Populist Zeitgeist Research Articles

Populist attitudes and foreign policy postures: a comparative analysis of four European countries

Abstract This article explores how populist attitudes are correlated with foreign policy postures at the public level in four European countries: France, Germany, Great Britain, and Italy. We provide first evidence adjudicating between two rivalling perspectives. One perspective focuses on the ideational core of populism and argues that it entails substantive beliefs and values that may inform foreign policy preferences – just like any other ideology. Another perspective focuses on the thin-centredness of populism and argues that no policy implications can be derived from populist ideas. Analysing original survey data, we find strong and consistent associations of populist attitudes with two foreign policy postures, militant internationalism and isolationism, and weaker and less systematic associations with two others, cooperative internationalism and global justice orientations. Importantly, these patterns are independent of host ideologies. We discuss the implications of these findings for the question of how “thick” populism is and what that may mean for the politics of (European) foreign policies in times of a continuing populist Zeitgeist.

Civil-Military Relations in the Age of Populist Nationalism: The Case of Israel

Abstract One underplayed aspect of the current populist zeitgeist is the politicization of the military, adding to the growing list of dangers that democracies face today. Israel, which has experienced its own nationalistic populism since 2010, represents a deviant case with regard to the civil–military dimension. In contrast to the typical pattern of populist leaders enhancing the military's influence to bolster their own power, in Israel, populist politicians have sought to restrain the military top brass from the decision-making process, going as far as delegitimizing them by portraying them as part of the “leftist” out-of-touch elite. In a country in which the lines between the military and civilian spheres have traditionally been blurred and where security officials have played a significant role in decision-making, this has been a noteworthy development in the era of Benjamin Netanyahu. This article advances two causal claims pertaining to the Israeli case. First, perceived military setbacks and political-diplomatic moves associated with the military have diminished the once-hallowed reputation of the Israel Defense Forces. Second, right-wing politicians often view the military top brass as potential political rivals, given the standard practice in Israel of high-ranking generals entering politics upon retirement. The generals’ declining status in Israeli society has opened up the political space for populist nationalists to assault both active and retired security officials whose assessments often clash with the worldview of right-wing politicians.

Populist communication among usual and unusual suspects: A longitudinal analysis of the communication of Finnish party leaders during parliamentary elections (2007–2019)

AbstractA great deal of scholarly attention has been devoted to the success of populist actors around the world. However, to a lesser extent, the focus has been directed towards the way in which populist political communication is used by other parties and how populist political communication has developed over time. Hence, this article takes a longitudinal approach to examine how Finnish party leaders have used populist communication during four parliamentary elections and if populist communication is contagious. This study argues that populism is best understood as a discursive frame, combined with the necessary element of people centrism with antielitism and/or exclusion of ‘dangerous others’. Manual content analysis has been used to measure the usage of populism in Finnish party leader interviews during the parliamentary elections between 2007 and 2019. The analysis reveals that several party leaders used populist political communication and that an increase in its overall usage occurred during the 2011 parliamentary election. Most commonly, populism was used by the Finns Party's leaders and by leaders of other niche parties in the opposition. However, in the 2011 parliamentary election, certain mainstream parties also used populist political communication. The article critically examines the idea of a populist Zeitgeist and the contagious effect of populist political communication as an explanation for the significant increase in populist political communication. The article suggests that populist communication spreads to certain parties, but to speak of a full‐blown populist Zeitgeist seems exaggerated in a consensus‐seeking multiparty democracy.

Left and right in the age of populism: has the populist zeitgeist permeated citizens’ representation of ideological labels?

ABSTRACT This article explores whether the current populist zeitgeist has changed the social representation of the political labels ‘left’ and ‘right’ in terms of their relevance, understanding and meaning. We merged two post-electoral quota samples of the Italian adult population. The first (N = 1,377) was collected in 2006 by the ITANES research group, the second in 2019 (N = 1,504) for this study. We analysed the relevance of left and right in politics as the frequency with which participants placed themselves on the left–right axis; its understanding as the frequency with which participants answered at least one of two open-ended questions about the meaning of such categories, and the meaning participants gave to left and right in politics through content analysis of their responses to the open-ended questions above. From 2006 to 2019, the relevance and understanding of left and right declined. In terms of meanings, references to the traditional elements of left and right became less common, while references to specific leaders, and the notion of ‘left’ and ‘right’ in politics no longer making sense, became more widespread; moreover, none of the other populist categories significantly changed their frequency. This study expands the scope of the previous research on this topic also by identifying the critical role that political interest plays in the changes on which we have focused. Strengths, limitations and implications of the study are discussed.

Populism in Europe: An Illiberal Democratic Response to Undemocratic Liberalism (TheGovernment and Opposition/Leonard Schapiro Lecture 2019)

AbstractIn this lecture, I lay out my approach to populism, which falls within the now dominant ‘ideational approach’ of populism, discuss the complex relationship between populism and politics, and identify some of the main causes of the ongoing ‘populist Zeitgeist’. My main arguments are: (1) while populism is related to (real and perceived) ‘crises’, these so-called ‘crises’ are often catalysts rather than prime causes of the rise of populism; (2) populism is essentially an illiberal democratic response to undemocratic liberalism; and (3) populism can only be overcome by more rather than less liberal democracy. I illustrate my arguments on the basis of the recent rise of populism in Europe, but believe they also largely hold true beyond that specific regional and temporal context.

Chasing the Other \u201cPopulist Zeitgeist\u201d? Mainstream Parties and the Rise of Right-Wing Populism

This article answers the question of why certain European mainstream parties have changed their policy positions on the GAL-TAN (Green/Alternative/Libertarian vs. Traditional/Authoritarian/Nationalist) dimension in recent years. I argue that these changes can be explained through the electoral success of new right-wing populist parties and the ideological proximity of conservative mainstream parties towards these parties. These arguments were tested with econometric models of mainstream parties’ policy positions in 11 Western European democracies between 2002 and 2019. The results indicate that mainstream parties chase the other “populist zeitgeist” by changing their policy positions on the GAL–TAN dimension in response to the electoral success of right-wing populist parties. Mainstream parties respond to this threat by closing the distance to these parties on the GAL–TAN dimension. However, this responsiveness is largely constrained to conservative mainstream parties. The findings have important implications for understanding mainstream party responsiveness towards rivalling right-wing populist parties.

Political Contagion and Electoral Populism: Content Analysis of Campaign speeches in United Kingdom and United States

The aim of this thesis is to contribute to the definition of populism as a political communication style and to the identification of the populist’s stylistic features and elements as a mode of persuasive communication that has been recently adopted by leaders of mainstream political parties. This research intends to explore how to measure the employment of the populist style of political communication. This research investigated to what extent this style was adopted by Hilary Clinton and David Cameron in their latest campaign discourses in 2016; comparing their speeches before and after the rise of the populist zeitgeist. Two main theories were applied the rational choice theory which describes how political actors apply a behavioral rule in by deciding what tools or techniques are used to reach to specific goals and purposes such as winning votes in elections and the theory of behavioral contagion explains why politicians would act in a populistic style consciously or even unconsciously.Quantitative content analysis was carried out to measure the intensity of populist communication. A purposive sampling was conducted in which speeches were selected five months before the voting day; one speech per month and speeches that contained controversial themes were selected for the sake of covering a diversity of issues and topics that are of people’s concerns. In total twenty speeches were analyzed, ten for Clinton (five from USPE in 2008 and another five from 2016). As for Cameron’s speeches five were selected from GE in 2010 and five other speeches from 2016 Brexit referendum elections. Both candidates have been influenced into adopting the populist communication style. The thesis proved that there is a positive correlation between the successful electoral performance of populist actors and the adoption of the populist style of communication by mainstream politicians in their campaign discourses.

Max Weber's antinomies of the Fall: Paradisiacal ethics and the populist Zeitgeist.

This article points out that the way the biblical myth of the Fall has been interpreted in the Judeo-Christian tradition is a crucial heuristic in the works of Max Weber, an assessment that hitherto largely remained unnoticed. Nevertheless, Weber's understanding of everyday action is closely related to the various religious interpretations of what deprivations were suffered by humanity as a consequence of Adam's original sin and the paradisiacal yearning for salvation it engenders. Moreover, Weber's interpretation of the Fall is characteristic for his tragic sociology in the sense that it guarantees the freedom to subjectively create self-conscious meaning that is, however, no longer embedded in a context of common knowledge. His solution to this epistemological problem involves a Nietzschean heroic existentialism whereby individuals give personality to one's character by freely choosing their own values. Yet, he also realizes that many will not be able to choose by themselves and, therefore, will be attracted by charismatic leaders that can invoke a paradisiacal community of choice. Weber's modern antinomical interpretation of the Fall is still relevant today because it provides insight in the epistemological underpinnings of the contemporary populist Zeitgeist.

How Do Populist Voters Rate Their Political Leaders? Comparing Citizen Assessments in Three Jurisdictions

Drawing from the field of management studies, we explore how a sample of voters in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom use a leader character framework to judge political leadership. We ask, how do voters actually assess the character of their current leaders? And, in light of the populist zeitgeist, do people who hold a populist attitude differ markedly in how they judge the character of political leaders? Our results show that voters generally consider character important. However, voters who lean toward populism believe character matters less in political leadership than individuals who scored low on the populism indicator. This durable difference merits more exploration in a political context marked by populism. Our findings about the factors that influence vote choice contribute to this conversation and to extant research that reports that some voters pay greater attention to leader characteristics than do others.

Neo-Populism: Applying Paul Taggart’s Heartland to the Italian Five Star Movement and League parties

In the early 2000s the British academic and expert in the field of populism, Paul Taggart, conceptualised the heartland – which he defined as ‘a version of the past that celebrates a hypothetical, uncomplicated and non-political territory of imagination.’ The idea is that populists envision this return to an almost utopic, laborious, morally pure, and culturally homogenous ‘place’ where professional political administration is not completely rejected but certainly kept at a minimum. Applying Taggart’s heartland to leaders and parties allows us to build on an efficient comprehension of specific uses of populist dialogue, as well as their general discursive styles and political narratives. Those who have capitalised on the current populist zeitgeist (a term Cas Mudde often uses), such as the American President Donald J. Trump, have mobilised masses by implicitly calling for a return to the heartland with slogans such as ‘Make America Great Again’. However, Trump is not the only politician who has discursively framed the concept of heartland in the twenty-first century. Interestingly, the heartland can also be applied to ‘right-wing’ national- populists and ‘left-wing’ techno-populists in Italy. The League, believes that with their involvement, their country can return to be a safer, more stable, hard-working, producerist society. Similarly, the Five Star Movement pressures the elites for a more virtuous, honest, and transparent way of doing politics through the digital web and direct democracy practices. Those values are the ones that shape their idea of heartland. This piece untangles the two distinct versions of heartland that exist within the forma mentis of the two Italian populist parties, compares them, and contrasts them in the hope of contributing to the already existing literature that has presented little evidence so far on how Taggart’s relevant concept can be identified in populist discourse, monologue, and ideology. Also, some advice is given on how to deal with the new populists worldwide in a way that involves dialogue that is both constructive and inclusive.

The Rise of a Populist Zeitgeist? A Content Analysis of Populist Media Coverage in Newspapers Published between 1990 and 2017

ABSTRACTIt has been assumed that populism has become mainstream in the Western world, and that the media have substantially contributed to populism’s success and omnipresence in politics and society. To investigate populist elements in media coverage, extant research has mainly focused on election periods, or media populism in specific types of coverage and outlets. In this paper, we investigate if the use of populist elements in general media coverage has increased over time. Focusing on a 28-year period in the Netherlands, we find clear evidence for an increasing presence of people-centric, anti-elitist and right- and left-exclusionist coverage in newspapers. This trend is general, with only limited evidence for cross-outlet differences. Since our analysis was not limited to specific periods, sample frames or topics, our research offers first evidence for an unconditional increase of different elements of populist communication in traditional news coverage. An important implication is that the rise of populist news coverage has made populism more visible to the electorate, potentially setting the agenda for political parties and populist attitudes in public opinion.

Communist populism in Hungary

According to Cas Mudde, we live in a “populist Zeitgeist”. The paper argues that not just the 21st, but also the 20th century is about populism. In the first section I elaborate the theoretical background of populism, which is claimed to be a never-ending phenomenon: here, various notions of populism are analysed; I investigate the relationship between democracy and populism; and I refer to the biopolitical framework of populism (called biopopulism) as well. This theoretical framework will be used to analyse Communist populism in Hungary. I elaborate the populism of the Horthyera (1920-1944) in the context of Communist populism. Then I analyse the case of Communist populism in Hungary (1948-1989) according to the following aspects: in the context of the working class and the bourgeois elite; the biopolitical character of the regime; goulash Communism as populist legitimacy; and the viewpoint of socialist patriotism. The main aspect of Communist populism is summarized at the end of the third section, and I briefly refer to the afterlife of Communist populism as a nostalgic phenomenon. The regimes analysed in this study aimed to govern the entire life of the citizens, which is why biopopulism is a useful analytical concept. The biopopulist framework shows that the investigation of the historical backgrounds of populism is necessary to understand contemporary populist tendencies.

A Populist Zeitgeist? The Communication Strategies of Western and Latin American Political Leaders on Facebook

By focusing on the Facebook activities of eighty-three political leaders from twenty-six Western and Latin American countries, we analyze their reliance on elements of populist communication for their competitive strategies. By integrating both a communication-centered and an actor-centered approach to the study of populism, we tackle four major research questions: Do populist and non-populist leaders adopt similar communication strategies on Facebook? Is there any evidence of the so-called populist zeitgeist in such arena? What different combinations between the so-called three “elements of populist communication” characterize the communication strategies of political leaders on Facebook? Are there major differences between Western and Latin American leaders? The results of our analysis provide an important contribution to the existing literature on populism and political communication in different respects. First, the populist zeitgeist “thesis” does not apply to the communication strategies of political leaders on Facebook. Second, the spread of elements of populist communication in Latin America is considerably lower in comparison with Western countries, irrespective of party ideological background. Finally, this paper identifies all the logical combinations that can occur between the interplay of the different elements of populist communication, thus enabling the classification of the communication strategies employed by political leaders on Facebook.

Hybrid media and populist currents in Ireland’s 2016 General Election

Populism, or at the very least a ‘populist zeitgeist’ has advanced across the globe with populist actors from across the ideological spectrum at the forefront of politics in Europe, North and South America and Southeast Asia. One of the major components is the media and specifically hybrid media, which can inhibit or magnify populist political tendencies among both parties and voters. We utilised both hand-coded traditional media data and machine learning on social media data in order to disengage the hybrid media nuances for populist storytelling. We find that the media system in Ireland largely inhibits populist politics and messaging and thereby dampens all anti-out-group messaging. Thus, contrary to the literature identifying an inclination towards populism in some types of new media, and the emergence of media populism in similar media systems in the United States and the United Kingdom, we find that the Irish media, across all platforms, tend not to focus on populist messaging. In addition, the norms appear to bleed over to social media. These results are important because they potentially provide lessons for other European countries in covering populist actors and they contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the role of different kinds of media in the representation of populist politics.

Left and right populism compared: The British case

This article represents one of the few systematic comparisons of left-wing populism with other populisms. Focussing on the manifestos of six British parties in 1999–2015, the findings confirm that left-wing populists are more socio-economically focussed, more inclusionary but less populist than right-wing populists. The article makes four main substantive contributions. First, empirically, it shows that the much-touted populist Zeitgeist in the United Kingdom barely exists. Second, methodologically, it provides a nuanced disaggregated populism scale that has advantages over existing methods because it can effectively distinguish populist from non-populist parties and analyse degrees of populism. Third, theoretically, it shows that host ideology is more important than populism per se in explaining differences between left and right populisms. Fourth is a broader theoretical point: what is often called ‘thin’ or ‘mainstream’ populism’ is not populism but demoticism (closeness to ordinary people). Therefore, analysts should not label parties ‘populist’ just because their rhetoric is demotic.

Who is populist in Central and Eastern Europe? Comparative analysis of prime ministers' populist disclosure

This article measures populist discourse among prime ministers in new Central and Eastern European democracies using a type of textual analysis called holistic grading. The article first offers a definition of populism as discourse and then measures populist discourse through grading political speeches by contemporary prime ministers in Central and Eastern Europe. It then presents prime ministers’ populist scores and discusses positive cases of populism among prime ministers confirmed by holistic grading. Despite the general feeling that we live in populist zeitgeist , populism is rare and occasional phenomenon in Central and Eastern European executive politics. Despite populism has often been associated with violations of democratic structure and authoritarian experiments, data in this study implicate that these violations are more likely related to undemocratic political culture in general, rather than to populism in particular. Where populism does coincide with already undemocratic political mindsets, these violations tend to be more dangerous for democratic standards.

Populism in the Manifestos of Latvian Political Parties: Increasingly Used but Ineffective?

It is often stated that we live in an era of populist zeitgeist, namely, that populism today has become part of everyday politics. Despite systematic attempts to investigate the validity of this claim in Western European democracies, the situation in the Baltic states has been overlooked. This article marks the first attempt to investigate the dynamics of populism in the Latvian party manifestos by using novel research methodology to quantitatively estimate how populist Latvian political parties have become over an extensive period of time. Our findings reveal that in the last two decades populism has indeed become more widespread in Latvian party manifestos, yet it does not seem to be very effective and is largely primarily used by electorally unsuccessful parties.

The Populist Zeitgeist

AbstractSince the 1980s the rise of so-called ‘populist parties’ has given rise to thousands of books, articles, columns and editorials. This article aims to make a threefold contribution to the current debate on populism in liberal democracies. First, a clear and new definition of populism is presented. Second, the normal-pathology thesis is rejected; instead it is argued that today populist discourse has become mainstream in the politics of western democracies. Indeed, one can even speak of a populist Zeitgeist. Third, it is argued that the explanations of and reactions to the current populist Zeitgeist are seriously flawed and might actually strengthen rather than weaken it.