Us vs. Them: Initiatives against populist parties in European democracies

Abstract

In the last decade, after each major election in Europe, political scientists have been asked to comment on the performance of old and newer populist parties. In the meantime, scholarship has increasingly explored the causes for and the manifestation of populism in current politics. A significant body of literature has engaged with the responses to extremist movements and parties (see for instance Capoccia 2013); however, less has been written about how populist opponents seek to undermine populist presence and gains. This knowledge gap needs to be addressed because most populist parties, nowadays, do not openly reject democracy which has presumably impacted counterstrategies applied by opponents. Recent studies have analysed party initiatives against (right-wing) populism (e.g. Downs 2012, van Spanje and de Graaf 2018, Heinze 2020) but they have left out other categories of actors such as civil society groups and public authorities. Additionally, and from a theoretical perspective, a comprehensive analytical framework that can equip us to map the different initiatives to populist parties is still missing. This panel will address these gaps and ask how public authorities, political parties, and civil society groups oppose populists in Europe. In doing so, which challenges do they face? The different papers will contribute to the fifth axis of the section “Conspiring Elites and Disgruntled Masses? Revisiting the Populist and Extremist Challenges to Democracy” (S11) and will engage with the diversity of counter-strategies to populism, and their dynamics over time. The papers will focus on a great variety of countries in Western and Central Europe. The initiatives against different kinds of populist parties (left-wing vs. right-wing, at power vs. in opposition, older and newer populist parties) will be scrutinised. Finally, some papers will display case studies that develop theoretical accounts of the patterns of opposition to populist parties. Others will be rooted in political theory and will ask whether populists deserve toleration. Drawing on current European populist movements, they will challenge the classic response ‘no toleration for the intolerant’ (Popper 1995: 602).

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