Established political parties in Western Europe can react in either a responsive or a populist way to the continuous success of populist parties. Responsiveness means that they change their behavior in accordance with their ideological and institutional traditions (Budge et al. 2010) whereas populist behavior means the abandonment of these traditions and their orientation towards the “thin-centered ideology of populism” (Mudde 2004). Responsive party behavior ensures party divergence, thus constitutes a necessary corrective, which helps to overcome the current “malaise” (Meny/Surel 2002) of representative democracy. In contrast, populist behavior leads to “populist convergence”, hence jeopardizes the functioning of representative democracy.
By comparing the behavior of established political parties in Western Europe from the 1980s until today the paper analyzes which ideological and institutional inter- and intra-party arrangements favor which behavior. In other words, why does one party tend to behave responsively while another surrenders to the populist challenge?
