European Populisms: Demand-side, Supply-side and Contextual Explanations

Populist movements and parties have thrived in Southern Europe in recent years. Their success is often related to the influence of the financial crisis and its disastrous impact on the quality of life of ample sectors of the population throughout the region, that is, to demand-side variables emerging from an impoverished populations. This presentation reviews reaction to the crisis at EU level as well as in Italy, Greece and Spain and examines why political outcomes have been markedly different in these cases. It focuses on the impact of the 'populist turn' on organized civil society. It argues that the success of populist formations needs also to be related to distinctive supply-side and contextual factors, that is, to opportunities newly available to political entrepreneurs on the basis of different institutional set-ups, political cultures and rival newcomers in the political market. The resulting structure of populist formations is described and compared, and their impact on civil society is reviewed.