Radical Rascals: Populism and Left/Right Radicalism in Western Europe

What explains how populist a party is? Based on a quantitative analysis of the election manifestos of 33 parties in five Western European countries (France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom), this study shows that it is mainly left/right radicalism that explains the degree of populism of a party. This implies that both radical right-wing political parties and radical left-wing political parties are inclined to employ a populist discourse. Moreover, building on studies of Euroscepticism, which have indicated that the relationship between the left/right ideology of parties and their attitudes towards European integration can best be described by a U-curve (both the radical left and the radical right tend to be Eurosceptic), I show that the association between left/right ideology and populism follows a similar pattern. However, it tends to follow a J-curve instead of a U-curve: both the radical left and the radical right tend to be populist, but the radical right more so than the radical left. On the basis of a qualitative analysis of the discourses of radical left- and right-wing parties, I also demonstrate that radical left-wing parties employ another form of populism than radical right-wing parties – they tend to emphasize economic issues instead of cultural topics. This paper suggests that populism can help us to understand the commonalities and differences between radical parties. Moreover, the paper also indicates that left/right radicalism can help us to better understand populism.