Identifying Left- And Right-Wing Populist Parties with Expert Surveys

For many years, scholars working on populism have dedicated most of their resources studying the supply side of populism and most studies on populism were based on the application of text analysis methods on party manifestos and speeches by party leaders. Only recently, we have seen methods that try to cover both the supply and the demand side of populism by including batteries of items in survey questionnaires suitable for various target groups (voters, candidates and experts). One of these surveys is the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES) which uses the opinion of experts on the positioning of political parties in many countries in Europe. In this paper, we use data from the 2017 Chapel Hill Expert Survey which in addition to two populism related items already in CHES since 2014, it includes a new item with the following wording: Some political parties take the position that 'the people' should have the final say on the most important issues, for example, by voting directly in referendums. At the opposite pole are political parties that believe that elected representatives should make the most important political decisions. Where do the parties fall on this dimension? In addition to populism, the 2017 CHES questionnaire has items that can be used to estimate the position of the political parties on the following dimensions: i) economic left/right, ii) libertarian vs authoritarian (socio-cultural issues), iii) attitudes towards immigrants and minorities and iv) attitudes towards the EU. In our study we use all these items to identify Left- and Right-Wing Populist Parties.