Ideological Orientations and Populist Attitudes among Radical Left Individuals: A comparative analysis of five European cases

This paper analyzes the ideological and programmatic positions of radical left individuals in five European countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Portugal). In particular, our paper focuses on the populist attitudes of individuals with radical left attitudes in all these countries. Historically, all these societies were characterized by the importance of intra-left party divisions and the presence of significant to strong communist parties. Nowadays, however, these countries differ strongly in terms of the electoral success, organizational stability, and ideological discourses of their radical left parties (March 2011; Damiani 2020). Furthermore, not all these countries have witnessed the development of a populist radical left discourse, the French France Insoumise and the Spanish Podemos being the clearest instances of fusion between populist and leftist ideas (Damiani 2020). Combining a comparative approach and survey analyses, our paper will examine the attitudes and preferences of individuals holding radical-left orientations in these four countries. In particular, we will analyze the intensity of populist attitudes among individuals with radical left orientations. For our analysis we will identify radical left voters on the basis of both self-placements in the left-right scale and, as in Jungkunz (2018), positions in different attitudinal dimensions (redistribution, immigration policies, law and order, and gender equality and sexual and reproductive rights). As far as populist attitudes are concerned, we will consider both the multidimensional concept and its constitutive sub-dimensions (people-centrism, anti-elitism, Manichaeism). We hypothesize that the degree to which radical left voters adopt populist attitudes is very strongly connected to the presence of political parties articulating populist attitudes. We also expect to find a positive association between the presence of populist attitudes among radical left voters and the electoral success of radical left parties. By conducting this analysis, we aim at identifying some of the sources and ideological correlates of radical left attitudes in Europe. In so doing, we also expect to make a useful contribution to the comparative literature on the relationships between populist attitudes and radical left orientations, a research field that has been scarcely developed due to the overwhelming attention paid to the populist radical right over the last years.