To blur or not to blur: Disentangling populism, ideology, electoral strategy, and party system dimensionality

Studies of populism often associate it with blurred or vague economic positions, yet we do not know whether this connection is inherent to populism or a result of other characteristics of these parties and the environments in which they compete. This paper leverages cross-regionally comparable data to argue that populists tailor their strategies based on party system dimensionality and populism’s host ideology. We find that populists blur their economic positions in multidimensional systems and when they adopt exclusionary, thick ideologies. Populist parties in unidimensional party systems and those with inclusionary thick ideologies, however, present clear economic positions. These findings have implications for the study of populism as a global phenomenon and parties’ adaptation to diverse competitive environments.