Background
The PopuList provides a list of European parties from 31 countries that can be classified as populist, far left, and/or far right. For the parties that belong to one of these categories, it also examines whether they are Eurosceptic. The most recent iteration of the database was launched in 2023 and includes all national elections from 1 January 1989 until 31 December 2022. The list has been thoroughly peer-reviewed by about 100 academics (see below). Note: parties voted into office before 1989 and falling under the threshold in subsequent elections have not been examined by the experts.
The countries examined by The PopuList are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
The PopuList Team
The PopuList team consists of eight comparativists (all experts in the field of study) from across Europe:
- Matthijs Rooduijn, University of Amsterdam (please contact m.rooduijn@uva.nl for questions, comments and suggestions)
- Andrea Pirro, University of Bologna
- Daphne Halikiopoulou, University of York
- Stijn van Kessel, Queen Mary University of London
- Caterina Froio, Sciences Po
- Sarah de Lange, University of Amsterdam
- Cas Mudde, University of Georgia
- Paul Taggart, University of Sussex
Employed definitions
We employ the following definitions:
- Populist parties: parties that endorse the set of ideas that society is ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, “the pure people” versus “the corrupt elite,” and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people (Mudde 2004).
- Far-left parties: parties that reject the underlying socio-economic structure of contemporary capitalism and advocate for alternative economic and power structures. They see economic inequality as the basis of existing political and social arrangements and call for a major redistribution of resources from existing political elites (March 2011).
- Far-right parties: parties that are nativist (which is an ideology that holds that states should be inhabited exclusively by members of the native group and that non-native elements are fundamentally threatening to the homogenous nation-state) and authoritarian (which is the belief in a strictly ordered society, in which infringements of authority are to be punished severely) (Mudde 2007).
- Eurosceptic parties: parties that express the idea of contingent or qualified opposition, as well as incorporate outright and unqualified opposition to the process of European integration. This includes both “hard Euroscepticism” (i.e., outright rejection of the entire project of European political and economic integration, and opposition to one’s country joining or remaining a member of the EU) and “soft Euroscepticism” (i.e., contingent or qualified opposition to European integration) (Taggart and Sczcerbiak 2004).
Consulted experts
Tarik Abou-Chadi, Koen Abts, Kathrin Ackermann, Alexandre Afonso, Julian Aichholzer, Tjitske Akkerman, Daniele Albertazzi, Kai Arzheimer, Paris Aslanidis, Daunis Auers, Ilze Balcere, Tim Bale, Eirikur Bergmann, Laurent Bernhard, Niklas Bolin, Lenka Bustikova, Paul Carls, Filipe Carreira da Silva, Elisabeth Carter, Neil Carter, Matteo Cavallaro, Giorgos Charalambous, Léonie de Jonge, Claes de Vreese, Kevin Deegan-Krause, Martin Eiermann, Sarah Engler, John Fitzgibbon, Zsolt Enyedi, Rob Ford, Pietro Castelli Gattinara, Vassiliki Georgiadou, Sergiu Gherghina, Raul Gomez, Matthew Goodwin, Marijana Grbesa, Petra Guasti, Isabelle Guinaudeau, Eelco Harteveld, Tim Haughton, Vlastimil Havlik, Reinhard Heinisch, Ivan Hrstic, Carlo Invernizzi-Accetti, Giles Ivaldi, Stuart J. Turnbull-Dugarte, Kristof Jacobs, Ann-Cathrin Jungar, Anders Jupskas, Mindaugas Jurkynas, Flemming Juul Christiansen, Petr Kaniok, Andres Kasekamp, Giorgos Katsambekis, Yannos Katsourides, Elina Kestilä, Alena Kluknavská, Péter Krekó, Algis Krupavicius, Roman Kuhar, Levi Littvay, Kirsti M. Jylhä, Luke March, Nonna Mayer, Oskar Mazzoleni, Duncan McDonnell, Susi Meret, Thomas Meyer, Michael Minkenberg, Benjamin Moffitt, Aurelien Mondon, Jonathan Olsen, Eoin O’Malley, Mojca Pajnik, Teun Pauwels, Maria Popova, Lorenzo Pregliasco, Bartek Pytlas, Luis Ramiro, Anders Ravik Jupskås, Marko Ribač, Saskia Ruth-Lovell, Jens Rydgren, Berto Salaj, Susana Salgado, Antonella Seddone, Allan Sikk, Sorina Soare, Peter Spác, Maria Spirova, Bram Spruyt, Ben Stanley, Yannis Stavrakakis, Paul Sum, Ivan Tranfić, Ólafur Þórður Harðarson, Hulda Þórisdóttir, Davide Vampa, Sofia Vasilopoulou, Gerrit Voerman, Christos Vrakopoulos, Markus Wagner, Annika Werner, Tuukka Ylä-Anttila, Andrej Zaslove, Mattia Zulianello.
References
- March, L. (2012). Radical Left Parties in Europe. London: Routledge.
- Mudde, C. (2007). Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Mudde, C. (2004). The Populist Zeitgeist. Government and Opposition, 39(4), 541-563.
- Taggart, P., & Szczerbiak, A. (2004). Contemporary Euroscepticism in the party systems of the European Union candidate states of Central and Eastern Europe. European Journal of Political Research, 43(1), 1-27.