Background
The PopuList is the result of close cooperation between academics and journalists, initiated by The Guardian. The list consists of European parties from 31 countries (see list belw) that can be classified as populist, far right, far left and/or Eurosceptic, and: have either won (1) at least 1 seat or (2) at least 2% of the votes in national parliamentary elections since 1989. The list has been thoroughly peer-reviewed by more than 80 academics. Note: parties voted into office before 1989 and falling under the threshold in subsequent elections have not been examined by the experts.
Countries Examined by The PopuList: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom;
Of course, The PopuList is not perfect. Not everybody will agree with the employed definitions and/or party categorizations – in particular with respect to borderline cases. Moreover, The PopuList is still work in progress. Nonetheless, we believe that this is one of the most complete, up-to-date, and carefully designed classifications of populist, far left, far right and Eurosceptic parties in the field.
On this website we will keep The PopuList up to date. We will update the list based on feedback we receive and the outcomes of recent national parliamentary elections (always in consultation with country and party experts). The current version, The Populist 2.0, has last been updated in January 2020.
Version 2.0
Version 2.0 of The PopuList extends the previous version of the list in several ways:
- it goes further back in time (1989 instead of 1998);
- it loosened up the criteria of inclusion (it now also includes parties that have never obtained 2% of the votes, but have nonetheless been (at least once) represented in their country’s national parliament);
- it is updated and includes all relevant parties until 1st January 2020;
- a borderline dummy has been added to all classifications, indicating ambiguity among experts;
- the data have been linked to other databases (enabling linkage to ParlGov, the Manifesto Project, and Party Facts).
Version 1.0
The first version of The PopuList only covered parties between 1998 and 2018 which had at least 2% of the vote. In consultation with country experts, some classifications have been adapted. For an overview of these changes see here. To access the first version of The PopuList, use this excel file.
Employed 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 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 nonnative 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).
Far left parties: parties that reject the underlying socio-economic structure of contemporary capitalism and advocate 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 2012).
Eurosceptic parties: parties that express the idea of contingent or qualified opposition, as well as incorporating 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, University of Zürich
- Koen Abts, Tilburgh University
- Kathrin Ackermann, University of Heidelberg
- Julian Aichholzer, University of Vienna
- Tjitske Akkerman, University of Amsterdam
- Daniele Albertazzi, University of Birmingham
- Kai Arzheimer, University Mainz
- Paris Aslanidis, Yale University
- Daunis Auers, University of Latvia
- Ilze Balcere, University of Latvia
- Tim Bale, Queen Mary University of London
- Laurent Bernhard, FORS
- Niklas Bolin, Mid Sweden University
- Lenka Bustikova, Arizona State University
- Filipe Carreira da Silva, University of Cambridge
- Elisabeth Carter, Keele University
- Matteo Cavallaro, University of Paris 13
- Giorgos Charalambous, University of Nicosia(Cyprus)
- Léonie de Jonge, University of Groningen
- Claes de Vreese, University of Amsterdam
- Kevin Deegan-Krause, Wayne State University
- Martin Eiermann, University of California Berkeley
- Sarah Engler, University of Zürich
- John Fitzgibbon, Boston College
- Rob Ford, University of Manchaster
- Sergiu Gherghina, University of Glasgow
- Raul Gomez, University of Liverpool
- Matthew Goodwin, University of Kent
- Marijana Grbesa, University of Zagreb
- Tim Haughton, University of Birmingham
- Vlastimil Havlik, Masaryk University
- Reinhard Heinisch, University of Salzburg
- Ivan Hrstic, Institute Pilar
- Carlo Invernizzi-Accetti, City College of New York
- Giles Ivaldi, University of Nice
- Stuart J. Turnbull-Dugarte, Kingscollege London
- Kristof Jacobs, Radboud University
- Ann-Cathrin Jungar, Södertörn University Stockholm
- Anders Jupskas, University of Oslo
- Mindaugas Jurkynas, Vytautas Magnus University
- Flemming Juul Christiansen, Roskilde University
- Petr Kaniok, Masaryk University
- Andres Kasekamp, University of Toronto
- Giorgos Katsambekis, Loughborough University
- Elina Kestilä-Kekkonen, Tampere University of Applied Sciences
- Algis Krupavicius, Vytautas Magnus University
- Levi Littvay, Central European University
- Kirsti M. Jylhä, Institute for future studies
- Luke March, University of Edinburgh
- Nonna Mayer, Sciences Po
- Oskar Mazzoleni, University Lousanne
- Duncan McDonnell, Griffith University
- Thomas Meyer, Humboldt University
- Michael Minkenberg, Europa University Frankfurt
- Benjamin Moffitt, Australian Catholic University
- Aurelien Mondon, University of Bath
- Eoin O’Malley, Dublin City University
- Teun Pauwels, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
- Lorenzo Pregliasco, University of Bologna
- Bartek Pytlas, LMU Munich
- Luis Ramiro, Leicester University
- Anders Ravik Jupskås, University of Oslo
- Saskia Ruth-Lovell, Leibniz Institute for Global and Area Studies
- Jens Rydgren, Stockholm University
- Berto Salaj, University of Zagreb
- Susana Salgado, University of Lisbon
- Allan Sikk, University College London
- Peter Spác, Masaryk University
- Bram Spruyt, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
- Ben Stanley, Swps University of Warsaw
- Yannis Stavrakakis, Auth university
- Paul Sum, University of North Dacota
- Ólafur Þórður Harðarson, University of Iceland
- Hulda Þórisdóttir, New York University
- Gerrit Voerman, University of Groningen
- Markus Wagner, University of Vienna
- Annika Werner, Australian National University
- Tuukka Ylä-Anttila, University of Helsinki
- Andrej Zaslove, Radboud University
- Mattia Zulianello, University of Birmingham
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.
This website is maintained by Philipp Mendoza