To what extent has populism become a feature of public debates in European countries? Matthijs Rooduijn employs content analysis to assess the frequency of populist statements in newspaper articles in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the UK. He concludes that populism is more widespread in these countries than previously assumed, with populist parties not only enjoying more electoral success, but populist messages also becoming more pervasive in public discourse

Rooduijn, Matthijs

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29/01/2015Populist arguments have become more pervasive in WesternEuropean countriesblogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2015/01/29/populist-arguments-have-become-more-pervasive-in-western-european-countries/To what extent has populism become a feature of public debates in European countries? MatthijsRooduijn employs content analysis to assess the frequency of populist statements in newspaperarticles in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the UK. He concludes that populism is morewidespread in these countries than previously assumed, with populist parties not only enjoyingmore electoral success, but populist messages also becoming more pervasive in public discourse.Radical right-wing parties have become increasingly successful in Western Europe; UKIP in theUK, the Front National in France and the Freedom Party in the Netherlands fare very well in opinionpolls. Similarly, radical left-wing parties like Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece are increasingly popular amongvoters, underlined by Syriza’s victory in the Greek elections on 25 January. Although these parties diﬀer from eachother in many respects, they also have something in common: they all express a populist message. While a lot hasalready been written about populist parties, relatively little is known about the extent to which this populist messagehas become widespread beyond the party political sphere. To what extent has the populist message aﬀected publicdebates in Western Europe? And do these debates become more populist when populist parties are successful? Ina recent study I examine these questions.Although scholars still quarrel about the question of how to deﬁne populism, they increasingly agree that populismcan best be deﬁned as a political message concerning the antagonistic relationship between the (good) people andthe (evil) elite. The Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde, for instance, argues that populism is “an ideology thatconsiders society to be 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 (generalwill) of the people”. The central elements of the populist message are ‘people-centrism’ and ‘anti-elitism’. Populism ispeople-centrist because it emphasises the idea of popular sovereignty and argues that the popular will should be thepoint of departure for every political decision. Populism is anti-elitist because the elite (be it a political, economic orcultural elite) is criticised for having lost touch with the people. The elite is accused of being corrupt, incompetent,arrogant and/or selﬁsh.Populism can be combined with many diﬀerent ideologies. A party that combines populism with a radical right-wingideology is often also exclusionist towards ‘dangerous others’ (immigrants or people of another race or religion). Butwhen populism is combined with, for instance, a radical left-wing ideology, this exclusionist feature is usually absentfrom the party’s worldview. Populism is like a chameleon: it takes on the colour of the environment in which itoccurs. Parties and politicians – but also other actors like journalists, newspapers, voters or companies – canendorse the populist message to a lesser or larger extent. Hence, populism can best be conceived of as a matter ofdegree: actors can be more or less populist.Populism in Western EuropeTo what extent have public debates in Western Europe become increasingly populist over the years? To answer thatquestion I have assessed how populist opinion articles in newspapers are (I focused on editorials, columns, op-edpieces and letters to the editor). I collected 15 newspapers in 5 Western European countries (France, Germany,Italy, the Netherlands and the UK). In every country I selected four ‘election periods’ (the four weeks before ageneral election) between 1988 and 2008. I drew a systematic sample of days from every election period andselected those opinion articles that concerned domestic and EU politics. Although the opinion section in newspapers1/4is not the only media site where the public debate takes shape – there are, for instance, also magazines, televisionprogrammes and discussion forums on the internet – it is still one of the most central ones.I measured the degree of populism by means of a content analysis. Native coders assessed for every paragraphwhether it was populist or not. A paragraph was coded populist when both people-centrism and anti-elitism werepresent. The degree of populism of an opinion article is the percentage of populist paragraphs. The presence of onlypeople-centrism or only anti-elitism is not enough to mark a paragraph as populist. It is, after all, the combination ofpeople-centrism and anti-elitism that deﬁnes the populist message. The populism score refers to the extent to whichthe authors of opinion articles endorse the populist message. A mere reference to populism without a clearendorsement of it by the author(s) is not coded.Figure 1: Average populism scores per newspaperNote: For full calculations see the author’s longer articleFigure 1 displays the average populism scores per newspaper. The debate in Italy turns out to be more populist thanin other countries. This might well be due to the widespread corruption scandals in the country. The high score in theNetherlands is to a large extent due to a peak in 2002. This peak can most probably be explained by the impact ofthe sudden political upsurge around the murder of the populist politician Pim Fortuyn. The debate in France is muchless populist than one might expect when one takes into account the success of former Front National leader Jean-Marie Le Pen during the ﬁrst round of the presidential elections in 2002. The low degree of populism here is mostprobably due to the isolation of the FN: the FN was widely conceived of as radical, and many of its standpoints havelong been ignored in the media.It is striking that the tabloid newspapers in the UK (The Sun) and Germany (Bild) are less populist than the qualitynewspapers that were investigated in these countries. The reason for this remarkable ﬁnding is most probably thatopinion articles in tabloids are generally very short. There is only limited space for populist arguments in such shortarticles.2/4Figure 2: Average populism scores (left axis) and success of populists (right axis) in predicted vote shareover time per countryFranceGermanyItalyNetherlandsUnited KingdomNote: For full calculations see the author’slonger articleThe solid lines in Figure 2 display the populism scoresover time. These lines show a pretty clear net picture: inGermany, Italy, the Netherlands and the UK, the opinionarticles have become more populist over the years,whereas in France this has not been the case. The ﬁgurealso shows the predicted successes of populist parties(the dashed lines). In France, Germany, the Netherlandsand the United Kingdom, the predicted vote shares forpopulists coincide with the degree of populism in opinionarticles. When populist parties were more electorallysuccessful in the polls, the debates became morepopulist as well. When these parties were lesssuccessful, the debates became less populist too. Onlyin Italy does the electoral success of populists and thedegree of populism in opinion articles not seem tocoincide. It is important to emphasise, however, thatalthough the vote shares of Forza Italia, Lega Nord andAlleanza Nazionale (all populist parties in these years)dropped in 2001 and 2008, these parties were still verysuccessful in this period (in fact, in both 2001 and 2008they won the elections and also formed a governmentcoalition together).In general, public debates in Western Europeancountries have thus become more populist over theyears. Yet the increase of populism is not steady andpersistent. Populism comes with ups and downs. To a large extent, it is dependent on the electoral successes ofpopulist parties: when populist parties are more successful, media tend to incorporate the populist message in theircoverage. We can conclude that populism is more widespread than previously assumed. Not only have populistparties become more electorally successful; but the populist message itself has also become more pervasive in3/4Western European public debates. Populism appears tobe a mesmerising message that transcends the realm ofparty politics.Please read our comments policy before commenting .Note: This article gives the views of the author, and notthe position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy,nor of the London School of Economics. Featured imagecredit: Dr Case (CC-BY-SA-3.0)Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/1BrJJUf _________________________________About the authorMatthijs Rooduijn – University of AmsterdamMatthijs Rooduijn is a postdoctoral researcher andlecturer at the Department of Political Science at theUniversity of Amsterdam. His research focuses on topicssuch as populism, radicalism, voting behaviour, publicopinion and political communication.4/4

Populist arguments have become more pervasive in Western European countries

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