Scarica Understanding Populism: Definitions, Characteristics, and New Political Organizations e più Appunti in PDF di Comunicazione Politica solo su Docsity! Definitions and Literature review: Populism is attracting much scientific attention. The media use it as a pejorative label, defining it with the illusion of being able to govern according to the general will of the people, the latter being considered as the only source of political legitimacy (Mény and Surel, 2002). The populist strategy consists of an antagonistic relationship between ‘the (good) people’ and ‘the (corrupt) elite’ (Canovan, 2002; Stanley, 2008). Populists place ‘the people’ at the centre of politics and, at the same time, are hostile towards (corrupt) political, economical and cultural elites because they stand in the way of the (legitimate) desires of the people. Mudde sees populism ‘as a thin-centred ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogenous 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’ (2004, p. 544). Populist parties thus propose exactly the opposite of what the establishment does. That is why they are called “chameleons”, and that also explains the differences in their agenda (over-time and across- countries) (Lee, 2006). Wider definitions of populism have features that seem to apply to all the new European political organizations that are posing threats to traditional parties. Scholars, indeed, frequently associate populism with weak party institutionalization, strong emphasis on leaders and low emphasis on party structures or formal organization (Ucen, 2007) and other new, non-traditional ‘business’ models of party organization (Hopkin and Paolucci, 1999). Jagers and Walgrave (2007) note populism as a question of style, emphasizing the central role of ‘man in the street communication styles’ rhetoric and the role of the television and tabloid media. Studies of ‘new parties’ echo the anti-elite, and anti-corruption attributes of populism, as ‘new parties’ often emphasize newness to signal independence from the establishment and its corruption (Sikk, 2005). When it comes to immigration, populist organizations reflect the classic right/left ideological lines in which right-wing populism is strongly against immigrants, while those of the left are moderately open towards this issue. In this sense, it might work the inclusionary v. exclusionary material dimension of populism, where the former concerns parties that are left-wing, favour welfare enlargement and are not pre-conditionally against immigration. Exclusionary populists, on the other hand, are usually right-wing and welfare chauvinists (Mudde and Kaltwasser, 2013). However, the breadth of the above-mentioned definitions and the outstanding ideological distance between political organizations that share the same label, drive us to rely on Taguieff’s reflections (1997): populism is considered as a sort of ‘rhetorical arsenal’, which can be used in different ways, according to the specific prevailing political cultures of each country. To say that all ‘new parties’ in Europe are populist is not correct. However, new-born parties and deep-rooted populist organizations often share the identification with anti-elite and anti- establishment sentiments. Operationalizing anti-establishment politics is difficult, (challengers always attack incumbents) but some works include more precise indicators (Barr, 2009). Several ‘new parties’, such as the M5S in Italy and The Alternative in Denmark are explicitly in preference for popular participation and mechanisms of direct democracy, while ‘traditional’ populism’s commitment to popular empowerment is more doubtful, because of its affinity with the direct mechanisms of ‘plebiscitary’ or ‘delegate’ democracy (Mral et al., 2013). In this article, we consider ‘new parties’ as the political organizations that, in each country, ran for elections for the first time in the last national election. We define populist parties as the ones that in their manifestos explicitly combine calls for people-centrism with anti-establishment appeals, thus matching the most well-known definitions (Mény and Surel 2002, Mudde 2004). While always keeping them separate in our analysis and definition framework, we consider them as challengers to mainstream parties. Reference List Barr, R.R. (2009) Populists, outsiders and anti-establishment politics. Party Politics 15(1):
