In this article, we examine the programmatic reactions to the rise of populist parties. It has been argued that populism is not necessarily the prerogative of populist parties; it has been adopted by mainstream parties as well. The article investigates whether populism is contagious. On the basis of the results of a content analysis of election manifestos of parties in five Western European countries (France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom), we conclude that the programmes of mainstream parties have not become more populist in recent years. We find no evidence that mainstream parties change their programmes when confronted with electoral losses or successful populist challengers. Yet, we do find that populist parties change their own programmes when they have been successful: Their initial success makes them tone down their populism.

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Various scholars have argued and demonstrated that Western European populist parties have something in common. Although these parties adhere to various ideologies and employ different organizational forms and political styles, they all endorse a similar set of ideas concerning the relationship between the people and the elite. Yet despite our increasing knowledge about these parties, so far we know only very little about populist voters. Do the voter bases of populist parties also have something in common? To answer that question, I focus on the electorates of 15 prototypical populist parties from 11 Western European countries. I show that, in contrast with widely held beliefs, the electorates of populist parties do not always consist of individuals who are more likely to be 'losers of globalization' with Eurosceptic attitudes, low levels of political trust, and preferences for (more) direct democracy. This suggests that 'the' populist voter does not exist.

Many studies have found that political discontent and populist voting are positively related. Yet, an important shortcoming of these studies is that they interpret the correlation between these two phenomena as evidence that existing feelings of political discontent contribute to the support for populist parties. We argue that there is also a causal effect in the opposite direction: Populist parties fuel political discontent by exposing their supporters to a populist message in which they criticize the elite. Our study links individual level data on political discontent of voters to the populist message of the party they intend to vote for, employing various operationalizations of populism. Based on a 6-wave panel study from the Netherlands (2008e2013), we conclude that political discontent is both cause and consequence of the rise of populist parties. Our findings imply that the effect of political discontent on populist voting has been overestimated in many previous studies.

There are different area-based bodies of literature on populism, which generally define the concept in slightly different ways. As a result, the term ‘populism’ has been attached to a wide variety of political actors, from Perot in the US to Berlusconi in Italy, and from Perón in Argentina to Le Pen in France. Is it an unfortunate coincidence that the same word has been used for completely different parties and politicians, or is it possible to discern the lowest common denominator that these actors share? By means of a comparison of six cases, based on a most-different systems design, I demonstrate that populists in different times and places have four characteristics in common: (1) they emphasize the central position of the people; (2) they criticize the elite; (3) they perceive the people as a homogeneous entity; and (4) they proclaim a serious crisis. These four characteristics constitute the core elements of populism.

What are the psychological roots of support for populist parties or outfits such as the Tea Party, the Dutch Freedom Party or Germany's Die Linke? Populist parties have as common denominator that they employ an anti-establishment message, which they combine with some 'host' ideology. Building on the elective affinity metaphor we expect that a voter's personality should match with the message and position of her party. We theorize that a low score on the personality trait Agreeableness matches with the anti-establishment message and should predict voting for populist parties. We find evidence for this hypothesis in the United States, the Netherlands and Germany. The relationship between low Agreeableness and voting for populist parties is robust controlling for other personality traits, authoritarianism, socio-demographic characteristics and ideology. Thus, explanations of the success of populism should take personality traits into account. According to political psychology research, factors such as ideology and cynicism are rooted in personality (Gerber et al., 2010; Jost et al., 2003; Mondak & Halperin, 2008). The 'elective affinity model', assumes that the association between psychological dispositions and political attitudes is a 'functional match' between the symbolic nature of a political issue and Notes1 The Tea Party is a faction within a party.3 the goals and motives of personality traits (Caprara & Zimbardo, 2004; Jost et al., 2009). We expand this argument and theorize that a person is drawn to a populist party when the antiestablishment message of this party resonates with one's personality. When assessing an individual's personality, researchers often make use of the Big Five personality traits, which is a taxonomy of temperament and behavior that identifies five traits: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism (Digman, 1990;Goldberg, 1992). We push this research one step further by hypothesizing that voting for populists is rooted in low Agreeableness. Because low agreeable individuals are inclined to be highly skeptical of the behavior of others, they are highly sensitive to populist parties' antiestablishment message and therefore inclined to support these parties.To test our argument, we report survey evidence from the United States, the Netherlands and Germany. These countries have a diverse set of successful populists: the antigovernment Tea Party (US), the welfare chauvinist and anti-immigrant Freedom Party (Netherlands) and the left-wing Die Linke (Germany). We report systematic negative correlations between Agreeableness and support for a populist party. We control for a host of additional interpretations -ideology, socio-economic background, authoritarianism and the other Big Five traits -but find systematic evidence for an independent effect of Agreeableness on populist voting. This is an important finding, because we demonstrate (1) that populist voters do not have an authoritarian personality such as supporters of fascist outfits and (2) that popul...

As a result of the steady rise of populist parties and politicians all over the world – and particularly since the Brexit referendum and the election of Donald Trump – populism research has become increasingly popular and widespread. The field, however, also faces some tricky challenges. First, it is easy to confuse populism with related concepts like, for instance, ‘nativism’ and ‘Euroscepticism’. This brings the risk of sloppy conceptualisation, and, as a result, invalid inferences. Second, populism research remains relatively detached from adjacent fields, and fruitful fertilisation across literatures is still rather uncommon. In order to deal with these challenges, populism research should become both more and less focused. How can these two seemingly conflicting recommendations be reconciled? When it comes to conceptualisation/categorisation strategies and drawing conclusions from studies by other researchers, populism scholars should employ a narrow framework and be precise, distinctive and consistent. Yet when it comes to exploring the literature in search of new hypotheses, scholars should employ a more open mind‐set. After all, theories developed in adjacent fields can inspire populism scholars to formulate innovative new questions and expectations.

Electorally, Western European populist political parties have been rather successful in the last two decades. But how pervasive is their actual populist message? Although some scholars have looked at the diffusion of this message, they have only focused on the arena of party politics. Research on how widespread populism is beyond the party political sphere is still in its infancy.This study looks at populism in public debates in the media. Based on a content analysis of opinion articles in newspapers in five Western European countries, I demonstrate that these debates have become more populist over the years, and that the degree of populism is strongly related to the success of populist parties.This indicates that populism is more widespread than previously assumed. I also show that letters are more populist than other opinion articles and that debates in tabloid media are not more populist than debates in elite media.