Despite the explosion of populism research, there is a shortage of comprehensive analyses of the ideational varieties of populist parties and of the different roles they play in contemporary party systems. In order to overcome such limitations, I provide a state-of-the-art review of the literature on the classification of populist parties and make three innovative contributions to populism research. First, by adopting a truly pan-European perspective to cover, in addition to EU member countries, contexts that are generally overlooked, including but not limited to Liechtenstein, Russia, Serbia and Ukraine, this review article provides an empirical application of the ideational approach to populism to 66 contemporary parties. Second, it highlights the major shortcomings of common approaches to the study of populist parties in contemporary party systems, which almost invariably treat them as 'challengers' or 'outsiders'. Finally, it pushes the agenda further by providing a classification and empirical overview of the three interactive patterns characterizing the 66 populist parties under analysis: non-integration, negative integration and positive integration.

On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the concept of anti-system party it is time to ask whether it enjoys good health in addition to longevity. Reflecting on what constitutes an anti-system party appears to be of unprecedented relevance, particularly in the light of the electoral success of populist parties such as the French Front National, the Five Star Movement in Italy and Syriza in Greece. This article highlights two crucial questions that remain unsolved if we follow existing conceptualizations: What are the boundaries of the concept? When does a party cease to be anti-system and how can it be reclassified thereafter? In order to overcome such limitations, this article develops a revisited concept of anti-system party and provides a set of guidelines for its empirical application. Furthermore, a novel typology capable of investigating the evolution of anti-system parties and classifying political parties in general is presented.

By focusing on the Facebook activities of eighty-three political leaders from twenty-six Western and Latin American countries, we analyze their reliance on elements of populist communication for their competitive strategies. By integrating both a communication-centered and an actor-centered approach to the study of populism, we tackle four major research questions: Do populist and non-populist leaders adopt similar communication strategies on Facebook? Is there any evidence of the so-called populist zeitgeist in such arena? What different combinations between the so-called three “elements of populist communication” characterize the communication strategies of political leaders on Facebook? Are there major differences between Western and Latin American leaders? The results of our analysis provide an important contribution to the existing literature on populism and political communication in different respects. First, the populist zeitgeist “thesis” does not apply to the communication strategies of political leaders on Facebook. Second, the spread of elements of populist communication in Latin America is considerably lower in comparison with Western countries, irrespective of party ideological background. Finally, this paper identifies all the logical combinations that can occur between the interplay of the different elements of populist communication, thus enabling the classification of the communication strategies employed by political leaders on Facebook.

The growing popularity of Greta Thunberg has led an increasing number of pundits and scholars to consider her message to be an instance of ‘climate’ or ‘environmental’ populism. Following a qualitative content analysis of key speeches by the young activist, this paper challenges this view, and argues that her message is far from being a case of populism. On the contrary, it abides by a substantially different set of ideas that can be defined as technocratic ecocentrism. In particular, it is argued that rather than people‐centrism, anti‐elitism and vox populi, Greta Thunberg’s message is grounded on three different core ideas: ecocentrism, technocracy, and on the exaltation of the vox scientifica. However, whereas Thunberg’s technocratic ecocentrism is at odds with the foundations of the populist set of ideas, it shares a similar emphasis on monism, moralisation, a Manichean vision of the world, a critique of key features of the metapolitical status quo, and a tendency to personalisation.

The emergence of the information society has resulted in an unprecedented debate on issues such as internet censorship and surveillance, privacy, and copyright. Such issues have been mobilized through the channels of party politics by pirate parties, which represent an almost ideal-typical manifestation of the niche party phenomenon. This paper provides the first comparative analysis of the impact of contextual factors on the cross-national variations in the levels of pirate voting by focussing on the 11 countries in which pirate parties contested EP elections between 2009 and 2014. The analysis is performed using QCA, and suggests that the interplay between five contextual factors play an important role in influencing the different levels of pirate voting across Europe: the saliency of macro-economic issues; the levels of trust in political parties; the levels of trust in the internet; the turnout of voters aged 18-24 and the de-alignment of the young voters aged 18-24. On the one hand, the analysis reveals that the failed electoral mobilization of young voters, as reflected in the low levels of turnout of young adults, plays a prominent role in explaining why the majority of pirate parties are electorally unsuccessful. On the other hand, however, the analysis of the most favourable breeding grounds for significant levels of pirate voting to take place suggests that such an outcome is usually not dependent on the levels of turnout of young voters, but is rather influenced by a more complex interaction between the other contextual factors under investigation.