Populism and intra‐party democracy

Abstract

This article examines how populism is linked to party organization and, specifically, intra-party democracy. Populism can be defined as an ideology (ideational perspective), which is characterized by anti-elitism, people-centrism and a discourse emphasizing a moral struggle between 'good people' and 'the elite'. On the other hand, there are leadership-focused definitions which see populism as a form of organization with personalistic control (a leadership perspective). With respect to party organization, focusing on the ideational perspective leads to the expectation that populist parties will be internally democratic, and the leadership approach will lead to the opposite expectation. Using the recently published Populism and Political Parties Expert Survey (POPPA) that develops party-specific populism scores, we examine more than 200 parties in 26 countries. The results highlight that populist parties gravitate toward personalized leaders and thus develop less democratic intra-party structures. This finding contributes to our understanding of populist parties and their organizations.

Coalition Politics in Central Eastern Europe

“…On the road from conservatism to populism, Fidesz became hostage of its party leader (Körösényi, 2007(Körösényi, , 2019. This image of party organization confirms former scholarly analysis that party democracy is missing in leadercentred populist parties (Böhmelt et al 2022). This organizational transformation was going in parallel with Fidesz's changed political and policy attention in a populist frame and changed the conflict structure towards the GAL/TAN divide (see Table 6.1b).…”

Legislative Transparency in the European Parliament: Disclosing Legislators' Meetings with Interest Groups

“…To qualify populist parties, we rely on Mudde's (2007) well‐established definition conceiving populism as a ‘thin ideology’ not expressing core beliefs, but conceiving that society is divided into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, the ‘pure people’ versus the ‘corrupt elite’. By emphasizing anti‐elitism, people‐centrism and moral integrity (Böhmelt et al ., 2022), recent research has identified parties for which populism is a constitutive ideational element (Zulianello, 2020). For the purpose of this study, this ideational approach allows the conceptualization of party's populist views and discourses as informal rules guiding behaviour.…”