The populist cat-dog: applying the concept of populism to contemporary European party systems

Populism is a frequently used yet problematic concept; the term is often ill-defined and randomly applied. While these problems have been widely acknowledged, this article argues that there are still issues with the way populism tends to be used, even if a sound definition is provided. This relates...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of political ideologies Vol. 19; no. 1; pp. 99 - 118
Main Author van Kessel, Stijn
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Abingdon Routledge 01.01.2014
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
Conceptualization
Discourse
Europe
Ideology
Party systems
Political actors
Political Parties
Political theory
Populism
Europe
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Summary:Populism is a frequently used yet problematic concept; the term is often ill-defined and randomly applied. While these problems have been widely acknowledged, this article argues that there are still issues with the way populism tends to be used, even if a sound definition is provided. This relates to the fact that it is often not clear whether populism is used to refer to an ideological feature of an exclusive category of political parties or whether populism is seen as a type of discourse which can be expressed by any political actor. In order to illustrate the difficulties with regard to the application of the term populism, several 'hard' cases of populism across Europe are discussed. The article argues that in order to stimulate a more accurate use of the term, observers should be explicit not only about the meaning of populism, but also about the form in which it manifests itself.
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ISSN:1356-9317
1469-9613
DOI:10.1080/13569317.2013.869457