Since their transition to democracy in the mid-1970s, Spain and Portugal were considered immune t... more Since their transition to democracy in the mid-1970s, Spain and Portugal were considered immune to populist radical right (PRR) parties. In the last two years, however, the so-called Iberian exception seems to have come to an end. The different patterns of democratization produced different collective memories of the authoritarian past, with Spain that tried to silence its past for over two decades and Portugal celebrating the revolution that ended the Estado Novo. In turn, these different collective memories can contribute to shed light on the resounding success of Vox at the 2019 elections, compared to the more modest but sti l l significant electoral breakthrough of Chega in Portugal.
In May 2019, the elections for the European Parliament (EP) saw populist parties obtain almost a ... more In May 2019, the elections for the European Parliament (EP) saw populist parties obtain almost a third of the available seats, with populist radical right parties making the biggest gains compared to the 2014 elections. Despite the results were less resounding than some predictions anticipated, a considerable amount of Members of the EP represent a populist party. This article first presents the performance of populist parties in forty years of EP elections, from their first occurrence in 1979 until 2019, and then focuses on populist radical right parties. The analysis suggests that (i) the number of seats occupied by populist parties in the EP continues to grow over time; (ii) right-wing populist parties no longer struggle to form political groups within the EP; (iii) radical right populist parties have become the most common type of populist party within the EP.
With the COVID-19 pandemic dominating the public sphere in recent months and no aspect of social ... more With the COVID-19 pandemic dominating the public sphere in recent months and no aspect of social and political life left unaffected, it seems almost natural that this unprecedented public health crisis would soon be reflected on discussions around the other buzzword of our time: populism. This report aims at providing a concise yet rigorous global comparative mapping of populist politics in the context of the ongoing pandemic. This will not only shed further light on the specificities, the potentials and limitations of the phenomenon, but we also expect it to highlight its irreducible heterogeneity and diversity as a way of doing politics.The key questions that we posed to contributors in this report when looking at different countries across the world can be summarised as follows: • How have populist actors reacted to the COVID-19 pandemic when in government or opposition? • Has their ideological position on the left or right, or indeed somewhere inbetween, played a role to that reaction? • How have the rates of approval and vote intensions for populist actors developed during that period? • More generally, how have discussions around ‘populism’ and the role of ‘experts’ and ‘science’ developed in each country during this time? Have they reproduced standard anti-populist stereotypes? In order to shed light on these crucial aspects of the discussion and set the agenda for future comparative research as well as conceptual enquiry, we approached a series of well established scholars, along with several dynamic younger researchers specialising on both populism and the study of politics in different countries and regions. This gave us a sum of sixteen (16) case studies of countries and political actors from across the world, making the scope of our report truly global, extending from Australia to Sweden and from the Philippines to Brazil and the United States.
Las elecciones legislativas del 4 de marzo han sumergido a Italia en un periodo de incertidumbre.... more Las elecciones legislativas del 4 de marzo han sumergido a Italia en un periodo de incertidumbre. Dos formaciones autoproclamadas “antisistema” se situaron a la cabeza de los resultados electorales y reivindican el poder, pero ninguna dispone de la mayoria necesaria para gobernar.
Italian Political Science Review/Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica, 2017
The paper focusses on the online political discourse of the Five Star Movement (5SM) and its stra... more The paper focusses on the online political discourse of the Five Star Movement (5SM) and its strategic adaptability. The main goal of the analysis is to establish how salient several topics are over time in order to test the party’s ideological flexibility. Indeed, 5SM’s post-ideological approach and its emphasis on direct-democratic tools might constitute a winning formula for other populist parties willing to exploit the crisis of the mainstream parties and representation. The paper, through an automated content analysis, tracks the longitudinal evolution of the salience of the topics addressed by 5SM on the party’s blog. This allows us to establish which topics are at the core of the party’s message and which, on the other hand, have been raised strategically over time. Results show that 5SM’s discourse is very flexible and adaptable: it devotes a large space to the importance of direct democracy while flexibly addressing different topics depending on the political and social con...
Codebook for a quantitative content analysis of populist communication in news media, party manif... more Codebook for a quantitative content analysis of populist communication in news media, party manifestos and social media.
This working paper approaches the study of populism from an explicit political communication pers... more This working paper approaches the study of populism from an explicit political communication perspective and thereby adds a new and original dimension to the existing literature. It first reviews the existing approaches to populism and then combines them within an integrative framework for populism research. This framework understands populism as ideology, strategy, or style and arranges them in a way that permits the empirical analysis of populism in political communication, media and the attitudes of the people. The framework serves as a guide for developing straightforward instruments to identify and quantitatively measure populism in the self-presentation of actors, in news media and other forms of communication, as well as in public opinion. By virtue of the broadness of the framework, it is applicable to longitudinal and cross-cultural analyses of populism, as well as the investigation of the flow of populist ideology among political actors, the media, and the public. It takes...
Since their transition to democracy in the mid-1970s, Spain and Portugal were considered immune t... more Since their transition to democracy in the mid-1970s, Spain and Portugal were considered immune to populist radical right (PRR) parties. In the last two years, however, the so-called Iberian exception seems to have come to an end. The different patterns of democratization produced different collective memories of the authoritarian past, with Spain that tried to silence its past for over two decades and Portugal celebrating the revolution that ended the Estado Novo. In turn, these different collective memories can contribute to shed light on the resounding success of Vox at the 2019 elections, compared to the more modest but sti l l significant electoral breakthrough of Chega in Portugal.
In May 2019, the elections for the European Parliament (EP) saw populist parties obtain almost a ... more In May 2019, the elections for the European Parliament (EP) saw populist parties obtain almost a third of the available seats, with populist radical right parties making the biggest gains compared to the 2014 elections. Despite the results were less resounding than some predictions anticipated, a considerable amount of Members of the EP represent a populist party. This article first presents the performance of populist parties in forty years of EP elections, from their first occurrence in 1979 until 2019, and then focuses on populist radical right parties. The analysis suggests that (i) the number of seats occupied by populist parties in the EP continues to grow over time; (ii) right-wing populist parties no longer struggle to form political groups within the EP; (iii) radical right populist parties have become the most common type of populist party within the EP.
With the COVID-19 pandemic dominating the public sphere in recent months and no aspect of social ... more With the COVID-19 pandemic dominating the public sphere in recent months and no aspect of social and political life left unaffected, it seems almost natural that this unprecedented public health crisis would soon be reflected on discussions around the other buzzword of our time: populism. This report aims at providing a concise yet rigorous global comparative mapping of populist politics in the context of the ongoing pandemic. This will not only shed further light on the specificities, the potentials and limitations of the phenomenon, but we also expect it to highlight its irreducible heterogeneity and diversity as a way of doing politics.The key questions that we posed to contributors in this report when looking at different countries across the world can be summarised as follows: • How have populist actors reacted to the COVID-19 pandemic when in government or opposition? • Has their ideological position on the left or right, or indeed somewhere inbetween, played a role to that reaction? • How have the rates of approval and vote intensions for populist actors developed during that period? • More generally, how have discussions around ‘populism’ and the role of ‘experts’ and ‘science’ developed in each country during this time? Have they reproduced standard anti-populist stereotypes? In order to shed light on these crucial aspects of the discussion and set the agenda for future comparative research as well as conceptual enquiry, we approached a series of well established scholars, along with several dynamic younger researchers specialising on both populism and the study of politics in different countries and regions. This gave us a sum of sixteen (16) case studies of countries and political actors from across the world, making the scope of our report truly global, extending from Australia to Sweden and from the Philippines to Brazil and the United States.
Las elecciones legislativas del 4 de marzo han sumergido a Italia en un periodo de incertidumbre.... more Las elecciones legislativas del 4 de marzo han sumergido a Italia en un periodo de incertidumbre. Dos formaciones autoproclamadas “antisistema” se situaron a la cabeza de los resultados electorales y reivindican el poder, pero ninguna dispone de la mayoria necesaria para gobernar.
Italian Political Science Review/Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica, 2017
The paper focusses on the online political discourse of the Five Star Movement (5SM) and its stra... more The paper focusses on the online political discourse of the Five Star Movement (5SM) and its strategic adaptability. The main goal of the analysis is to establish how salient several topics are over time in order to test the party’s ideological flexibility. Indeed, 5SM’s post-ideological approach and its emphasis on direct-democratic tools might constitute a winning formula for other populist parties willing to exploit the crisis of the mainstream parties and representation. The paper, through an automated content analysis, tracks the longitudinal evolution of the salience of the topics addressed by 5SM on the party’s blog. This allows us to establish which topics are at the core of the party’s message and which, on the other hand, have been raised strategically over time. Results show that 5SM’s discourse is very flexible and adaptable: it devotes a large space to the importance of direct democracy while flexibly addressing different topics depending on the political and social con...
Codebook for a quantitative content analysis of populist communication in news media, party manif... more Codebook for a quantitative content analysis of populist communication in news media, party manifestos and social media.
This working paper approaches the study of populism from an explicit political communication pers... more This working paper approaches the study of populism from an explicit political communication perspective and thereby adds a new and original dimension to the existing literature. It first reviews the existing approaches to populism and then combines them within an integrative framework for populism research. This framework understands populism as ideology, strategy, or style and arranges them in a way that permits the empirical analysis of populism in political communication, media and the attitudes of the people. The framework serves as a guide for developing straightforward instruments to identify and quantitatively measure populism in the self-presentation of actors, in news media and other forms of communication, as well as in public opinion. By virtue of the broadness of the framework, it is applicable to longitudinal and cross-cultural analyses of populism, as well as the investigation of the flow of populist ideology among political actors, the media, and the public. It takes...
With the COVID-19 pandemic dominating the public sphere in recent months and no aspect of social ... more With the COVID-19 pandemic dominating the public sphere in recent months and no aspect of social and political life left unaffected, it seems almost natural that this unprecedented public health crisis would soon be reflected on discussions around the other buzzword of our time: populism. This report aims at providing a concise yet rigorous global comparative mapping of populist politics in the context of the ongoing pandemic. This will not only shed further light on the specificities, the potentials and limitations of the phenomenon, but we also expect it to highlight its irreducible heterogeneity and diversity as a way of doing politics.The key questions that we posed to contributors in this report when looking at different countries across the world can be summarised as follows:
• How have populist actors reacted to the COVID-19 pandemic when in government or opposition?
• Has their ideological position on the left or right, or indeed somewhere inbetween, played a role to that reaction?
• How have the rates of approval and vote intensions for populist actors developed during that period?
• More generally, how have discussions around ‘populism’ and the role of ‘experts’ and ‘science’ developed in each country during this time? Have they reproduced standard anti-populist stereotypes?
In order to shed light on these crucial aspects of the discussion and set the agenda for future comparative research as well as conceptual enquiry, we approached a series of well established scholars, along with several dynamic younger researchers specialising on both populism and the study of politics in different countries and regions. This gave us a sum of sixteen (16) case studies of countries and political actors from across the world, making the scope of our report truly global, extending from Australia to Sweden and from the Philippines to Brazil and the United States.
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Papers by luca manucci
• How have populist actors reacted to the COVID-19 pandemic when in
government or opposition?
• Has their ideological position on the left or right, or indeed somewhere inbetween, played a role to that reaction?
• How have the rates of approval and vote intensions for populist actors
developed during that period?
• More generally, how have discussions around ‘populism’ and the role of ‘experts’ and ‘science’ developed in each country during this time? Have they reproduced standard anti-populist stereotypes?
In order to shed light on these crucial aspects of the discussion and set the agenda for future comparative research as well as conceptual enquiry, we approached a series of well established scholars, along with several dynamic younger researchers specialising on both populism and the study of politics in different countries and regions. This gave us a sum of sixteen (16) case studies of countries and political actors from across the world, making the scope of our report truly global, extending from Australia to Sweden and from the Philippines to Brazil and the United States.