Mapping

The International Populism Research Network is based in the Political Theory, History of Ideas and Political Culture section at Kiel University (CAU Kiel). It serves as a platform to facilitate international exchange and initiate publication and research projects on the subject of populism.

The Populism Specialist Group purports to facilitate a critical dialogue about contemporary democratic politics, and populism’s complex role within that. It particularly invites the participation and contribution of international scholars from countries and regions where populism has marked political culture, shaping political frontiers and stimulating antithetical discursive articulations.

Team Populism brings together renowned scholars from Europe and the Americas to study the causes and consequences of populism.

The Center for Research on Extremism, C-REX, is a cross-disciplinary center for the study of right-wing extremism, hate crime and political violence. It is a joint collaboration with six of the leading Norwegian institutions on extremism research.

The Centre for the Politics of Feelings is devoted to the interdisciplinary understanding of how emotions and feelings can be active causes but also targets of political behaviour in diverse socio-political contexts. The Centre will address from a multi-disciplinary perspective, how affect and emotions and their underlying neurophysiological mechanisms shape political behaviour in intricate couplings with rationality, as well as how politics shapes and exploits affect and emotions. The Centre represents a focused, timely and multidisciplinary endeavour to give a new answer to an age-old question: What does it mean to be a political animal in the 21st century of ’emo-cratic’ politics, alternative facts, social media, precarious health and populism?

DESIRE performs critical academic research into the political-democratic nature of societal processes and their discursive-significatory dimensions.
Crucial within DESIRE’s remit is the study of the logics of power. How are power strategies developed and resisted? And how does signification intervene in these power logics? This focus is grounded in the idea that processes of signification are highly political because they define our realities in always particular ways. Processes of signification sometimes result in hegemonic orders, sometimes in highly instable struggles of contestation and resistance. DESIRE’s focus on the discursive-significatory is always grounded in contextualising reflections on the material, the structural, affect and agency.
DESIRE’s focus is on the political, broadly defined as the ontological dimension of struggle and conflict in society, and therefore not restricted to specific institutionalised forms of politics. DESIRE studies the many societal fields where meaning is produced and circulated, including the media sphere, the sphere of cultural institutions and heritage sites, and the sphere of politics.

The European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS) is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, based in Brussels, for research on and analysis of challenges posed by increasing political populism. The international rise of populism can lead to democratic decay and authoritarianism around the world and endangers global peace, security, and stability. ECPS promotes open society by adhering to the principles of liberal democracy, including the rule of law, human rights, pluralism, freedom of speech, gender equality, social and enviromental justice, transparency, and accountability.

The UK’s leading anti fascism & anti racism campaign group.

Building Solutions Together

This research project investigates how the protest discourses of the so-called square movements in six European countries were taken up by party formations and channeled into different representation offers. Square movements are understood to mean various protest movements, which are characterized in particular by collective identity-forming practices of public square assemblies and occupations as well as a radical democratic target horizon of the re-founding of democracy, which in turn makes them accessible to different party-shaped “representative claims” (Saward) and – according to the preliminary thesis – through this partial closure of different kinds (e.g. nationalist, left- or right-wing populist). The aim of the research is a typology of party-shaped “representative claims” that bridges the different terminology of radical theories of democracy and populism on the one hand and party and movement research on the other hand by conceptualizing the representation offers both discourse-theoretically and organizationally-typical.

The aim of FATIGUE is to develop theoretically and empirically robust explanations for the causes and consequences of rise of illiberalism and authoritarianism in post-communist Europe (and Europe, more generally) with reference to the concept of ‘delayed transformational fatigue’.

Populism in Action investigates the widely held notion that political parties in Western Europe are losing their traditional function of bridging the gap between citizens and the political elites. It has often been claimed that the era of so-called ‘mass parties’, which are characterized by large memberships organised in local branches, is over. Over the past decades, party memberships have declined and some observers have noticed that citizens have increasingly become disengaged from politics altogether.

This Action brings together researchers to investigate populist political communication and its impact on democratic political life across Europe. This is necessary not only in light of recent populist backlashes in many democracies against governments and political and economic developments, but also in respect to changes in national media and communication systems. In order to comprehend this poorly understood aspect of contemporary political communication this Action will examine three interconnected but distinct aspects of populist political communication: First, populist political communicators and their strategies. Second, the media and populist discourses and frames. Third, citizen’s engagement with populist political messages and the effect of these messages. This Action will provide a thorough critical review of existing knowledge, much improved research co-ordination, widen co-operation between scholars, bridge gaps in existing knowledge and strengthen dialogue with various societal stakeholders, benefiting media organizations, NGOs and policy actors as well as the wider scientific community.

POPREBEL is an inter-disciplinary consortium of researchers focused on explaining and contextualising the recent rise of populism in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). While populism is a phenomenon that has by now emerged in almost every democracy, we believe that regional and cultural-historical dimensions need to be considered in order to improve not only scholarly knowledge, but also policy recommendations. It is urgent for Western Europeans to look into the CEE mirror, just as it is urgent for the CEE region to understand itself. To this end, we will create a typology of populism’s various manifestations, reconstruct trajectories of its growth and decline, investigate its causes, interpret its meanings, diagnose its consequences, and propose policy solutions.

The main purpose of this project is to analyse the characteristics, causes and consequences of populist attitudes in the Spanish public opinion. The upsurge of populist movements is one of the most relevant phenomena that have witnessed democratic societies, particularly in Western Europe, in the last decades. Although Spain seemed immune to this trend, recent evidence in the political outlook suggests this is no longer the case.

In recent years, a new form of political popular music has emerged: mainstream sounds with populist messages have gained widespread popularity beyond the confines of extremist circles. This recent phenomenon of commercially successful and widely received popular music promoting populist agendas has been instrumental in the growing success of populism in Europe. Therefore, this project identifies the negligence of music in the study of populist movements by examining popular music as one central element of the cultures of populism. It explores the ways in which popular music functions as a medium for the mainstreaming of populist ideologies in Hungary, Austria, Italy, Germany, and Sweden from a comparative perspective.

Neste projeto, propomo-nos desenvolver uma nova abordagem a este tema e testá-la por relação ao caso português numa perspectiva comparativa. Segundo a nossa abordagem, o populismo não é algo substantivo, como uma ideologia ou um discurso. O populismo é antes uma forma de fazer política. Em particular, a forma populista de fazer política opera de acordo com uma lógica própria: a lógica do ressentimento. Neste projeto, concentramos a nossa atenção no quadriénio 2011-2015, o período em que os efeitos da crise económica mais se fizeram sentir no nosso país.

The project reflects a methodological and conceptual agenda of studying narratives and symbolic politics. Getting a better understanding of the performative dimension of politics, the group is interested in different forms of symbolic representations such as images, metaphors or performative art and in the role they play in modern governance practices. Contrary to recent trends of understanding these aspects of politics through the lens of cognitivist frame analysis, the group studies the emotional appeal and affective aspects of political storytelling. One starting premise is that the combination between imagery (e.g. metaphors) and narratives helps to make sense of performativity and at the same time offers an innovative research tool for studying these processes in empirical terms.

L’Osservatorio su Politica e Istituzioni (OPI) è un centro di ricerca attivo presso il Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche dell’Università di Pisa. L’OPI è il nodo principale di un network di 4 osservatori: l’Osservatorio su Partiti Politici e Rappresentanza; l’Osservatorio su Corruzione Politica e Criminalità; l’Osservatorio su Movimenti Sociali e Democrazia; l’Osservatorio su Populismo, Leadership e Democrazia.

POP investigates populism in all its forms: as electoral strategy, ideology, style, political show, mediatized logic, outburst of social anger and frustration, blasts of coprolalia, social heuristic to make sense of the world, and more.

The Observatory of Populism is an ongoing research project that aims to decipher, debate and analyze the various facets of populism. Created in the summer of 2021, the Observatory of Populism is a space for research and discussion within Institut Montaigne. This ongoing project is spearheaded by Dr. Christophe Jaffrelot, Senior research fellow at CERI-Sciences Po/CNRS, and Marc Lazar, Director of the History Center of Sciences Po, and a President of the LUISS school of government in Rome. Each month, both experts conduct a discussion with international speakers and focus on a specific dimension or case study of populism. These discussions seek to delve into the multiple facets of the phenomenon, such as the personalization of power, electoral processes, surveillance regimes, the differences between authoritarianism and crony capitalism, etc. Based on each of these discussions, our team of editors prepares the interviews and opinion pieces that you can find on this page.

Collective blog on populism: “this blog understands populism as rhetoric and performative acts by political actors that are not strictly political at first sight, but are actually key to political success, as they aim to appeal to voters by establishing a public image of the respective politician as “man (or woman, but usually man) of the people” and different from “the self-serving elites”.”

This (FB) group is for all scholars who are interested in populist parties, movements and politicians. Pretty much everything that is relevant for others scholars working on populism.

Blog about Ideology and ideologies in social life and social research.

The Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right (CARR) is a UK-based research centre and pedagogical outreach initiative focused on the study and countering of radical right extremism and intersecting phenomena (e.g. populism, gender, antisemitism, and Islamophobia) that aims to support a variety of mainstream groups, from government agencies to grass-roots charities, through podcasts, commentary, research reports, presentations, media interviews and commissioned work.

The Chapel Hill expert surveys estimate party positioning on European integration, ideology and policy issues for national parties in a variety of European countries. The first survey was conducted in 1999, with subsequent waves in 2002, 2006, 2010, 2014, and 2019.

The institute cover some reports and publications on populism. Check https://www.cidob.org/en/content/search?searchText=populism .

Parties and Elections in Europe provides a comprehensive database about political parties, elections and governments. The website contains the results of legislative elections from more than 100 countries and autonomous regions in Europe. The parties are classified according to their political orientation. Historical data can be found in the archive.

Socialbakers is a company that helps brands work smart on social media through AI-powered marketing. Indicators on social media use per country.