A Comparative Analysis of Populisms in Europe: exploring populist parties’ ideological flexibility and ambiguity

Despite the recent academic literature widely focused on populism research, the development of populist parties’ ideologies remains one of the least explored factors. As such, this chapter provides two different approaches in examining populist parties’ ideologies in Western Europe. More specifically, it namely investigates: (a) the causes behind their ideological flexibility in the long-term and (b) the electoral consequences of their ideological ambiguity (or issue blurring) in the short-term. The first topic will be explored comparing the ideological flexibility of The League and the National Rally with regards to the new transnational cleavage. While the second topic will be analyzed comparing the impact of the ideological ambiguity of Italian populist parties (M5S Party, The League and Brothers of Italy) to their electoral performance at the national and subnational levels. Through the deploy of multiple quantitative methods, including secondary data analysis (from the CMP and CHES databases) and manual content analysis, the central finding of the first case study is that both The League and the National Rally have been ideologically flexible – whilst in different ways – with regards to the new transnational cleavage regardless of their party reputation on the European (EU) issue. For the second case study, the core finding is that the M5S Party has suffered a severe electoral decline since the 2018 domestic election. The main factor behind this electoral performance is due to its ideological ambiguity. By contrast, The League and Brothers of Italy Parties have adopted clear positional stances. The results from both case studies are important as they demonstrate the development of populist parties’ ideology, alongside underlying as the research has much to debate about both the nature and impact of populist parties’ ideologies.