The Oxford Handbook of Populism presents the state of the art of research on populism from the perspective of Political Science. The book features work from the leading experts in the field, and synthesizes the main strands of research in four compact sections: concepts, issues, regions, and normative debates. Due to its breath, The Oxford Handbook of Populism is an invaluable resource for those interested in the study of populism, but also forexperts in each of the topics discussed, who will benefit from accounts of current discussions and research gaps, as well as a map of new directions in the study of populism.

Often neglected in the study of far right organisations, post-communist Europe recently witnessed the rise and fall of a number of populist radical right parties. The Populist Radical Right in Central and Eastern Europe is the first comparative study to focus on the ideology, impact, and electoral performance of this party family in the region. The book advances a series of arguments concerning the context and text of these parties, and systematically analyses the supply-side and demand-side of populist radical right politics. Whilst populist radical right parties in Central and Eastern Europe maintain broad similarities with their West European counterparts, they come across as a distinct phenomenon worthy of study in their own right. Parties like Ataka (Bulgaria), Jobbik (Hungary), and the SNS (Slovakia) resort to historical legacies and contextual idiosyncrasies to frame their ideology; interact with other parties over a number of policy areas; and ultimately compete for public office on the basis of their nativist agenda. The book provides a novel framework for the analysis of different aspects of populist radical right politics, notably enhancing the understanding of this phenomenon by means of primary data such as personal interviews with party leaders and original expert surveys. Using the ideological features of these parties as an overarching analytical tool, this book is essential reading for students and scholars researching the far right, post-communist issues and European politics in general.

Cognisant of the ongoing pandemic and political turmoil across Europe, this timely book examines the growing influence of populist movements in Central and Eastern Europe. Simona Kukovič and Petr Just bring together contributions from experts working in the fields of political science and sociology to study the roots and ramifications of populism in this historically turbulent region.

The authors of this book approach the emergence and endurance of the populist nationalism in post-socialist Eastern Europe, with special emphasis on Hungary. They attempt to understand the reasons behind public discourses that increasingly reframe politics in terms of nationhood and nationalism. Overall, the volume attempts to explain how the new nationalism is rooted in recent political, economic and social processes. The contributors focus on two motifs in public discourse: shift and legacy. Some focus on shifts in public law and shifts in political ethno-nationalism through the lens of constitutional law, while others explain the social and political roots of these shifts. Others discuss the effects of legacy in memory and culture and suggest that both shift and legacy combine to produce the new era of identity politics. Legal experts emphasize that the new Fundamental Law of Hungary is radically different from all previous Hungarian constitutions, and clearly reflects a redefinition of the Hungarian state itself. The authors further examine the role of developments in the fields of sociology and political science that contribute to the kind of politics in which identity is at the fore.

Populism is booming across all the nuances of the political spectrum. It occupies relevant positions in national parliaments, in governmental coalitions with mainstream parties or as successful challengers of the political status quo. This volume sheds new light on the topic from different methodological and theoretical angles and offers evidence from a variety of cases on the ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions on populism’s emergence and consolidation in Europe over the past 30 years. The volume, composed of eight chapters, investigates how different populist parties in the European Union have been affected by the various crises, disentangling the role of the Great Recession vis-à-vis other factors (such as political and party system factors, but also structural social changes or cultural opportunities) in the growing strength of populist parties in various European countries. More specifically, the volume aims are to: promote critical discussion on the concept of populism, reflecting on its conceptual ‘usability’ beyond the traditional party families to which it is usually related; use a preliminary theoretical clarification to shed new light on the different ways in which populism has been articulated in the various European countries (either in Continental and Southern Europe, or in the lesser known and studied East-Central countries) since the economic crisis, which has acted as an external shock for many party systems, either giving birth to new political actors or consolidating existing ones; investigate the connections between populism and the national contextual political and cultural specificities that can determine the development of different types of populisms across countries, elaborating on different ‘configurations’ of triggering conditions for populism and reflecting on the limitations of a discrete conceptualisation of the phenomenon. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of West European Politics.

Populism is a concept that is currently in vogue among political commentators and, more often than not, used pejoratively. The phenomenon of populism is typically seen as something adverse and, in the European context routinely related to xenophobic politics. What populism exactly is and who its main representatives are, however, often remains unclear. This text has two main aims: to identify populist parties in 21st century Europe and to explain their electoral performance. It argues that populist parties should not be dismissed as dangerous pariahs out of hand but rather that their rise tells us something about the state of representative democracy. The study has a broad scope, including populist parties of various ideological kinds – thus moving beyond examples of the ‘right’ – and covering long-established Western European countries as well as post-communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe. It presents the results of an innovative mixed-methods research project, combining a fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) of populist parties in 31 European countries with three in-depth case studies of the Netherlands, Poland and the United Kingdom.

East European populism has influenced the politics of peasant societies, offering an alternative to both socialist and capitalist developmental strategies. Anti-Semitic, xenophobic, anti-modern and anti-urban, the populists have represented an ideology which has been anti-modernist overall. In this much-needed volume, distinguished historians and political scientists discuss this crucial topic.