Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Over the past two decades an abundant number of studies that seek to explain the electoral success of radical right-wing populist parties have been published. In recent years the focus in these studies has shifted from demand-side explanations to supply-side explanations. Many supply-side explanations point at policy variables as crucial factors in the success of radical right-wing populist parties. Usually these explanations are tested on the basis of quantitative analyses. The measurement of policy variables then occurs on the basis of one of the many methods available to estimate parties’ policy positions. Although most methods have been subject to methodological scrutiny, few scholars have been concerned with the way in which the choice for a particular estimation method affects the outcomes of empirical analyses. This paper shows that, although there is substantial correspondence between the policy estimates generated by various methods, differences between manifesto-based methods, on the one, and perception-based methods, on the other hand, are striking. Voters and experts largely agree about the placement of radical right-wing populist parties on the left-right axis. Their judgements differ substantially, however, from estimates generated through the content analysis of party manifestos. These methods create policy estimates for radical right-wing populist parties that generally have low face validity and should therefore be treated with suspicion. The paper explores these differences, their causes, and consequences and argues that the way in which manifestos are analyzed in content analysis procedures fails to tap into the substantive content of radical right-wing populist parties’ manifestos.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The chapters of Rousseau’s Social Contract devoted to republican Rome prescribe institutions that obstruct popular efforts at diminishing the excessive power and influence of wealthy citizens and political magistrates. I argue that Rousseau reconstructs ancient Rome’s constitution in direct opposition to the more populist and anti-elitist model of the Roman Republic championed by Machiavelli in the Discourses: Rousseau eschews the establishment of magistracies, like the tribunes, reserved for common citizens exclusively, and endorses assemblies where the wealthy are empowered to outvote the poor in lawmaking and elections. On the basis of sociologically anonymous principles like generality and popular sovereignty, and by confining elite accountability to general elections, Rousseau’s neo-Roman institutional proposals aim to pacify the contestation of class hierarchies and inflate elite prerogative within republics—under the cover of more formal, seemingly more genuine, equality.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: We argue that Populism was a cooperative movement specifically responding to the "globalization" or interatnationalization of the economy of the late nineteenth century.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper addresses the question how populist discourse varies in different contexts. Specifically, I examine whether different party representatives employ a different discourse in public and non-public settings. Hereby, I follow the claim of recen