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Hanspeter Kriesi and Takis S. Pappas (eds.) ECPR Press, Colchester, 2015, 394pp., £65.00/ EUR89.00,
ISBN: 978-1785521249
In the last decades, populism has been one of the most debated topic in political science. Comparative studies on populist parties have ranged from the analysis of the ideology and the policy-making to the attitude of the electorate and the relationship between populists and the so-called intermediate bodies, in particular the Parliament. Edited by Kriesi and Pappas, European Populism in the Shadow of the Great Recession is an early effort to investigate the growth of populist parties in Europe since the outbreak of the economic and financial crisis in 2008. The study comprises five European regions - Nordic, Western, Southern, Central-Eastern and Anglo-Celtic - and 17 case studies. The starting point of the book is the definition of populism as a thin-centred ideology, in which the people are considered as a homogenous monolith in opposition to the elites, but also other specific groups, that is, ethnic minorities or immigrants. Four guiding hypothesis constitute the core of the case study analysis: (i) the economic crisis and (ii) the political crisis intensify the populist electoral success; (iii) the simultaneous presence of the two in a given country is particularly conductive for populism, while (iv) when in power, populists tend to behave similarly to mainstream parties, toning down populist attitudes.
The first conclusion that the authors reach is that populism experienced an uneven growth during the Great Recession. Nonetheless, the whole picture presented in the case studies shows that, despite regional differences, all four hypotheses...