Luca Manucci
Biographic Data
| ID | 4152134 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Luca Manucci |
| GIVEN NAMES | Luca |
| FAMILY NAME | Manucci |
| SIGNATURE | MANUCCI L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Iscte – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6695-518X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 134 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
The Promise of a Better Past
The rising electoral support for far-right parties has sparked vibrant debates about the sociopolitical dynamics driving this phenomenon. This paper investigates a crucial yet underexplored dimension: the interplay between media consumption, authoritarian nostalgia, and far-right voting behaviour. Focusing on Spain and Portugal – two countries with distinct yet comparable histories of authoritarian rule – survey data analyses suggest that readers…
Is the populist Robin Hood a fairy tale? Parliamentary attention to social welfare
In the aftermath of the Great Recession, populist parties rose to prominence across Europe, campaigning on the promise to do something about growing economic inequality by funding social welfare programs. We investigate if the pro-welfare reputation of European populist parties, either on the left or the right, is well deserved. We draw on a dataset of questions asked by members of parliament from nine European democracies over three decades. We …
The young, the radical and the dissatisfied
Back to the Future? The Electoral Breakthrough of Far-Right Parties
In contemporary Europe, far-right parties threaten liberal democratic principles such as pluralism, media freedom and minority rights. Despite the stigma they normally face, far-right parties have experienced electoral breakthroughs even in countries where they remained electorally marginal such as Germany, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. We advance the idea that this happened because the level of stigmatization faced by these parties decreased befor…
Authoritarian nostalgia and support for (populist radical) right parties
For decades, party politics literature has argued that populist radical right (PRR) parties must distance themselves from their countries’ authoritarian pasts to achieve electoral relevance in a Sartorian sense. Yet, we now observe the growing success and influence of PRR parties that not only embrace nostalgia for this past but also maintain ties to it. The use of what we term ‘authoritarian nostalgia’ is not only becoming more widespread across…
Populism and transitional justice
They shall not pass? The role of supply-side factors in the electoral breakthrough of VOX and Chega
No country is immune to the electoral success of populist radical right (PRR) parties: Spain and Portugal seemed to be the exception to this rule because, for decades, PRR parties remained relegated to the margins of the Iberian political systems. However, in 2019 VOX and Chega gained parliamentary representation: how did they manage to obtain their historic electoral breakthrough? From a supply-side perspective, we use the Party Manifesto datase…
The Populism Interviews
Giorgos Venizelos examines the populist parable once it comes to power, focusing on the affective relationships between leader and masses, addressing several issues such as emotions and styles, as well as the links between populism and democracy. Drawing on examples from left-wing and right-wing populism in Europe, Latin America and the United States, in this interview Venizelos observes that while populism may be normatively at odds with liberal…
Populism Interviews
Populism and nationalism revisited
Current definitions of populism are insufficiently determinate. They fail to distinguish between populism and nationalism. We propose to remedy this problem by advancing a new definition of populism as the logic of democratic resentment. We apply this new definition to a comparison between Spain's Podemos and Portugal's Left Bloc (BE), which we classify as social carriers of populism. We make two contributions to the literature. First, our findin…
A new Iberian exceptionalism? Comparing the populist radical right electorate in Portugal and Spain
Since their transition to democracy in the 1970s, Spain and Portugal have been ‘immune’ to the success of populist radical right (PRR) parties. This exceptional situation, however, came to an end: Chega’s leader, André Ventura, was elected in the Portuguese parliament, while VOX has become the third most voted political party of Spain. Using new online survey data from the Spanish and Portuguese national elections in 2019, we find that the Iberia…
Populism, collective memory, and stigma of the fascist past
This chapter introduces the main conceptual novelty of the study: the idea that populism might be more or less legitimate in different countries because of cultural and historical reasons. Every country presents a certain political culture, which in turn legitimizes or stigmatizes different ideas of power. In particular, the collective memory of the fascist past is linked to the legitimacy of the populist idea of power. The chapter is structured …
Explaining populism “the usual way”
This analytical chapter aims at understanding which factors, or combination of factors, explain the different levels of populism’s social acceptability in different countries over time. The first section operationalizes and calibrates the three outcomes: overall populism, right-wing populism, and left-wing populism. The same process is followed for the four conditions: corruption, accountability and responsiveness, ideological convergence of the …
Taxonomy of a chameleon
Chapter 1 illustrates the development of populism in history, showing the many possible typologies of populist movements, parties, and actors from Ancient Greece to the Occupy movements. The aim of the chapter is to explain what populism is, to illustrate the role of concepts such as ‘the elite’ and ‘the people,’ and to provide a definition that reduces the complexity of populism to a common denominator. Populism, following an ideational approach…
Conclusions
Fascism tout court might no longer be an acceptable ideology, and political parties describing themselves as neo-fascist usually remain at the margins of the political debate, but populism can reintroduce crypto-fascist ideas of power by formally adopting democratic elements. In Western Europe, left-wing populism will avoid social stigma and constitute a credible alternative as long as it will protect the rule of law and all the informal norms th…
Methodology
This chapter illustrates the operationalization of populism and its measurement through a process of semi-automated content analysis. Moreover, it explains and justifies several key elements of this study such as the case selection, the period examined, and the criteria for the selection of party manifestos. The percentage of populist statements in party manifestos is then combined with two additional elements in order to determine the degree of …
Collective memory and fascist legacies in Western Europe
This chapter assigns to each country a type of collective memory and possibly one or more secondary narratives. This is done by analyzing the relevant secondary literature on each country’s collective memory of the fascist past. Potential secondary narratives and disagreement among sources are taken into consideration, and eventually the levels of stigmatization of the fascist past are assigned to each country. Moreover, it is important to observ…
The effect of fascist legacies on populism
This chapter introduces into the model a novel condition: the levels of stigma attached to the fascist past . The results show that fascist legacies explain with greater precision the social acceptability of populism, in particular its right-wing articulation, while left-wing populism’s social acceptability remains unexplained. Compared to Chapter 7 , the results produced make it possible to conclude that fascist legacies, especially in combinati…
Populism in eight West European countries since the 1970s
This chapter presents the results of the content analysis. It illustrates the trend for the presence of populism in party manifestos in eight European countries from the 1970s to now. Moreover, it disentangles left- and right-wing variants of populism. Finally, it describes each country in detail, explaining which party manifestos articulate populist discourses, and discussing whether the findings are in line with the literature on the topic. The…
The natural habitat of populism
This chapter explores the relevant literature in order to produce a set of socio-economic and political-institutional conditions that are supposed to explain why populist discourses are more socially acceptable in certain countries than in others. The first section illustrates the theoretical framework linking the presence of populism to large-scale processes such as modernization and globalization. The second section illustrates and discusses th…
National past and populism
The electoral performance of right-wing populism depends on the type of re-elaboration of countries’ national past and their collective memories. Complementing socio-economic and political-institutional factors, the article analyses cultural opportunity structures. Given the link between fascist and populist visions of power, it shows that different collective memories of the fascist past and World War II open up or close down the space for right…
Populism and Collective Memory
Right-wing populism is a global phenomenon that challenges several pillars of liberal democracy, and it is often described as a dangerous political ideology because it resonates with the fascist idea of power in terms of anti-pluralism and lack of minorities’ protection. In Western Europe, many political actors are exploiting the fears and insecurities linked to globalization, economic crisis, and mass migrations to attract voters. However, while…
Where the wind blows
The paper focusses on the online political discourse of the Five Star Movement (5SM) and its strategic adaptability. The main goal of the analysis is to establish how salient several topics are over time in order to test the party’s ideological flexibility. Indeed, 5SM’s post-ideological approach and its emphasis on direct-democratic tools might constitute a winning formula for other populist parties willing to exploit the crisis of the mainstrea…
Populism and the Media
This chapter discusses three aspects of the relationship between populist discourses and the media: the process of mediatization of politics, the impact of media populism on democratic quality, and the link between new media and populism. The aim is to summarize theories and results present in the relevant literature, while advancing a more sophisticated framework for analysis based on a clear definition of populism as an ideology articulated dis…
Why The Big Picture Matters
While a vast theoretical literature argues that we live in populist times, the success of populism beyond its electoral dimension is rarely investigated empirically. This paper analyses the development of populism in five Western European countries (Austria, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom) from the 1970s to the 2010s. First, it measures whether political parties articulate populist discourses more and more often in thei…
Why The Big Picture Matters
While a vast theoretical literature argues that we live in populist times, the success of populism beyond its electoral dimension is rarely investigated empirically. This paper analyses the development of populism in five Western European countries (Austria, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom) from the 1970s to the 2010s. First, it measures whether political parties articulate populist discourses more and more often in thei…
A new Iberian exceptionalism? Comparing the populist radical right electorate in Portugal and Spain
Since their transition to democracy in the 1970s, Spain and Portugal have been ‘immune’ to the success of populist radical right (PRR) parties. This exceptional situation, however, came to an end: Chega’s leader, André Ventura, was elected in the Portuguese parliament, while VOX has become the third most voted political party of Spain. Using new online survey data from the Spanish and Portuguese national elections in 2019, we find that the Iberia…
National past and populism
The electoral performance of right-wing populism depends on the type of re-elaboration of countries’ national past and their collective memories. Complementing socio-economic and political-institutional factors, the article analyses cultural opportunity structures. Given the link between fascist and populist visions of power, it shows that different collective memories of the fascist past and World War II open up or close down the space for right…
Where the wind blows
The paper focusses on the online political discourse of the Five Star Movement (5SM) and its strategic adaptability. The main goal of the analysis is to establish how salient several topics are over time in order to test the party’s ideological flexibility. Indeed, 5SM’s post-ideological approach and its emphasis on direct-democratic tools might constitute a winning formula for other populist parties willing to exploit the crisis of the mainstrea…
They shall not pass? The role of supply-side factors in the electoral breakthrough of VOX and Chega
No country is immune to the electoral success of populist radical right (PRR) parties: Spain and Portugal seemed to be the exception to this rule because, for decades, PRR parties remained relegated to the margins of the Iberian political systems. However, in 2019 VOX and Chega gained parliamentary representation: how did they manage to obtain their historic electoral breakthrough? From a supply-side perspective, we use the Party Manifesto datase…
Populism and Collective Memory
Right-wing populism is a global phenomenon that challenges several pillars of liberal democracy, and it is often described as a dangerous political ideology because it resonates with the fascist idea of power in terms of anti-pluralism and lack of minorities’ protection. In Western Europe, many political actors are exploiting the fears and insecurities linked to globalization, economic crisis, and mass migrations to attract voters. However, while…
Populism and nationalism revisited
Current definitions of populism are insufficiently determinate. They fail to distinguish between populism and nationalism. We propose to remedy this problem by advancing a new definition of populism as the logic of democratic resentment. We apply this new definition to a comparison between Spain's Podemos and Portugal's Left Bloc (BE), which we classify as social carriers of populism. We make two contributions to the literature. First, our findin…
Back to the Future? The Electoral Breakthrough of Far-Right Parties
In contemporary Europe, far-right parties threaten liberal democratic principles such as pluralism, media freedom and minority rights. Despite the stigma they normally face, far-right parties have experienced electoral breakthroughs even in countries where they remained electorally marginal such as Germany, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. We advance the idea that this happened because the level of stigmatization faced by these parties decreased befor…
The young, the radical and the dissatisfied
Authoritarian nostalgia and support for (populist radical) right parties
For decades, party politics literature has argued that populist radical right (PRR) parties must distance themselves from their countries’ authoritarian pasts to achieve electoral relevance in a Sartorian sense. Yet, we now observe the growing success and influence of PRR parties that not only embrace nostalgia for this past but also maintain ties to it. The use of what we term ‘authoritarian nostalgia’ is not only becoming more widespread across…
Populism and transitional justice
Is the populist Robin Hood a fairy tale? Parliamentary attention to social welfare
In the aftermath of the Great Recession, populist parties rose to prominence across Europe, campaigning on the promise to do something about growing economic inequality by funding social welfare programs. We investigate if the pro-welfare reputation of European populist parties, either on the left or the right, is well deserved. We draw on a dataset of questions asked by members of parliament from nine European democracies over three decades. We …
Populism and the Media
This chapter discusses three aspects of the relationship between populist discourses and the media: the process of mediatization of politics, the impact of media populism on democratic quality, and the link between new media and populism. The aim is to summarize theories and results present in the relevant literature, while advancing a more sophisticated framework for analysis based on a clear definition of populism as an ideology articulated dis…
Why The Big Picture Matters
While a vast theoretical literature argues that we live in populist times, the success of populism beyond its electoral dimension is rarely investigated empirically. This paper analyses the development of populism in five Western European countries (Austria, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom) from the 1970s to the 2010s. First, it measures whether political parties articulate populist discourses more and more often in thei…
Where the wind blows
The paper focusses on the online political discourse of the Five Star Movement (5SM) and its strategic adaptability. The main goal of the analysis is to establish how salient several topics are over time in order to test the party’s ideological flexibility. Indeed, 5SM’s post-ideological approach and its emphasis on direct-democratic tools might constitute a winning formula for other populist parties willing to exploit the crisis of the mainstrea…
Populism, collective memory, and stigma of the fascist past
This chapter introduces the main conceptual novelty of the study: the idea that populism might be more or less legitimate in different countries because of cultural and historical reasons. Every country presents a certain political culture, which in turn legitimizes or stigmatizes different ideas of power. In particular, the collective memory of the fascist past is linked to the legitimacy of the populist idea of power. The chapter is structured …
Explaining populism “the usual way”
This analytical chapter aims at understanding which factors, or combination of factors, explain the different levels of populism’s social acceptability in different countries over time. The first section operationalizes and calibrates the three outcomes: overall populism, right-wing populism, and left-wing populism. The same process is followed for the four conditions: corruption, accountability and responsiveness, ideological convergence of the …
Taxonomy of a chameleon
Chapter 1 illustrates the development of populism in history, showing the many possible typologies of populist movements, parties, and actors from Ancient Greece to the Occupy movements. The aim of the chapter is to explain what populism is, to illustrate the role of concepts such as ‘the elite’ and ‘the people,’ and to provide a definition that reduces the complexity of populism to a common denominator. Populism, following an ideational approach…
Conclusions
Fascism tout court might no longer be an acceptable ideology, and political parties describing themselves as neo-fascist usually remain at the margins of the political debate, but populism can reintroduce crypto-fascist ideas of power by formally adopting democratic elements. In Western Europe, left-wing populism will avoid social stigma and constitute a credible alternative as long as it will protect the rule of law and all the informal norms th…
Methodology
This chapter illustrates the operationalization of populism and its measurement through a process of semi-automated content analysis. Moreover, it explains and justifies several key elements of this study such as the case selection, the period examined, and the criteria for the selection of party manifestos. The percentage of populist statements in party manifestos is then combined with two additional elements in order to determine the degree of …
Collective memory and fascist legacies in Western Europe
This chapter assigns to each country a type of collective memory and possibly one or more secondary narratives. This is done by analyzing the relevant secondary literature on each country’s collective memory of the fascist past. Potential secondary narratives and disagreement among sources are taken into consideration, and eventually the levels of stigmatization of the fascist past are assigned to each country. Moreover, it is important to observ…
The effect of fascist legacies on populism
This chapter introduces into the model a novel condition: the levels of stigma attached to the fascist past . The results show that fascist legacies explain with greater precision the social acceptability of populism, in particular its right-wing articulation, while left-wing populism’s social acceptability remains unexplained. Compared to Chapter 7 , the results produced make it possible to conclude that fascist legacies, especially in combinati…
Populism in eight West European countries since the 1970s
This chapter presents the results of the content analysis. It illustrates the trend for the presence of populism in party manifestos in eight European countries from the 1970s to now. Moreover, it disentangles left- and right-wing variants of populism. Finally, it describes each country in detail, explaining which party manifestos articulate populist discourses, and discussing whether the findings are in line with the literature on the topic. The…
The natural habitat of populism
This chapter explores the relevant literature in order to produce a set of socio-economic and political-institutional conditions that are supposed to explain why populist discourses are more socially acceptable in certain countries than in others. The first section illustrates the theoretical framework linking the presence of populism to large-scale processes such as modernization and globalization. The second section illustrates and discusses th…
National past and populism
The electoral performance of right-wing populism depends on the type of re-elaboration of countries’ national past and their collective memories. Complementing socio-economic and political-institutional factors, the article analyses cultural opportunity structures. Given the link between fascist and populist visions of power, it shows that different collective memories of the fascist past and World War II open up or close down the space for right…
Populism and Collective Memory
Right-wing populism is a global phenomenon that challenges several pillars of liberal democracy, and it is often described as a dangerous political ideology because it resonates with the fascist idea of power in terms of anti-pluralism and lack of minorities’ protection. In Western Europe, many political actors are exploiting the fears and insecurities linked to globalization, economic crisis, and mass migrations to attract voters. However, while…
A new Iberian exceptionalism? Comparing the populist radical right electorate in Portugal and Spain
Since their transition to democracy in the 1970s, Spain and Portugal have been ‘immune’ to the success of populist radical right (PRR) parties. This exceptional situation, however, came to an end: Chega’s leader, André Ventura, was elected in the Portuguese parliament, while VOX has become the third most voted political party of Spain. Using new online survey data from the Spanish and Portuguese national elections in 2019, we find that the Iberia…
The Populism Interviews
Giorgos Venizelos examines the populist parable once it comes to power, focusing on the affective relationships between leader and masses, addressing several issues such as emotions and styles, as well as the links between populism and democracy. Drawing on examples from left-wing and right-wing populism in Europe, Latin America and the United States, in this interview Venizelos observes that while populism may be normatively at odds with liberal…
Populism Interviews
Populism and nationalism revisited
Current definitions of populism are insufficiently determinate. They fail to distinguish between populism and nationalism. We propose to remedy this problem by advancing a new definition of populism as the logic of democratic resentment. We apply this new definition to a comparison between Spain's Podemos and Portugal's Left Bloc (BE), which we classify as social carriers of populism. We make two contributions to the literature. First, our findin…
Populism and transitional justice
They shall not pass? The role of supply-side factors in the electoral breakthrough of VOX and Chega
No country is immune to the electoral success of populist radical right (PRR) parties: Spain and Portugal seemed to be the exception to this rule because, for decades, PRR parties remained relegated to the margins of the Iberian political systems. However, in 2019 VOX and Chega gained parliamentary representation: how did they manage to obtain their historic electoral breakthrough? From a supply-side perspective, we use the Party Manifesto datase…
The young, the radical and the dissatisfied
Back to the Future? The Electoral Breakthrough of Far-Right Parties
In contemporary Europe, far-right parties threaten liberal democratic principles such as pluralism, media freedom and minority rights. Despite the stigma they normally face, far-right parties have experienced electoral breakthroughs even in countries where they remained electorally marginal such as Germany, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. We advance the idea that this happened because the level of stigmatization faced by these parties decreased befor…
Authoritarian nostalgia and support for (populist radical) right parties
For decades, party politics literature has argued that populist radical right (PRR) parties must distance themselves from their countries’ authoritarian pasts to achieve electoral relevance in a Sartorian sense. Yet, we now observe the growing success and influence of PRR parties that not only embrace nostalgia for this past but also maintain ties to it. The use of what we term ‘authoritarian nostalgia’ is not only becoming more widespread across…
The Promise of a Better Past
The rising electoral support for far-right parties has sparked vibrant debates about the sociopolitical dynamics driving this phenomenon. This paper investigates a crucial yet underexplored dimension: the interplay between media consumption, authoritarian nostalgia, and far-right voting behaviour. Focusing on Spain and Portugal – two countries with distinct yet comparable histories of authoritarian rule – survey data analyses suggest that readers…
Is the populist Robin Hood a fairy tale? Parliamentary attention to social welfare
In the aftermath of the Great Recession, populist parties rose to prominence across Europe, campaigning on the promise to do something about growing economic inequality by funding social welfare programs. We investigate if the pro-welfare reputation of European populist parties, either on the left or the right, is well deserved. We draw on a dataset of questions asked by members of parliament from nine European democracies over three decades. We …
Populism, Right-Wing Movements (21 works) · Political science (19 works) · Law (18 works) · Politics (17 works) · Populism (14 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Law (11 works) · Political economy (11 works) · Democracy (7 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (5 works)