Too little, too vague

How populist parties talk about deliberation in Europe

Bibliographic Data

ID7973528
AuthorsGherghina (0000-0002-6627-5598), Bettina Mitru (0009-0006-1906-2713)
Year2025
Volume45
Issue3
Pages417-434
Publication date2025-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePolitics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0032-3268 • E-ISSN: 1467-9256
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/02633957241231803
OpenAlexW4392056934
LanguageEN
Citations received19
References cited44

Populist parties place the people at the centre of polity and politics. Such parties refer to direct democracy as a suitable avenue to involve people in the decision-making process but much less is known about their approaches towards deliberation. This article seeks to address this gap in the literature and analyses how populist parties talk about deliberation in their election manifestos. It tests empirically how much they speak about deliberation and whether they have a generic discourse as opposed to specific references to forms of deliberation and levels of implementation. Our qualitative content analysis draws on the election manifestos of 84 political parties from the Manifesto Project Dataset in 23 European democracies in the national elections between 1996 and 2021. The results indicate that populists talk considerably less and use vague language about the levels of implementation compared to non-populists

Deliberation · Economics · Law and economics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Populism · Positive economics · Sociology · Law