Abstract
Populism is the "40 is the new 30" of political research, buzzing for the last two decades with what seems as an unfading energy. A lot of attention has been paid to defining the phenomena and outlining its general features. Significantly less notice has been paid to political parties. Even less work has been done on comparative party populism in contemporary Europe, one that would take into consideration social, political and historical aspects. This paper fills this void. Examining sixteen European populist parties and movements across the continent, we argue that while all adhere to the standard populist framework, there is not one but four populisms in contemporary Europe. We demonstrate our argument by positioning the case selection against the following dichotomies: exclusionary v. inclusionary populism, authoritarian v. non-authoritarian populism, strong nativist v. weak nativist populism, and radical democratic v. conspiratorial populism. Based on these variables, we introduce four types of party populism: (1) radical right-wing populist parties, which are exclusionary, authoritarian with a strong nativist appeal and which use conspiratory explanations of liberal democracy; (2) radical left-wing populists, which are inclusionary, non-authoritarian with a weak nativist appeal and use a radical democratic approach; (3) illiberal (post-communist) populist parties, which are exclusionary with strong a nativist appeal and use conspiratory explanations of liberal democracy; (4) anti-establishment populists and political entrepreneurs, which are non-authoritarian with a weak nativist appeal and tend to have radical democratic appeal (exclusionary variable is rather inconclusive due to their lack of ideology).