Abstract
In the last two decades, political reality in many democratic countries in Europe as well as around the globe has witnessed an increase in active populist political parties and a rise in their popularity among citizens. Parallel to the spread of populism, political science and sociological analyses note a clear difference between the discourses of members of populist and non-populist parties, especially when using social and other media.
However, less is known about the relationship between populist and non-populist discourses in the speeches of members of parliament (MPs) in political systems of parliamentary democracy, in which parliaments are the central representative, legislative, and controlling state institutions. This contribution aims at suggesting a model for such analysis.
The proposed analysis is embedded around two key concepts. First, we use the concepts of life-world to acknowledge the existence of a specific reality of MPs in which their speech is made.
Second, we draw on the existing typology of populist and non-populist parties created by political scientists and sociologists to see how MPs from two different groups of political parties, i.e. populist and non-populist, construct their view of the public. The goal of the analysis is to detect any differences between populist and non-populist discourse observed through the lens of their references to the general public.