Is Populism Truly Advanced in the World?

Abstract

It is fashionable to affirm that populism is advancing in the world. Examples of governments assuming positions that can be qualified in this way are abundant. But it seems pertinent to really dimension the existence and magnitude of this phenomenon and not only attend to a casuistic vision, largely focused on the Western world. That is why this paper will seek to measure the growth during the 21st century in terms of votes and seats in the lower national assemblies and the participation in the governments of the world of parties, differentiated according to their populist orientation. Today there are reliable sources of information to do this type of exercise. In particular, we will use the data compiled by the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project to compare the electoral presence and success and the ability to lead or be part of the government coalitions of the parties according to their adherence to populist logics. To do this, after an introduction related to the same concept of populism, the source of information to be used in this text and the indices that will be used for analysis will be characterized. Subsequently, the results of the measurement of the behavior of these indices in the world in the period 2000-2019 and their relationship with the achievements of the parties in terms of votes, seats and participation in government coalitions will be presented in a synthetic way. Finally, the meaning of the data compiled, displayed and analyzed will be discussed. The analyzed data allow us to advance in the finding of a relationship between populist discourse and the adoption of a position contrary to elitism and that the position to the right in the political-ideological spectrum tends to make an organization less likely to adopt a populist rhetoric. However, there would be a long way to go to achieve a full explanation of the phenomenon of populism in this century and it is not insignificant progress in achieving electoral support and integration into governments that has been detected during the last decade. This forces us to think of new paths and alternative sources for understanding the phenomenon that occupies the center of attention in this essay.