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A crisis of representation has precipitated a surge in support for populist radical right (PRR) parties that challenge the existing model of representative democracy. Simultaneously, institutional reforms across Western Europe have sought to improve the input-legitimacy of local democracy with a proliferation of direct and participatory democratic methods. This paper investigates the extent to which PRR parties advance a populist democratic agenda when in leadership of the executive at the local level of government. Previous work on the subject of PRR parties in power has neglected the sub-national perspective, despite the increasing congruence between populist demands for a more direct linkage of politics to the people and this institutional environment. An exploration of three cases of PRR party-led local government in Italy, Austria and Switzerland enables a comparison of their governing behaviour, its ideological content and democratic consequences, through qualitative content analysis of referendums, policies and council resolutions. This paper finds they do little to promote popular sovereignty through participatory forms of governance at the expense of representative democracy in local government. However, when in local government environments with higher executive autonomy, PRR parties emphasise a more direct (plebiscitarian) linkage between the executive and the 'people', who are increasingly represented in nativist terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

That political parties are in a deep crisis is nothing new. The number of works foreseeing the decline of representative democracy is copious. However, studies that empirically examine the relationship between support for anti-political-establishment parties and liberal democracy are almost a rara avis. This article tries to fill a gap in the literature by answering this essential, and notably current, research question. In order to do so, it makes use of an original dataset looking at 28 European countries from 1950 until 2017. Our results show that the relationship between the share of votes for anti-establishment parties and the level of liberal democracy is negative and significant: that is, the higher the strength of these parties, the lower the level of liberal democracy. This study definitively sheds some new light on the perils of populist parties for the survival of liberal democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are populist parties bad for representative democracy or are they filling a representative gap? While it has been broadly established that the emergence and success of populist parties is not merely a sign of protest, there is still a sparsity of empirical investigations into whether these parties represent hitherto under- or unrepresented social groups or whether they offer a policy profile that was in demand but not present. Using Pitkin's concepts of symbolic, descriptive and substantive representation, this article opens up the dimensions in which populist parties might challenge or aid democratic representation. It then places the articles in the Special Issue 'Populist Representation of, by and for the People?' along these dimensions and highlights their specific contributions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]