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With a proliferation of scholarly work focusing on populist, far-left, and far-right parties, questions have arisen about the correct ways to ideologically classify such parties. To ensure transparency and uniformity in research, the discipline could benefit from a systematic procedure. In this letter, we discuss how we have employed the method of 'Expert-informed Qualitative Comparative Classification' (EiQCC) to construct the newest version of The PopuList (3.0) – a database of populist, far-left, and far-right parties in Europe since 1989. This method takes into account the in-depth knowledge of national party experts while allowing for systematic comparative analysis across cases and over time. We also examine how scholars have made use of the previous versions of the dataset, explain how the new version of The PopuList differs from previous ones, and compare it to other data. We conclude with a discussion of the strengths and limitations of The PopuList dataset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research shows that parents have a strong influence on the party preferences of their children. Yet little is known about how such preferences are transmitted in multiparty systems with weak party identification and high electoral volatility. We propose a model of intergenerational transmission that includes both direct effects of parents' party preferences on those of their children, as well as indirect effects through left-right and issue positions. We test this model with original survey data of Dutch adolescents (14-20 years old) and their parents (N = 751 adolescent-parent pairs). We find two paths through which parents exert influence on the party preferences of their adolescent children. On the first path, parental party preferences function as a direct predictor of adolescent party preferences. On the second path, adolescent left-right and issue positions function as a mediator between parental left-right and issue positions and adolescent party preferences, with the effect of left-right positions being stronger than that of issue positions. The frequency with which adolescents discuss political topics with their parents moderates these effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The connections between political parties and civil society are central to parties' representative performance. Several explanations exist for cross-party variations in the strength of these connections. However, nobody has compared the explanatory power of rival theories. This article does just that, using a novel dataset covering 149 parties in 29 elections in 14 West European countries. It establishes that elites in parties with government experience and a left-wing ideological orientation have the strongest links to civil society. Parties at the far right are the least connected, in particular those that have no governing experience. Contrary to expectations, however, the study shows that, when controlling for party ideology and governing experience, the level of intra-party democracy and key components of party trajectory, such as party origin and strategy, are not significant in explaining the strength of party-society connections. Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at: 10.1080/01402382.2021.1986784 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political parties are increasingly confronted with electoral volatility. However, the support for some parties is more stable than that of others. Although it has been established that parties' links to civil society stabilised their electorates in the period until the 1980s, it has not yet been investigated whether such links still fulfil this function in our volatile age. In this paper, we argue that traditional party connections, as well as links to modern day civil society organisations, continue to tie voters to parties. Using a novel dataset covering 149 parties in 29 elections in 14 West European countries, we establish that parties with stronger links to civil society do indeed have a more stable support base. This relationship holds for parties of the left and right. Our results demonstrate that parties' societal embeddedness continues to play a role in understanding party competition in the 21st century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the differences in the representational performance of mainstream and niche parties. It hypothesizes that mainstream parties represent their voters better on the socio-economic dimension and issues, while niche parties represent their voters better on the socio-cultural dimension and specific socio-cultural issues. To test these expectations, the congruence between Dutch local representatives of both mainstream and niche parties and their voters is measured using two surveys, one among Dutch voters and one conducted by the authors among a representative sample of municipal councillors. By analysing 'many-to-many' scores of congruence, which compare the distributions of the preferences of the representatives and their voters, it is concluded that mainstream parties do not consistently represent their voters better on specific issues or dimensions than niche parties, or vice versa. Instead, a mismatch between the preferences of representatives and their voters sometimes occurs particularly on issues that a party 'owns', because representatives tend to take more radical positions on these issues than their supporters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how the refugee crisis has affected attitudes towards the EU, as well as attitudes towards national institutions. By combining different waves of individual survey data, official records of asylum applications and a content analysis of the media, we examine the effect of the numbers of asylum applications and the amount of media coverage thereof on citizens' attitudes towards the EU and national politics. Our findings demonstrate that the number of asylum applications in the EU and the media attention this generates primarily affect euroscepticism, while the number of asylum applications into each individual Member State first and foremost affects attitudes towards national institutions. Our results contribute to the literature on democratic accountability, by demonstrating that, even in a complex multi-level governance structure, citizens differentiate between levels of government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we examine the programmatic reactions to the rise of populist parties. It has been argued that populism is not necessarily the prerogative of populist parties; it has been adopted by mainstream parties as well. The article investigates whether populism is contagious. On the basis of the results of a content analysis of election manifestos of parties in five Western European countries (France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom), we conclude that the programmes of mainstream parties have not become more populist in recent years. We find no evidence that mainstream parties change their programmes when confronted with electoral losses or successful populist challengers. Yet, we do find that populist parties change their own programmes when they have been successful: Their initial success makes them tone down their populism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Immigration and integration issues have become increasingly important in West European politics, partly as a consequence of the rise of anti-immigration parties. This article investigates how immigration and integration issues have become politicised in the Netherlands since the beginning of the 1990s, what role anti-immigration parties have played in this process and the extent to which party positions on these issues are structured by a left-right dimension. It examines changes in debates about immigration and integration issues by means of a content analysis of party programmes, measuring changes in frames, positions and salience. It concludes that (1) immigration and integration issues have been given more attention by parties since the early 1990s, (2) parties have replaced their discourse of socio-economic integration by a discourse of cultural integration and (3) parties have adopted a monoculturalist instead of a multiculturalist position in the immigration and integration debate. However, despite these changes to the immigration and integration debate, it remains structured by a left–right divide, with left-wing parties being in favour of more lenient, multiculturalist policies and right-wing parties being in favour of more restrictive, monoculturalist policies. Furthermore, the article demonstrates that many of the changes were already set in motion by mainstream parties prior to the successful electoral breakthrough of anti-immigration parties. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]