Economic Populism and Producerism. European Right-wing Populist Parties in a Transatlantic Perspective

International audienceThe general aim of this paper is to show that a transatlantic perspective may be fruitful to understand the electoral rise and success of the Right-wing Populist Parties (RPPs). While contingent upon national structures of political opportunities, the widespread political success of RPPs in Western Europe and North America represents a growing challenge for populism scholars and it is crucial that we adopt cross-national perspectives and concepts of populism. Our departing point is the relevance of economic populism as a mobilization frame common to European right-wing populist parties (Ivaldi & Mazzoleni, forthcoming). We focus on how the “true” people are constructed in populist rhetoric, and how the (declining) economic well-being of the people is addressed by right-wing populist parties. To do so, we borrow from the concept of "producerism" which has been widely used in the study of right-wing populism in the US (e.g. Berlet & Lyons 2000). We conduct a comparative qualitative analysis of populist producerist themes and issues across three prominent Western European RPPs (the FN, SVP and UKIP) and investigate similarities and differences with the deployment of right-wing populist discourse in the U.S., in particular by the Tea Party and Donald Trump