Macro-Geographical Analysis of Current European Populism (2018)

During the last two decades the European societal environment has undergone crucial political transformation. The electoral support and general influence of populist parties and leaders is on the constant rise. The first results of rising populism can be seen, for example, in the so-called erosion of democracy in Hungary and in the British people's decision to leave the EU. An analytical part of this thesis is based on a theoretical framework which is presented in the beginning of this paper. It mainly elaborates on a definition that builds on Mudde's ideological concept and on possible divisions of populism which are used in the thesis. Useful definition and classification of the complex character of the term populism is crucial and allows proper understanding and also further development of the thesis itself. The conceptualisation of main attributes and causes is mainly based on the current literature and especially on the theory of economic grievance and on the Cultural Backlash theory. The first crucial contribution of this thesis is construction of an empirical model which is able to measure and categorise political parties by their level of populism. Closer look at these results created by factor analysis showed that the current success of European populist parties is highly alarming. In..