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AbstractEmpirical literature regarding which actors support the most participatory democracy is surprisingly scarce. Discussing the core ideological features of populist and post-materialist-centred parties, we expect that these parties emphasise participatory democracy more than their competitors. Additionally, populist parties should embody a monist demand for greater participatory democracy, while post-materialist-centred (PMC) parties should advocate a pluralist understanding of it. Drawing on party electoral manifestos, we verify these assumptions in several national elections across Europe. Our findings show mixed support for the theoretical expectations. Both post-materialist and populist parties support participatory democracy more than other parties, and their principles diverge. More precisely, our data confirm that PMC parties advocate a pluralist understanding of participatory democracy. Yet populist parties show a fuzzier picture. While populist radical right parties exhibit a monist profile, radical left populist parties are much more in line with post-materialist arguments.

Populism is undoubtedly one of the most relevant concepts to the study of contemporary party politics. A massive amount of literature has been produced on this topic, especially with regard to the European continent. However, the literature still lacks a comprehensive meta-analysis of this vast body of research. In this work, we summarize the results of one hundred and ninety-four articles present on the two most authoritative bibliographic databases, Web of Science and Scopus, in the last three decades. The meta-analysis enquires into definitions of populism employed across the decades and the main characteristics of the research design. The main results show that, across time, the definition of the concept has become increasingly clear, with the interpretation holding populism to be a thin-centred ideology clearly prevailing. The focus on the empirically oriented partially confirms our expectations, although relevant differences are identified and further discussed. We conclude that more research is needed on this topic, in particular with regard to the diversity of the geographical contexts.

In the context of the ongoing deinstitutionalisation of the Italian party system, Fratelli d'Italia (FdI) emerged as the most voted-for party in the 2022 general election. Although previous studies categorised FdI as a populist radical right (PRR) party, no research has so far been conducted on its voters. We examine whether the traditional explanations for the rise of PRR parties also apply to FdI. We develop a theoretical argument suggesting that in the context of over-crowded competition amongst populist parties, as seen in Italy, leadership evaluation trumps policy and ideological consideration in predicting vote switching. Our results reveal that positive evaluations of Giorgia Meloni emerge as the most significant predictor of voters switching to FdI in the 2022 election. This research sheds light on individual-level mainstreaming of PRR attitudes and preferences, in particular during an electorally expansive phase, emphasising the role of leadership evaluations in voting behaviour in a context characterised by intense populist competition.