Populism in Action at the PSA International Conference 2021

This week all of the Populism in Action Project’s Research Team will be taking part in the 2021 Political Studies Association (PSA) Annual International Conference. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 public health emergency this year’s conference is taking place online but it is virtually hosted by Queen’s University Belfast.

Populism in Action’s research will be presented at two panels, one taking place on the 30th March (15:30-17:00) and one taking place on 31st March (09:00-10:30).

Panel 824: “The Survival of the Mass Party? Discussing Party Organisation among Populist Radical Right Parties (Prrps) in Europe”

15:30-17:00, 30th March 2021

This panel is dedicated to the Populism in Action Project’s ESRC- funded research and will be chaired by our principal investigator, Daniele Albertazzi while the discussant will be Antonella Seddone. The four research fellows Adrian Favero, Niko Hatakka, Judith Sijstermans and Mattia Zulianello, will present the findings of Phases 1 and 2 of their research.

They will discuss how the League, Flemish Interest, Swiss People’s party and Finns party are organised, with a particular focus on power relations within them.

Panel 923: Why Do Populists Succeed? Government Experiences, Discursive Strategies and Party Organisation

09:00-10:30, 31st March 2021

In this panel Populism in Action’s Principal Investigator Daniele Albertazzi and Co-Investigator Stijn van Kessel, will present some of the project’s research findings.

Their paper is entitled: “Why Do Populists Succeed?: The Survival of the Mass Party: Centralisation, Rootedness and Control Among Populist Radical Right Parties (PRRPs) in Europe”

Drawing on Populism in Action’s comparative research, this presentation maps the formal and informal organisational structures of the League, the Flemish Interest, the Finns Party, and the Swiss People’s Party. It compares these parties’ institutional structures, and degrees of centralisation.