What’s in a Buzzword? A Systematic Review of the State of Populism Research in Political Science

Sophia Hunger and Fred Paxton

EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, 2022, vol. 10, issue 3, 617-633

Abstract: While attention to populism is ever-increasing, the concept remains contested. This article provides a comprehensive overview of populism research and identifies tendencies to a conflation of host ideologies and populism in political science through a two-step analysis. First, we conduct a quantitative review of 884 abstracts from 2004 to 2018 using text-as-data methods. We show that scholars sit at ‘separate tables’, divided by geographical foci, methods, and host ideologies. Next, our qualitative analysis of 50 articles finds a common conflation of the populism with its host ideologies resulting in the analytical neglect of populism. We therefore urge researchers to properly distinguish populism from ‘what it travels with’ and engage more strongly with the dynamic interlinkages between thin and thick ideologies.

Keywords: populism; text-as-data; systematic review; meta analysis; radical right (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:espost:238113

DOI: 10.1017/psrm.2021.44

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