Profiling Far‐Right Populist Women Leaders: A Trait Analysis of Le Pen, Meloni, and Weidel

Henriette Müller and Klara-Josefin Ehrnst
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Henriette Müller: Division of Arts and Humanities, New York University Abu Dhabi, UAE
Klara-Josefin Ehrnst: Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford, UK

Politics and Governance, 2026, vol. 14

Abstract: Limited scholarly attention has been paid to the leadership profiles of far-right populist women leaders and their implications for political leadership, particularly from a comparative perspective. Employing Leadership Trait Analysis (LTA), this article examines the leadership profiles of Marine Le Pen, Giorgia Meloni, and Alice Weidel. The article makes three contributions: first, it bridges scholarship on gender, leadership traits, and populism with LTA’s theoretical framework; second, it provides empirical profiles of these three prominent far-right populist women leaders; and third, it compares them to their male far-right populist counterparts, non-populist women leaders, and a broader sample of world leaders. The analysis draws on software-assisted content analysis of party convention speeches and press conferences from 2011 to 2024. The findings show that the leadership profiles of far-right populist women leaders are marked by high self-confidence and pronounced distrust of others. Differences vis-à-vis male populist counterparts are comparatively small, consistent with the argument that masculine-coded leadership norms dominate far-right party contexts; by contrast, differences from other women leaders are pronounced.

Keywords: Alice Weidel; comparative analysis; far‐right populist women leaders; gender; Giorgia Meloni; leadership trait analysis; Marine Le Pen (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cog:poango:v14:y:2026:a:12459

DOI: 10.17645/pag.12459

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