The “Big Bang” of the populist parties in the European Union: The 2014 European Parliament election

Abstract

A significant number of voters are turning their backs on traditional parties. The stability of European party systems is being defied by a growing number of (new) radical parties, whose presence in the European Parliament has never been as strong as it is now. Faced with the worst global economic crisis of the last 80 years and with growing socio-economic inequalities, a series of political groups, referred to as populists, have secured almost a quarter of the seats in the European Parliament. This paper aims to highlight some of the reasons why these parties attract so much support and to reach a better understanding, from a comparative perspective, of the profile of these electorates as well as their motivations and aspirations. The analysis is based on the study of microdata (N = 30,064) from the European Election Study 2014 conducted in the EU after the European elections of 2014.

Keywords:

• Europe
• social innovation
• great recession
• radical parties
• comparative politics
• post-electoral survey

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank M. Hodkinson for translation of the paper into English and an anonymous referee and the editor for their valuable comments and suggestions. They have significantly improved the research. The usual disclaimers apply.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Spanish Ministry of Economics and Competitiveness [grant numbers CSO2013-43054-R and ECO2017-87245-R].