Paths to Populist Electoral Success and Failure: fsQCA Analysis

Abstract

Having discussed the way populism has manifested itself in contemporary European party systems, I will now turn to the electoral performance of the populist parties identified in the previous chapter. This chapter presents the results of the fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA). As its name suggests, QCA is essentially a research approach and technique of comparison. As explained in Chapter 1, the approach is primarily chosen because QCA is able to demonstrate how an outcome can be based on different combinations of explanatory conditions across contexts. Following this notion of ‘equifinality’, there can be different paths towards the same outcome. Since populist parties are not all similar in terms of the issue positions they take and the themes they emphasise, this principle appears crucial to the aim of explaining their electoral performance across countries.