“Centrist Populism” in Central and Eastern Europe? Introducing a Revisionist Approach

This article focuses on the concept of centrist populist parties which has gained traction in research on new parties in Central and Eastern Europe. These parties are identified as not having any coherent or clear position on the economic and cultural dimensions of political conflict, which they often compensate by anti-corruption and anti-establishment appeals. First, focusing on the Czech ANO party, we find that key predictor of vote for ANO party was attitudes to immigration and minorities going contrary to current literature. Second, using expert coded data, we show that the blurriness of economic and cultural positions of centrist populist parties is overstated. Many of the parties commonly labelled as centrist populist are characterized by clear positions in economic or cultural dimension compared to other parties in the respective countries. Given the findings, we argue that the economic and cultural positions of centrist populist parties should not be disregarded.