The recent wave of populist parties and politicians throughout Europe and the world has been portrayed as a monolithic phenomenon that transcends national borders. On the right and on the left, populists have been portrayed as polarising forces that reinforce existing divisions in society and pull each side further from the centre.

But is this the case? This event explores two counterintuitive arguments about Europe’s populist parties. First, that populist parties may find more in common with traditional parties in their home countries than with their counterparts in other European contexts; second, that populist parties on the left and the right have more in common with each other than with the traditional parties they separated from.

Dr Alexandru Filip (@AlexFilip_87) is a Dahrendorf Forum Post-Doctoral Fellow based at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin.

Sara Hobolt (@sarahobolt) is Sutherland Chair in European Institutions and professor in the Department of Government and the European Institute at LSE.

Dr Benjamin Martill is a Dahrendorf Forum Post-Doctoral Fellow based at the London School of Economics.

Dr Rosa Balfour (@RosaBalfour) is a Senior Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund and Associate Fellow at LSE IDEAS. 

This event is co-organised by the Dahrendorf Forum at LSE IDEAS. The Dahrendorf Forum (@DahrendorfForum) is a joint initiative between the LSE and the Hertie School of Governance, funded by the Mercator Stiftung. 

LSE IDEAS (@lseideas) is LSE's foreign policy think tank. We connect academic knowledge of diplomacy and strategy with the people who use it. 

Twitter hashtags for this event: #LSEFestival #NewWorldDisorders

This event is part of the LSE Festival: New World (Dis)Orders running from Monday 25 February to Saturday 2 March 2019, with a series of events exploring how social science can tackle global problems.

Podcast 

A podcast of this event is available to download from A Populist Wave? Unity and Division Among Europe's New Parties.

Podcasts and videos of many LSE events can be found at the LSE Public Lectures and Events: podcasts and videos channel.