In Spain, for the first time since the end of the Franco dictatorship, an ultra-right party moves into parliament. In Greece, Alexis Tsipras, a left-wing populist, is leading the country. And in Germany, for the first time since the end of World War II, a party has established itself on the right-hand side of the political spectrum nationwide with the AfD.

Populists, Eurosceptics, parties from left and right outside are celebrating success in many European countries. For the election to the European Parliament in a month observers and surveys assume that, for example, right-wing parties should grow properly.

Populism is on the rise in many places

Only rarely do classic extremist parties play a role. But populists are all the more successful in many places. When political scientists speak of populist parties, they mean parties that present themselves as an alternative to an establishment that does not live up to the people's will.

SPIEGEL has looked more closely at the development of anti-establishment parties in the 28 EU countries. The starting point is their performance in national parliamentary elections over the past 20 years. The election results were compared with the investigation The PopuList, which had initiated the British newspaper "The Guardian" last year. In it, more than 30 political scientists have classified European parties in the populist and radical spectrum.

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In many Western and Northern European countries right-wing populists have been an integral part of the party system for many years: be it the Danish People's Party, the FPO in Austria or Geert Wilders' Freedom Party in the Netherlands. In France, the share of votes of Marine Le Pens Rassemblement National (formerly the National Front) at first glance seem comparatively manageable, but the party chairman has made it two years ago known to the runoff election for president.

In Finland, the right-wing party Perussuomalaiset (The Finns) has been very present for a decade and has managed to keep its result close to the recent election. The Swedish Democrats have also been in Sweden for years. And in Belgium, where a new national parliament is being voted on at the same time as the European elections, a revival of the separatist Vlaams Belang is emerging, according to polls.

AfD and Left Party classified as populist

In Germany, a party was established with the AfD, which the researchers have classified as right-wing populist. The party The Left also emerges in the investigation, the political scientists see it as fulfilling the criteria of a left-wing populist party. (Read below in more detail how the ratings came about.)

Right-wing as well as left-wing populism are almost always accompanied by skepticism towards the European Union. European integration, that is the progressive convergence and transfer of national responsibilities to the EU, is being rejected, at least in part. However, skepticism about Europe does not only occur in populist parties: in the United Kingdom, the Tories are ruling a party that has paved the way for the country's exit from the EU, but the political scientists do not classify it as populist.

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In Southern Europe, the populism of links plays a bigger role. In Greece, after the beginning of the debt crisis in 2010, Syriza significantly increased, since 2015, the party is the government. Also in Spain, a left-wing protest party was formed in 2014 as a result of the financial crisis with Podemos. And in Portugal, the communist-green coalition CDU and the Marxist Bloco de Esquerda were represented throughout the past two decades in parliament.

In Italy, the Lega Nord is a recently very successful right-wing party. Moreover, in the country the so-called populism of the middle has a long tradition. With Silvio Berlusconi's "People of Freedom" (formerly Forza Italia), a center-populist party with a conservative profile has established itself. On the other hand, with the five-star movement for two electoral periods there has also been a populist party that can do without a left-wing ideology, thus making it into the government last year. Whether the success will be permanent, is questionable.

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The phenomenon of middle-populism is otherwise found mainly in Eastern and South-Eastern European countries. In Bulgaria, for example, the populist-conservative GERB party has been the strongest party in parliament for ten years, and most of the time it also nominated the prime minister. In the Czech Republic, too, the middle-populist ANO party has governed for five years.

The opposite is true in Hungary and Poland, where right-wing populists have risen to the government. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán's Fidesz party has dominated politics for many years; In Poland Jaroslaw Kaczynski led his PiS party first in 2005 and last in 2015 in the government.

Where does the data come from?

The election results are from ParlGov, a database of political scientists at the University of Bremen with data on elections, parties and governmental organizations worldwide. The classification of which parties are considered populist comes from The PopuList, a collaborative project of the British newspaper The Guardian and several political scientists, supported by the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research and the ECPR Standing Group on Extremism and Democracy.

SPIEGEL has prepared the election results and added to the recent parliamentary elections in Estonia, Finland and Spain, which were not yet deposited with ParlGov. Subsequently, the results were compared with the populist system of The PopuList. The resulting data set and a detailed documentation of the procedure can be found on GitHub.

Which elections were considered?

All national parliamentary elections in the 28 EU member states have been considered since 1998 up to and including 26 May 2019. For countries with a bicameral system, only the lower house has been included in the evaluation. For the recent elections in Finland and Spain, the preliminary results were used, not the final ones.

In some cases, very small votes of populist parties may be missing, because ParlGov often only shows election results from a share of one percent.

Which parties were considered?

ThePopuList names all parties in Europe that are defined as populist, right or left wing, or Eurosceptic, and who have achieved at least two percent of at least one national parliamentary election since 1998.

A complete list of all parties to which these criteria apply can be found here as a PDF file. For the present analysis the list as of February 11, 2019 was used.

If a party classified by The PopuList participated in an electoral coalition, only the partial result of the party was considered in the present analysis.

How was it decided if a party is populist?

The PopuList works with four definitions derived from political science research:

Populists are parties that argue that society is facing the "common people" and the "corrupt elite." Politics should therefore express the general popular will.

Right-wing parties ("far right") are parties that on the one hand represent the idea that states should only be inhabited by natives and that non-natives threaten the homogenous nation-state. On the other hand, they demand a state in which society is strictly ordered and authority violations are punished.

Left-wing parties are parties that reject capitalism and its underlying socio-economic structure. They demand alternative economic and power structures as well as a comprehensive redistribution.

Eurosceptic is defined by parties that reject all or part of European integration. This includes both "tough" skeptics of Europe, who reject all political and economic integration and membership of the EU, and "soft" skeptics who reject certain EU policies and emphasize national interests.

Based on these definitions, a classification was made in consultation with country and party experts. In individual cases, the populist property has been limited in time, so parties can only be regarded as populist for a certain period of time.

The "Guardian" describes the exact procedure at this point.

Why is the Left Party considered leftist populist?

The party The Left is a borderline case, says political scientist Matthijs Rooduijn, who led the investigation The PopuList. Over time, the party had become more moderate, but because of their anti-capitalist stance and the strong emphasis on economic redistribution still classified as left outside. In addition, she has been classified as populist because she has "often linked her positions with the message that there is a corrupt political and economic elite that does not listen to ordinary citizens."

Why is the AfD considered right-wing populist?

The PopuList classifies the AfD as right-wing due to its anti-immigration discourse and its law-and-order rhetoric. Because of her appeal to a popular will and its demarcation to a supposedly dishonest elite she is also classified as populist.

Not everywhere in Europe populists are successful. In Malta, in the past 20 years, there has not been a single populist party with noteworthy electoral successes. In the United Kingdom, Luxembourg and Slovenia, their share of votes is relatively modest, falling in Lithuania and Romania.

So there is no single trend. And yet populism is now a Europe-wide phenomenon, says political scientist Sarah Engler. She researches populism at the University of Zurich and the Center for Democracy Aarau and was involved in the project The PopuList.

Danger for liberal democracy

For the success of populist parties, there are a number of explanatory approaches, Engler says: "Right-wing populists, for example, address so-called globalization losers - people who do not profit from economic and cultural openness and hope for better chances of protectionism and border closures."

In southern and eastern European countries, corruption scandals have repeatedly led to populists' anti-establishment slogans reaching voters, according to Engler. "And finally, in many places the binding power of the popular parties has decreased, which opens up new electoral potential for new parties."

When populists demand to make politics for the people, that does not sound outlandish - what else should be the job of people's representatives? Populism, however, continues, explains Sarah Engler: "He starts from a unified will of the people, subordinating pluralism and the protection of minorities - elementary components of a liberal democracy."

In some countries, it is also possible to see populists openly questioning the separation of powers: "In Poland, for example, the ruling PiS party is increasingly influencing the judiciary - after all, the government already knows which legal conception the people are."

The graphic representations in this article are inspired by the play How Far Is Europe Swinging to the Right? the "New York Times".