Common sense justice? Comparing populist and mainstream right positions on law and order in 24 countries

Abstract

While the subject of populism receives increasing scholarly attention from both political scientists and criminologists, so far these two bodies of literature have existed mostly in isolation of each other. This paper aims to connect them by investigating whether parties that political scientists describe as populist are likely to evince positions on criminal justice that criminologists describe as populist. Relying on a secondary data analysis comparing mainstream right-wing and populist right-wing parties for 131 elections in 24 countries since 1973, this paper concludes that the populist right on average expresses slightly more support for penal populism than the mainstream right, but that its positioning is crucially shaped by considerations relating to issues of immigration and multiculturalism. These findings suggest that most contemporary populist parties on the right primarily pursue a nativist agenda and will only invoke penal populism when it fits this overall strategy.