“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 inresearch on new parties in Central and Eastern Europe. These parties are identified as not havingany 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, focusingon the Czech ANO party, we find that key predictor of vote for ANO party was attitudes toimmigration and minorities going contrary to current literature. Second, using expert codeddata, we show that the blurriness of economic and cultural positions of centrist populist partiesis overstated. Many of the parties commonly labelled as centrist populist are characterized byclear positions in economic or cultural dimension compared to other parties in the respectivecountries. Given the findings, we argue that the economic and cultural positions of centristpopulist parties should not be disregarded.