The Milei Question, or: How Liberal Are Right-Wing Populist Parties? A Measurement Approach Using Large Language Models

How liberal are right-wing populist parties beyond their rhetorical commitment to “freedom”, and their opposition to liberal elites and institutions? Our paper addresses this question by leveraging large language models (LLMs) to systematically analyze the ideological content of party manifestos. First, we identify and score populist rhetoric based on its characteristic features in the ideational definition: anti-elitism, people-centrism, and Manichean discourse. Second, we classify right-wing populist parties by their emphasis on nationalism, anti-immigration stances, and cultural threat narratives. The resulting populism scores and ideological classifications are very much in-line with other indicators. Third, we assess the degree of liberalism expressed in these manifestos across four dimensions: political, social, economic, and financial market liberalism. Our empirical findings reveal a consistent rejection of liberalism among all populist parties, where increases in the overall use of populist rhetoric are matched with a decidedly anti-liberal shift. Increases in the populist rhetoric of right-wing parties are further associated with an across the board reduction in manifesto positions promoting liberty, which is mostly indistinguishable from that of left-wing populism.

Working Paper (Universidad de Navarra & University of Liechtenstein)