COVID-19, European integration and populism

Abstract

Will COVID-19 "kill populism"- by exposing its incapacity to govern, its inadequate rhetoric, its hostility towards scientific expertise, and its political short-termism? In order to address this question in the European context it is necessary to account for two broader contextual factors. Firstly, that Europe's recent crises - the European debt crisis of 2010 and the migration crisis of 2015 - overlap with the current crisis, both politically and economically. Secondly, that in Europe, populism in one country cannot be viewed as independent from populism in another. The article sets out to empirically map how (and why) populism has fared quite differently in different European countries and comes to a preliminary response to the "will it kill populism"- question: no, it will not.