Much ado about nothing?

Abstract

The covid-19 pandemic and its socioeconomic impacts led to fears that a kind of pandemic-fuelled populism could erupt in crisis-struck societies. Through a content analysis of parliamentary debates on issues dear to populists, we explore the impact of covid-19 on the incidence of populist rhetoric in Portugal in different moments of the pandemic and by different political parties. Our results indicate that, despite an increase of people-centrism during the first covid-19 wave, the pandemic globally decreased the prevalence of populist rhetoric, suggesting that parties’ adoption of populist frames under a crisis may be dependent on the nature of that crisis.