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Democracy and distrust | 109 but several different forms. They call this the “overall diversity of populism” when they differentiate between right-wing and left-wing populisms. This is a very important distinction, usually not made by other scholars, though both the overgeneralisation of the term and its mixing up with far-right extremism and post-fascism have been discussed elsewhere (Art 2020; Ziegler 2016). Taggart and Pirro compare researches based on the 2019 European Parliament elections and on the roles of populist parties in national political systems. Their results show that “Europe has generally witnessed a growing tide of support for populist parties in recent years” and that [t]here have always been significant variations in the fortunes of populist parties across the continent, but now they are almost ubiquitous and increasingly important to many of their respective party systems and institutions of supranational governance. (Taggart and Pirro 2021, 291-292) In their research, they also find that populist parties performed best and received the most votes in Central and Eastern Europe, but this does not mean that in other countries populism would not be relevant. On the contrary, “over one-third of European populist parties were in government at some point in 2019”, which confirms “the trend that European populist parties have moved from being insurgent parties to being potential and existing parties of government” (Taggart-Pirro 2021, 289). Right-wing populism seems to be stronger and the Europe-wide cooperation (both in the European Parliament and at other levels) of these actors has become now an everyday reality in European politics. However, they have not managed to create a strong pan-European alliance so far. One possible reason for this is that Euroscepticism is no longer commonly shared by rightwing populist parties. Left-wing populism is less relevant at the European level, but these parties can also gain significant popular support at the national level, especially in Southern Europe, like in Greece (Syriza) or Spain (Podemos), even if “the populist left has not made anything like the same electoral inroads of the populist right into national party systems” (Taggart-Pirro 2021, 288). Though the rise of populist parties is usually seen as a threat to democracy, Marlene Mauk claims that despite previous findings evidencing a negative relationship between populist party support and political trust on the individual level, the electoral success of populist parties may still increase political trust among the general public. It argued that populist parties may be perceived as a corrective force finally giving voice to and tackling concerns about the political system that had long been prevalent among citizens. (Mauk 2020, 54)
