How we combed leaders’ speeches to gauge populist rise
The Global Populism Database is the most up-to-date, comprehensive and reliable repository of populist discourse in the world. It was commissioned by the Guardian and built by Team Populism, a global network of scholars dedicated to the scientific study of the causes and consequences of populism.
The database provides insight into the extent of populist rhetoric in the speeches of government leaders across the world over the past two decades. It is based upon populism “scores” given to 728 speeches by the presidents, prime ministers and chancellors of 40 countries.
The grades were derived using textual analysis of speeches, one of the more reliable, valid and precise techniques used by political scientists to gauge levels of populism.
Kirk Hawkins, an associate professor at Brigham Young University (BYU) who has pioneered the use of textual analysis in populism studies, oversaw the project. In collaboration with the Guardian, Hawkins and his team trained, instructed and supervised 46 paid researchers who examined speeches in 13 different languages.
The resulting database, which features speeches by leaders of all major countries in Europe, the Americas and India, gives a populism score to 182 terms in office between 1999 and 2019. The database contains 138 politicians, 31 of whom served at least two terms after they were re-elected.
Background
Despite widespread public debate about the rise of populism and substantial empirical research into the phenomenon, until now there has not been a valid, reliable database or index measuring populist discourse across
