The Populist Grammar of Democracy: A Comparative Analysis of Democratic Discourse among European Populist Leaders

This article examines how populist actors articulate democratic principles in their political communication. Rather than focusing on whether populism is compatible with liberal democracy, the study analyses how populist leaders themselves interpret and mobilise democratic language. Drawing on a comparative analysis of Twitter communication by Nigel Farage, Matteo Salvini, Giorgia Meloni, and Marine Le Pen between 2013 and 2022, the article investigates how democratic discourse is structured along three institutional dimensions: pluralism, parliamentarism, and constitutionalism. Using a mixed-methods approach that combines computational text analysis and qualitative interpretation, the analysis identifies tweets referring to these dimensions and examines their semantic organisation and affective tone. The findings show that populist democratic discourse is not random or purely context dependent. Instead, it is structured around a recurring discursive grammar that organises how democratic concepts are framed across actors and contexts. While parliamentarism emerges as a highly convergent dimension, pluralism displays greater variation, and constitutionalism occupies an intermediate position. These results contribute to debates on populism and democracy by showing how democratic legitimacy is discursively reinterpreted in contemporary politics.