After having performed this research my main conclusion is that it has provided some interesting new theories and ideas which could be used in continued research and in strengthening theories. Even though this research has been conducted with the utmost precautions it has its limitations. The three chosen countries have a similar liberal democratic tradition. However there systems of government and nation specific problems make it difficult to compare certain parts of the discourse. Furthermore the chosen parties for this research are somewhat skewed to the right as there are no green parties and socialist parties chosen for this research. As the extreme right and the extreme left the first follow up for this research would be to determine if the extreme left and left parties would undergo a similar transition as the liberal conservative parties in using more ‘the people’ discourse. If this is the case it might mean that parties on the far ends of the left and right axis might be more susceptible in using populist discourse.
One of the most interesting questions of this time, whether society is becoming more or less democratic, could be answered due to the chosen research design. In order to be able to do so it would have been better to delve more complete into one of the three countries. And when focusing on only one country all parties who participated within the elections within the chosen time period should be taken into the equation. This way an increase in parties using more indicators of populist discourse might be discerned. If this research would be continued with a follow up research, the researcher would focus more deeply on the Netherlands. The beginning of 2017 was the election period within the Netherlands. And within the Netherlands the 2017 elections stood in the light of many new parties like GeenPeil, VNL, Denk and Forum
- 64 - voor de Democratie. Each of these parties use a discourse in the media which has similarities with the chosen indicators of populism in this research, Thus even though this research can give no decisive answer if Dutch society is becoming more influenced by populist parties the researcher is not convinced of this fact. A thorough in depth analysis of the elections within the Netherlands between 2000-2017 taking all parties who participated in those elections into account would be able to give an answer to this question. Especially when data is taken from more sources than only party manifestos and election programs. Party manifestos are used by parties to present their core values and ideas including what they want to change in society. As most parties are not always in the government and governments really can’t change things that drastically in four or five years, party manifestos tend to alter very little over time. Thus a wider data source would be recommended in a follow up research. Also interesting for continued research is the situation within the UK. As the time period for this research was pre-Brexit referendum. All party manifestos researched talk about the possibility of a Brexit referendum. Now that the referendum has passed and the UK is leaving the EU one of the more interesting developments to follow would be to see towards what the UKIP will transition. Will it become a populist party like the PVV? Or is it going to become a mainstream right conservative party and will one of Taggart(2004) options prove right that with the passing of time each populist party will either become mainstream or render itself obsolete. Another interesting UK party to follow in the following period of time is the SNP. As said in the analysis part of this research the SNP is showing more and more populist discourse. After the Remain-referendum and the Brexit-referendum the Scottish party might transition more to a more populist natured party.
Interesting theoretical conclusions which could be drawn from this research lie in two aspects. The first is one which is about the chameleonic nature of populism (Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2012) (Taggart, 2004). As this research has shown some aspects of a countries nature appear to influence the form of discourse a populist party uses. When this is combined with one of the hunches explained said earlier in this discussion paragraph, whether the far ends of the left and right axis might be more easily susceptible for populism, might lead to the conclusion that although populism has a chameleonic nature which adapts more easily to some ideologies. Whilst it also might have a slightly different affect per ideology, type of country and form of government of country.
The final remark of this discussion chapter is going to be directed towards Colin Crouch(2003). The researcher sees a lot of similarities between the tendencies seen by Tocqueville for a democratic society and a society transitioning into a post-democracy. Most of the aspects causing the transition towards post-democracy argued by Crouch (2003) are coming from either a financial, monetary or economical perspective. The researcher is of an opinion that it
- 65 - would be interesting in theorizing that the driving force behind the transition into a post-
democratic society can also come from more sociological effects of democracy. Which might be given form through the populist theory and the tendencies seen by Alexis du Tocqueville.
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