Populist communication in the parliament: the case of the Croatian Sabor

An increase in the number of populist parties was recorded in the eighties of the 20th century, and several types of populism appeared in theory. On the one hand, some view populism as an ideology based on a positive assessment of people and a negative assessment of political elites, while on the other hand, some recognize populism as a style of political communication, that is, frequent positive references to people or the use of certain linguistic figures aimed at getting to know voters. The latter interpretation of populism was the theoretical basis for this research, in which the authors, analyzing the degree of populism in the Croatian Parliament, answer the question of whether there is populist communication in the Croatian Parliament using the method of qualitative analysis of the phonograms of parliamentary questions and replies to the government’s answers at the current morning meetings of the representatives of the 10th convocation of the Croatian Parliament. from September 16, 2020 to April 20, 2022. The aim of this paper, based on the theoretical background of Jagers and Walgrave, is to comprehensively investigate the elements of populist discourse among representatives of all political parliamentary parties, from the left to the extreme right of the political spectrum.