There is little evidence citizens with populist attitudes are less democratic

A great deal of research has been conducted on the impact of populist parties on democracy, but do populist voters think differently about democracy than the rest of the electorate? Drawing on recent research, Andrej Zaslove, Bram Geurkink, Kristof Jacobs and Agnes Akkerman explain that individuals with populist attitudes are slightly more in favour of democracy, less likely to protest, and more supportive of referendums and deliberative forms of political participation than those who are less populist

Modern American populism: Analyzing the economics behind the Silent Majority, the Tea Party and Trumpism

This article researches populism, more specifically, Modern American Populism (MAP), constructed of white, rural, and economically oppressed reactionarianism, which was borne out of the political upheaval of the 1960’s Civil Rights movement. The research looks to explain the causes of populism and what leads voters to support populist movements and politicians. The research focuses on economic anxiety as the main cause but also examines an alternative theory of racial resentment. In an effort to answer the question, what causes populist movements and motivations, I apply a research approach that utilizes qualitative and quantitative methods. There is an examination of literature that defines populism, its causes and a detailed discussion of the case studies, including the 1972 election of Richard Nixon; the Tea Party election of 2010; and the 2016 election of Donald Trump. In addition, statistical data analysis was run using American National Election Studies (ANES) surveys associated with each specific case study. These case studies were chosen because they most represent forms of populist movements in modern American history. While ample qualitative evidence suggested support for the hypothesis that economic anxiety is a necessary condition for populist voting patterns that elected Nixon, the Tea Party and Trump, the statistical data only supported the hypothesis in two cases, 2010 and 2016, with 1972 coming back inconclusive. The data also suggested that both economic anxiety and racial resentment played a role in 2010 and 2016, while having no significant effect in 1972 in either case. This suggests that further research needs to be conducted into additional populist case studies, as well as an examination into the role economic anxiety and economic crises play on racial resentment and racially motivated voting behavior

Parties and Voters in the Populist Market: Left and right populism in France and the Netherlands

International audienceThe literature on populism has been split, reflecting the distribution of the populist phenomenon across regions, i.e. left-wing populism in Southern Europe and Latin America, and right-wing populism in Northern Europe (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2013). There are only few cases where populist parties and voters both left and right are found to coexist and compete within the same political system. More recently, there has been a complexification of the populist ‘market’ across a number of countries, however. While competing against the mainstream, populist parties in those countries are also fishing from the same pool of voters dissatisfied with ‘old’ politics and traditional party elites, thereby competing against each other from different party system locations. Little is known of what may unite and oppose populist voters operating across both sides of the left-right spectrum in a given polity. Whilst we may expect populist voters to differ according to their attaching ideology, there may be more convergence on political attitudes –i.e. the core of populism defined as a Manichean representation of politics- as well as attitudes towards the EU which are increasingly associated with populist mobilization. In this paper, these possible commonalities of populist mobilization are examined cross-nationally from two voter surveys conducted in France and the Netherlands. Both countries provide suitable cases where relevant populist parties are found in both their radical left and radical right manifestations. This study aims to assess the relationships of varieties and/or common similarities of populism within a same context, when confronting similar institutional constraints and competitive incentives. Its findings have important implications for our understanding of the electoral dynamics of competition within a ‘populist market’, which, as recent developments in populist politics worldwide suggest, may become an increasingly relevant phenomenon across a range of actors and contexts, and a promising research area

A Europe of populisms : convergence and diversity

The European Elections of 2014 were characterized by the rise of populist parties. Using cross-national data from the “Comparative Electoral Dynamics in the European Union in 2014” survey, this paper looks at what motivates voters to vote for both left and right-wing populists, and the relation between populist voting and EU integration across contributor and recipient EU member states. We find that supporters of populist parties on the left and right demonstrate higher levels of mistrust towards political institutions in both groups of countries, while diverging in terms of their economic and sociocultural attitudes. Left populist supporters in receiving countries tend to be more skeptical regarding EU integration than the populist left in contributing countries. In the latter, euroscepticism has a marginal effect on support for left wing populist parties while it shows a strong impact on right wing populist voting, in relation to cultural conservatism, anti-globalization and economic protectionism.Les élections européennes de mai 2014 ont été marquées par la poussée des partis populistes. À partir des données comparatives issues de l’enquête « Comparative Electoral Dynamics in the European Union in 2014 », cet article examine les motivations du vote en faveur des partis populistes de gauche et de droite, et de leur rapport avec le projet d’intégration européenne dans les États membres contributeurs et bénéficiaires de l’UE. Nous trouvons des niveaux plus élevés de défiance politico-institutionnelle chez les supporters des partis populistes de gauche et de droite dans les deux groupes de pays, avec cependant des attitudes économiques et culturelles divergentes. Les supporters des populismes de gauche dans les pays bénéficiaires se révèlent plus eurosceptiques que leurs homologues des pays contributeurs. Dans les pays contributeurs, l’euro- scepticisme a un effet marginal sur le populisme de gauche mais il joue un rôle central dans la mobilisation par les partis populistes de droite, en lien avec le conservatisme culturel, l’opposition à la globalisation et le protectionnisme économique

Pluralist Populists within Context: the dynamics of support for left and right-wing populism in Europe

International audiencePopulist parties are a stable entity within European party systems. However, what is interesting is that the electoral support for populist parties is unevenly distributed between the North, the South, and Eastern Europe. In the North we tend to find populist radical right parties, in the South populist left parties, and in Eastern Europe it is more variegated. The question is: Are there different dynamics between the regions that explains these trends and what are the differences that account for the varying electoral fortunes of those parties? To address this question, we examine why voters support populist parties, but within different contexts. To do so, we use two successive waves of the European Election Study survey in 2009 and 2014, with macro socio-economic data and expert data on party positions from CHES surveys 2010 and 2014. We perform a multi-level analysis which combines two nested levels, namely voters and country. Looking first at voters, we anticipate similarities and a number of differences. We expect lack of political trust, similar economic attitudes, and opposition to globalization and the EU to unite left and right populist voters. However, we also expect that the radical right voters are anti-immigrant and authoritarian, while the populist radical left voters should favour equality and state intervention. However, we also expect country level variation. We expect higher levels of immigration to increase the propensity to vote for the populist radical right, while higher levels of unemployment will increase the propensity to vote for the populist left. However, we expect that Euroscepticism operates differently in northern and southern European countries, reflecting variation in levels of public support for EU integration, and the current fiscal redistribution between contributor/ recipient EU member states. We consider these implications for understanding populist electoral dynamics in Europe