Authoritarian Predispositions and Attitudes Towards Redistribution

Abstract

Authoritarian predispositions are associated with a preference for order, certainty, and security. Using data from European Social Surveys (ESS), we show that this association extends to attitudes towards redistributive policies. We demonstrate that support for redistributive policies that emphasize the government’s responsibility to provide old age, health, and unemployment benefits are positively associated with authoritarian predispositions. We also provide evidence that perceived economic threats moderate this relationship such that, for individuals who perceive higher levels of economic threat, the relationship between authoritarian predispositions and support for government responsibility is stronger. These results show that authoritarian predispositions are not only associated with social preferences but also attitudes towards economic policies.

Social Exclusion and Anti-Immigration Attitudes in Europe: The mediating role of Interpersonal Trust

“…To provide greater clarity and ease interpretation of the results, all of the following measures have been rescaled on a range of values between 0 and 1 (e.g. Arikan and Sekercioglu 2019). We decided to rescale the variables, rather than standardize them, because in a multilevel mediation model it is essential not to lose the information about the average score of predictors associated with each level-2 unit.…”

In Search of the Missing Links Between Economic Insecurity and Political Protest: Why Does Neoliberalism Evoke Identity Politics Instead of Class Interests?

“…A permanent underclass in absolute need does not elicit as much redistributive compassion as a sudden fall of middle-class income (Delton et al, 2018 , p. 911, 919). To gain majoritarian support, redistributive politics would presuppose universal benefits for the middle classes (Arikan and Cekecioglu, 2019 , p. 1114), too, and trust in the reciprocal shouldering of its cost between people in different phases of life. Increasing inequality and growing social distances diminish social trust necessary for redistribution (Gärtner and Prado, 2016 ).…”

“…If various protesters could see economic concerns from the same angle, they could cease to imagine each other as “forbiddingly alien and other” (Nussbaum, 1997 , p. 85), and cooperate against moneyed interests despite their principled antagonisms in cultural issues. In that case, the populist rhetoric pitting common men against “corrupt” elites (Mudde, 2015 ; Bos et al, 2018 ) would possibly increase support for redistribution (Arikan and Cekecioglu, 2019 ). “Authoritarian neoliberalism,” conceived as redistribution up by mobilizing aggressions down (Streeck, 2015 ; Bruff and Tansel, 2018 , 2019 ) would fade as the likeliest outcome of the next long-lasting economic crisis.…”

Authoritarianism and Attitudes Toward Welfare Recipients Under Covid-19 Shock

“…Additionally, the literature suggests that authoritarianism is highly related to perceptions of threat (Feldman, 2003;Stenner, 2005), as multiple studies have found that perceived threat interact with authoritarianism when it comes to opinions and behaviors regarding marginalized groups (Duckitt, 1989(Duckitt, , 2001Doty et al, 1991;Feldman and Stenner, 1997;Rickert, 1998;Lavine et al, 1999Lavine et al, , 2005Feldman, 2003). Interestingly, Arikan and Sekercioglu (2019) have shown that this is the case for opinions about distributive policies as well. Authoritarianism now tends to be viewed as a latent disposition that can be activated or muted depending on the context, and more specifically depending on perceived threat.…”