Demand and Supply of Populism

Abstract

We define as populist a party that champions short-term protection policies without regard for their long-term costs. First, we study the demand for populism: we analyze the drivers of the populist vote using individual level data from multiple waves of surveys in Europe. Individual voting preferences are influenced directly by different measures of economic insecurity and by the decline in trust in traditional parties.However, economic shocks that undermine voters' security and trust in parties also discourage voter turnout, thus mitigating the estimated demand of populism when ignoring this turnout selection. Economic insecurity affects intentions to vote for populist parties and turnout incentives also indirectly because it causes trust in parties to fall. Second, we study the supply side: we find that populist parties are more likely to appear when the drivers of demand for populism accumulate, and more so in countries with weak checks and balances and with higher political fragmentation.The non-populist parties' policy response is to reduce the distance of their platform from that of new populist entrants, thereby magnifying the aggregate supply of populist policies.

Globalization and electoral outcomes: Evidence from Italy

“…The size of the coefficients on immigration implies that an increase in the percentage of immigrants per resident by one standard deviation leads to a decrease in voters’ turnout by almost five percentage points in the fixed‐effects model, while the magnitude of the effect is much smaller in the mixed first‐difference model (just over one percentage point). If the presence of immigrants increases natives’ sense of insecurity (Hainmueller & Hiscox, ; Kriesi et al, ), which, in turn, reduces trust toward political parties as well as political involvement, then the negative impact of the share of immigrants on the electoral turnout can be explained following the reasoning of Guiso et al (). Following their argument, one may argue that the majority of those who have decided not to vote would have otherwise voted for parties classified as far‐right in the present analysis or so‐called populist parties following their classification.…”

The politics of social status: economic and cultural roots of the populist right

“…Part of the answers may lie on the 'supply side' of political competition, where recent movements in party platforms have made the populist right more attractive to many voters (cf. Kitschelt 2013;Guiso et al 2017). A convergence over the past three decades in the economic platforms of the centre-left and centre-right toward the right have reduced the appeal of the centre-left to the working class (Iversen 2006).…”

“…Contemporary discussion of this subject often focuses on whether workingclass support for populism is based primarily on economic or cultural developments (cf. Oesch 2008;Blyth 2016;Baker 2017;Inglehart and Norris 2017;Guiso, Herrera, Morelli and Sonno 2017). Posing the question in this way, however, obscures what we contend is one of the most striking features of rising support for right-wing populism, namely, the likelihood that it is rooted in both economic and cultural developments, including economic changes that have depressed the income or job security of some segments of the population and shifts in the cultural frameworks that people use to interpret society and their place within it.…”

Crashing the Party? Elites, Outsiders, and Elections

“…Guiso et al. () and Karakas and Mitra () assume Outsiders have a comparative advantage in offering populist policies or rhetoric; in contrast, we emphasize why voters may turn to Outsiders even if they are presumed to be riskier or less competent.…”

“…In Di Tella and Rotemberg (2018), voters demand incompetent leaders as a means to ensure against elite betrayal. Guiso et al (2017) and Karakas and Mitra (2017) assume Outsiders have a comparative advantage in offering populist policies or rhetoric; in contrast, we emphasize why voters may turn to Outsiders even if they are presumed to be riskier or less competent.…”