Populist Democrats? Unpacking the Relationship between Populist and Democratic Attitudes at the Citizen Level

Abstract

It is widely feared that the onset of populism poses a threat to democracy, as citizens' support for democracy is essential for its legitimacy and stability. Yet, the relationship between populism and democracy at the citizen level remains poorly understood, particularly with respect to support for liberal democracy. Data measuring citizens' populist attitudes in conjunction with a comprehensive range of measures of democratic support has been lacking. Using unique data from the Netherlands, we study the relationship between individuals' populist attitudes and their attitudes towards democracy in three studies. We examine the association between populism and support for democracy and satisfaction with democracy (Study 1); populism and support for liberal democracy (Study 2); and populism and support for majoritarian conceptions of democracy (Study 3). We find that while populist citizens are dissatisfied with how democracy works, they are no less supportive of the principle of democracy. Contrary to most theorizing, we find that populist citizens are largely supportive of key institutions of liberal democracy, but reject mediated representation through political parties. At the same time, populists strongly support forms of unconstrained majoritarian rule. These findings suggest that the relationship between populism and support for (liberal) democracy is more complicated than commonly assumed.

Measuring Populism in Political Parties

“…Yet this does not mean that populist attitudes do not matter. Populist citizens have a unique perspective on representation and liberal democracy, as Andrej and I have also shown in a recent paper (Zaslove and Meijers, 2021). Moreover, citizens' adherence to populist beliefs are in all likelihood not static.…”

Don't Budge! The Reputational Cost of Political Compromises

“…What is more, if political compromise breeds distrust in mainstream parties and distrust propels the success of populist parties (Meijers and Zaslove 2021), the compromise-distrust nexus could well prove to be a vicious circle for modern democracies. After all, populist parties advocate an uncompro-mising, majoritarian vision of representation (Urbinati 2019), which is also shared by citizens with high levels of populist attitudes (Zaslove and Meijers 2023). More research is needed on whether political compromise in increasingly diverse governing coalitions does indeed drive political distrust and the populist vote.…”

Individuos políticamente descontentos con la democracia

“…In general terms we can state that there is a consensus that VOX belongs to the populist radical right (see Norris, 2020;Vampa, 2020;Turnbull-Dugarte, 2019;Turnbull-Dugarte et al, 2020;Rama et al, 2021;Mudde, 2020;Rooduijn et al, 2019;Olivas-Osuna, 2021;Olivas-Osuna and Rama, 2021). As the literature on the populist radical right has pointed out, within this party family, the radical component is much stronger than the populist one (see Mudde 2007;Zaslove and Meijers 2021).…”