Power to the people? Populism, democracy, and political participation: a citizen's perspective

Abstract

Much research is devoted to the relationship between populist parties and democracy. However, relatively little is known about the relationship between citizens' populist attitudes and democracy. This article examines the relationship between populist attitudes, support for democracy, and political participation (voting, protest, support for referendums, and support for deliberative forms of participation). Using survey data from the Netherlands, this article shows that individuals with stronger populist attitudes are more supportive of democracy, are less likely to protest, are more supportive of referendums, and are more supportive of deliberative forms of political participation compared to individuals with weaker populist attitudes. Results show no relationship between populist attitudes and voting. These findings provide important insights into the relationship between populism, democracy, and political participation from a citizen's perspective.

Voters of Populist Parties and Support for Reforms of Representative Democracy in Belgium

“…It could also be via more deliberative instruments such as citizens' assemblies or participatory budgeting. Zaslove et al (2020) found the same patterns among Dutch populist citizens. What appears to matter is to empower citizens.…”

Populist Attitudes and Direct Democracy: A Questionable Relationship

“…Some of the studies we cite here do this to some extent. For example, Zaslove et al (2020) examine in parallel the link between populist attitudes and support for referendums and deliberative assemblies. Mohrenberg et al (2019) connect support for direct democracy and for technocracy.…”

“…Their findings indicate that populist attitudes are positively associated with the support for referendums either in terms of use or in terms of providing them a more decisive role in the decision‐making process. Evidence comes from the Netherlands (Jacobs et al 2018; Zaslove et al 2020), a comparison of France, Germany, Switzerland and the UK (Mohrenberg et al 2019), and 17 European countries (Rose and Wessels 2020). These studies have the concept of populist attitudes in common, but they operationalize it differently.…”

Populism and Protest Intensity: A Cross-National Analysis

“…In their study on populist attitudes, Kaltwasser and Hauwaert (2019) conduct a cross-national survey involving countries in both Europe and Latin America and demonstrate that while populist citizens, on the whole, tend to be dissatisfied with the state of democracy in their country, fundamentally, they show strong support for democracy and democratic values. This implies that populists are not closet authoritarians by nature, but simply dissatisfied democrats (see Figure 1 below) (see also Zaslove, et al, 2020;Oesch, 2008;Ramiro, 2016;Van Hauwert and Van Kessel, 2018). Note: The Populist scale takes the Ideological approach as its conceptual base (See Mudde, 2004).…”