The Populist Marketplace: Unpacking the Role of “Thin” and “Thick” Ideology

Abstract

A growing body of work adopts a "thin" ideology conception of populism, which attributes populist parties' electoral success to anti-elite and people-centric appeals that resonate with voters holding populist attitudes. A second tradition, however, has attributed the success of populist parties to particular "thick" or "host" ideologies, such as anti-immigration, anti-globalization, or pro-redistribution positions. This creates a need to unpack which exact components of thin and/or thick populist ideology attract voters to these parties. We address this question by leveraging conjoint survey experiments that allow us to causally identify the effects of several thin and thick populist attributes on vote choice. Examining the case of Germany, results from experiments embedded in two high-quality panel surveys demonstrate that populist anti-immigration and proredistribution positions as well as people-centric political priorities are the most vote-maximizing components of populist ideology. In contrast, anti-elite priorities as well as Eurosceptic and antiglobalization positions do not boost support, not even among voters with strong populist attitudes.Our findings also call into question conventional wisdom about the interplay between supply and 2 demand in the electoral marketplace. Surprisingly, populist voters, in general, are not significantly more attracted to candidates who advocate populist priorities than non-populist voters.

The People and The Nation: The “Thick” and the “Thin” of Right‐Wing Populism in Canada

“…Building on the work of Guderjan and Wilding (2018), Mudde (2007), and Neuner and Wratil (2020), among others, I considered the conceptualization of populism as a thin ideology that can be appended to thicker existing ideologies in the context of the two most prominent RWP movements in Canada during the 2010s. Though I posited that support for the PPC and Ford Nation would be associated with demographically similar communities, the analysis did not support my first hypothesis, indicating that the underlying thick ideologies to which each movement appended a thin vale of populism still matter.…”

“…Populism, while maintaining some coherent common principles—namely, an antipathy toward elites—is more an ideological addendum to other kinds of political ideologies. In this, populism can be understood as Neuner and Wratil note, a “valence” (Neuner and Wratil, 2020. : no page numbers).…”

The lure of populism: A conjoint experiment examining the interplay between demand and supply side factors

“…ii In terms of design, our study is most similar to that of Neuner and Wratil (2020). However, we focus on different demand side factors and their interaction effects.…”

“…A particular problem with survey studies is that they may underestimate actual support for populist politicians, as some people still find it difficult to admit that they support candidates who are often provocative and use divisive rhetoric as part of their campaigns. Our paper forms part of an emerging literature that has begun to examine the interplay of the supply and demand side factors in examining the success of populist politicians using experimental methods (see, esp., Neuner and Wratil 2020). ii The conjoint analysis used here allows us to both identify the specific effects of the different supply side factors and also examine whether their effects vary across different sub-groups of the population, while also mitigating concerns about social desirability bias.…”

Unpacking the social psychology of populism: A brief introductory note

“…Populism is conceptually approached as an ideology, a movement, a syndrome, a discourse style or frame, as well as a political strategy (see Aslanidis, 2016; Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2018). It has been conceived primarily as an ideology, which highlights how anti‐elite and people‐centric messages appeal to individuals holding populist attitudes (Mudde, 2004), and is partly associated with other ideologies, such as anti‐immigration or anti‐globalization (Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2013; Neuner & Wratil, 2020). From this perspective, there are three core concepts in populism: the pure people, the corrupt elite, and the general will (Mudde, 2004).…”