Who Decides When The Party Doesn’t? Authoritarian Voters and the Rise of Donald Trump

MacWilliams, Matthew C.

doi:10.1017/s1049096516001463

Cited by 104 publications

(102 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…To the extent that candidates, however, do signal their authoritarian tendencies -for instance, by abandoning norms of democratic discourse and delegitimizing democratic institutions -these appeals may resonate with voters distrustful of democratic pluralism. Studies of authoritarianism in the population have focused on its two varieties: a political orientation that is critical of democracy and favours rule by a strong authority (Lubbers and Scheepers 2002;) and a more general psychological trait that prioritizes order, patriarchy, and respect for traditions (Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswick, Levinson and Sanford 1950;Hetherington and Weiler 2009;MacWilliams 2016). While the robustness of the latter has been a subject of debate, both have been shown in survey studies to be associated with radical-right support.…”

Section: The Evidence: Supply and Demand Sides Of Ethno-nationalist Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ethno‐nationalist populism and the mobilization of collective resentment

Bonikowski

2017

British Journal of Sociology

367

169

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Scholarly and journalistic accounts of the recent successes of radical‐right politics in Europe and the United States, including the Brexit referendum and the Trump campaign, tend to conflate three phenomena: populism, ethno‐nationalism and authoritarianism. While all three are important elements of the radical right, they are neither coterminous nor limited to the right. The resulting lack of analytical clarity has hindered accounts of the causes and consequences of ethno‐nationalist populism. To address this problem, I bring together existing research on nationalism, populism and authoritarianism in contemporary democracies to precisely define these concepts and examine temporal patterns in their supply and demand, that is, politicians’ discursive strategies and the corresponding public attitudes. Based on the available evidence, I conclude that both the supply and demand sides of radical politics have been relatively stable over time, which suggests that in order to understand public support for radical politics, scholars should instead focus on the increased resonance between pre‐existing attitudes and discursive frames. Drawing on recent research in cultural sociology, I argue that resonance is not only a function of the congruence between a frame and the beliefs of its audience, but also of shifting context. In the case of radical‐right politics, a variety of social changes have engendered a sense of collective status threat among national ethnocultural majorities. Political and media discourse has channelled such threats into resentments toward elites, immigrants, and ethnic, racial and religious minorities, thereby activating previously latent attitudes and lending legitimacy to radical political campaigns that promise to return power and status to their aggrieved supporters. Not only does this form of politics threaten democratic institutions and inter‐group relations, but it also has the potential to alter the contours of mainstream public discourse, thereby creating the conditions of possibility for future successes of populist, nationalist, and authoritarian politics.

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Section: The Evidence: Supply and Demand Sides Of Ethno-nationalist Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ethno‐nationalist populism and the mobilization of collective resentment

Bonikowski

2017

British Journal of Sociology

367

169

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“…While language related to power is not surprising given the topic of conversation, power authoritative participants, which can be interpreted as language used to describe how power flows through followers, appeared twice in the top five. This is notable since authoritarian views were a key predictor of support for Trump (MacWilliams, ). Interestingly, we found evidence that Trump’s opposition disfavored those same predispositions through their language.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While the primary research question of group polarization guided our study, these data are also ripe to answer other lingering questions about voter behavior in this election. For example, we could test theories about Trump’s eventual win related to populism (Inglehart & Norris, ), sexism (Clinton, ), or authoritarianism (MacWilliams, ) that others have argued were pervasive in the election. We might also explore how our results compare with exit polls to try and tie to broader voting trends.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effect of Group Polarization on Opposition to Donald Trump

Bekafigo

Степанова

Eiler

et al. 2019

Political Psychology

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Using focus groups, we examined support and opposition for Donald Trump prior to the 2016 presidential election. When ingroup members participate in discussion, this conversation alone typically strengthens and intensifies members’ initial attitudes. We used a pre‐ to post‐focus‐group questionnaire to assess attitudes toward Trump, his campaign, and policies. We argue that group polarization influenced people’s opinions about Trump such that attitudes became more extreme after discussion with like‐minded individuals. We report changes for Trump nonsupporters for which group polarization occurred on attitudes toward illegal immigration, political correctness, the military, women, and veterans after the group discussion. For each, level of support for Trump’s views decreased. To further explore potential psychological mechanisms associated with group polarization, we employed network science methods to examine the structure of the language associated with these issues and identify potential drivers of attitude change. Results provide some support for a common mechanism for group polarization, which may be driven by language dynamics specific to individual attitudes.

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“…They follow authoritarian leaders. They eschew diversity, fear ‘the other,’ act aggressively toward others….” (MacWilliams, , p. 717).…”

Section: Theories Of Authoritarianismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moreover, in a book that some see as uncannily forecasting the rise of Trump, Hetherington and Weiler () found authoritarianism to be a primary driver of polarization in American politics, based on an obsession with law and order, immigration, fear of change, and the need for a strongman leader to meet an array of threats. MacWilliams () argues that this authoritarian‐driven partisan polarization, along with “increasing fear of real and imagined threats, and terrorist incidents abroad and at home” (p. 716) is exactly what has propelled Trump (see also Choma & Hanoch, ). Although racial and gender attitudes played an important role (Blair, ), along with education and many other factors (Rothwell & Diego‐Rosell, ), authoritarianism is especially deeply implicated in the emergence of support for Trump.…”

Section: Theories Of Authoritarianismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Television and the Cultivation of Authoritarianism: A Return Visit From an Unexpected Friend

Morgan

Shanahan

2017

J Commun

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The 2016 Presidential election brought a surprise: the rise of Donald Trump as a viable candidate for the Republican nomination. What started as a seeming publicity stunt morphed into something more. Trump raised fears of authoritarianism-and even fascism-that were thought to be mostly confined to other countries. This study uses a national sample to examine television viewing's relationship to authoritarian values. We find that heavy viewers of television are more likely to be authoritarian, and that authoritarians are more likely to support Trump. We find an indirect relationship between amount of viewing and Trump support through authoritarianism. These findings have implications for current political debates as well as for media effects theory.Authoritarianism has been a much-studied (and much contested) construct since the 1950s. Gaining impetus and momentum from the events of World War II and the rise of worldwide Fascist movements, it has been adduced as a "root cause" of attitudes such as ethnocentrism, nationalism, and anti-Semitism. The idea is that the authoritarian "personality" is one who is subservient to power above him or her, and abusive of power to those below. Authoritarians favor conformity; liberal attitudes that support and celebrate freedom of speech or social diversity are abhorrent to authoritarians' sense of things. They also prize law and order, and believe force and power are often necessary to create it. Strong leaders are seen as more desirable than those who work toward consensus or compromise through democratic

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Who Decides When The Party Doesn’t? Authoritarian Voters and the Rise of Donald Trump

Cited by 104 publications

References 12 publications

Ethno‐nationalist populism and the mobilization of collective resentment

Ethno‐nationalist populism and the mobilization of collective resentment

The Effect of Group Polarization on Opposition to Donald Trump

Television and the Cultivation of Authoritarianism: A Return Visit From an Unexpected Friend

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