Bottom-up populism: How relative deprivation and populist attitudes mobilize leaderless anti-government protest

Abstract

The present research focuses on populism as a bottom-up phenomenon that emerges from shared perceptions of relative deprivation. We predict that by serving as a shared ideological basis, populist attitudes can mobilize leaderless anti-government protest across ideological boundaries. We test this prediction in the context of the French Yellow Vests movement. Using a sample of French citizens (N = 562), we compare the effects of different indicators of relative deprivation on Yellow Vest protest participation and the extent to which populist attitudes account for these relationships. Results indicate that protests were fuelled by indicators of relative deprivation at the individual and group levels. Populist attitudes were best predicted by vertical comparisons between “the people” and “the elite” and fully accounted for the relationship between this type of group relative deprivation and protesting. Conversely, populist attitudes only partially accounted for the relationships between protesting and traditional measures of relative deprivation that either contrast natives with immigrants or individuals with fellow citizens. The findings strengthen the understanding of populism as a “thin centred” belief set that can unite and mobilize those who feel unfairly disadvantaged compared to a socio-political elite.

Populism and Protest Intensity: A Cross-National Analysis

“…Meanwhile, studies testing participation in institutional forms of political participation, however, have shown the showed the opposite relationship (Anduiza et al, 2019;Immerzeel & Pickup, 2015). In another study by Lüders, et al (2021), populist attitudes were a highly significant mediating variable between indicators measuring levels of group relative deprivation and joining in the Yellow Vests protests in France. However, different studies investigating the mobilizational potential of those with high populist attitudes also show a null or even inverse effect; using a sample from the Netherlands, Zaslove et al's tests revealed a statistically negative relationship.…”

Our group is worth the fight: Group cohesion is embedded in willingness to fight or die for relatively deprived political groups during national elections.

“…First, the data are correlational and cannot provide support for a causal relationship between the variables nor can we rule out possible explanations that were not measured in our data or were not included in our model. For example, some intergroup comparisons that foster perceptions of relative deprivation have stronger relationships with collective action than others (e.g., Lüders et al, 2021). The measure of relative deprivation used in the studies did not specify the intergroup comparisons that produced the group level relative deprivation, nor did the SYFERS, ROYER, ANJIERWERDEN, RAST III, AND GAFFNEY measure include the outrage and resentment that arises from subjective perceptions of relative deprivation, which is the component of relative deprivation that most strongly predicts intergroup violence (see Smith et al, 2012).…”

Mobilising ideas in the COVID-19 pandemic: Anti-lockdown actions and the Identity-Deprivation-Efficacy-Action-Subjective well-being model

“…These affects are conceived as part of the coping response, whereby the individual perceives an external entity or group as responsible for the unfair situation. This experience of group-based anger, in turn, fuels involvement in collective action to challenge the perceived injustice (Goldenberg et al, 2016;Grant, 2008;Grant & Smith, 2021;Lüders et al, 2021; see also van Zomeren et al, 2008). A meta-analysis of the relative deprivation literature showed that affective relative deprivation indeed mediates the effect of cognitive affective deprivation (Smith et al, 2012).…”