Economic Populist Attitudes in Western Europe and the United States

Abstract

The rise of populist actors is increasingly associated with economic issues such as welfare, redistribution and international trade. However, the link between populism and the economy remains unclear. This chapter argues the importance of a specific concept of economic populism whereby economic issues may be partially embedded into a populist frame. This frame may be expressed differently across contexts and it may also cross-cut traditional economic cleavages. Moreover, economic populism may be found among ordinary citizens in the form of a specific set of attitudes. Based on a recent comparative cross-sectional survey of citizens in France, Switzerland and the United States, we show that economic populism forms a common attitudinal dimension across these three countries, which is however differently distributed across the left-right axis and which manifests differently in relation to other important economic correlates of populism such as economic redistribution, welfare chauvinism and attitudes towards globalization, according to context.