Fairness and Support for Populist Parties

Abstract

On the premise that issues of fairness are important to voting behavior but often unrecognized, we explore how feelings of unfairness increase support for populist parties. We distinguish personal unfairness, the view that one’s own economic situation is unfair, from social unfairness, the view that the economic situation of others in society is unfair. Based on findings in psychology, we argue that uncertainties associated with the transition to a globalized knowledge economy heighten people’s feelings of personal unfairness and find empirical support for that contention. We develop arguments about why feelings of personal unfairness should increase support for the populist right and feelings about social unfairness should increase support for the populist left and find empirical support for them. Our results contribute to explanations for why people vote for the populist right rather than the left and underline the roles that uncertainty and issues of fairness play in electoral politics.

Blinded by Out-group Hatred. Why does Radical Party Entry Reduce its Voters’ Satisfaction with Democracy?

“…Second, the findings suggest a self-reinforcing mechanism leading polarized voters to further affective rejection and growing dissatisfaction when losing elections, regardless of their party performance if not winning (Cohen et al 2022;Fahey, Allen, and Alarian 2022;Haugsgjerd 2019;Kołczyńska 2022;Juen 2023;Rooduijn and Slageren 2022). Adding to recent evidence on the negative impact of affective polarization on democratic support, this paper shows that negative partisan identity does not only increase the likelihood of accepting illiberal reforms when in power (Graham and Svolik 2020) or defying the electoral results when in opposition (Kim and Hall 2023), but also impedes new party voters to engage as a result of entering the system. Whereas it has been largely theorized that the political inclusion of marginalized political groups may have a corrective function for representative democracy Mudde and Kaltwasser 2012), these arguments have neglected the crucial role of out-group negative feelings among affectively polarized voters.…”

“…While affective polarization has been argued to enact support for illiberal policies among winners (Graham and Svolik 2020) and defiance of the electoral results among the opposition losers (Kim and Hall 2023), this paper proposes another channel through which dissatisfaction with democracy and affective polarization reinforces each other, namely, impeding new party voters to engage after breaking into the system. Thus, the integration of emerging radical parties may not be the cure to this vicious circle.…”