Support for Liberal Democracy and Populist Attitudes: A Pilot Survey for Young Educated Citizens

Zanotti, Lisa; Rama, José

doi:10.1177/1478929920945856

Cited by 12 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…This argument goes in hand with what many scholars have pointed out: that populism puts a strain on internal contradictions within liberal democracy Zanotti and Rama 2021). If, on the one hand, democracy is the rule of the people by the people, then on the other, it also supposes both the protection of certain disadvantaged groups such as minorities and the existence of unelected bodies that function as controllers ( Rovira Kaltwasser 2014).…”

Section: Populism and Crisis: A Matter Of Representationmentioning

confidence: 98%

Populists and the Pandemic

Rennó¹,

Ringe²

2022

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Populists and the Pandemic examines the responses of populist political actors and parties in 22 countries around the globe to the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of their attitudes, rhetoric, mobilization repertoires, and policy proposals.The responses of some populist leaders have received much public attention as they denied the severity of the public health crisis, denigrated experts and data, looked for scapegoats, encouraged protests, questioned the legitimacy of liberal institutions, spread false information, and fueled conspiracies. But how widespread are those particular reactions? How much variation is there? What explains the variation that does exist? This volume considers these questions through critical analysis of countries in the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa by leading experts with deep knowledge of their respective cases. Some chapters focus on populist parties, others on charismatic populist leaders. Some countries examined are democracies, others autocracies. Some populists are left wing, others right wing. Some populists are in government, others in opposition. This variation allows for a panoramic consideration of factors that systematically influence or mediate populist responses to the pandemic. The book thus makes a unique contribution to our understanding of the intersection between two of the most pressing social and political challenges of our time.The book will be of interest to all those researching populism, extremism, and political parties and those more broadly interested in political science, public policy, sociology, communications, and economics.

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Section: Populism and Crisis: A Matter Of Representationmentioning

confidence: 98%

Populists and the Pandemic

Rennó¹,

Ringe²

2022

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“…In this way, they transform a critical juncture which is, by definition, a brief period, in a prolonged crisis of representation. This argument goes in hand with what many scholars have pointed out that populism puts a strain on internal contradictions within liberal democracy (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2017;Zanotti and Rama 2020). If, on the one hand, democracy is the rule of the people, on the other, it also supposes both the protection of certain disadvantaged groups such as minorities and the existence of unelected bodies that function as controllers (Rovira…”

Section: Populism and Crisis: A Matter Of Representationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Italy: The diverging strategies of the populist radical right during the pandemic

Meléndez¹

2021

Preprint

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This chapter deals with how populist parties reacted and engaged with the pandemic in Italy, one of the European countries most affected by the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The main argument of this chapter is that populist actors are successful in profiting from a crisis when they can credibly frame it as a failure of representation. The case of Italy, which has been defined as a “country of many populisms” (Tarchi 2008), is particularly insightful. Since the outset of the pandemic at the end of February of 2020, there were two populist parties in the system , both on the right of the political spectrum: the League (former Northern League) and Brothers of Italy. After a first period known as “rally around the flag” the two parties' strategy was somehow similar until they started to diverge substantially in February 2021. In general terms, we can say that—until the breakdown of the second Conte government—the League discursively attacked the government on managing the pandemic, focusing mainly on two issues: migration and the economy. When the League entered the government, supporting Mario Draghi’s cabinet, its discourse changed even if its loyalty to the government has been flaky, at least. This strategy of keeping one foot in and one out of government (see Albertazzi and McDonnell 2005) has always been a trademark characteristic of the (Northern) League since the 1990s. Conversely, Brothers of Italy, while sharing with the League the critique to the government supported by the Democratic Party and the Five Star Movement during the first year, has later changed its strategy becoming the only relevant party in opposition to Mario Draghi’s government. This allowed FdI to systematically challenge the government's actions and depict itself as the only party to act in the interest of the people, opposing to the elite. Even if the pandemic is still unfolding, vote intention shows that Brothers of Italy has become the first Italian party, demonstrating to have taken advantage of the crisis, through a framing that was more functional with its populist appeal and in turn resulted more credible to voters.

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“…One of the most influential, and widely used, instruments to measure populist attitudes is the scale designed by Akkerman et al (2014), which is built upon the work of Hawkins et al (2012) and captures with eight items, three broad dimensions of populism: (i) the notion of popular sovereignty, (ii) anti-elitism, and (iii) a Manichean worldview. This scale initially designed and tested empirically in the Netherlands has been later applied in different case studies (Spruyt et al, 2016;Meléndez and Rovira Kaltwasser, 2019;Zanotti and Rama, 2021), and cross-country surveys (Van Hauwaert and van Kessel, 2018). Following this line of research, Castanho Silva et al (2020) propose a scale which expands the number of items but keeps the focus on the same three core dimensions and Van Hauwaert et al (2020) suggest a refinement of the scale of Akkerman et al (2014) by identifying the "best-three" performing items.…”

Section: Measuring Voters' Populist Attitudesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recalibrating populism measurement tools: Methodological inconsistencies and challenges to our understanding of the relationship between the supply- and demand-side of populism

Osuna

Rama

2022

Front. Sociol.

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The analysis of the congruence between the demand- and supply-side of populism is key to understand the relationship between citizens and populist parties, and to what extent this is mainly a “pull” or “push” phenomenon. Although the study of populism has experienced an unprecedented growth across social sciences during the last decade, research directly addressing this connection remains scarce. Moreover, most existing tools used to measure populism have not been created paying much consideration to their compatibility with those applied in the other side of this demand-supply divide. This article critically revisits the influential Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) Module 5 dataset to illustrate shortcomings regarding current efforts to measure the demand- and supply-sides of populism. We show that according to CSES data the, often presumed, correspondence between “populist” attitudes and likelihood of voting for “populist parties” is only partial and country specific. But more importantly, we identify three main potential sources of such mismatch linked to instrumental issues: (i) problems with the choice, design and operationalization of attitudinal survey items; (ii) problems in the assessment of parties' populism; and (iii) instrument biases that make them more effective with some varieties of populism than with others. These methodological limitations are hindering our ability to settle longstanding theoretical debates concerning the correspondence between the demand- and supply-side, the relative centrality of attributes, and varieties of populism. Therefore, we invite scholars working in this field to update existing measurement tools, or develop new ones, considering the multidimensionality of this latent construct, the diversity of movements, and the need to apply consistent criteria and operationalization techniques when assessing degrees of populism in citizens and parties.

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Support for Liberal Democracy and Populist Attitudes: A Pilot Survey for Young Educated Citizens

Cited by 12 publications

References 14 publications

Populists and the Pandemic

Populists and the Pandemic

Italy: The diverging strategies of the populist radical right during the pandemic

Recalibrating populism measurement tools: Methodological inconsistencies and challenges to our understanding of the relationship between the supply- and demand-side of populism

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