To whom are “the people” opposed? Conceptualizing and measuring citizens’ populist attitudes as a multidimensional construct

Abstract

Previous research has predominantly measured populist attitudes as a onedimensional concept, tapping into the distinction between the ordinary people and the culprit elites. With growing differentiation of populist viewpoints across the globe, this unidimensional approach may not reflect the multifaceted reality of the people's populism. Most importantly, albeit paramount in right-wing populist rhetoric, exclusionist perceptions of others threatening the monocultural nation of the people are typically not captured in one-dimensional conceptualizations. To assess more precisely how populist attitudes are structured, we collected original survey data (N = 809) among a representative sample of Dutch citizens. Using Multidimensional Scaling and Confirmatory Factor Analysis, we propose a two-dimensional structure: antiestablishment and exclusionism. This study further demonstrates how salient these different populist attitudes are among which voters.

Assessment of Citizens’ Populist Orientations: Development and Validation of the POPulist ORientation (POPOR) Scale

“…() also claim that a full populist is assumed to hold all the three facets, thus weakening the conceptual support for separate dimensions. In the other cases, separate dimensions tap attitudes that generate, or are consequential of, populism, such as anti‐immigrant stances (Hammelers and de Vreese, ) or sentiments of national affiliation (Oliver and Rahn, ). In sum, we believe that, though constituted by a number of facets, a true populist orientation can be detected only when all the defining facets are expressed by individuals.…”

“…Second, some of their items are not very focused or discriminant. For instance, items such as “The politicians in the Dutch Parliament need to follow the will of the people” (Akkerman, Mudde, and Zaslove, ) and “The ordinary people should have more influence in political decision making than corporations that only want to make profits” (Hammelers and de Vreese, )—substantially analogous items are part of the other available scales—plausibly lack validity because they could be given an affirmative response both by populists and advocates of representative democracy. Moreover, it is debatable that item such as “How important is being an American to who you are?” and “When it comes to really important questions, scientific facts don't help very much” (Oliver and Rahn, ) actually tap into the core of populist orientations.…”

“…However, this line of research tends to focus on the probability that citizens will vote for populist parties or candidates (e.g., Oesch, ), thus creating an artificial dichotomization between populist and nonpopulist parties that neglect differences in the levels of populist orientation of their voters. Recently, a growing corpus of studies analyzed the role of voters’ populist orientations, values, and predispositions in fueling the support for populist parties (e.g., Hammelers and de Vreese, ; Stanley, ; Van Hauwaert and Van Kessel, ).…”

The Appeal of Media Populism: The Media Preferences of Citizens with Populist Attitudes

“…Extant research has predominately conceptualized and measured "the" populist attitude as a one-dimensional concept (e.g., Akkerman, Mudde, & Zaslove, 2014;Hawkins, Riding, & Mudde, 2012). To arrive at a more precise conceptualization of populist attitudes sensitive to the variety of populist ideas expressed throughout the globe, we have proposed and tested a two-dimensional structure underlying populist attitudes (see Appendix A for a graphical depiction of the model; Hameleers et al, 2015). We briefly outline these two metadimensions here.…”

“…On the sender side, we propose three types of media populism that journalists can use to cover news events: people centrality, anti-elites, and monocultural media populism. Building on recent research, we relate these types of media populism to two metadimensions structuring citizens' populist attitudes: antiestablishment and exclusionism (Hameleers, Bos, & de Vreese, 2015). These conceptualizations allow us to assess the relationship between the appeal of populist ideas propagated by journalists on the sender side and the populist attitudes of citizens on the receiver side.…”