Satisfied and Populist? Mass Support for Populism in Power

• In Event: Populist Attitudes and Communication

Abstract

The prevailing wisdom points to discontent as a critical driver for the mass appeal of populism. Yet, studies exploring this “demand side” of populism have typically focused on cases where populist actors have been in the opposition. We argue that scholars’ emphasis on populism in opposition has led them to overlook the roles of elite rhetoric and partisanship in voters’ adoption of populist attitudes. We contend that support for populism does not need to be necessarily rooted in discontent: In cases of populism in power, those who are more satisfied politically and economically and partisans of the ruling party should display higher levels of support for populism.

We provide observational and experimental evidence for our argument by drawing on two original, nationally representative surveys from Turkey – a case where a party with a clearly populist agenda, the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP), has long been the incumbent. Adopting the ideational approach to populism, we find that partisans of the AKP and voters who are more satisfied with the way democracy works in Turkey and with their economic circumstances exhibit higher levels of populist attitudes, and especially higher levels of contempt for institutions of horizontal accountability, even after accounting for several relevant individual-level factors. The Turkish case illustrates that populism does not necessarily need to be grounded in a deep discontent; those with favorable views of the political system and the economy could also possess strongly populist attitudes, given that their preferred party is in power, and it engages in politics on a populist platform.

We also show that partisan cues are effective in shaping voters’ populist attitudes using a population-based survey experiment. We observe both in-group and out-group effects: Partisans who receive populist messages from their preferred party's leader report higher levels of populist attitudes compared to their co-partisans in a control condition, and they also report lower levels of populist attitudes when they receive populist messages from an opponent party's leader.

Our findings highlight a significant consequence of populism in power: if successful, it is particularly susceptible to a regime transition to competitive authoritarianism. The weakening of institutions and the accompanying decline in checks on executive power has been considered as the most prevalent form of democratic backsliding in the past two decades. Scholars have documented how populist executives have successfully assaulted institutions of horizontal accountability to have unchecked control over state institutions in Turkey, Hungary, Poland, and Latin America. We show that such executive encroachment of institutions could be endorsed by certain segments of the society, given the discourse of the ruling populist elites that, among other things, repeatedly attacks institutions of horizontal accountability and casts them as “the enemies of the people.” Our findings suggest that the size of this constituency would be positively related to the level of satisfaction voters feel with populism in power and to the strength of its partisan brand.

Authors

• S. Erdem Aytaç, Koç University

• Ali Carkoglu, Koc University