Authoritarian Populism: Theory and Evidence from China

• In Event: Populist Attitudes in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

In this paper, we examine the phenomenon of authoritarian populism, a relatively neglected topic within the recent profusion of ideational populist research. Building on work exploring the trigger conditions for populism at the individual level in electoral democracies (Hawkins, Read and Pauwels 2017), we argue that authoritarian systems may also give rise to popular, or bottom-up forms of populism. Working inductively from the case of China’s one-party state, we first outline our theory of latent authoritarian populism. We then test for the existence of populist attitudes in China using original, nationwide survey data collected in summer 2018. Employing a populist scale devised by “Team Populism” researchers for cross-national use, we uncover a strong current of populist opinion in China. Linking results from the populist scale to survey data on government satisfaction and political trust, we find that populists in China divide into two groups, “red” and “critical.” Red populists subscribe to those populist views that echo the Chinese Communist Party’s own populist tropes and display a high degree of loyalty to the state. A numerically larger group of critical populists are more suspicious of political elites and also significantly less satisfied with government.

Authors

• Sarah Eaton, Humboldt University Berlin

• Armin Mueller