Populism, Identification and Affective Polarization in the Age of Globalization

• In Event: Populist Attitudes and Communication

Abstract

Although there has been ample research on populist attitudes, scholars mostly looked at predicting citizens’ vote choice as potential consequence. Unfortunately, we still know very little about how populist attitudes cause citizens to evaluate other people as more positively or negatively in social life. Research on affective and issue polarization in western countries argued that the new integration-demarcation cleavage created so called winners and losers of globalization which become more divided as tensions between groups increase. As Hawkins (2018) recently argued, we would expect that cleavage consciousness leads to an activation of populist attitudes with consequences not only for political behavior and participation but also social perception of individuals on the other side of the cleavage.

In our study we first test whether an increase in populist attitudes also leads to a higher identification with one’s own group of the cleavage. Secondly, we analyze how populist attitudes affect the evaluation of individuals from the other side of the cleavage. And thirdly, we investigate whether these evaluations are symmetric or asymmetric, or in other words: do people of both sides of the cleavage (dis-) like each other in the same way or does one (dis-) like the other more strongly. To do so, we conducted two representative online surveys with vignette experiments in Germany (2017) and Austria (2018). Studying these two countries allows for a comparison between a country where a populist competitor has been a consistent force in the national parliament for a long time (Austria) and a country where it has emerged only recently (Germany). Thus, we can draw on potential differences in the activation of populist attitudes in these two settings. To measure of populist attitudes we use the 9-item scale by Castanho Silva et al. (2018).

Results show that populist attitudes increase identification with one’s own group of the cleavage for voters of right-wing populist parties (AfD & FPÖ) in both countries. However, cleavage identification is constant or actually decreases for those with strong populist attitudes among voters for mainstream parties and the Left Party in Germany. In Austria, populist attitudes also lead to stronger party identification for voters of mainstream parties. As for social perception, we see that populist attitudes lead to a stronger negative perception of people with different nationalities (especially Turks) and party attachment in Austria. In Germany, we experience similar effects for nationality but actually an increase in sympathy for people with an attachment for a party from the other side of the cleavage (i.e. AfD vs. mainstream parties and Left Party). In terms of symmetry, populist attitudes lead to a more negative evaluation of the higher educated among the lower educated in both countries. Also, populist attitudes strongly decrease the evaluation of FPÖ partisans among mainstream party voters, but only to a far lesser degree is this present vice versa. In Germany, populist attitudes do not seem to create greater asymmetry in evaluation of other individuals with mainstream, AfD or Left Party identification. Results, comparisons and implications for social cohesion are discussed.

Authors

• Sebastian Jungkunz, University of Bamberg

• Marc Helbling, University of Bamberg