The Populist Toolkit: Effect of Authoritarian Rhetoric on Democratic Discourse

• In Event: Democratic Erosion

Abstract

A growing number of elected leaders come into office through democratic means, but then proceed to threaten democratic institutions with democracy’s main tools, without the utilization of overt violations of the formal rule of law. In Hungary, Viktor Orban engineered a re-writing of the constitution that greatly augmented to powers of the president. In Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan regularly imprisons political opponents. In the United States, Donald Trump has threatened the independence of institutions such as the courts and the Federal Reserve. While the specific actions may provide us with strong signals of democratic erosion, the campaign statements of these politicians might represent an early-warning system that democracy could be threatened under their administrations. If we distinguish between the type of politicians as "populists" who won and "normal" politicians who lost to them, do they sound any different from other, less disruptive candidates on the campaign trail? We use quantitative and qualitative analysis of candidate speeches to explore how politicians use terms of unity and division, ideas about the identities of "the people" and their enemies, and the distinctive emotional cues they try to elicit, from anger and fear to enthusiasm to optimism. In particular, we study whether without prejudice to the effect of authoritarian rhetoric on a leader’s capacity to attract adherents, do the sensational statements of would-be strongmen disrupt democratic discourse.

Authors

• Susan C. Stokes, University of Chicago

• Ipek Cinar, University of Chicago