The Unifying Power of Morality Frames in Populist Appeals

• In Event: Populist Appeals and Their Influence Networks

Abstract

To what extent are moral appeals in populist messages able to reach across different sides of societal cleavages? To unite different ‘peoples’ populists need a strong communication frame, one that highlights commonalities and minimizes any differences. Central to the populist frame is the moral distinction between the people and the elite; the people are good, moral, honest and pure, and the elite is bad, immoral and corrupt. This “vertical” distinction between the people and the elite is rooted in morality. The moralization of issues, or conflicts, has been shown to have mobilizing effects, on the one hand, and to increase hostility towards others, on the other. We argue that the moralising frame of populist language can, under certain circumstances, yield a unifying power that transcends traditional conflict lines - stemming, e.g., from cultural or political cleavages - and unite different peoples under the banner of “people-as-underdog.” With this in mind, our article investigates whether exposure to populist moral appeals - that is, appeals that stress the moral “vertical” conflict between the “pure” people and the “corrupt” elite - reduces the importance of “traditional” conflict lines and cleavages for candidate evaluation, party support, and evaluation of the outgroup. In establishing the moral superiority of the Manichean conflict between the citizens and the elite, we argue, populist communication - perhaps paradoxically - reduces the salience of traditional conflicts and cleavages. We furthermore expect this to be particularly the case among voters showcasing high levels of populist attitudes, particularly susceptible to the moralizing arguments in populist communication.
We test this expectation via novel experimental evidence gathered in representative samples of voters in four selected countries, representing as many typical examples of contexts in which “traditional” conflict lines are salient: (i) Belgium: economic/cultural conflict between Walloon & Flemish regions; (ii) Spain: nationalist conflict between Catalonia and Spain; (iii) Northern Ireland: religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants; (iv) Switzerland: linguistic conflict between German, Italian, and French. We present comparative evidence from experiments fielded in the four proposed countries, with a diverse sample of respondents on each side of the conflict, where respondents are exposed to elite communication in which the moralization of populism is either present or absent (vertical moral conflict between the people and the EU). Dependent variables are (1) salience of the “traditional” conflict line in the country (e.g., linguistic cleavage) and (2) support for people across that conflict line. Populist attitudes will be included as moderators to test the assumption that respondents scoring high on populist attitudes will be more likely to be persuaded by the moral populist frame.

Authors

• Linda Bos, University of Amsterdam

• Alessandro Nai, University of Amsterdam