Participatory Burden: How Democratic Institutions Shape Populism

• In Event: Political Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Bureaucratic Politics (Table 15)

Abstract

While there is much known about how populism structures democratic institutions, this paper asks the inverse: how do democratic institutions structure populism? To answer this question, I draw on three years of comparative qualitative case studies of municipal debates over dam removals in two, socioeconomically divergent, small towns in Maine. I develop the concept participatory burden to explain how democratic institutions structures populist claims. Participatory burden refers to individuals’ experiences within democratic institutions as onerous, incurring learning, compliance, and interactional costs as they exercise their rights as citizens. I find that individuals who can navigate high participatory burden experience integration into democratic institutions and this moderates their populist claims. Individuals who are unable to do so experience alienation from democratic institutions and this intensifies their populist claims. These findings contribute to community, cultural, and political sociology by developing participatory burden as a unified conceptual framework for explaining the barriers individuals experience when interacting with democratic institutions and how these barriers shape populist claims. Significantly, I show how participatory burden is one factor that explains why socioeconomically disadvantaged citizens turn to forms of populism that are found to be harmful to liberal democracies.

Author

• Meaghan Stiman, William & Mary