TY - JOUR
T1 - Populist Attitudes and Political Engagement
T2 - Ugly, Bad, and Sometimes Good?
AU - Ardag, M. Murat
AU - Castanho Silva, Bruno
AU - Thomeczek, J. Philipp
AU - Bandlow-Raffalski, Steffen F.
AU - Littvay, Levente
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 McDougall Trust, London.
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - Representation failures are one of the main reasons for the emergence of populism in contemporary politics. Mainstream parties’ convergence towards the centre left parts of the electorate to feel underrepresented. Populists are successful when they engage apathetic voters. In this sense, populism is suggested to be a potential corrective to democracy as long as it engages dissatisfied and disenfranchised citizens, helping close the representation gap. We test this proposition in three experiments with samples from two different countries, to test whether the activation of populist attitudes has impacts on normatively positive and negative political participation. The experimental manipulations show that triggering populism neither makes individuals more likely to participate nor to donate to a political campaign. We also find that activation of populist attitudes makes people more likely to accept political apathy and justify not-voting. Our findings contribute to the ‘threat or corrective democracy’ debate, which suggests populism’s involvement in more political participation. Ultimately, and unfortunately, it does not seem like populism is an effective answer to ever falling levels of political participation or representational gaps in Western democracies.
AB - Representation failures are one of the main reasons for the emergence of populism in contemporary politics. Mainstream parties’ convergence towards the centre left parts of the electorate to feel underrepresented. Populists are successful when they engage apathetic voters. In this sense, populism is suggested to be a potential corrective to democracy as long as it engages dissatisfied and disenfranchised citizens, helping close the representation gap. We test this proposition in three experiments with samples from two different countries, to test whether the activation of populist attitudes has impacts on normatively positive and negative political participation. The experimental manipulations show that triggering populism neither makes individuals more likely to participate nor to donate to a political campaign. We also find that activation of populist attitudes makes people more likely to accept political apathy and justify not-voting. Our findings contribute to the ‘threat or corrective democracy’ debate, which suggests populism’s involvement in more political participation. Ultimately, and unfortunately, it does not seem like populism is an effective answer to ever falling levels of political participation or representational gaps in Western democracies.
KW - experiment
KW - participation
KW - political
KW - Populism
KW - psychology
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85074593401&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/00344893.2019.1661870
DO - 10.1080/00344893.2019.1661870
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85074593401
SN - 0034-4893
VL - 56
SP - 307
EP - 330
JO - Representation
JF - Representation
IS - 3
ER -