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Running Head: POPULIST ATTITUDES LITERATURE REVIEW
What Do We (Not) Know About Demand-Side Populism? A Systematic
Literature Review on Populist Attitudes
Hugo Marcos-Marne (marcosmarne@usal.es)
Homero Gil de Zúñiga (hgz@usal.es)
Porismita Borah (p.borah@wsu.edu)
Paper published with European Political Science under DOI : 10.1057/s41304-
022-00397-3
Abstract
Research on populist attitudes has bloomed in recent years, especially among political science
and communication scholars. While this trend is undoubtedly positive to unravel what the
causes and consequences of individuals’ populism are, rapid accumulation of knowledge is
also challenging, as numerous articles are published simultaneously using diverse theoretical,
methodological, and data strategies. This systematic literature review considers all articles
stored in the Web of Science and published in English that refer to populist attitudes, without
time restrictions (N = 138). After a detailed reading of all articles, we focus on the most relevant
findings considering populist attitudes both as dependent and independent variable. Main areas
of consensus, disagreements, and guidelines for future research are considered.
Keywords
Populist attitudes; ideational approach; systematic literature review; elections; communication
POPULIST ATTITUDES LITERATURE REVIEW
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Introduction
The emergence and electoral relevance of populist forces across the world has run in parallel
with a reinvigorated interest among social science researchers to understand the origins and
effects of populism. While systematic reviews on the concept and theories of populism exist
(Gidron and Bonikowski, 2013; Rooduijn, 2019), there has been, to the best of our knowledge,
no attempt to systematize main findings regarding citizens’ populist attitudes (i.e., the extent
to which individuals are populists themselves), a topic that bloomed in recent years along with
the ideational approach to populism (Hawkins et al., 2019). This endeavor is of the highest
importance given that populist attitudes are relevant to predict behavior and are associated with
preferences that tap into core components of contemporary democracies. Therefore, measuring
populism at the individual level allows us to get a more accurate picture of public opinion
across countries, explain associated behaviors, and anticipate both challenges and opportunities
derived from the existence of widespread populist attitudes (e.g., Rovira Kaltwasser and Van
Hauwaert, 2020).
Systematic analyses of research help to make “better decisions about what research
needs to be designed next” (Potter and Riddle, 2016: 90), and this is a fundamental goal of our
own. There are two types of meta-analysis—meta-analysis that conduct quantitative analysis
of data from past studies to determine the aggregate influence of various dependent variables,
and content analysis of past literature without examining data from the published literature
(Borah, 2017). Our study belongs to this second category, and it scrutinizes all articles stored
in the Web of Science database that refer to populist attitudes and published in English, with
no time restrictions.
Our results evidence a fair degree of convergence in the measurement of populist
attitudes, and relevant agreements on main antecedents and electoral effects. However, they
POPULIST ATTITUDES LITERATURE REVIEW
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also evidence a geographical bias that benefits European countries and the U.S., a generalized
lack of studies considering causal time variation, and a clear predominance of quantitative
research based on surveys (at the expense of qualitative and/or mixed-methods research). Our
systematic literature review also allowed us identifying two main topics for future research
agendas. These refer to the confusion of populism with host ideologies, and the link between
populism and processes of polarization. A more detailed analysis of the challenges and research
gaps identified is included in the final section of the article.
Analytical approach
Although populism remains as a highly disputed concept, there is a growing consensus around
the ideational approach that defines populism as a distinct set of ideas that understands politics
as a “cosmic struggle between a reified will of the people and a conspiring elite” (Hawkins and
Rovira Kaltwasser, 2017: 514). This approach enables considering populism as both a supply
and demand-side phenomenon, bringing attention to populist ideas at the level of political
parties/movements, as well as individuals. Ideationally defined populism thus allows us to pay
attention to the extent to which individuals hold anti-elite, people-centered, and Manichean
understandings of politics, and observe populist attitudes’ antecedents and consequences.
To conduct our systematic literature review on populist attitudes, we followed the
PRISMA methodology (Moher et al., 2015). We chose all articles published in English
included in the core collection of Web of Science that included the term “populist attitudes” in
the title, abstract, keywords, or keyword Plus (all searchable fields available in the website).
1
The collection of data was conducted using the search tool of the Web of Science in June 2022,
using no time restrictions. This searching criterion yielded an initial sample of 177 articles. All
articles were then subjected to an inspection by the coders to make sure they actually deal with
1
https://www.webofscience.com/wos/woscc/basic-search
POPULIST ATTITUDES LITERATURE REVIEW
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populist attitudes (e.g., articles that just mention populist attitudes without further
theoretical/empirical developments were removed from the sample). Our final sample
consisted of 138 articles after having removed all articles not published in English, duplicates,
and/or not referring to populist attitudes (see Figure 1). For each of these articles we collected
the Web of Science information on journal, field, year of publication, and origin of the
corresponding author. In the last step, we fully read all articles screening for the methods
utilized, the country/ies of data collection, the scales used to measure populist attitudes, and
learned about their main findings.
Figure 1. Selection process
Of the 138 articles scrutinized, approximately 86% had been published in Political Science
(n=91) and Communication journals (n=29). Attending to the location of the corresponding
authors, Germany was the leading country in the field (n=35), followed by The Netherlands
(n=29), Switzerland and the U.S. (n=18), Austria and England (n=15), and Spain. (n=13). Only
three articles had been published on populist attitudes before 2017, when 10 pieces were
Initial Search
- Web of science
- Journal articles
- No time restrictions
- "Populist attitudes"
in any of the fields
available
First Sample
177 articles
Manual Inspection
Removal
- Duplicates
- Articles not in English
- Articles not dealing with
populist attitudes despite
using the term
Final
Sample
138 articles
POPULIST ATTITUDES LITERATURE REVIEW
4
published. The number of publications rocketed afterwards, reaching 9 in 2018, 19 in 2019, 31
in 2020, 51 in 2021, and 15 as of June 2022 (see table 1).
Table 1. Descriptive data on fields, journals, country of the corresponding author, and
publication year.
Fields
Political Science (n=91); Communication (n=29); Psychology Social
(n=17); International Relations (n=9); Sociology (n=8).
Journals
International Journal of Public Opinion Research and Political Psychology
(n=8); Political Studies and Swiss Political Science Review (n=6); West
European Politics (n=5); European Political Science Review, Party
Politics, and Politics (n=4); Acta Politica and Communication Research
(n=3).
Corresponding
Author
Germany (n=35); The Netherlands (n=29); Switzerland and The United
States (n=18); Austria and England (n=15); Spain. (n=13).
Years
1976 (n=1); 2011 (n=1); 2014 (n=1); 2017 (n=10); 2018 (n=9); 2019
(n=19); 2020 (n=31); 2021 (n=51); as of June 2022 (n=15).
In terms of methods, 136 articles had an empirical focus. A total of 134 quantitative articles
were found, and only two followed a qualitative logic. Two more articles were theoretical in
nature. A large majority of the quantitative articles utilized cross-sectional survey data (online
and offline), but 8 articles included more than one wave, and 19 articles used experiments.
Overall, there is a European orientation within the field as visible by the countries that had been
most often subjected to analysis. 96 articles from the sample deal only with European countries,
and 114 included data from at least one European country (21 included data from the U.S).
Only a handful considered populist attitudes beyond Europe and the U.S. (i.e., Argentina,
POPULIST ATTITUDES LITERATURE REVIEW
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Australia, Brazil, Canada, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, and Turkey). There were also 41
comparative studies, most of them focusing on European countries. As for the scales used to
measure populist attitudes, the ones by Akkerman and colleagues (2013) (n=63) and Schulz
and colleagues (2018) (n=19) were the most popular scales. The third most popular scale was
the one developed by Hobolt and colleagues (2016), included in the surveys of the Comparative
Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) (n=12) (see Table 2). All these three scales tap into three
core components: anti-elitism, people-centrism, and anti-pluralism, but while the scale by
Schulz et al. (2018) has different set of items for each subdimension of populism, the ones by
Akkerman et al. (2013) and Hobolt et al. (2016) contain items referring to different
subdimensions (Castanho Silva et al., 2019).
Table 2. Statements included in the three indexes most often used in our sample
Akkerman et al. (2013) - 6 items
A.1 The politicians in the [COUNTRY] Parliament need to follow the will of the people.
A.2 The people, and not politicians, should make our most important policy decisions.
A.3 The political differences between the elite and the people are larger than the differences
among the people.
A.4 I would rather be represented by a citizen than by a specialized politician.
A.5 Elected officials talk too much and take too little action.
A.6 What people call “compromise” in politics is really just selling out on one’s principles.
Hobolt et al. 2016 - 7 items
H.1 What people call compromise in politics is really just selling out on one’s principles.
H.2 Most politicians do not care about the people.
H.3 Most politicians are trustworthy.
H.4 Politicians are the main problem in [COUNTRY].
POPULIST ATTITUDES LITERATURE REVIEW
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H.5 Having a strong leader in government is good for [COUNTRY] even if the leader
bends the rules to get things done.
H.6 The people, and not politicians, should make our most important policy decisions.
H.7 Most politicians care only about the interests of the rich and powerful.
Schulz et al. 2018 - 9 items
S.1 MPs in Parliament very quickly lose touch with ordinary people.
S.2 The differences between ordinary people and the ruling elite are much greater than the
differences between ordinary people.
S.3 People like me have no influence on what the government does.
S.4 The people should have the final say on the most important political issues by voting on
them directly in referendums.
S.5 The people should be asked whenever important decisions are taken.
S.6 The people, not the politicians, should make our most important policy decisions.
S.7 Ordinary people are of good and honest character.
S.8 Ordinary people all pull together.
S.9 Although the [NATIONALS] are very different from each other, when it comes down to
it they all think the same.
Results
After reading all papers included in our sample, we found that they could be neatly classified
as dealing with either the antecedents or the consequences of populist attitudes. While there
are alternative ways to systematically present our results, we believe that following this logic
allows us to treat agreements and disagreements from a multidisciplinary perspective that
combines different subfields for a more holistic view.
POPULIST ATTITUDES LITERATURE REVIEW
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Who Are the Populist Individuals? Populist Attitudes as Outcome
While responses to who are the populist individuals are often connected, three main families
of explanations emerge from this literature review, which emphasize psychological,
sociological, and communication aspects.
First, a common expectation among researchers is that that populist attitudes might be stronger
among individuals with a certain personality. Using data from Germany and the U.K, Fatke
(2019) found that populist attitudes correlated with neuroticism and, unexpectedly,
agreeableness, but also that changes in populist attitudes seemed to occur regardless of changes
in personality traits. With a different measurement of personality traits, a study focusing on
Canada found a relationship between populist attitudes and honesty-humility, emotionality,
conscientiousness, and narcissism (Pruysers, 2021), and a study of Spain by Galais and Rico
(2021) found a negative association with psychopathy and Machiavellianism. Although further
research is needed to clarify these results, some of these inconsistencies may be related to the
different personality of populist individuals of the left and the right, as suggested by
Vasilopoulos and Jost (2020). Basically, same as host ideologies influence the discourse of
populist parties (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, 2013) they could also affect the association
between personality and demand-side populism. Controlling for the effects of left-right
positioning and related preferences seems key for unraveling the extent to which personality
traits explain populism on its own (see Marcos-Marne, 2021). What seems unquestioned in the
psychologically-oriented literature is that populist attitudes can be triggered by emotional
responses related to lack of control in situations of crisis, be this via anxiety (Abadi et al., 2021;
Dennison and Turnbull-Dugarte, 2022) or anger (Rico et al., 2017). There is also compeling
evidence for the association between populist attitudes and feelings of nostalgia (Elçi, 2022;
van Prooijen, Rosema, et al., 2022), and conspiracy beliefs (Castanho Silva et al., 2017; Eberl
et al., 2021; Erisen et al., 2021; van Prooijen, Cohen Rodrigues, et al., 2022).
POPULIST ATTITUDES LITERATURE REVIEW
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A different stream of literature, more sociological in nature, has found an empirical
connection between populist attitudes and objective indicators such as negative working
conditions, economic deprivation, lower levels of education, and living in peripheral regions,
(Boscán et al., 2018; Dvořák et al., 2022; Rovira Kaltwasser and Van Hauwaert, 2020;
Stanojevic et al., 2020). However, work by Elchardus and Spruyt (2016) explained populist
attitudes as the result of, first, having a negative view of the dynamics and evolution of society
(i.e., declinism); and second, identifying with a group that is perceived to be unfairly treated
by society (i.e., perception of relative deprivation), thus emphasizing interpretations of how
society is doing, rather than objective economic positions and personal satisfaction with life.
Overall, and while objective indicators are far from irrelevant to explain populist attitudes in
the work by Spruyt and colleagues (2016),
2
a less explanatory leverage for populist attitudes is
offered, and similar results are emphasized by Rico et al. (2020) and Rico and Anduiza (2017).
In a nutshell, populist attitudes seem better predicted by how people feel in comparison to other
groups, especially in comparison to the elites (Hameleers and de Vreese, 2020; Lüders et al.,
2021), and they also increase when people feel not represented by these elites (Castanho Silva
and Wratil, 2021). Objective indicators can explain a relevant part of the feeling, but
researchers must be careful not to assume a perfect correspondence between them and be aware
of the so far predominance of subjective variables when both are considered in the analysis.
Relatedly, while political distrust is a powerful predictor of populist attitudes one should
consider that the critic to the political status quo can be articulated in different manners, and
that the populist one is just one among many (Bertsou and Caramani, 2020; Fernández-
Vázquez et al., 2022; Geurkink et al., 2020).
2
The economic situation of individuals had an indirect effect via both declinism and relative deprivation, men
were prone to display stronger populist attitudes, and more education correlated with weaker populist attitudes.
POPULIST ATTITUDES LITERATURE REVIEW
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Last, communication scholars have shown that individuals’ populist attitudes are
affected by populist messages. That is, exposure to messages that blame politicians for the
malfunctioning of political systems, and attribute a general positive behavior to lay people are
likely to booster populist attitudes (Hameleers, 2020; Hameleers et al., 2017b). However, this
relationship seems highly contingent to whether individuals exposed to those messages were
holding any prior populist attitude (Müller et al., 2017), and the extent to which they consider
the source reliable (Hameleers and Schmuck, 2017). A worrisome estimate of these studies is
that exposure to populist messages will produce polarization among citizens, reinforcing
positive and negative previous evaluations of populist statements (Müller et al., 2017), but there
is also evidence suggesting that populist attitudes can be moderated by factual information
(Morisi and Wagner, 2021). Overall, these studies underline that not all individuals are equally
susceptible to populist communication and invite further research considering how sociological
explanations may create fertile ground for the expansion of populist attitudes via populist
communication (e.g., Hameleers et al., 2018)
The Effects of Populist Attitudes
Since the first studies on populist attitudes, major research efforts have been directed to
understand how populist attitudes relate to voting. While there is no evidence for the link
between populist attitudes and voter turnout (Anduiza et al., 2019) a large majority of papers
demonstrate a significant correlation between populist attitudes and populist voting (see
Marcos-Marne, 2020: 3),
3
even if exceptions to this rule exist (Gründl and Aichholzer, 2020;
Hieda et al., 2021; Stanley, 2011), especially when implicit populist attitudes are controlled for
(Bos et al., 2018) or populists are in office (Balta et al., 2021; Jungkunz et al., 2021).
3
A complete list of articles that find a significant correlation between populist attitudes and voting is included in
the online appendix (Table OA.1).
POPULIST ATTITUDES LITERATURE REVIEW
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Considering the general agreement on the relevance of populist attitudes to explain
voting for populist parties (at least when not in power), more recent efforts have been devoted
to unravelling whether this happens regardless of more traditional dimensions of electoral
competition. The question is thus the extent to which we can expect populist attitudes to
substitute agreement on economic and cultural left-right ideology on voting decisions, or
whether they rather behave as an additional motive for voting only if an agreement on these
dimensions exist. A majority of papers highlight that populist candidates have limitations to
attract populist individuals who do not agree with their discourse in economic and/or cultural
terms (Gonthier and Guerra, 2022; Hawkins et al., 2020; Marcos-Marne, 2020). A corollary of
this line of research is that important transfers of votes between populist candidates with
different policy proposals are not generally expected.
Beyond the realm of elections, a major concern of researchers has been the connection
between populist attitudes and support for democracy. The conception of populism as mirror
image of pluralism (Akkerman et al., 2013) anticipated some difficulties for contemporary
democracies provided that populist attitudes spread among citizens, which seems supported by
empirical research (Zanotti and Rama, 2020), at least among sophisticated voters (Spruyt et al.,
2021). In a similar vein, studies in Austria and The Netherlands found that more populist
individuals are less likely to support coalition partners and concede victory to the most voted
party (Plescia and Eberl, 2021), and less supportive of democratic norms (Bos et al., 2021).
However, evidence for the support of coalitions among the populists in The Netherlands is
mixed (Ellenbroek et al., 2021), and comparative studies have found that populist individuals
do support democracy (Rovira Kaltwasser and Van Hauwaert, 2020), even to a higher extent
than citizen-peers (Spierings and Zaslove, 2017). In fact, individuals displaying stronger
populist attitudes are more likely to prefer direct forms of participation such as referendums
(Jacobs et al., 2018; Mohrenberg et al., 2019; Zaslove et al., 2021), and more likely to accept
POPULIST ATTITUDES LITERATURE REVIEW
11
their results regardless of the outcome (Werner and Jacobs, 2022). This evidence paints a
complex association between populist individuals and democracy that seems much better
described by lights and shades rather than a clear threat to it. Key in this regard are the
dimensions considered in different studies (pluralism, coalitions, procedures, democracy as a
whole…) as well as the possibility that populist individuals are not a homogeneous group in
their perception of democracy and related values (e.g., Spruyt et al., 2021). Once again,
considering the preferences associated with the host ideologies to which populism attaches may
be key to clarify the democratic preferences of populist individuals.
In case of communication research, populist attitudes have been associated with a
higher propensity to consume news, especially commercial TV and tabloids (Schulz, 2019).
They also correlate with higher levels of media skepticism (Fawzi, 2019; Fawzi and Krämer,
2021; Fawzi and Mothes, 2020; Schulz et al., 2020), specifically toward public broadcasters
(Markov and Min, 2020), and with a higher propensity to consume news reflecting populist
views (Hameleers et al., 2017a; Wettstein et al., 2020). Whether individuals with stronger
populist attitudes use social media to a higher extent is still under discussion (Müller and
Schulz, 2021) because the general connection seems elusive and it may be dependent on the
supply side (Jeroense et al., 2021; Schulz, 2019; Stier et al., 2020). Nevertheless, strong
evidence exists supporting the mediating role of populist attitudes both when processing and
reacting to populist messages. Populist attitudes influence emotional reactions to populist
messages, increasing persuasion (Peter, 2019; Wirz, 2018), and stronger populist attitudes
make people more likely to share populist content online (Blassnig and Wirz, 2019). In this
sense, it is plausible that the relationship between populist attitudes and patterns of media
consumption is a circular one in which populist ideas influence the news/sources consumed,
POPULIST ATTITUDES LITERATURE REVIEW
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and this consumption influences in turn populist attitudes (González-González et al., 2022;
Müller et al., 2017).
4
Conclusion and Suggestions for Future Research
In this systematic literature review, we scrutinized all articles published in English and gathered
in Web of Science that referred to populist attitudes in all searching fields available. In doing
so we aimed to highlight existing agreements and potential lines for future research,
systematizing empirical information from a subfield that has grown rapidly in recent years. We
must acknowledge that our sample is not exhaustive because, despite the unquestioned
relevance of the source, we only examine articles included in the Web of Science dataset.
Furthermore, it also may be that relevant discussions on populist attitudes are taking place in
languages other than English. Assuming these limitations, main results and ideas for future
research are included below.
Populist individuals display a distinct set of political preferences that combines anti-elitist,
people-centric and Manichean elements, and are thus often characterized by their detachment
towards representation dynamics in contemporary democracies. Populist attitudes are stronger
among individuals who feel (and often are) unfairly treated comparatively speaking, are not
represented by existing political parties, experience situations of crisis with anxiety and
especially anger, consume news with a populist framing, and are predisposed to believe in
conspiracies. Those who hold stronger populist attitudes are more likely to vote for populist
parties that are not in power, especially if they perceive that populist politicians represent them
4
Empirical findings so far do not allow us identifying which of the two possible pathways is more powerful to
explain populist attitudes.
POPULIST ATTITUDES LITERATURE REVIEW
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in more traditional dimensions of competition.
5
They also show higher levels of media
skepticism, and even if they do not have a monolithic diet of news they rely more often on
news with a populist view, which may have a reinforcing effect on previously existent populist
attitudes. In line with work that underlines the ambivalent relationship between populism and
democracy (Mudde, 2021), some studies indicate that populist individuals are less pluralistic
and declare to respect democracy to a lesser extent. However, these results are not
unchallenged, and individuals holding stronger populist attitudes are more likely to defend
referendums even if the outcome is not the option they supported/preferred. There is an overall
fair degree of convergence in the measurement of populist attitudes, but challenges persist
because of the limitations of scales to perform adequately on internal coherence, cross-national
validity, conceptual breadth, and external validity (Castanho Silva et al., 2020),
6
and because
of the average measures to deal with a non-compensatory sub dimensional concept such as
populism (Wuttke et al., 2020).
7
After conducting this systematic literature review, we identified three main challenges
that refer to data and methods in the study of populist attitudes. First, there are only few studies
that examine populist attitudes beyond Europe and the U.S. This can be surely explained by
the lack of data available in many countries, but it is worth highlighting that a lot of what we
5
However, populist attitudes can have little or no electoral effects if populism is not electorally activated (Hawkins
et al., 2020; Medeiros, 2021; Santana-Pereira and Cancela, 2020).
6
In their comparison, the scales by Castanho Silva and colleagues (2020) and Akkerman and colleagues (2013)
were the only ones ranking between medium and high validity in all dimensions scrutinized
7
To deal with this relevant issue that affects the external validity of the construct, the authors propose to implement
a “Goertz-correction” that altogether considers the minimum value of the subdimensions. As such, the correction
does not allow for compensation between subdimensions, making justice to the idea of populism as a concept with
its own separate entity.
POPULIST ATTITUDES LITERATURE REVIEW
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empirically know of populist attitudes comes from regions with comparatively stablished
democracies with particular dimensions of conflict in electoral terms (Bornschier, 2009). The
fact that populist politicians are far from uncommon beyond Europe and North America makes
this absence even more troublesome, and reasons for concern may become starker because it
is precisely in research not focused on Europe and the U.S. where the electoral effects of
populist attitudes seem more contested. Second, and despite the increasing presence of panel
studies and experimental designs, most studies rely on cross-sectional data. This complicates
answering questions of causality and dynamic effects on time, connected to topics such as the
stability and electoral activation of populist attitudes. Furthermore, there is a striking lack of
qualitative studies about populist attitudes, which could be key to clarify concepts such as
democracy, and forms of participation among populist individuals. Third, the different
characteristics of the scales developed to measure populist attitudes (Castanho Silva et al.,
2020) begs for a careful interpretation of results obtained with different set of items. This can
be particularly the case when the three different subdimensions of populism are considered
separately, which can be problematic on its own terms (Wuttke et al., 2020).
Besides systematizing methodological recommendations, we also like to mention two
substantive topics that may deserve additional attention in future research agendas. These refer
to the confusion of populism with host ideologies, and the link between populism and processes
of polarization. Although these constructs may be correlated, we argue they are theoretically
and empirically distinct.
Confusions around the concept of populism facilitate the emergence of inferential
issues derived from attributing to populism what is indeed caused by “adjacent concepts”
(Rooduijn, 2019), and the subfield of populist attitudes in certainly not immune to it. For
example, an avid observer could assume that anti-immigrant attitudes explain voting for
populist parties paying attention to a sample of only right-wing populist parties, but nativism
POPULIST ATTITUDES LITERATURE REVIEW
15
and populism are in reality different dimensions even if there is some elective affinity between
them (Marcos-Marne et al., 2021; Mudde, 2004). Similarly, some of the (un)democratic
features attributed to populist individuals could be partially explained by the positioning of the
individuals in the left-right scale. That is, populists of the radical right may hold anti-pluralistic
views due to their adherence to authoritarianism; while populists of the radical left may be
more pluralistic due to universalistic values, rather than populism. Controlling for potential
confounders in empirical associations of populist attitudes should thus be a key concern for
researchers in the field, who might particularly benefit from experimental designs that allow
manipulation of different dimensions that are difficult to disentangle in observational studies
(e.g., Neuner and Wratil, 2020).
Second, existing evidence indicates that populist communication can trigger issue
polarization by increasing gaps between populist and non-populist leaning individuals.
However, it is unclear whether this kind of polarization can contribute to affective polarization,
which builds upon the emotional distances between groups (Iyengar et al., 2019). It seems
initially difficult that identities are developed around being or not being populist because of the
many negative connotations associated with populism (i.e., it is unlikely that people call
themselves populists and stablish in-and out-group boundaries building upon it), but it is not
impossible that similar identities are developed not using the populist label. Populist
communication could then be a contributor to affective polarization, which could operate in
addition to the Manichean component that is inherent to populism to create clear-cut
separations between groups. The fact that many countries experience populist waves together
with increases in affective polarization does not demonstrate anything on itself, but we believe
the arguments displayed above underline the relevance of exploring causal associations
between them. Communication research that emphasizes the different effects of populist
communication on political actors, social media, and citizens can be key in this regard (de
POPULIST ATTITUDES LITERATURE REVIEW
16
Vreese et al., 2018), as it well reflects the multifaceted consequences of this complex
phenomenon.
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