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28 - Populism

from Part III - Contemporary Challenges to Democracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2022

By
Elisabeth Gidengil  and
Dietlind Stolle
Edited by
Danny Osborne  and
Chris G. Sibley
Danny Osborne
Affiliation:
University of Auckland
Chris G. Sibley
Affiliation:
University of Auckland
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Summary

This chapter reviews the literature that seeks to identify the people who are enamoured with populism. It focuses on two related measures of support for populism at the individual level: populist attitudes and the vote for populist parties. We first detail the problems with definitions of populism and the resulting measures of populist attitudes with a special focus on anti-elitism, popular sovereignty, and a Manichean world view. The second section shifts to the populist vote and discusses the lack of a coherent set of socio-demographic predictors and examines the psychological determinants of populist party support with an emphasis on emotions and personality traits.

Keywords

PopulismVote for populist partiesPopulist attitudesBig Five personality traitsEmotions
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Political Psychology , pp. 442 - 457
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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