Am 15.05., 10-12 Uhr, Raum 02-601 ist Professor Dr. Steven van Hauwaert (Forward College, Paris) zu Gast im Kolloquium der Abteilung Innenpolitik und Politische Soziologie. Professor van Hauwaert arbeitet vor allem zu Themen im Bereich Populismus und Einstellungen zur Demokratie. Um beides wird es auch in seinem Vortrag gehen. Alle Interessierten sind herzlich eingeladen!
Abstract
Populism is one of the more persistent challenges to democracy. From polity-level research, we know that the simplification, or dichotomisation, of politics can bolster populism. The question remains to what extent this is also true on the individual-level. We argue two important dynamics have been neglected when examining
populist support, namely partisanship and (affective) polarisation. Like populism, both dynamics view politics in a dichotomous and simplistic manner. This study posits that such an interpretation of political life is beneficial for populists. We rely on an original 2019 survey fielded in 10 West European countries to examine how dichotomised views of politics feed into populist support. We find that populist attitudes, positive partisanship and affective polarisation stimulate populism, whereas negative partisanship curtails it. At the same time, the relationship between affective polarisation and populist support is also more conditional on other party characteristics, like ideology, but not others, like governmental status.