The Critical Antecedents of Populism

Under “normal” circumstances, people unhappy with their personal or national conditions turn their attention to traditional opposition parties. Only when there is widespread political dissatisfaction with all existing political choices does the potential for populism coming to power arise. This chapter focuses on two critical antecedents that make populism in power possible: mass discontent with existing political arrangements/institutions and elite disarray. It shows that, in all the cases discussed in the book, they provide the critical antecedents in which populist candidacies thrive. These two antecedents are not the only possible causes of populism but, when jointly present, they are sufficient conditions for the election of a populist leader.

Arrived in Power, and Yet Still Disgruntled? How Government Inclusion Moderates ‘Protest Voting’ for Far-Right Populist Parties in Europe

While debates about far-right populism often concentrate on Central and Eastern Europe, research on these parties predominantly focuses on Western countries. Addressing this remarkable gap, this article revisits the ‘protest voting’ explanation for electoral support for the far right. Using European Social Survey data (2002–16) from 22 countries, we show that political dissatisfaction is a stronger explanatory factor when far-right parties are in opposition, but is a less important determinant of electoral support when they are in government. Previous findings based on Western Europe – which similarly showed that the anti-elite hypothesis is less relevant when far-right parties join government coalitions – travel well to post-communist European countries. In Hungary and Poland, we even find that far-right voters have become less distrustful of national political institutions than the rest of the electorate. Our conclusion implies that anti-elite populism is context-dependent and has limited use for understanding successes of leaders such as Wilders, Salvini and Orbán.

Ideological voting for radical right parties in Europe

The aim of this research is to examine to what extent the electoral support for radical right parties (RRPs) is driven by ‘policy voting’ and to compare this support with that of centre-right parties. Using the European Election Study 2019, we focus on six party systems: Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Austria, and the United Kingdom. Our analyses reveal that party preferences for RRPs are better explained by policy considerations than by other alternative explanations (e.g. by ‘globalization losers’ or ‘protest voting’). Additionally, the results show that although preferences for both party families are mainly rooted in ‘policy voting’, notable differences emerge when looking at the role of specific policy dimensions. Overall, these findings suggest that the support for RRPs cannot be understood fundamentally as a mere reaction against economic pauperization or political dissatisfaction but instead as an ideological decision based on rational choice models.

The lure of populism: A conjoint experiment examining the interplay between demand and supply side factors

Several studies have examined the success of populist leaders in recent decades. These studies focus on both supply side factors that concern the traits of populist actors and demand side factors in the form of characteristics of the supporters. However, we still lack a solid understanding of how these supply and demand side factors interact to explain the support of populist leaders. We contribute to this literature by examining the interplay of two central supply side factors, people-centeredness and nativism, and two demand side factors, political dissatisfaction and generational differences, in determining populist support. We test these explanations by leveraging a choice-based conjoint analysis embedded in a representative sample of the Finnish population (n=1030). The results show that while both people-centeredness and nativism enhance the favourability of prospective political leaders, it is only nativism that it more appealing to the politically dissatisfied. In contrast to recent studies, we find no evidence that populist leader traits would be more favoured by younger generations. These results indicate that the interplay between supply and demand may well be more intricate than what previous studies suggest.

Violence or nonviolence: instrumental nature of protest mobilization

Protest mobilization is a complex multifaceted process, the implementation of which depends on the range objective and subjective factors. Recurrent mass protests aimed against the activity of government structures in different regions of the world, as well as unprecedented decrease in violence worldwide, actualize the questions associated with the motives of protest activity, as well as the instruments that characterize protest mobilization. The subject of this research is the instruments of protest political mobilization. The goal consists in delineating the boundaries of resorting to violence and nonviolence as the instruments of protest mobilization. Leaning on the principles of Charles Tilly’s Repertoire of Contention towards analysis of violence and nonviolence in political activity, as well as using the analysis of relevant data on the practices of protest activity, the authors formulate the following conclusions: 1) both violent and nonviolent instruments, which intersect within the framework of mass actions to various extent, underlie protest activity; 2) violence is an integral part of mass protests, however, the magnitude and intensity of violence is determined by the level of political dissatisfaction of the subjects of collective activity and the scale of available resource base; 3) statistically, nonviolent forms of mass protest are more successful in attaining the goals by the subjects of mobilization.

The Social Movement of Alexei Navalny

The article focuses on the major stages of development of Alexei Navalny’s social movement in 2017-2019 on the federal and regional levels. The movement aims to form and mobilize the supporters of Alexei Navalny in the movement’s structural elements to carry out opposition activities in large cities. In the long-term, the movement wants their activists to participate in regional and local elections. The movement is developing in the context of slowly growing socio-economic and political dissatisfaction in the country and the government’s aim to restrict public expression of concern. The conditions make the movement look for new formats of manifesting people’s discontent. The weakness of the movement is Alexei Navalny’s non-eligibility to hold the office and absence of Navalny’s political party. His image of a “fringe” and “protesting” politician created by the television media prevents him from becoming a respectable and worthy of support politician for the majority of Russians.

Did Austerity Cause Brexit?

This paper documents a significant association between the exposure of an individual or area to the UK government’s austerity-induced welfare reforms begun in 2010, and the following: the subsequent rise in support for the UK Independence Party, an important correlate of Leave support in the 2016 UK referendum on European Union membership; broader individual-level measures of political dissatisfaction; and direct measures of support for Leave. Leveraging data from all UK electoral contests since 2000, along with detailed, individual-level panel data, the findings suggest that the EU referendum could have resulted in a Remain victory had it not been for austerity. (JEL D72, F15, F60, H53, I38)

Housing precarity and advanced marginality in the UK

This chapter presents concluding remarks about the impacts of the Bedroom Tax. It reflects on the processes through which housing insecurity is generated and how this is playing a central role in increasing urban marginality. It does so by drawing on studies about rising housing precarity and homelessness to consider how both the social and private housing sectors have been responding to reductions in housing benefit. This chapter argues that we need to re-consider how and in what ways the struggles over housing are being played out at the local level and how this can generate divisions in and between different groups. Particularly when people are re-negotiating a welfare state that is undergoing deep systematic reorganisation. It considers the relationship between austerity policies and their role in creating political dissatisfaction with the state of UK politics. Especially in areas where the full impact of austerity measures have been felt.

Between strategy and protest: how policy demand, political dissatisfaction and strategic incentives matter for far-right voting

What attracts voters to far-right parties? Emphasizing the repercussions of far-right parties' past achievements on the mobilization of voters' electoral demand, this paper develops an argument of context-dependent strategic far-right voting. Far-right parties seek to mobilize on a combination of demand for nativist policies and anti-establishment protest sentiment. Their capacity of doing so, however, critically depends on the strategic incentives they supply. My findings from a comparative analysis based on six waves of the European Election Study show that far-right parties' past attainment of legislative strength boosts the credibility of their policy appeal and broadens the scope of their protest appeal whereas their participation in government jeopardizes their capacity to mobilize on popular discontent.