Do populist voters reflect the populist discourse and have a distinctive set of democratic norms compared to non-populist voters?

Graduate School of Social Science

Political Science Master/Track: International Relations 2018/19, Semester 2, Block 4

Master Thesis

Do populist voters reflect the populist discourse and have a distinctive set of democratic norms compared to non-populist voters?

Word Count: 9,847

Course: A global crisis of democracies? Change and continuity in 21st century politics. Lecturers: Dr. Armèn Hakhverdian

Course Catalogue Number: 7324E206ZY

Submitted by: Amsterdam, 23/06/2019

Matthias Peschke

Student number: 12282103 Daalwijk 707 D

1102 AA Amsterdam

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Contents

2.3 Different Populist Forms ... 8

3. Methods ... 11

3.1 Selection of Data ... 11

3.2 Variables for Democratic Norms ... 12

3.3 Control Variables ... 14

4. Findings ... 14

5. Conclusion ... 20

Notes ... 23

Tables and Figures ... 24

Tables ... 24

Figures ... 27

Bibliography ... 39

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1. Introduction

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, liberal democracy was hailed by many as the only legitimate form of government (Galston 2018). Francis Fukuyama described this moment as the end of history in a similar fashion as did Hegel in 1806 when he witnessed the triumph of Napoleon over the Prussian army which ushered in the new age of the modern state (Fukuyama 1989). Similarly, with the Iron Curtain gone and faster communication technology accelerating the speed of globalisation, it was assumed that liberal democratic norms such as human rights and the rule of law would spread quickly all across the globe. Unfortunately, these noble hopes soon experienced setbacks in Afghanistan and in Iraq where efforts to establish a liberal democratic system through military intervention failed at enormous cost for human life and regional stability (Chandler 2013). The Arab Spring, which many had hoped would democratise the countries of Northern Africa and introduce liberal values, also fell short of expectations as the ouster of authoritarian figureheads did not necessarily lead to stable liberal democratic countries (Afsah 2017). It rather seems that introducing liberal norms in societies with non-liberal traditions through military force or revolution was a challenging task that had yet to be mastered (Chandler 2013). In addition to that, other types of government have proven to be more durable than expected (Roy 1994). Although they guarantee their citizens more freedom than at any time in the past, market oriented authoritarian regimes in Singapore and China have not turned into democracies yet while radical Islam continues to play a significant role in countries of the Middle East. Contrary to Fukuyama’s hopes of the 1990s, there are indeed illiberal and undemocratic regimes out there that challenge liberal primacy in the world (Galston 2018).

In fact, a substantial challenge to the liberal world order comes from within (Galston 2018). Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Europe has seen the rise of various populist parties, leaders and movements across the continent that challenge liberal values and advocate for a more radical form of democracy based on more direct participation of the people. Their main argument is that the good people are oppressed by evil elites who govern the country only for their own good (Mudde 2004). Depending on the countries specific situation, populists have attached their discourse to different polarising issues such as ethnic identity, immigration, redistribution and high tax burdens. With the exception of Germany, where the Nazi and SED legacy has made legislators and voters suspicious of any form of extremism, they gained significant shares of up to 22 percent all over Western Europe (Taggart 2000: 76-83). This trend continued into the 21st century where it was strengthened by the financial crisis, austerity measures and an influx of migrants (Fetzer 2018; Hawkins/Kaltwasser 2019: 1-2; Roberts 2019: 9-10). It culminated in 2016 when the British people decided to leave the European

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Union (EU) in a referendum and the United States elected a right-wing populist outsider as president.

Most research in this field was done to define the term and explore the causes, drivers and different forms of this phenomenon (Guriev 2018; Hawkins/Kaltwasser 2019; Mudde 2004; Mudde/Kaltwasser 2013; Weyland 2001). Analysing the so-called supply side has allowed researchers to better understand how the continued success of these parties can be explained (Mudde 2007) and how serious the threat for liberal democracy is (Mudde/Kaltwasser 2012a; 2012b). By comparison, demand-side research has not been as extensive. There are several papers which broadly analyse attitudes of the general public toward democratic principles and norms (Foa/Mounk 2016; Howe 2017). Others were more concrete investigating levels of trust and satisfaction as well as authoritarian tendencies among populist voters to find out if those are causally related (Aguilar/Carlin 2019; Rooduijn et al. 2016). So far, there are not many papers that try to measure populist attitudes directly. While distrust and dissatisfaction might explain causes and consequences of populist voting, they are not an inherent component of a voter’s personality. In this context, Akkerman et al. (2014) have made an important contribution as they were able to demonstrate that populist and anti-pluralist attitudes are more common among populist voters. I think more demand side research is paramount to understand why people decide to vote for populist parties. Is it that these voters are disappointed by established parties or have they adapted different democratic norms which are at odds with liberal democracy? To find out, in this paper, I want to examine if democratic norms held by populist parties and leaders are reciprocated at the individual level. The research question that guides this endeavour is “do populist voters reflect the populist discourse and have a distinctive set of democratic norms compared to non-populist voters?” First, I define populism and discuss the key characteristics of populism. My focus lies on deducing populist democratic norms from the discourse populists use to address politics. Then, I use data from the European Social Survey (ESS) to find out if democratic norms articulated by populists receive support at the individual level. I have selected 6 variables where differences between populists and democrats are mostly likely to occur. As for the analysis, I conducted independent samples t-tests to compare the means of the selected variables between populist and non-populist voters as well as a binary logistic regression to measure how well democratic norm variables explain populist voting behaviour.

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2. Theoretical Framework

2.1 Populism

Populism has sprung up in numerous contexts and has taken up a variety of different ideological shapes. Its origin lies in the US and Russia of the late 19th _{century, where the first populist parties} and movements emerged. Through the Great Depression, populist leaders rose to power in Latin-America where they continue to wield enormous influence until this day. In Western Europe, the phenomenon first appeared in France in the 1950s but it did not gain real political significance until a couple of decades later (Hawkins/Kaltwasser 2019: 2; Mudde/Kaltwasser 2012a: 3-4; Rucht 2019: 70-74). Over the course of time, different theories have been used to explain what was happening. Each of these tried to delineate populists under the specific historical and economic conditions where it occurred. For the most part, researchers have struggled to find a universal definition of the problem as they were using various frameworks to approach the topic (Hawkins/Kaltwasser 2019: 2-3). It was only in recent years, that the so-called ideational approach was developed which understands populism as a set of ideas that is different from a fully-fledged ideology. This broader definition allows populism to take different ideological shapes instead of focusing on organisational structures (Weyland 2001) or economic policies (Acemoglu et al. 2013). Hence, populist parties can pursue distinct sets of policies but still be analysed with the same analytical tool (Hawkins/Kaltwasser 2019: 3; Mudde/Kaltwasser 2012b: 8-9).

According to this minimalist concept, populists see the world in Manichean terms of dualistic struggle between good and evil. The people are considered a homogeneous and virtuous group and represent the good while the evil elites are the opposite, corrupt and self-serving (Mudde 2004: 543; Mudde/Kaltwasser 2012a, 2012b; Hawkins/Kaltwasser 2019; Rooduijn 2019). This conflict is the most principle element of any populist discourse. It seeks to reduce the complexity of society by portraying the people as a virtuous and homogenous community which is being taken advantage of by self-serving and corrupt freeloaders who sit on top of the social hierarchy and shamelessly reap societies’ benefits before they can get to the honest people at the bottom. This simplification suggests that the people are able to come together to form a singular will which gives the government an unambiguous mandate when, in reality, different social groups pursue a plurality of needs, interests and values. By the same token, it assumes that the elites are a uniform group that acts collectively towards the same goal which is diametrically opposed to the needs and interests of the people at all times. Hence, ideas of pluralism and elitism are rejected by populism while promoting popular sovereignty is seen as the panacea to win the cosmic struggle. Putting the power into the hands of the virtuous people and respecting their authority at all times is, therefore,

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paramount for any government (Mudde/Kaltwasser 2012a; 2012b: 207-209; 2013: 151; 2017: 9-15; Hawkins/Kaltwasser 2019; Rooduijn 2019; Müller 2016; Taggart 2012).

Once mainstream parties failed to address salient political issues, populist parties managed to gain access to the political system riding a wave of political distrust and democratic weariness. Policies of European countries of the past decades were mostly in line with the international financial market who demands that states reduce expenditures on welfare and deregulate the financial sector for the purpose of creating a business friendly environment (Roberts 2017: 2). Regional organisations such as the EU have grown in influence further limiting the scope for national government actions (Verbeek/Zaslove 2017: 3). Combined with mass migration from culturally distant countries and ever growing multiculturalism, many people gained the perception that they were being neglected by their own government which was busy bailing out big banks, implementing austerity measures, following orders from Brussels and allowing cheap migrant labour into the country (Mounk 2018: 179-180; Mudde 2018: 1676-1679). Being told in response that the world’s complexity cannot accommodate the individual wishes of each and everyone (Mounk 2018: 38), many citizens have become less willing to support establishment parties and increasingly vote for single-issue movements, populist candidates and anti-system parties that oppose the status quo at any cost and promise a government that is more responsive to the people’s will (Foa/Mounk 2016; Mudde/Kaltwasser 2018: 1679). Hence, “populism is […] the quintessential expression of anti-elite and anti-establishment politics” (Roberts 2017: 3) and an illiberal, democratic response to decades of undemocratic liberalism (Mudde 2015). While it is true that populism can pose a threat to liberal democracy by using popular sovereignty as a vehicle to dismantle checks and balances or constitutionally protected rights, it can also be seen as a corrective. Many people did not feel represented by mainstream parties since they unanimously excluded crucial issues such as inequality and immigration. Populist parties evolved around these topics and thereby opened a channel for participation to many people that were hitherto denied access (Mudde/Kaltwasser 2012b: 20-22). Unlike communist and fascist parties, populists do not officially want to bring back 20th century totalitarianism but instead use democratic means to offer a neglected part of society a platform to express and organise their discontent with which they seek to establish a system that is more responsive toward ordinary people (Mudde 2007; Mounk 2018: 35). Nothing shall be allowed to bypass the will of the people not even liberal rights because they are seen as something that prevents the people from exercising true democratic powers. Unsurprisingly, populists have problems accepting constitutional arrangements such as the rule of law, minority rights and the separation of power (Mudde/Kaltwasser 2018: 1670). The reason for this is that they conceptualise

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democracy more as a process to make decisions than a regime that should guarantee each individual a minimum amount of rights. Hence, they fully embrace the republican principle of popular sovereignty but reject the liberal component of modern democracies. This notion corresponds more with the understanding of democracy in ancient Greece where it literally meant rule of the people (Galston 2018; Roberts 2019: 3-4). Schumpeter has conceptualised this approach and labels a system democratic when the ruler is chosen by the public in competitive elections. He focuses on guaranteeing political competition and neglects the question of who is entitled to participate in this system stating that the people have the right to demarcate this as they hold fit (Mudde/Kaltwasser 2012a: 11-13; Schumpeter 2003). This flexibility towards the electorate clearly resonates with populist thinking because they regard the people as a unanimous and virtuous entity that has ultimate sovereignty over everything. If they decide to exclude certain groups from the electoral process, then it is there right to do so as long as they have a majority supporting this decision (Galston/Mounk 2018: 12-13; Mudde 2007).

It is only as of late that we conceive of democracy in a more comprehensive way. Modern democracies, especially since the end of the Cold War, are based on constitutional liberalism. They are not only about the process of selecting a government but also about certain minimum objectives every government has to accomplish such as guaranteeing individual rights and freedoms to some degree (Roberts 2019: 3-4; Zakaria 1998: 25-26). The most widely-accepted concept of such a regime was brought forward by Robert Dahl (1971). In his work, he considers democracy to be the ideal political system that is fully responsive to citizens and guarantees individual rights and freedoms. These ideals, however, cannot be attained in reality which is why he developed the notion of polyarchy to describe existing regimes that try to approximate the ideal model. Inspired by Schumpeter’s approach, Dahl goes much further by arguing that such a system can only survive if checks and balances are in place to prevent an electoral majority to take away fundamental rights of minorities. Based on the idea of political equality, polyarchies are characterised by having high levels of both contestation and inclusion. This suggests that such a form of government is more complex as it combines electoral and liberal elements to assure a fair election process, a degree of individual freedom for everyone and the continuation of the regime (Clark et al. 2013: 149-151; Dahl 1971). It is this liberal understanding of democracy that populists object to. They see the goal of protecting individual rights as something that corrupts the democratic process since the people speak with a single, virtuous voice that gives the government clear and unambiguous instructions on how to govern. Keeping this in check through any constitutional provisions would, therefore, be considered an intolerable dilution of the democratic process (Mudde 2004). Even though competitive and fair

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elections can only be facilitated when certain constitutional provisions are guaranteed such as freedom of speech or the separation of power, populists usually do not show appreciation for these aspects (Rhoden 2015). In fact, we have already seen the rise of populist regimes in Venezuela, Poland and Hungary and know of their tendency to entrench themselves in power by changing the rules of the game. Typically, populist governments end up influencing media coverage, filling important positions in the bureaucracy with loyalists and rewriting the constitution to weaken fundamental democratic institutions that guarantee the fair competition of ideas and opinions. The rise of populist, illiberal strongmen can therefore be a precursor to authoritarian rule (Levitsky/Ziblatt 2018: 47-48; Mounk 2018). Against this backdrop, Levitsky and Loxton (2013: 110-112) argue that populism leads to competitive authoritarianism because elected populists find themselves on hostile ground with the political elite still in control of the most important state institutions. Fulfilling their mandate of eradicating the political establishment therefore requires concerted efforts that might not comply with proper democratic behaviour at all times. Thus, all things considered, populism might invoke democratic norms and values when in opposition but, once in power, the very nature of democracy seems to be at stake.

2.2 Populist Norms

Until recently, research was more focused on the supply side analysing populist parties, speeches, programmes. While these efforts have brought insights into how to define populism, how it was caused and how its influence on policies has evolved, not much has been done to determine whether attitudes exhibited by populist politicians are being reciprocated at the individual level. Furthermore, those studies that focused on the demand side of the phenomenon did not directly measure populist attitudes but rather related feelings such as attitudes on immigration, European integration or trust and satisfaction of democracy (Algen et al. 2017; Cornelis/van Hiel 2014; Rooduijn 2018). There is no doubt that these studies have come up with interesting findings that improve the understanding of the problem, however, in so far, they never managed to truly grasp the extent to which populist attitudes are prevalent among citizens. Akkerman et al. (2014) made an important contribution in this context as they sought to directly measure populist attitudes at the micro level. Essentially, the authors wanted to find out if people are guided by similar principles as are populist politicians. For this reason, they chose variables that reflected the three core principles of populism: popular sovereignty, opposition to elites and a Manichean cosmology of good and evil. By directly measuring populist, pluralist and elitist attitudes and linking them to party preferences, this Dutch case study found significant positive correlation between voting for a populist party and scoring high on questions related to populist attitudes. Although the explanatory power of this paper

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is limited due to being a single-case study, it suggests that fundamental democratic attitudes are different depending on whom the individual voted for and raises the question whether populist voters across countries hold different democratic norms altogether.

So far, we know that populists differ in their conception of democracy and exhibit a distinctive set of democratic norms. In general, norms describe collective expectations for the proper behaviour of actors with a given identity by setting up rules that regulate their behaviour (Katzenstein 1996: 2). Hence, democratic norms can be explained as the collective expectations of citizens for the proper behaviour of political actors and institutions within a democratic state. The spread of democratic norms among politicians and citizens are instrumental in keeping a democratic system stable. They create a democratic atmosphere that lays out the framework for acceptable and unacceptable behaviour of political actors which helps to prevent abuse of ambiguous constitutional passages (Levitzki/Ziblatt 2018: 58-59).

Modern democracies are a mixture of majority rule and constitutional liberalism and, therefore, have democratic norms that consist of an electoral and a liberal component (Mounk 2018: 27-28). The former corresponds to Schumpeter’s minimalist understanding of democracy as a process to select a ruler through competitive elections whereas the latter refers to Dahl’s idea of polyarchy which, in addition to publicly choosing a leader, wants to uphold checks on the ruler and a minimum of civil rights and political freedoms. Thus, electoral norms emphasise the importance of government responsiveness to the will of the people, majority rule and direct participatory channels for citizens to actively take part in political decisions. Liberal norms, by contrast, are associated with a strong demand for political equality, protection of individual freedom and strict limitations to executive power.

As elaborated before, populist parties prefer a more radical concept of democracy that corresponds to its original understanding as the rule of the people (Mudde 2012b: 208). Government should primarily be responsive to the people’s demands and dismiss constitutional rights that limit the implementation of popular sovereignty. Given that the democratic norms exhibited by parties are at least partially reflected in the political attitudes of their supporters, I expect populist voters to have similar priorities when it comes to democratic norms. They will favour electoral norms over liberal ones and, thus, mirror the preferences of populist parties to a certain degree. This translates into the following two hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1: Populist voters have stronger electoral norms than the general electorate. Hypothesis 2: Populist voters have weaker liberal norms than the general electorate.

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2.3 Different Populist Forms

Populism is a rather loose construct that can be filled with different content depending on the context of its emergence. Taggart (2000: 10-11, 20) described how populism uses different circulating ideas and grievances and incorporates them in its discourse. Each manifestation of populism can be seen as a specific articulation that seeks to capture the vote of people who feel neglected by their government. Hence, Mudde (2013: 151) concludes that populist political actors, as much as their electorates, can hold on to different ideologies with competing ideas while, simultaneously, using the same antagonistic rhetoric of the people versus the elites.

Mudde and Kaltwasser (2013) analysed this issue when they compared the different variations of populism between Europe and Latin-America. Europe’s populist scene is characterised by more exclusionary ideas of nativism with parties defining themselves in opposition to immigration and multiculturalism. They conceive the native inhabitants as the pure people whose concerns with European integration have gone unheeded for many years. Through their opposition toward non-natives, they agree on rolling back minority rights and excluding them from the political process. When it comes to political personnel, however, their representatives come from blue-collar backgrounds which shows they open participation to groups they deem previously ignored by the establishment (Mudde/Kaltwasser 2013: 162-164). Latin-America’s populists, by contrast, are defined by their opposition to US imperialism. They have championed the fight against poverty and constantly sought to include previously marginalised indigenous people. Radical democracy in this context enables more political participation by lower classes of society who use these new powers to push back the influence of international institutions that promote neoliberal agendas. In this pursuit, they have expanded executive power and undermined liberal principles such as checks and balances (Mudde/Kaltwasser 2013: 161-162). The left and right, therefore, can incorporate the same populist discourse although their ideological motivation is very distinct.

Rooduijn and Akkerman (2017: 195-196, 201) have also studied this phenomenon and noted in a similar fashion that, even though, historically, Europe was known for having a significant following of right-wing populist parties, parties on the left end of the political spectrum are applying a similar discourse. Both directions coincide in glorifying the people and criticising those who have been at the helm of the nation for the last decades even though they disagree on who the elites and the people actually are. The right combines this message with their disdain for non-native elements in society that threaten the cultural cohesion of the nation. Elites, according to them, are a cosmopolitan group that has allowed the influx of migrants in the first place. The left’s populism, in

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comparison, is paired with economic instead of cultural issues. Consequently, they blame political and economic elites for causing the misery of widening social and wealth inequalities under which the common people have to suffer. Their primary goal is to protect the people from capitalist exploitation implying an inclusive political nature through which they have gained support from different social groups such as environmentalists and feminists. Hence, the core ideologies of right and left-wing populists are substantially different from one another and lead to different political programmes attracting people with distinctive political attitudes. This suggests that the electorate might be drawn specifically to the underlying ideology instead of populism per se (Rooduijn/Akkerman 2017).

With regards to democratic norms, this means that the electorate of left and right-wing populist parties will diverge. Since they share populist ideals, their electoral norms will most likely be on a similar level above those of the general electorate. Liberal norms, on the other hand, are more likely to be championed by inclusionary populists on the left. Due to these parties enjoying wide-spread support among many social organisations, I assume that their liberal norms will exceed those of other parties. Right-wing populist voters are more likely to show the opposite tendency as nativism stands in open conflict with many constitutional rights (Mudde 2007). This translates into the following two hypotheses:

Hypothesis 3: Left-wing populist voters will have stronger liberal norms than the general electorate. Hypothesis 4: Right-wing populist voters will have weaker liberal norms than the general electorate. Radical right and left are not the only parties to take advantage when a political system experiences a crisis of representation. As observed by Taggart (2000: 2), populist parties are like a chameleon which adopts the colours of its surroundings. Hence, depending on the country’s specific context, there are other, non-radical ideologies it can attach itself to. According to van Kessel (2015: 7), populist parties combine anti-establishment rhetoric with ideas ranging from neo-liberalism and conservativism to social and environmental issues. Berlusconi’s Forza Italia is an example for the former. Brought into existence by a massive government corruption scandal in the 1990s, his party considered the free market to be beneficial for the people and the elite to be preventing the people from accessing it fairly while reaping the benefits through state bureaucracy and special interest groups. The populist logic, thus, also manages to attach itself to an ideology that is relatively benevolent towards economic multilateralism and European integration (Verbeek/Zaslove 2017: 10-12).

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Grillo’s Five Star Movement (FSM), on the contrary, is considered a polyvalent populism as it gets its inspiration from several, discordant ideologies. Populist discourse is combined with a mixture of mild euroscepticism, nativism, left-wing economics and post-materialistic issues such as environmentalism (Pirro 2018: 450-452). Others refer to the party as mutating populism since it was created in reaction to Berlusconi’s populism of the 90s and 2000s (Verbeek/Zaslove 2016: 307). Even though some consider FSM a radical party due to its aspiration to substantially transform politics for the benefit of the people (Pirro 2018: 447), it does not belong to the traditional radical left or right who are clearly attached to a particular ideology.

With regards to Central and Eastern Europe, the populist landscape is very diverse due to its distinctive history of Soviet rule and the subsequent transformation from totalitarian autocracy to democracy. The two main trends observed by Stanley (2017) are the radical populists and the so-called centrist populists. The former oppose the liberal politics of the post-communist transition which were aimed at closer alignment with the EU. They do not share their fondness for cosmopolitanism and want to replace the elites that implemented the reforms. The more influential version, however, that better characterises populism in Central and Eastern Europe is centrist populism. These parties have established themselves at the political centre by having successfully mobilised against post-communist elites claiming they have mismanaged the country ever since Soviet rule ended. By emphasising the general need to reform institutions and increase political participation in order to stop corruption and replace incompetent elites, these populist parties were able to remain ideologically inconsistent.

As noted by van Kessel (2015: 7), since populist parties follow different ideologies and seek to implement their individual programme, they do not form a coherent party family in the classic sense. Even though each of them applies the populist discourse and want the system to be more responsive toward the will of the people, their policy proposals often look very different. This is especially true for parties that cannot be associated with either extreme of the left-right axis. In order to simplify, I consider these parties under the category non-radical populists, even though, other names are in use to describe some of these parties such as centre (Stanley 2017), polyvalent (Pirro 2018) or mutating populism (Verbeek/Zaslove 2016). Based on these facts, I can assume that the norms of this electorate will be inherently inconsistent and different from left and right-wing populism. Apart from a penchant for direct democracy (Hypothesis 1), no specific prediction can be made.

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3. Methods

3.1 Selection of Data

To evaluate democratic norms of populist voters, I need relevant survey questions that measure the electoral and liberal dimension of democratic norms. I decided to use the European Social Survey (ESS 2012) which is being published every two years since 2002. Each round, the survey is equipped with special modules that ask more detailed questions on a current topic such as climate change in 2016 or social inequalities in health in 2014. Round 6 of the ESS in 2012 included the democracy module which asked questions regarding the importance of democratic and liberal institutions. Even though the data does not reflect the current extent of the phenomenon, the survey items of this module are well-suited to investigate the spread of democratic norms.

Of the 29 countries that were surveyed, I wanted to use those that experienced noticeable populist support. Since populist movements across Europe gained momentum after the survey was conducted, interesting cases such as Germany’s AFD or Spain’s Podemos did not make it into the study. Unfortunately, Greece, which had arguably experienced the biggest populist manifestation by 2012, was not part of the survey making SYRIZA supporters unavailable to the study. Another limitation was the fact that the ESS did not include UKIP as a response category in its survey of Great Britain. One of the most prototypical right-wing populist parties was, therefore, not analysed.

On the basis of this survey, I have chosen 17 different countries where populism was a legitimate force in 2012. In order to decide which party can be considered populist, I relied on the PopuList (Rooduijn et al. 2019), an online resource that keeps record of populist, radical and eurosceptic parties. Based on the ideational approach and reviewed by more than 30 academics, this list has been in use since 1998 and allows me to divide populism into four different categories: left-wing, right-wing, non-radical and overall. To consider a country, there had to be at least 60 respondents that voted for a populist party, otherwise, the sample size would be small to make reliable inferences.1 If a country had several populist parties of different kinds and only together they reached the threshold of 60, I only considered them under the overall category (see Bulgaria and Italy). Table 1 displays the populist parties that made it into the study and groups them into the three subcategories. Unfortunately, the analysis will be tilted in favour of right-wing populist parties as they dominate the populist landscape (Roberts 2017: 8-9). A total of 11 cases of right-wing populism has been analysed in this study while non-radical and left-wing populism have only been active in 4 countries. Thus, the dependent variable is a dummy variable with value (1) for the respective populist category and (0) for populist voters which are represented by all

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populist choices on the ballot including voting blank. Since a country may have several populist parties, they might be present in several categories. Furthermore, as suggested by the ESS (2012), I have applied weights to enhance the accuracy of the analysis. To compare a number of different countries, I have used a combination of design and population weight in order to account for the likelihood every respondent has to be part of the study and the differences between sample and population size.

3.2 Variables for Democratic Norms

Each survey question asks the participant to evaluate how important they think a certain aspect of democracy is. The respondent may answer on an 11-points scale ranging from (0), which means not at all important, to (10), which indicates extremely important for democracy in general. The choice of independent variables was mainly influenced by the literature that defines populism (Hawkins/Kaltwasser 2019; Mudde 2004; Taggart 2000) and democracy (Schumpeter 2003; Dahl 1971) as well as prior research which has undertaken similar endeavours. Ferrín and Kriesi (2016), who compiled a book of articles using the same data from the ESS round 6, have provided important insights into how survey questions can be used to measure political attitudes and democratic ideals. In one of the articles, Kriesi et al. (2016) sought to explore which aspects of liberal democracy people are most fond of and, thus, selected 13 survey questions from the ESS (2012) that address electoral and liberal facets of democracy. Split up into a liberal and an electoral scale, this list provided me with an example for how to operationalise concepts such as the rule of law or checks and balances. However, since not every variable the authors used, was tapping into populist terrain, I reduced the list of variables to only those that are essentially linked to populist discourse.

With regards to the liberal scale, Kriesi et al. (2016: 69) explain that these variables cover the rule of law, horizontal accountability and the protection of civil and minority rights. As they are based on political equality and require high levels of inclusion, each of these aspects also corresponds to Dahl’s conceptualisation of polyarchy (Clark et al. 2013: 149-151; Dahl 1971). As explained by Mudde and Kaltwasser (2013: 14; 2018: 1670), the rule of law, minority rights and the separation of power which includes independent judiciaries and media are the liberal concepts populist object to the most. I, therefore, eliminated the variables for freedom of expression and media reliability because neither directly addresses populist issues. Considering that populist parties often celebrate electoral success through aggressive social media campaigns (Common 2018) and criticise traditional mainstream media as an unreliable source of information (Mounk 2018: 44), it can be expected that

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their electorate would not distinguish themselves from voters of other parties on these indicators. Hence, the remaining four variables to analyse the dimension of political liberalism are the following: How important do you think it is for democracy in general…

1. …that the media are free to criticise the government? 2. …that the rights of minority groups are protected? 3. …that the courts treat everyone the same?

4. …that the courts are able to stop the government from acting beyond its authority?2 On the electoral side, Kriesi et al. (2016: 70-72) have included items that address accountability, responsiveness and multi-lateral democracy. Unfortunately for my analysis, the questions are rather vague and represent basic mechanisms of a functioning democracy that guarantee fair competition and prevent arbitrary rule. Democratic citizens with all kinds of party affiliation can be expected to agree to these elementary rules which is why I decided not to include these items. What distinguishes populists from other political parties is their emphasis on popular sovereignty. Inherently suspicious of any unelected body that influences decision making (Mudde/Kaltwasser 2012b: 208), their discourse makes it unambiguously clear that politics should be a direct and unmediated expression of the people’s will (Mudde 2004: 543). I, therefore, used variables that better approximate populist penchants for direct democracy and more responsiveness to the people. The survey questions are as follows:

How important do you think it is for democracy in general…

1. ...that citizens have the final say on the most important political issues by voting on them directly in referendums?

2. …that the government changes its policies in response to what most people think?3 Even here, it can be expected that opinions of populist and non-populist voters overlap as both accept the majoritarian concepts of decision-making. However, popular sovereignty is the core concept for populists making me expect higher scores among their electorate than voters of non-populist parties.

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3.3 Control Variables

Inspired by prior micro-level research on different attitudinal dimensions of the populist as well as radical right and left electorate (Algen et al. 2017; Cornelis/van Hiel 2014; Rooduijn 2018), I included several control variables in the analysis4. First, I will use the basic control variables gender, age, education5 and income to provide insights into fundamental characteristics of populist voters. Then, I will make use of the left-right control variables redistribution and immigration to examine how well these items explain the populist vote. Lastly, I will control for satisfaction with democracy and trust towards parliament as the literature points out that high-levels of distrust and satisfaction are often causally linked to radical and populist voting behaviour (Rooduijn et al. 2017: 541-542).

4. Findings

First, I will take a look at how populist and non-populist voters scored with each variable. Table 4-8 as well as figures 1-24 illustrate the data. What stands out at first glance is that the norms of populist and non-populist voters are very much alike. Each populist group averages between 7 and 10 on each survey question which is evidence that liberal and electoral norms are still well-spread among all citizens. The figures confirm this and, further, show how little populist and non-populist voters actually deviate from one another. At the same time, however, many people decided to give scores lower than 9 which at least indicates doubts about certain aspects of these norms and approval of case-dependent exceptions.

The next striking observation is that, in all but one country, populist voters resemble non-populist voters by having stronger preferences for liberal norms than electoral ones. This already contradicts my first two hypotheses and foreshadows that the analysis will not yield many significant results. Nonetheless, when looking more carefully at the figures for populism overall and right-wing populism, I can attest that these voters have on average stronger electoral norms and weaker liberal norms than their non-populist counterparts which, at least, partially complies with hypothesis 1, 2 and 4. This is true for 70 to 85% of the cases in the study depending on the norm, however, if we only look at significant results with P < 0.05, most inference does not hold true in the population. Unsurprisingly, the most significance is evinced by Switzerland whose right-wing populist party is entirely in line with hypotheses 1 and 2. With regards to the other two populist categories, we get a slightly different view. Left-wing populist voters exceed non-populist voters on the liberal and electoral scale 3 out of 4 times while non-radical populist voters managed to do the same on two occasions. Even though most of these results cannot be generalised either, they largely correspond

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to predictions made in hypothesis 3. Despite the results lacking generalisability, they largely echo Mudde and Kaltwasser’s (2013) research on inclusionary left-wing and exclusionary right-wing populism. Non-radical populist voters, on the other hand, seem to be the most diverse. Hardly any results are valid for the population indicating little internal consistency with regards to norms. It might be that the ideological flexibility (Stanley 2017: 4-5) and the contextual situation, in which the parties emerged (Taggart 2000: 2), allow attracting voters with very different norms and backgrounds.

Next, I present the results of the binary logistic regression. There are two tables that provide insights into the results of the analysis: Table 2 and Table 3. Table 2 shows the regression results for people that have voted for any populist party in their country whereas the other one divides it up into left-wing, non-radical and right-wing populism. Starting with table 2, we can see that there is much more significance among control variables than the norm variables I chose to test my hypotheses. Of all the significant effects, only 14.2%, or 1 in 7, are among norm variables. The computed variables political liberalism and popular sovereignty only feature two significant cases each. Although the direction of these effects was predicted correctly, in most countries, these two dimensions cannot explain the populist vote. Unsurprisingly, the individual variables under democratic norms do not exhibit many significant results either. Liberal norms have only been significant in three cases while electoral norms had five. Moreover, the effect was incorrectly predicted in two instances which amounts to 25% of the time. It seems, therefore, that the model I created does not suggest that the populist message is completely endorsed by their constituency.

The control variables in general show more significance but also lack depth and consistency. None of the chosen parameters is a universal factor that can explain in every country in the study why people vote for populist parties. Trust and satisfaction are mostly negatively associated with populist voting with just 3 or 6, respectively, of the 17 cases being correctly predicted. Whereas this suggests that at least some populist voters have grown weary of the democratic system, the majority of people who voted for any populist voters does not share this concern. This comes as a surprise because scholars have found increasing levels of distrust and dissatisfaction with the democratic system among Europeans to be a result of the Great Recession (Algen et al. 2017). The most unexpected observation is clearly Hungary, where the populist electorate shows great fondness of parliament and democracy. This can be seen as a clear exception and might be due to the special situation in the Hungarian parliament where the governing party and the main opposition party are both populists of the radical right who enjoy resilient support since 2010 (Lönnqvist et al. 2019).

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Variables that controlled for left and right-wing voters have also shown ambiguous results. Redistribution is important for a mere 4 out of 17 different national populist movements. In three cases, we have a strong left-wing populist party present which explains the tendency. The right-wing populist electorate in Poland, however, also shows a clear preference for redistribution which is generally not something parties at the right end of the political spectrum are fond of. With regards to immigration, having a negative attitude was significant in 7 out of the 17 countries. Excluding foreigners is, therefore, not a common feature of populist parties either.

By the same token, the basic control variables gender, age, education and income do not yield significant results that hold true for populist voters across countries. There is a tendency that men are more likely to support populism, however, this relation is only relevant in 5 cases. Age has a negative effect with a p-value of less than 0.05 in just 7 cases indicating that younger people are often but not always more attracted to these parties. Education shows a similar degree of relevance, however, in the case of Germany, a positive effect was detected. Lastly, income, which usually plays a role when analysing radical parties (Rooduijn et al. 2017: 540-541), only yields two significant effects that are both negative. Even though these results are largely in line with Rooduijn (2018) who concluded that the typical populist voter does not exist, it is still astounding that the economically disadvantaged, to whom the populist message should appeal more, do not support populist parties to a palpable degree. Considering the fact that populism gains traction in times of economic crisis (Roberts 2017: 6-7), it seems reasonable that Mounk (2018: 159) assumes the fear of potentially experiencing poverty in the future drives people toward populist parties, not poverty itself.

If we divide populism up into the different subcategories, the model is able to explain slightly more variation. Nonetheless, the effects that democratic norms have on populist affiliation appear to remain negligible. Political liberalism stays significant in the same two cases while popular sovereignty gains one significant result among right-wing populist voters in the Netherlands. Among the individual norm variables, 11 instances show relevance out of a possible 114 (6 norm variables * 19 cases of populism). Even if we look at the different forms of populism, we cannot make any inferences other than that the populist electorate seems to be very diverse in terms of democratic norms. There is no evidence to assume that certain less liberal and more electoral expectations of democracy dominate among populist voters in general or a certain type in particular.

Left-wing populism only shows relevance in France with the Left Front whose voters support referenda and minority rights to relevant degree while being critical of courts overturning government decisions. This partially contradictory attitude is also reflected among right-wing populist voters in France who value the media’s right to criticise the government but remain

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sceptical toward the protection of minority rights. The fact that norms in France matter in a more unforeseen pattern on both sides of the political spectrum might be more a testament of France’s strong democratic culture than of genuine populist characteristics. By looking at the control variables, it can be noted that splitting up the populist electorate into the three categories has enabled a clearer examination of the differences and a better understanding of the variation. Variables such as redistribution, gender and income correlate with the electorate in two or three out of four cases. Immigration is seen as a benefit for society in two cases thereby reflecting a more inclusionary form of populist discourse that is diametrically opposed to the right’s nativism. Nevertheless, the effects are not consistent among all countries. Ireland’s Sinn Fein supporters seem to be the odd one out since they lack most of the qualities except for age. Moreover, only four Western European countries of the ESS 2012 had a sizable left-wing populist constituency which clearly limits the explanatory power of the witnessed effects.

As expected, the most ambiguous results come from non-radical populists. In Italy, populist voters demonstrate populist norms to some degree as the effect for political liberalism is substantial and negative just as the variable measuring the importance of courts being able to stop unconstitutional decisions by the government. Turning to electoral norms, the picture becomes slightly contradictory since changing policies in response to what most people think is appreciated while direct participation through referenda has a significant negative effect. In the other three countries, by contrast, not one significant effect can be measured among the norms variables. This continues if we look at the control variables. Italian non-radical populist voters are more likely to be men and have a younger and less educated electorate whereas, among Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Lithuania, only Bulgaria has a significantly higher probability of having younger supporters. This reaffirms that the norms and attitudes of non-radical populist voters are probably the most ambiguous to evaluate corresponding to my initial expectations which foresaw inherently inconsistent norms as a result of adhering to many different and sometimes contradictory ideologies.

The picture of right-wing populism, although slightly clearer, remains deeply ambiguous with regards to norms. The electorates of 7 out of 11 countries do not exhibit any significance which reinforces the notion that even right-wing populist voters do not coherently advocate for the same norms as the parties they vote for. Only observations in the Netherlands, Poland and Switzerland fulfil my initial expectations at least partially due to having either strong electoral norms or weak liberal norms. The control variables have yielded better results after the populist constituency was split up into their respective category and are largely in line with results of prior quantitative research on radical voting patterns (Cornelius/van Hiel 2014; Lubbers/Coenders 2017; Rooduijn et al. 2017). Lack

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of education and a negative attitude towards immigration show the most consistent correlation with 6 out of 11 countries having these attitudes. Other attitudes typically assumed populist such as dissatisfaction and distrust, however, remained fairly equivocal adding to the plurality of norms and attitudes held among right-wing populist voters.

Another aspect that struck me was that the diversity of the populist electorate in Eastern European countries seems to be higher. Out of the 6 countries in the analysis, only Polish and Hungarian voters show significant patterns while the other four hardly show any common features at all. Hence, it seems that there is not only a gap between different kinds of populisms but also a spatial difference between former Soviet republics and Western European democracies. This echoes research by Stanley (2017) who asserted that non-radical populist parties at the political centre with inconsistent ideologies dominate the populist landscape in most of the former Soviet republics. Western and Eastern Europe, especially with regards to the 20th century, are so fundamentally different from one another, it makes sense that populism would go diverge in these areas. This would be another example for the chameleonic nature of populism (Taggart 2000), which thrives when social and economic conditions are under threat (Mudde/Kaltwasser 2018), and takes on another form when faced with distinct socio-economic situations.

In summary, I can say that the analysis does not provide sufficient evidence for hypotheses 1 and 2. I assumed that populist voters will approximate the norms and attitudes of populist parties and exhibit a preference for electoral norms over liberal ones. The analysis of means and the binary logistic regression both have shown that this is not consistently the case. The vast majority of populist voters on average appreciate liberal norms more than electoral ones which is why the regression could not yield more significant results. Even though there is some proof for my hypotheses in some countries such as France, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Switzerland, the key findings echo the results of prior research which suggested that the populist electorate is very diverse (Rooduijn 2018). Voting for populist parties cannot be explained by democratic norms held by the electorate. Rather, it seems that the underlying ideology, as was the case with left and right-wing populist parties in this study, is more of a decisive factor.

Hypothesis number 3, on the other hand, seems to partially hold true. Since neither democratic norms nor control variables have been able to successfully explain the voter’s decisions in every case, making a definitive statement is not possible. However, there are signs that left-wing populist voters are more appreciative of liberal values and more inclusive than their voters of other parties. Just as described by Mudde and Kaltwasser (2013), this inclusive form of populism seeks to assimilate marginalised groups contrary to the right’s nativism which wants to exclude non-native

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elements of society. Many left-wing populist voters think immigrants make their country a better place to live. Furthermore, they want to redistribute wealth from the top to the bottom and, at least, in France we can see them supporting minority rights. Similarly, non-radical populists, with the exception of Italy, seem to be of very diverse background as they do not converge on any norm or control variable indicating a genuinely unique composition of voters in each case. Even among right-wing populists, we see a huge gap between the 4 countries that fulfil the conditions set out in the beginning and the 7 countries that hardly feature any of those. Hypothesis 4 can thus only be partially accepted. The regression has shown some of their illiberal norms and attitudes, however, the comparison shows that, overall, this group values liberal aspects of democracy more than popular sovereignty. All of this can be seen as evidence for the heterogeneity of the populist constituency. Across the political spectrum and even within the specific populist category, voters do not share many features but seem to have different convictions, expectations and attitudes. This shows that different forms of populism are distinctive from each other reinforcing the need, stressed by Mudde and Kaltwasser (2018), to investigate populism in combination with its host ideology and better understand the variations of this phenomenon.

We find evidence for this heterogeneity in political practice. The European People's Party (EPP) gave in to pressures from other political groups to suspend the membership of Orbán’s Fidesz (Rankin 2019). No such request was made for GERB, the ruling and non-radical populist party of Bulgaria. In the quest for a stable majority in the European Parliament, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) has once even reached out to Italy’s Five Star Movement (Wirtz 2019). By the same token, the left alliance European United Left–Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL), where all the left-wing populist parties of this study are located, also constitutes a potential coalition partner. For the most part, it is the right-wing populists who are excluded from the discussion indicating that the liberal forces in the EU parliament place them under a cordon sanitaire (Radosavljevic 2019). During the last parliamentary term, which ended in 2019, right-wing populist parties were members of 4 different political groups which clearly illustrates the inner divisions of this movement. Furthermore, it shows that distinguishing between different populisms is already a common practice among political leaders. All of this coincides with the results of my study which has reinforced the notion that populism is anything but a uniform movement with shared values and understandings of how democracy should work.

Apart from having had to leave out several countries with aspiring populist parties, there are two other limitations to my analysis that I wish to address. First, a principle component analysis (see appendix) has shown that the variables I have chosen for electoral norms do not factor together.

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Even though the questions I used are very similar in asking whether the people should be more directly involved in deciding important political issues, the answers did not correlate much with one another. In fact, the referendum item correlated more with liberal norms than with the variable for government responsiveness. This suggests that these questions, although appearing to be adequate, do not quite grasp the normative dimension I wanted to measure. It also might be that the wording of the second electoral variable was too abstract as the valid number of responses was much lower compared to all the other variables in the study. The ESS has taken notice of certain shortcomings especially with regards to measuring competing views of democracy. Populism remains a salient issue which is why the ESS is adjusting the wording and necessity of several items including the government responsiveness variable whose content will be slightly modified (ESS 2018). This will be beneficial for future research as improved questionnaires that address different views of democracy will allow for more accurate examination of people’s opinions.

Finally, another problem is that many populist parties are still of marginal significance which means that the number of respondents in the survey will necessarily be low in many cases. A small number of respondents can often increase uncertainty around the results which could be the reason why some countries failed to deliver significant results. Even though I used a minimum threshold that amounts to at least 4.4 percent of valid responses, a share of votes high enough to enter some national parliaments, including more respondents in the study would have had more explanatory power. This is a typical problem when analysing small parties in multi-party systems as a small number of respondents does not allow for very accurate models. Additional variables in surveys that measure the propensity to vote for a certain party, as proposed by Van der Eijk et al. (2006), would enrich the data and help researchers gain better insights of voting behaviour and deliberation.

5. Conclusion

In line with previous research (Rooduijn 2018; Rooduijn/Akkerman 2017), this paper reaffirms that the populist electorate is very diverse. There is no evidence to suggest that democratic norms, as measured in this paper, substantially explain why people vote for populist parties. The populist discourse is, thus, not precisely reciprocated at the individual level. Rather, it seems that the underlying ideology is what attracts most voters.

As the analysis of overall populism has revealed, the vast majority of populist voters display a similar amount of fondness for both liberal and electoral aspects of democracy compared to their non-populist counterparts. Hypotheses 1 and 2, which assumed that non-populist voters will be in favour of

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more popular sovereignty and less liberal rights compared to voters of other parties, cannot be upheld for several reasons. First, the analysis of means has shown that both categories emphasise liberal norms more than the electoral ones mentioned in the study. Most of these results were, however, not significant enough to make assumptions about the entire population. Second, the regression analysis has not shown many significant effects among norm variables. Although there are some significant results in each of these analyses that are in line with the predictions made in hypotheses 1 and 2, it seems that democratic norms do not decisively explain why people vote for any populist party.

If we look at the different types of populism, we see differences especially between left and right which correspond to prior research by Mudde and Kaltwasser (2013) and Rooduijn et al. (2017). Despite norm variables again not being able to explain most of the variation, there are some significant effects indicating that hypothesis number 3 might prove true. For the left, the main factors seem to be positive attitudes towards migrants and redistribution which underlines their inclusiveness. Right-wing populist voters, by contrast, are more united in their rejection of migrants and certain liberal norms, thereby showing some compliance with hypothesis 4. However, these tendencies are far from coherent in every country which reiterates the diversity that exists even with a particular type of populism. The results for the non-radical populist voters go in a similar direction. As expected, the mixture of different ideologies attracts a wide-range of voters whose opinions do not converge across nations at all. Whereas left and right-wing populists often reflect the populist discourse in their support for more direct participation opportunities, this link cannot be verified for non-radical populist voters specifically echoing the results of Rooduijn (2018) whose research has shown that non-radical populist parties have few things in common.

Although democratic norms in the model I constructed do not explain the populist vote sufficiently, future research should not discard the idea of distinctive democratic norms among populist and non-populist voters. The number of respondents for some parties might have been too low and some questions might not completely grasp the normative dimension I had intended to measure which means that different data sets or operationalisations might deliver more fruitful results. What is true is that the initially mentioned spread of liberal values has found ferocious resistance in populism which will continue campaigning for less liberalism and stricter adherence to the will of the people. Fortunately, the ESS (2018) will renew its democracy module in 2020/2021 and include a modified set of survey questions aimed at measuring competing views of democracy. I would encourage scholars to make use of these improved questionnaires as they will allow for better measuring of

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populist attitudes and enhance the understanding of what people think should be the ideal version of democracy.

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Notes

1. The following countries were surveyed in the ESS (2012) but lacked significant populist parties which is why they did not make it into the analysis: Cyprus, Estonia, Iceland, Slovenia. The remaining countries in the survey did not have a populist party at the time (according to Rooduijn et al. 2019): Albania, Kosovo, Portugal, Russia, Ukraine. Israel was not considered as it is located in the Middle East.

2. The liberal norm variables will be abbreviated as follows: 1. Free media, 2. Minority rights, 3. Equality before law, 4. Courts able to stop gov’

3. The electoral norm variables will be abbreviated as follows: 1. Referenda, 2. Gov’ responsiveness

4. The literal questions for each of the control variables are the following: Satisfaction: How satisfied with the way democracy works in country? Trust: Trust in country's parliament?;

Redistribution: And still thinking generally rather than about [country], how important do you think it is for democracy in general... ...that the government takes measures to reduce differences in income levels?

Immigration: Is your country made a worse or a better place to live by people coming to live here from other countries?;

Gender: Gender;

Age: Age of respondent, calculated;

Education: What is the highest level of education you have successfully completed?;

Income: Using this card, please tell me which letter describes your household's total income, after tax and compulsory deductions, from all sources? If you don't know the exact figure, please give an estimate. Use the part of the card that you know best: weekly, monthly or annual income.

5. In the case of Germany, instead of one education item which determines the highest level of education achieved, there were several education items, each of which focusing on a different aspect of the German education system: highest school degree (allgemeiner Schulabschluss); highest university degree (Studienabschluss); highest apprenticeship degree (Ausbildungsabschluss). To assess the education level, I thus used years of full-time education completed. The corresponding literal question is: About how many years of education have you completed, whether time or part-time? Please report these in full-time equivalents and include compulsory years of schooling.

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Tables and Figures

Tables

Table 1. Populist parties in the study Region Countries valid/

missing Right-wing populism

Respon-dents % Left-wing populism

Respon-dents % Non-radical Populism Respon-dents % WE Belgium 1358/1600 Vlaams Belang 47 1.6% List Dedecker 6 0.4% Front National 8 0.6%

CEE Bulgaria 1352/1606 National Front 14 1.0% GERB 774 57.2%

Ataka 28 2.1%

CEE Czech R. 1041/1917 Public Affairs 97 9.3%

WE Denmark 1327/1631 Danish People's Party 117 8.8% WE Finland 1498/1460 True Finns * 202 13.5%

WE France 1256/1702 Front National * 126 10.0% Left Front 63 5.0%

WE Germany 1859/1099 The Left 161 8.7%

CEE Hungary 1002/1956

Fidesz 633 63.2%

Jobbik 73 7.3%

Justice and Life 1 0.1%

WE Ireland 1652/1306 Sinn Fein 178 10.8%

WE Italy 536/2422 Lega Nord 8 1.5% 5 Star Movement 126 23.5%

Brothers of Italy 2 0.4% People of Freedom 87 16.2%

CEE Lithuania 1073/1885 Way of Courage 22 2.1%

Order & Justice 123 11.5% WE Netherlands 1412/1546 Party for Freedom 96 6.8% Socialist Party 142 10.1%

WE Norway 1175/1783 Progress Party 132 11.2% CEE Poland 1076/1882 Law & Justice 340 31.6% CEE Slovakia 1114/1844 Ordinary People 62 5.6% WE Sweden 1441/1517 Sweden Democrats 64 4.4% WE Switzerland 743/2215 Swiss People's Party 131 17.6%

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Consideration criterion: at least 60 respondents Percentage = respondents/valid responses

Gray shaded area: Parties to small to be subject of analysis. Only analysed together with other populist parties from the same country.

Countries not considered in the study due to lack of significant populist parties: Cyprus, Estonia, Iceland, United Kingdom (UKIP not part of survey item), Slovenia. * Party has renamed itself since survey was conducted

Table 2. Binary logistic regression explaining democratic norms of the overall populist constituency

Be Bu Cz Dk Fi Fr Ger Hu Ir It Li Nl No Pl Se Sk Ch

Political Liberalism - -

Popular Sovereignty + +

Media free to criticise

government +

Protection of minority

rights -

Courts treating everyone the same Courts stopping the

government - Referendums + - + + Government responsiveness + Satisfaction - - + - Trust - - - + - - - Redistribution + + + + Immigration - - + - - - - - Gender + + + + + Age - - - - Education - + - - - - - Income - -

Gray shaded areas: significant at P < 0.050

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Table 3. Binary logistic regression explaining democratic norms of different populist constituencies

Left-Wing Non-Radical Right-Wing

Fr Ger Ir Nl Bu Cz It Li Be Dk Fi Fr Hu Nl No Pl Se Se Ch Political Liberalism - - Popular Sovereignty + + + Media free to criticise government + Protection of minority rights + - - Courts treating everyone the same Courts stopping the

government - - Referendums + - + + Government responsiveness + Satisfaction - - + - Trust - - - + - - Redistribution + + + + Immigration + + - - - - Gender + + + + + + Age - - - - Education + - - - - Income - -

Gray shaded areas: significant at P < 0.050

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Figures

Figure 1. Means of Political Liberalism and Popular Sovereignty for non-Populist Voters (Overall Populism)

Figure 2. Means of Political Liberalism and Popular Sovereignty for Populist Voters (Overall Populism)

7 7.5 8 8.5 9 9.5 10

Political Liberalism Popular Sovereignty

Means of Non-Populist Voters

Bulgaria Czech Republic Denmark Finland France Germany Hungary Ireland Italy Lithuania Netherlands Norway Poland Sweden Switzerland Slovakia 7 7.5 8 8.5 9 9.5 10

Political Liberalism Popular Sovereignty

Means of Populist Voters

Bulgaria Czech Republic Denmark Finland France Germany Hungary Ireland Italy Lithuania Netherlands Norway Poland Sweden Switzerland Slovakia

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Figure 3. Means of Political Liberalism and Popular Sovereignty for non-Populist Voters (Right-Wing Populism)

Figure 4. Means of Political Liberalism and Popular Sovereignty for Populist Voters (Right-Wing Populism)

7 7.5 8 8.5 9 9.5 10

Political Liberalism Popular Sovereignty

Means of Non-Populist Voters

Denmark Finland France Hungary Netherlands Norway Poland Sweden Switzerland Slovakia 7 7.5 8 8.5 9 9.5 10

Political Liberalism Popular Sovereignty

Means of Right-Wing Populist Voters

Denmark Finland France Hungary Netherlands Norway Poland Sweden Switzerland Slovakia