Do parties’ representation failures affect populist attitudes? Evidence from a multinational survey experiment

• DOI: 10.1017/psrm.2021.63
• Publication Date: 2021-10-19T07:05:53Z
• Authors: Bruno Castanho Silva; Christopher Wratil
• Keywords: 506014 Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft; experimental research; 05 social sciences; Comparative politics: political behavior; European politics and integration; 506014 Comparative politics; 0506 political science

AbstractThe rise of populist forces in Western democracies is often linked to representation failures. However, to date we lack causally identified evidence for the effect of parties’ representation on populist attitudes. We address this lacuna through a survey experiment conducted in 12 European Union countries involving 23,257 subjects. Our experiment manipulates citizens’ perceptions of being represented by national parties in the 2019 European elections campaign, and identifies the effect of perceived representation on populist attitudes. The results reveal that poor representation increases populist attitudes in respondents that did not express such attitudes pretreatment, but has no effect among those who were already populist. We demonstrate that this effect is primarily due to parties’ representation failures triggering citizens’ anti-elite sentiment.