Populism

Using an original two-wave panel survey fielded before and after the US 2020 election, we investigate the relationship between populist attitudes, conspiracy beliefs, and the propensity to justify political violence. We find that conspiracy beliefs are associated with higher justification of violence, while the relationship with populist attitudes is mixed, depending on whether people believe in conspiracy theories or not.

Using CSES Module 5 (2016-2020) data from 30 countries, we show that existing scales of populist attitudes effectively explain voting for populist parties in countries where populist leaders and parties are in opposition but fail to explain voting for populist parties in countries where they are in power.