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To what extent do European citizens have a populist view of politics? Under what conditions are these populist attitudes more prevalent? What are their political consequences in terms of individual behavior? This talk will present an overview of the causes and consequences of populist attitudes in Europe using comparative and longitudinal survey data. The effect of economic conditions (both objective and perceived), emotional reactions of anger and fear, and internal political efficacy are explored. From our evidence populism is more related to sociotropic perceptions than to objective economic hardship, and to anger than to fear. Populist attitudes seem to be also powerful mobilisatory motivations for political engagement, particularly for people with low levels of income and education.

Eva Anduiza is professor of political science at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona where she is also ICREA Academia research fellow. She directs the research group on Democracy, Elections and Citizenship, and until recently she directed the Master in Political Science. She is currently 2018-19 Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioural Sciences at Stanford University.

Anduiza' s main areas of research deal with different aspects of citizens’ involvement in politics in advanced democracies. This includes an interest in the causes and consequences of electoral turnout, political protest, digital media and political attitudes. She is also interested in attitudes towards corruption and in survey and experimental methodology. Recently her research has focused on the attitudinal consequences of the economic crisis, with a special focus on populist attitudes. Her next project explores how individuals’ attitudes towards gender equality and feminism change over time.

Sponsored by the Global Populisms Project at The Europe Center

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Recent scholarship suggests that, under authoritarian regimes, quasi-democratic institutions such as elections and legislatures—the velvet gloves of autocratic rule—actually enable political stability and economic growth. The political economies of China and Vietnam are indeed remarkably stable and dynamic, and compared with China’s ostensibly democratic institutions, those in Vietnam are open and raucous. That makes Vietnam a likely place to find election and legislatures performing their hypothetically salutary functions.  But are they?

Even in Vietnam, Prof. Schuler will argue, the legislature’s main function is to convey regime strength and cow possible opposition.  Using evidence drawn from more than ten years of fieldwork, survey research, and close readings of legislative debates and the debaters’ lives, he finds that electoral and legislative activity reflect intra-party debates rather than genuine citizen opinion. His results should temper expectations that such institutions can serve either as safety valves for public discontent or as enablers of tangibly better governance. Single-party legislatures are more accurately seen as propaganda tools that reduce dissent while increasing disaffection. That said, Schuler will acknowledge that opponents of authoritarian rule may manage, under certain conditions, to repurpose seemingly democratic institutions toward undermining the regime whose longevity they were developed to prolong.

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