Discontent With What? Linking Self-Centered and Society-Centered Discontent to Populist Party Support
| Author | Benjamin Schürmann,Heiko Giebler,Susanne Veit,Magdalena Hirsch |
| Date | 01 November 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321720932115 |
| Published date | 01 November 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321720932115
Political Studies
2021, Vol. 69(4) 900 –920
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321720932115
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Discontent With What? Linking
Self-Centered and Society-
Centered Discontent to
Populist Party Support
Heiko Giebler , Magdalena Hirsch,
Benjamin Schürmann and Susanne Veit
Abstract
Previous studies aimed at explaining populist support emphasize the crucial role of populist
attitudes and ideology among the general population. With respect to the role of discontent and
grievances as drivers of populist support—often at the heart of theoretical work on populism—
however, empirical results are rather mixed. We argue that the apparent contradictions are partly
due to insufficient conceptualization of discontent. We distinguish between societal-centered
discontent, which is more based on a general, negative subjective assessment of society, and
self-centered discontent that expresses a negative assessment of one’s personal situation. In line
with our expectations, regression results for Germany confirm that society-centered discontent,
but not self-centered discontent, is important for populist party support. Moreover, we find
that society-centered discontent also moderates the relation between populist attitudes and
populist support. We conclude that beyond ideologies, populism capitalizes on the cultivation of
collective—but not individual—discontent.
Keywords
society-centered discontent, populist attitudes, Alternative for Germany, populist party support,
self-centered discontent
Accepted: 15 May 2020
Populist support can be understood as an expression of protest or motivation for political
change in response to a negative or negatively perceived status quo. It relates to what you
yourself or “people like us” deserve—in comparison with the “ideal” society or to a “glo-
rious” past (e.g. Gest et al., 2018; Kriesi and Pappas, 2015; Rooduijn et al., 2016; Van Der
Bles et al., 2018). Feeling less well off than one deserves creates discontent. The notion
of such discontent being important for populist support ties in with many reports of
WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Berlin, Germany
Corresponding author:
Heiko Giebler, WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Reichpietschufer 50, 10785 Berlin, Germany.
Email: heiko.giebler@wzb.eu
932115PSX0010.1177/0032321720932115Political StudiesGiebler et al.
research-article2020
Article
Giebler et al. 901
populism and its success in the last decades ranging from Taggart’s (2004) concept of the
“sense of crisis” to the “losers of modernization” thesis (Kriesi et al., 2006; Lengfeld,
2017b; Rippl and Seipel, 2018; Rooduijn, 2015) and arguments regarding democratic
disappointments (Canovan, 1999; Laclau, 2005).
Despite the high interest in discontent in populism research, previous studies remain
rather unspecific and undecided concerning the nature and focus of this discontent (Rico
and Anduiza, 2019; Van Der Bles et al., 2018). The present article addresses the question
of the focus of discontent and distinguishes between society-centered and self-centered
discontent. By the term society-centered discontent, we refer to a group-centered evalua-
tion that concerns the society as a whole and relates strongly to Elchardus and Spruyt’s
(2016) concept of declinism as well as notions of societal pessimism (Steenvoorden and
Harteveld, 2018), collective nostalgia (Cheung et al., 2017; Mols and Jetten, 2014), the
zeitgeist of collective discontent (Van Der Bles et al., 2015, 2018), and group-based rela-
tive deprivation (Abrams and Grant, 2012; Smith et al., 2012). Self-centered discontent,
by contrast, reflects dissatisfaction with one’s personal situation and taps into concepts
such as individual relative deprivation (Smith et al., 2012) and fear of downward social
mobility (Bornschier and Kriesi, 2013; Inglehart and Norris, 2016; Jetten et al., 2015;
Mutz, 2018).
According to the ideational approach, populist ideology creates a collective identity
(“the people”), fosters strong negative emotions against outgroups (especially “the elite”)
and justifies its ideology with a concrete group-based goal: the implementation of the will
of the people in defense against elite interests (Anduiza et al., 2019). Expanding on this
line of reasoning, we propose that populist support is primarily driven by sociotropic
concerns about “the people” and much less so by self-centered discontent. In addition, we
argue that the consideration of society-centered discontent helps to better understand the
relationship of populist attitudes (PA), on the one hand, and populist party support, on the
other hand. Previous studies that draw on the ideational framework (Hawkins and
Kaltwasser, 2018; Mudde, 2004, 2017) have focused on the interplay of PA and host ide-
ologies (Loew and Faas, 2019; Van Hauwaert and Van Kessel, 2018). We expand this
perspective by considering discontent as an additional driver of populist party support.
We expect that discontent increases the likelihood of populist party support both directly
and indirectly, as a powerful moderator. More precisely, we expect that PA need to fall on
the fertile soil of society-centered discontent to elicit populist party support.
We test these arguments using data from an online survey that is representative for the
German population. In line with our expectations, our results stress the notion that pop-
ulism is inherently linked to a perceived crisis. This sense of crisis, however, does not
refer to individual, but only to society-centered discontent. Second, our findings confirm
that society-centered discontent, and only this kind of discontent, strengthens the relation
between PA and populist party support. This leads to the conclusion that a closer exami-
nation of collective grievances and drivers of societal pessimism should provide impor-
tant insights into why populism has been so successful in the last two decades in virtually
all regions of the world.
Populism and Its Demand-Side Determinants:
The Role of Discontent
According to the ideational approach (Hawkins and Kaltwasser, 2018; Mudde, 2004,
2017), populism may be understood as a “thin ideology” based on the perceived
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