Ideologically consistent, but for whom? An empirical assessment of the populism-elitism-pluralism set of attitudes and the moderating role of political sophistication
| Published date | 01 November 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/02633957211017763 |
| Author | Bram Spruyt,Matthijs Rooduijn,Andrej Zaslove |
| Date | 01 November 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957211017763
Politics
2023, Vol. 43(4) 536 –552
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/02633957211017763
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Ideologically consistent, but
for whom? An empirical
assessment of the populism-
elitism-pluralism set of
attitudes and the moderating
role of political sophistication
Bram Spruyt
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
Matthijs Rooduijn
University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Andrej Zaslove
Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Abstract
Scholars who study populism from an ‘ideational approach’ consider populism as a set of ideas
based on a moralised anti-establishment thinking and a strong people-centrist view of politics.
From this perspective, at a theoretical level, populist attitudes have the following two main
contrasts: pluralism and elitism. In this article, we investigate the ideological consistency of the
populism-pluralism-elitism set of attitudes among voters. Analysing data from Flanders (N = 1444),
we make three main contributions. First, we show that there indeed exists an internally consistent
relationship between populism, elitism, and pluralism among voters. Second, we demonstrate that
this consistency only holds for the most politically sophisticated citizens. And third, we show that
the relationship between populist and elitist attitudes is much more nuanced than often assumed.
We show that it is possible to empirically distinguish between ‘expertise elitism’ and ‘anti-populist
elitism’, two forms of elitism which relate differently to populist attitudes.
Keywords
elitism, pluralism, political sophistication, populist attitudes, survey research
Received: 18th September 2020; Revised version received: 7th April 2021; Accepted: 23rd April 2021
Corresponding author:
Bram Spruyt, Sociology Department, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Brussels, Belgium.
Email: bram.spruyt@vub.be
1017763POL0010.1177/02633957211017763PoliticsSpruyt et al.
research-article2021
Article
Spruyt et al. 537
In the shadow of an ever-growing volume of contributions that study populism either
from a conceptual basis or from a party-based perspective, an increasing number of schol-
ars focus on the so-called ‘demand’ side of populism, that is, on the opinions of individual
voters. This literature follows an ‘ideational approach’ and thus considers populism as a
set of logically consistent ideas that represents politics as a Manichean struggle between
the homogeneous blocs of the ‘good people’ and the ‘corrupt elite’, with the goal of bring-
ing the power back to ‘the people’ (Mudde, 2017; Rooduijn and Pauwels, 2011; Stanley,
2008). This literature on the ‘demand side of populism’ has resulted in the development
of a number of different attitude scales (Akkerman et al., 2014; Castanho Silva et al.,
2020; Hawkins et al., 2012; Schulz et al., 2018; Wuttke et al., 2020) that have been suc-
cessfully used for both correlational (e.g. Van Hauwaert and van Kessel, 2018) and exper-
imental research (e.g. Hameleers et al., 2018; Hawkins et al., 2020).
One characteristic of the expanding literature on this demand side of populism, how-
ever, is that it tends to treat populist attitudes as a standalone phenomenon (Bickerton and
Accetti, 2017). In this article, and following Anne Schulz’s (2019: 8–13) work, we argue
that in order to advance our understanding of the origins, meanings, and consequences of
populist attitudes, it is important to assess (1) whether and (2) among which citizens
populist attitudes are related to other ideas in an ideologically coherent way.
Scholars who focus on relationships between attitudes argue that understanding a con-
stituting idea requires comprehension of the system in which that attitude is embedded
(Daenekindt et al., 2017). Moreover, the level of attitude coherence as measured by the
strength of the relationships between the ideological and/or attitudinal positions is consid-
ered to be a feature that affects both the stability and the resulting effects of the constitut-
ing ideological elements. Such variation implies that the meaning of an individual attitude
(e.g. populism) may vary between different subgroups and that one misses this point if
one studies attitudes in isolation. The specific relevance of this for populism becomes
readily apparent.
First, some scholars have called populism a thin-centred ideology thereby suggesting
that it can easily be combined with different ideological elements (Stanley, 2008).
Translated to the level of voters, such an assumption raises the question as to whether
populist attitudes actually correlate in any predictable and meaningful way with other
varying views on politics (such as pluralism and elitism) or whether they are flexible and
untethered. The latter question refers to a more fundamental issue. Although it is clear
how populism, pluralism, and elitism relate to each other in theory (see further), we know
very little about how these attitudes correlate among the general public. The few studies
that have assessed the relationship between these concepts have led to inconclusive
results (Akkerman et al., 2014; Hawkins et al., 2012). For example, at the voter level,
research found a positive correlation between populism and elitism, while a negative cor-
relation was expected (Akkerman et al., 2014).
Second, one of the most important insights from the literature on attitude coherence
concerns the general weakness of the ‘ideological consistency’ of the public, in particular,
those of the less educated (Converse, 1964; Lupton et al., 2015). This observation raises
important normative questions concerning the general public’s capacity to grasp the com-
plexity of – and ultimately, the meaningfulness of – representative democracy (Schulz,
2019: 10). Indeed, some scholars argue that populism is ‘an illiberal democratic response
to undemocratic liberalism’ (Mudde et al., 2018: 1670) that ultimately poses a threat to
democracy (Müller, 2014; Urbinati, 2014). Strategies that aim to address or combat popu-
list attitudes will be different when populist attitudes are a standalone phenomenon
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