Populist Attitudes, Political Trust, and External Political Efficacy: Old Wine in New Bottles?
| Date | 01 February 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321719842768 |
| Author | Bram Geurkink,Kristof Jacobs,Roderick Sluiter,Andrej Zaslove |
| Published date | 01 February 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321719842768
Political Studies
2020, Vol. 68(1) 247 –267
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321719842768
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Populist Attitudes, Political
Trust, and External Political
Efficacy: Old Wine in New
Bottles?
Bram Geurkink1, Andrej Zaslove2,
Roderick Sluiter1,2 and Kristof Jacobs2
Abstract
Substantial scholarly attention has been devoted to explaining why voters support populist
parties. Recently, a new concept has been introduced to gauge populism among voters and to
explain voting for populist parties: populist attitudes. However, some researchers regard populist
attitudes as simply another measurement of existing and established concepts such as political
trust and external political efficacy. Using data from the Netherlands (2018), this article addresses
the relationship between these concepts, both theoretically and empirically. This article examines
whether political trust, external political efficacy, and populist attitudes tap into different latent
dimensions. Using a confirmatory factor analysis, we show that populist attitudes are not old wine
in new bottles and that they tap into different underlying attitudes than political trust and external
political efficacy. Furthermore, we show that the three measures are not only different constructs
but also relate differently to populist voting preferences.
Keywords
populism, populist attitudes, external political efficacy, political trust, populist vote
Accepted: 18 March 2019
Introduction
Research on populism, especially on the populist radical right, is abundant. For some time
now, researchers have been interested in why voters support populist parties. With the suc-
cess of not only populist radical right but also populist left parties, the question has become
more complex. Researchers are interested in why voters support populist parties beyond
1 Economics Department, Institute for Management Research, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The
Netherlands
2
Political Science Department, Institute for Management Research, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The
Netherlands
Corresponding author:
Bram Geurkink, Economics Department, Institute for Management Research, Elinor Ostrom Building,
Heyendaalseweg 141, 6525 AJ, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Email: b.geurkink@fm.ru.nl
842768PSX0010.1177/0032321719842768Political StudiesGeurkink et al.
research-article2019
Article
248 Political Studies 68(1)
their left-right ideology (Akkerman et al., 2017; Rooduijn, 2018; Van Hauwaert and Van
Kessel, 2018). Is there something about populism that attracts voters to parties as diverse
as Podemos in Spain or the French Rassemblement national? Framing the problem as such
has sharpened the focus on whether voters for populist parties share unique attributes that
capture the essential and core features of populism beyond its left and right variants.
Earlier research often conflated radical right, fascist, and extremist parties with pop-
ulism. However, more recently, increased conceptual clarity has allowed researchers to
clearly identify which parties are populist and which are not (Mudde, 1996, 2007;
Rooduijn and Akkerman, 2017; Taggart, 1995). According to Mudde (2004), the core of
populism can be reduced to three essential components. First, populism is people-
centered, and it is anti-elite: populism pits the pure people against the corrupt elite.
Second, the dichotomy between the pure people and the corrupt elite is antagonistic (or
what is often referred to as Manichean). Third, and finally, populists proclaim that politics
should be an expression of the general will of the people.
Three sets of attitudes are commonly associated with voting for populist parties. First,
researchers use political trust as an indicator to explain why individuals vote for populist
parties (e.g. Doyle, 2011; Fieschi and Heywood, 2004; Rooduijn, 2018). Employing
political trust implies that those who have a lower level of trust toward political elites
(Rooduijn, 2018) or political institutions (Fieschi and Heywood, 2004) are more likely to
support populist parties. This taps into the anti-elitist component of populism, with anti-
elitist sentiments defined as anti-politician or anti-institution. Second, external political
efficacy is used to explain support for populist parties (e.g. Rooduijn et al., 2016). External
political efficacy taps into the feeling that citizens’ opinions are not heard by politicians.
The expectation is that individuals with lower external political efficacy are more likely
to vote for populist parties because political elites are not sufficiently attentive to citizens’
demands, that is, tapping into the anti-elitist component of populism.
More recently, scholars have developed another approach: the populist attitudes
approach (Akkerman et al., 2014; Castanho Silva et al., 2019; Hawkins et al., 2012; Van
Hauwaert et al., 2019; Van Hauwaert and Van Kessel, 2018). According to the populist
attitudes approach, populism is an individual attribute that can be directly measured
among individuals and is therefore not only a feature of political parties (Akkerman et al.,
2014; Hawkins et al., 2012; Van Hauwaert and Van Kessel, 2018). The populist attitudes
construct includes the three components of populism: people-centrism and anti-elitism,
the antagonistic relationship between the people and the elite, and a focus on the general
will. In particular, it focuses on the juxtaposition between a people-centered notion of
political representation and the corrupt political elite. The expectation offered by this
approach is that individuals with stronger populist attitudes are more likely to vote for
populist parties.
To capture the core elements of populism, studies have scrutinized the effects of politi-
cal trust, external political efficacy, and populist attitudes on populist voting behavior,
either separately or simultaneously (e.g. Akkerman et al., 2017; Spruyt et al., 2016; Van
Hauwaert and Van Kessel, 2018). However, sometimes, these items (in combination with
others) are used to assess other concepts. For example, Passarelli and Tuorto (2018) com-
bine political efficacy items, political trust items, and items on a “belief in a functioning
party democracy” to assess system discontent. Furthermore, some have questioned the
uniqueness of the three concepts and suggested that populist attitudes may not be substan-
tially different from external political efficacy (Van der Kolk, 2018) or are simply “old
wine in new bottles” (Rooduijn, 2019: 364).
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