A Tale of Two Populisms: Concept and Measurement of Right-wing and Left-wing Populist Attitudes
Authors
Jami, Waleed Ahmad
Issue Date
2023
Type
Dissertation
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Abstract
Populism is a powerful political force worldwide. Since WWII, populist parties have doubled their representation in governments including presidential and parliamentary roles. There is a consensus that populist movements or parties champion the will of the people, and the struggle of the ordinary people against the elite. Yet, there is a debate on how to measure populism at the individual level. Populist attitudes are difficult to conceptualize in terms of their factor structure, and existing measures often lack predictive power. One way to remedy these issues is to articulate how populist attitudes intersect with the left-right political spectrum. Populism usually occurs on the outer ends of the left-right political spectrum, entailing different views on society for the populist left and the populist right, respectively. Whereas the populist left views society as a struggle between the working class and the economic elite (e.g., bankers), the populist right perceives society as a clash between natives and the cultural elite (e.g., technocrats). The goal of this research is to develop two populist attitude scales: left-wing and right-wing. I conducted five studies to develop these two scales. Because the heart of populism depends on opposition to elites, the focus of Study 1 (n = 111) was to identify the types of elites (i.e., economic, cultural, political elites) people recognize using thematic analysis. Results indicated that economic elites (opponent of the populist left) and cultural elites (opponent of the populist right) were just as common as the political elite, as populist attitude measures almost exclusively focus on them. Study 2 (n = 230) used existing populism measures and reduced these scales to the best items, yielding a three-factor solution: anti-pluralism, anti-elitism, and people-centrism. Study 3 (n = 250) emphasized the construction of parallel scales for left-wing and right-wing populist attitudes based on Study 1 themes and Study 2 items, and examined criterion variables. Study 3 results showed that left-wing populist attitudes were linked to a positive evaluation of left-wing groups, a greater willingness to engage in future unconventional and conventional activism, the beliefs that Biden should enact executive orders and that Trump was responsible for the January 6 insurrection. In contrast, right-wing populist attitudes were related to a positive evaluation of right-wing groups, a willingness to take up arms against the government, the beliefs that there was electoral fraud in the 2020 election, that Christians are discriminated against in the U.S., and that Trump was not responsible for the January 6 insurrection. Study 4 (n = 200) expanded the nomological net and finalized scale development. Left-wing populist attitudes were associated with civic nationalism and left-wing authoritarianism whereas right-wing populist attitudes were linked to right-wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, ethnonationalism, and nativism; both were related to conspiracy beliefs and collective narcissism. The first four studies comprised of U.S. samples. Study 5 (n = 909) tested the equivalence of these scales with a multi-national dataset (U.S., Canada, & Australia) and cross-validated a subset of nomological net and criterion variables, and found that the scales are psychometrically equivalent and cross-validated across three English speaking cultures. The discussion details the new understanding of populist attitudes and their relationship to society and democracy.
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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 United States