Authoritarianism and the Populist Within: Experimental Evidence from Chile

Populism and democracy have a dubious relationship. Yet many voters are strongly attracted to populist leaders and their Manichean messages. Why? We theorize that populism arouses the kinds of emotions and latent attitudes that disrupt democracy’s fragile equilibrium. Namely, we expect populist messages activate a noxious mixture of authoritarian values that shape citizens’ evaluations of populists and, ultimately, their willingness to vote for them. We test these expectations using an experimental approach fielded among a national sample of Chileans. The results suggest that populist discourse triggers authoritarian attitudes that alter individuals’ evaluations of the leadership of and affect towards a populist candidate. In turn, leadership evaluations and affect are strongly associated with electoral support for a populist candidate. These findings have key theoretical and political implications. By understanding some of the micro-processes that produce populism in Latin America, we begin to flesh out major linkages between political communication and self-governance more broadly. Moreover, these results suggest that the political and social contexts that invite populist leaders are necessary but insufficient for understanding the effective of a populist discourse on voters. A greater appreciation for the success of populist leaders must include the psychological attributes that might make voters more or less prone to support a populist discourse. Politically, both would-be populists and non-populist candidates (“elitists” and “pluralists”) can learn how to tailor their message in order to activate (and deactivate) populist attitudes.