Attitudes towards politics and voting for Populist Parties: a comparative perspective

The concept of populism is arduously discussed, and several definitions have been proposed (Canovan, 1981; Laclau, 1977; Meny and Surel, 2002). The current study alleges the idea of populism as a political strategy (Mudde, 2004). Considering this conception, this paper contributes to the literature by observing which kind of general attitudes towards politics are related to the vote for a party that is applying a populist strategy. We argue that electors' attitudes toward political process-making, rather than standpoints on concrete policies themselves, are important in determining voters' inclination for populist parties (Hibbing and Theiss-Morse, 2002). While previous studies state that specific positions on policy issues influence the vote choice, we consider that attitudes towards the way political decisions are made drive the electorate to a populist vote - and this to a greater extent than attitudes towards the policy content of the decisions. These attitudes encompass voters' concerns about the way decisions are made in the framework of and their position towards the party system; their disposition to parties, the representative role and the intermediate bodies. For this purpose, a cross-sectional analysis on Italian, German and Swedish national-survey data spanning five years will be performed.