Love at First Sight? Populism, Stealth Democracy, and Direct Democracy

This article examines the relationship of populist attitudes and the support for and attitudes related to direct democracy. While existing studies view populists’ demand for direct democratic measures, such as referendums, as being mainly related to their stealth democratic attitudes (Bowler et al. 2017: 4-5), we challenge this view through a systematic empirical test of the link between populist attitudes, stealth democratic attitudes, and public support for direct democracy. Specifically, we argue that two dimensions constituting populism, namely anti-elitism and the perception of the people as good and homogeneous, explain individual support for direct democracy—independently of stealth democratic attitudes. Based on the population-based NCCR Democracy Phase 3 Module 1 Survey in four Western European democracies (UK, F, CH, and DE) we find, in line with our argument, that both dimensions of populism explain individual support for direct democracy. In detail, we find that individuals with more populist attitudes on either of the two dimensions consider it more important that people have the final say, and that the citizens are allowed to directly vote on all political matters without constitutional safeguards, e.g. protecting minority rights.