Do Populist Parties Revive Participation? A Cross-Regional Analysis

Whether and under what conditions populist mobilization revives political participation is a contested issue. While previous studies have explored this question at the aggregate level studying turnout in national elections, this study explores the impact of populist mobilization on the individual level from a cross-regional perspective. Building on previous literature arguing that populist parties and candidates mobilize citizens that have been disappointed by mainstream parties and have less trust in politics, we first, analyze whether and when populist forces are more likely to mobilize voters who have not participated in the last election in comparison to mainstream political parties or incumbents. Second, we compare the characteristic of both populist supporters who indicated to have not voted in the previous election with those supporters who voted in the last election. By doing so, we are able to analyze whether individuals with lower socio-economic status, extreme preferences, or high levels of disapproval of the government are effectively mobilized by populist actors. The study develops tests these arguments relying on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th modules of the Comparative Study of Electoral System (CSES) dataset. Estimating multi-level models, the hypotheses are tested controlling for a range of contextual factors.