Reactionary Orientations, Resentful Affect and ‘Anti’ Preferences: the Affective and Motivational Drivers of Populist Support.

In this paper we investigate the role of resentment and conservation values as determinants of reactionary political preferences in populist times. We examine the complex affective drivers of political reaction going beyond simplistic accounts of anger or fear and capture citizens’ experiences of perceived injustice, envy, suspicion and lack of hope by measuring their resentment. We make a distinction between resentful and non-resentful citizens, and examine their issue preferences and evaluations of political institutions. We use data from the 2017 World Values Survey (Greece module) which contain unique measures of political resentment, core values and political preferences. Our findings extend theoretical and empirical work in the field and shed light on the black box of the affective drivers of political reaction.