Whose Blame Undermines Support for the Government: Populists, Experts, or Oppositions

When do voters abandon party politics? As Schattschneider said “modern democracy is unthinkable save in terms of the parties.” Political parties are an indispensable part of liberal democracy, and competition between parties helps foster the ideal of liberty. Globalisation, financial crises, and the COVID-19 pandemic since 2020, all have cast doubt on the efficacy of party politics. Whereas populist parties and independent experts are criticising the party governments, insisting that existing political parties have lost effective governability. Populist and technocratic attacks on party government seem to deepen voter mistrust in party politics, but it remains an open question as to whether populist or technocratic rhetoric actually affects voter trust in party politics. Considering that, in some countries, governments have gained great authority that can limit civil liberty in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, it will be a matter of serious concern if people abandon their trust in the efficacy of party competition and responsible party governments. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, this paper examines whose rhetoric, the populistic one, technocratic one, or the one based on party politics, lays blame on the governments’ response to the pandemic, and affects the voters’ attitude towards governments. To answer this question, we conducted a factorial survey experiment in Japan, where various elements, from rank-and-file members of the governing party to the advisory board of medical experts, have all criticised the government and the government has been blamed for its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our survey experiment approximates such situations of public debates. In our survey experiment, subjects are presented the rhetoric criticising the Japanese government’s response to the pandemic by randomly assigning blamers that is, rank-and-file members, coalitional partners, opposition parties, prefectural governors, and independent experts, and the framing, that is, technocratic, populistic, and partisan discourse. Through the experiment, our study contributes to the literature on the crisis of liberal democracies, governments’ responses to the pandemic, and political behaviour.