Do populists want direct democracy? Examining the link between populist attitudes and the Finnish Citizens’ Initiative"

Theoretical works suggest that populists demand more direct democracy. However, rather than a monolith, it is helpful to conceptualize populism as a multidimensional attitude. Furthermore, it remains unclear how populist attitudes relate to other direct-democratic instruments such as citizens’ initiatives. We therefore examine whether populist attitudes affect the attitudes toward and the use of the Citizens’ Agenda Initiative (CI) in Finland with the help of the most recent national election study (FNES2019, n=1598). We aim to study 1) whether populist attitudes are associated with positive attitudes towards the citizens’ initiative 2) whether populist attitudes increase the propensity of using the citizens’ initiative, and 3) the interplay between anti-elitism, anti-immigration, and anti-pluralism as driving forces behind attitudes towards and using the citizens’ initiative. The results suggest that contrary to our expectations, anti-elitism has a negative link to satisfaction with the citizens’ initiative, and anti-pluralism is associated with lower likelihood of signing at least one initiative. While there is some evidence that anti-pluralism and anti-immigration attitudes in combination increases the likelihood of using the Citizens’ initiative, there is little to suggest that populist attitudes are strong drivers of involvement in this kind of direct-democratic participation.