Contextual Determinants of Populist Attitudes’ Activation across 55 Countries

While several contemporary explanations for the electoral success of populist parties include the impact of populist attitudes by voters, the mechanism through which those attitudes turn into voting behavior remains elusive. One theoretical proposition (Hawkins et al. 2018) is the "activation theory", according to which voters’ populist attitudes lay dormant until being activated by a combination of the right contextual factors with a viable populist political actor. Tests of this theory so far, however, have been restricted to single or comparative case studies. In this paper we go further by testing the activation mechanism with surveys from 27 countries (n = 52,466) part of module 5 of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES). Using a series of multilevel models, and operationalizing the activation theory as a cross-level interaction, we find that populist attitude only lead to populist voting where the offer of populism by parties or candidates is balanced, meaning no subdimension of populism overshadows the other, nor are there other radical or extreme ideological elements to parties’ appeals. These findings qualify the link between populist attitudes and voting and help us better understand the factors driving populists’ successes around the world.