Beware, the Fox is Already Inside the Henhouse! Exploring Illiberal Attitudes Among Political Elites and Voters in a Liberal Democracy

The ideological hegemony of liberalism is being internally challenged across European liberal democracies by publics increasingly critical of many of the key aspects integral to a liberal democratic political system. This has resulted in various types of anti-establishment parties growing in popularity, partly united in their critique towards a political system and an associated ideology that they consider having failed their various definitions of “the people”. Still, irrespective of an increasingly skeptical public and growing support for anti-establishment parties, a liberal minded political elite has long been expected to act as guardians of the liberal form of democracy. This presumed elite-consensus, we argue, cannot be taken for granted. Accordingly, in this study we will challenge the wide held assumption that the political elites will seek to act as guardians of liberal democracy by instead arguing for the emergence of an increasingly illiberal minded alternative political elite. This so-called illiberal elite represents political parties that are not nominally opposed to democracy as a system of governance but oppose many of the key aspects of a liberal form of democracy, such as respect for minorities, gender equality, multiculturalism, secularism and LGBTQ-rights. By using theoretical guidelines from scholarships of populism, nativism, authoritarianism and illiberalism, we make an important contribution to the theory-building of political elites in a populist-era of politics. Moreover, by adapting what we will refer to as illiberal attitudes, i.e., skepticism or opposition towards values, policies and principles integral to a modern liberal democracy, as an analytical tool we are able to use statistical analyses to explore the emergence of two antagonistic sets of political elites. These two groups of political elites are both broadly defined by semi-coherent ideologies constituting the foundation for their respective views about society: liberalism and illiberalism. Moreover, we will further explore to what extent these two groups of political elites align with their respective party supporters concerning how they relate to the main policies included in a liberal form of democratic governance. Using guidelines from the theory-building of political socialization and democratic dissatisfaction, we thus seek to predict illiberal attitudes among political elites and party supporters by utilizing two survey data sets, one including candidates running for national office (N=483) and one including a representative citizen sample (N=2 743), collected in relation to the Finnish national elections in the spring of 2023. Thereby using Finland as a case-study for exploring the emergence of illiberal attitudes in an established West European liberal democracy. Consequently, our findings also contribute to the theory-building of both voter-elite differences as well as the promising research field of illiberalism studies as an addition to the more established research fields of populism, nativism and authoritarianism.