Populist attitudes in Australia : Contextualising the demand-side

The study of populist attitudes is a burgeoning area of scholarship. While the manner in which populism is measured and the concepts underpinning it are continuously updated, much work remains. In this article we consider the way populist attitudes are associated with key issues in Australian politics and the way these issues shape voting behaviour. We demonstrate that populist attitudes are associated with dissatisfaction with the functioning of liberal democracy, as well as negative attitudes towards Indigenous peoples. However, we find it is not strongly associated with economic anxiety. We argue that measuring populist attitudes in isolation from other national level contextual factors is problematic and can lead to flawed assumptions about the drivers of voting behaviour.

学术界对民粹主义的研究方兴未艾。测量民粹主义的方法、阐述民粹主义的概念方面不断有新的进展，但还有很多工作有待完成。本文研究了民粹主义态度与澳大利亚政治重要话题的结合方式以及这些话题塑造选举行为的方式。民粹主义态度与对自由民主制度运行的不满、与对原住民的负面态度相联系，与经济上的焦虑却无太大关联。笔者认为，将民粹主义脱离其他国家层面的语境因素进行测量是有问题的，会导致对选举行为成因的错误假设。