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Populist attitudes : Bringing together ideational and communicative approaches
Kefford, Glenn Moffitt, Benjamin Werner, Annika
Kefford, Glenn
Moffitt, Benjamin
Werner, Annika
Abstract
The study of populist attitudes has thus far drawn heavily on ideational definitions of populism, focussing almost exclusively on attitudes related to dimensions such as people-centredness and anti-elitism. However, these accounts have largely ignored other approaches to populism, especially the discursive-performative school which see populism as something that is communicated and done by political actors. We argue that when studying populist attitudes, these approaches are not mutually exclusive. In this article, we develop a novel measure of attitudes towards populist communication and consider how these interact with populist ideational attitudes. Testing our measures on the Australian case, we demonstrate that attitudes towards populist communication exist independently of populist ideational attitudes, and that they have a significant effect on voting behaviour and on attitudes related to the ideational approach. Therefore, we argue that studies of populist attitudes need to take attitudes towards populist communication into account in future work.
Keywords
populism, political attitudes, voting behaviour, political communication, Australia
Date
2022
Type
Journal article
Journal
Political Studies
Book
Volume
70
Issue
4
Page Range
1006-1027
Article Number
ACU Department
School of Arts and Humanities
Faculty of Education and Arts
Faculty of Education and Arts
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Relation URI
Source URL
Event URL
Open Access Status
License
All rights reserved
File Access
Controlled