Economic Insecurity and the Causes of Populism, Reconsidered

By Yotam Margalit. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2019

227 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Growing conventional wisdom holds that a chief driver of the populist vote is economic insecurity. I contend that this view overstates the role of economic insecurity as an explanation in several ways. First, it conflates the significance of economic insecurity in influencing the election outcome on the margin with its significance in explaining the overall populist vote. Empirical findings indicate that the share of populist support explained by economic insecurity is modest. Second, recent evidence indicates that voters’ concern with immigration—a key issue for many populist parties—is only marginally shaped by its real or perceived repercussions on their economic standing. Third, economics-centric accounts of populism treat voters’ cultural concerns as largely a byproduct of experiencing adverse economic change. This approach underplays the reverse process, whereby disaffection from social and cultural change drives both economic discontent and support for populism.

Subfields: Political Science and International Relations, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/56e6fc91401d5342aeb4a318d4479840d241cb6b

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Citations in the corpus

Populist Leaders and the Economy (2020, background): “They also cover the (conﬂicting) strands of the literature with respect to cultural and economic factors (e.g., Margalit, 2019; Norris and Inglehart, 2019).”