Demand conditions for the growth of populist support

Abstract

While populism in the past was associated mainly with radical parties, by today they have become a part of the political mainstream in many countries. However, looking at the literature it is unclear what factors have led the rise in populist demand. A problem when trying to understand the causal relationship is, that large econometric analyses which were conducted over the past 5 years use different samples and measurement methods. This article will investigate three groups of reasons which may have led to the increase in populist demand: economic reasons; trust reasons and cultural factors. The article finds that because of regional and electoral heterogeneity it is not really possible to compare data from Europe with that of the USA, therefore before any general conclusions can be drawn it would be useful to have panel data across continents.