Policy Reports
A Playbook against Populism? Populist Leadership in Decline in 2021. Jan. 6, 2022.
In our annual update to our Populists in Power database, we find that the number of populist leaders in power around the world has dropped to 13, the lowest level since 2004. Four populist leaders fell from power in 2021, three of them through election loss. Two factors were important in these losses. One, populist leaders struggled with handling Covid-19. They had higher covid death rates than non-populist leaders. Populist leaders in Europe took a substantial polling hit, even before their countries had high covid death rates. This suggests that the pandemic reminded voters of the importance of seriousness and expertise in policymaking and that they were less favorable toward leaders who had less of a reputation for these.
Two, unusually broad opposition coalitions formed to depose these leaders. Previously divided opposition parties either formally or informally united to focus on removing the populist leader from power. This suggests that opposition parties can defeat populists if they remain focused and do not let their other substantive disagreements distract from this goal. The concern with such coalitions however is that once they take government, they collapse under the weight of their substantive difference. We examine the case of the post-populist coalition in Israel, which has been in power since June 2021 and is the most diverse in the country's history. We find that it has been able to remain in power because of the constant threat of populist Netanyahu's return but, critically, the member parties have focused their agenda on measures to present the rise of future populist leaders and other less controversial policies.
We conclude that such 'grand opposition coalitions' provide great promise for removing populist leaders if the parties can stay focused on removing the populist leader and setting the institutional conditions for preventing the rise of another when in office. We see evidence of such coalitions forming in other populist-led countries like Slovenia, Hungary, and Turkey. But there's also reason to believe that this may be less successful in the future: several remaining populist leaders have make institutional changes to insulate their power and may be more difficult to remove
Planes, Homes and Automobiles: The Role of Behaviour Change in Delivering Net Zero (with Tim Lord). Aug. 19, 2021.
While most reductions in carbon emissions to date have been in industry, the next phase of emissions reductions necessary to attain the UK government's goal of net zero emissions will require behavioral changes from individuals. In this report, we examine people's knowledge about what behavioral changes will be required of them and their willingness to make such changes in their lives. We find that while people have become much more aware of climate change and the government's net zero agenda, their understanding about what will be required of them is limited. Most believe that they personally are doing enough to tackle climate change and that big companies and government need to take further action. People are increasingly receptive to a variety of public policy measures to combat climate change, like air travel taxes and banning petrol cars, but across political beliefs, people are much more reluctant to cut back on or pay higher costs for every day things, like cutting meat from their diets or paying new taxes on gas.
Polls Apart: Mapping the Politics of Net Zero (with Tim Lord and Ian Mulheirn). Mar. 22, 2021.
The UK government has committed to reducing its carbon emissions by 40% by 2030 and 100%--or net zero--by 2050. But accomplishing these goals will require building a political coalition to support the requisite major policy changes. As a first step toward this, we examine the British public's attitudes toward climate change issues and how these have changed over the last ~10 years. We find that all groups, both by demography and political attitudes, have become more likely to be concerned about climate change and that it is caused largely by human action. Those in higher social classes and with higher incomes are more likely to have these views. Surprisingly, we find little attitude gap between urban and rural respondents and that the age gap is shrinking.
Climate change attitudes are divided on both a social open-closed dimension and an economic left-right one with the latter group in both being less likely to be concerned about it. But the open-closed divide is much wider than the left-right divide. Also, the open-closed divide has become a much stronger predictor of voting behavior in the past five years, with open attitudes voters now mostly supporting Labour and closed attitudes voters now mostly supporting the Conservatives. While we don't find polarization in climate change attitudes on this dimension--both open and closed attitudes voters are becoming more concerned about climate change--the increased salience of the open-closed divide and closely related culture war issues could bleed into climate change attitudes and create polarization here if conservative politicians/media types push an association between these.
Capitalizing on Crisis? Western European Populists and Covid-19, Past and Future. Mar. 5, 2021.
In this piece, we investigate the responses of right-wing populists to Covid-19 and their governments' policies in Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden. We find that responses to their governments' policies varied greatly in the initial weeks of Covid-19, ranging from highly restrained responses among Nordic country populists to very aggressive responses by populists in France, the Netherlands, and Spain. Response aggressiveness was positively correlated with case and death rates, although we argue that response aggressiveness was determined at least as much by future concerns regarding coalition formation as it was about substantive criticisms of government policy.
Populists who had restrained themselves in the initial weeks of the pandemic became more critical of their governments into the summer, focusing on non-transparency of policymaking, excessive restrictions on individual freedoms, and a lack of support for small businesses. Unlike in the United States, criticisms of China and Covid-19 conspiracy theories were limited to a few countries and were more common among the public than populist politicians.
We close the piece with a discussion of how the economic fallout from Covid-19 might affect support for populism. Governments have used extensive furlough programs to support businesses and wages but as these programs are wound down, many (especially small) businesses are likely to close. Small business owners are especially likely to support right-wing populists and populists can cater to the economic concerns of this group better than mainstream left and right parties, which depend more on knowledge economy workers less affected by Covid-19. But Covid-19 has also sped up the adoption of new technologies that threaten many knowledge economy jobs in western Europe. While these workers are currently unlikely to support right-wing populists, job loss and the attendant loss of social status could increase support for populists among them in the future.
Populists in Power: Perils and Prospects in 2021. Jan. 18, 2021.
Donald Trump’s attempts to subvert the democratic process and peaceful transfer of power illustrate the risks associated with populist leaders, who undermine the norms and institutions on which liberal democracy depends. But Trump is just the most salient example of populists in power around the world. Our annual study takes stock of the prevalence of populist leaders globally at the start of 2021. We find that the number of populist leaders in power around the world is down from its mid-2010s high, but it is close to the same level as at the start of the last decade. The composition of populist leaders in power has shifted. Cultural populists now constitute the majority of all populist leaders.
Trump’s loss may constrain other populist leaders around the world as they will likely have less international support and voters may become tired of their antics. But his absence is unlikely to damage their electoral prospects since most came to power before Trump was elected and base their support on domestic issues. Most are savvy and will adjust their behavior accordingly. US institutions are strong and held up against Trump’s attempts to subvert them. Countries with weaker institutions may be less likely to withstand a similar onslaught by a populist leader.
The Covid-19 pandemic has had some counterintuitive political effects, with populist leaders who took Covid-19 seriously in many cases receiving a polling boost. Opposition populist parties in western Europe took a polling hit in the first three months of the pandemic but had returned almost to their pre-Covid-19 polling levels by the end of October. The economic fallout from Covid-19 will create opportunities for cultural populists in advanced democracies.
In our annual update to our Populists in Power database, we find that the number of populist leaders in power around the world has dropped to 13, the lowest level since 2004. Four populist leaders fell from power in 2021, three of them through election loss. Two factors were important in these losses. One, populist leaders struggled with handling Covid-19. They had higher covid death rates than non-populist leaders. Populist leaders in Europe took a substantial polling hit, even before their countries had high covid death rates. This suggests that the pandemic reminded voters of the importance of seriousness and expertise in policymaking and that they were less favorable toward leaders who had less of a reputation for these.
Two, unusually broad opposition coalitions formed to depose these leaders. Previously divided opposition parties either formally or informally united to focus on removing the populist leader from power. This suggests that opposition parties can defeat populists if they remain focused and do not let their other substantive disagreements distract from this goal. The concern with such coalitions however is that once they take government, they collapse under the weight of their substantive difference. We examine the case of the post-populist coalition in Israel, which has been in power since June 2021 and is the most diverse in the country's history. We find that it has been able to remain in power because of the constant threat of populist Netanyahu's return but, critically, the member parties have focused their agenda on measures to present the rise of future populist leaders and other less controversial policies.
We conclude that such 'grand opposition coalitions' provide great promise for removing populist leaders if the parties can stay focused on removing the populist leader and setting the institutional conditions for preventing the rise of another when in office. We see evidence of such coalitions forming in other populist-led countries like Slovenia, Hungary, and Turkey. But there's also reason to believe that this may be less successful in the future: several remaining populist leaders have make institutional changes to insulate their power and may be more difficult to remove
Planes, Homes and Automobiles: The Role of Behaviour Change in Delivering Net Zero (with Tim Lord). Aug. 19, 2021.
While most reductions in carbon emissions to date have been in industry, the next phase of emissions reductions necessary to attain the UK government's goal of net zero emissions will require behavioral changes from individuals. In this report, we examine people's knowledge about what behavioral changes will be required of them and their willingness to make such changes in their lives. We find that while people have become much more aware of climate change and the government's net zero agenda, their understanding about what will be required of them is limited. Most believe that they personally are doing enough to tackle climate change and that big companies and government need to take further action. People are increasingly receptive to a variety of public policy measures to combat climate change, like air travel taxes and banning petrol cars, but across political beliefs, people are much more reluctant to cut back on or pay higher costs for every day things, like cutting meat from their diets or paying new taxes on gas.
Polls Apart: Mapping the Politics of Net Zero (with Tim Lord and Ian Mulheirn). Mar. 22, 2021.
The UK government has committed to reducing its carbon emissions by 40% by 2030 and 100%--or net zero--by 2050. But accomplishing these goals will require building a political coalition to support the requisite major policy changes. As a first step toward this, we examine the British public's attitudes toward climate change issues and how these have changed over the last ~10 years. We find that all groups, both by demography and political attitudes, have become more likely to be concerned about climate change and that it is caused largely by human action. Those in higher social classes and with higher incomes are more likely to have these views. Surprisingly, we find little attitude gap between urban and rural respondents and that the age gap is shrinking.
Climate change attitudes are divided on both a social open-closed dimension and an economic left-right one with the latter group in both being less likely to be concerned about it. But the open-closed divide is much wider than the left-right divide. Also, the open-closed divide has become a much stronger predictor of voting behavior in the past five years, with open attitudes voters now mostly supporting Labour and closed attitudes voters now mostly supporting the Conservatives. While we don't find polarization in climate change attitudes on this dimension--both open and closed attitudes voters are becoming more concerned about climate change--the increased salience of the open-closed divide and closely related culture war issues could bleed into climate change attitudes and create polarization here if conservative politicians/media types push an association between these.
Capitalizing on Crisis? Western European Populists and Covid-19, Past and Future. Mar. 5, 2021.
In this piece, we investigate the responses of right-wing populists to Covid-19 and their governments' policies in Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden. We find that responses to their governments' policies varied greatly in the initial weeks of Covid-19, ranging from highly restrained responses among Nordic country populists to very aggressive responses by populists in France, the Netherlands, and Spain. Response aggressiveness was positively correlated with case and death rates, although we argue that response aggressiveness was determined at least as much by future concerns regarding coalition formation as it was about substantive criticisms of government policy.
Populists who had restrained themselves in the initial weeks of the pandemic became more critical of their governments into the summer, focusing on non-transparency of policymaking, excessive restrictions on individual freedoms, and a lack of support for small businesses. Unlike in the United States, criticisms of China and Covid-19 conspiracy theories were limited to a few countries and were more common among the public than populist politicians.
We close the piece with a discussion of how the economic fallout from Covid-19 might affect support for populism. Governments have used extensive furlough programs to support businesses and wages but as these programs are wound down, many (especially small) businesses are likely to close. Small business owners are especially likely to support right-wing populists and populists can cater to the economic concerns of this group better than mainstream left and right parties, which depend more on knowledge economy workers less affected by Covid-19. But Covid-19 has also sped up the adoption of new technologies that threaten many knowledge economy jobs in western Europe. While these workers are currently unlikely to support right-wing populists, job loss and the attendant loss of social status could increase support for populists among them in the future.
Populists in Power: Perils and Prospects in 2021. Jan. 18, 2021.
Donald Trump’s attempts to subvert the democratic process and peaceful transfer of power illustrate the risks associated with populist leaders, who undermine the norms and institutions on which liberal democracy depends. But Trump is just the most salient example of populists in power around the world. Our annual study takes stock of the prevalence of populist leaders globally at the start of 2021. We find that the number of populist leaders in power around the world is down from its mid-2010s high, but it is close to the same level as at the start of the last decade. The composition of populist leaders in power has shifted. Cultural populists now constitute the majority of all populist leaders.
Trump’s loss may constrain other populist leaders around the world as they will likely have less international support and voters may become tired of their antics. But his absence is unlikely to damage their electoral prospects since most came to power before Trump was elected and base their support on domestic issues. Most are savvy and will adjust their behavior accordingly. US institutions are strong and held up against Trump’s attempts to subvert them. Countries with weaker institutions may be less likely to withstand a similar onslaught by a populist leader.
The Covid-19 pandemic has had some counterintuitive political effects, with populist leaders who took Covid-19 seriously in many cases receiving a polling boost. Opposition populist parties in western Europe took a polling hit in the first three months of the pandemic but had returned almost to their pre-Covid-19 polling levels by the end of October. The economic fallout from Covid-19 will create opportunities for cultural populists in advanced democracies.
Pandemic Populism: An Analysis of Populist Leaders' Responses to Covid-19. Aug. 17, 2020.
While the perception of populist politicians' responses to Covid-19 is that they've downplayed it, we find that this hasn't been the case for most of the populist leaders currently in power in our database. Of the 17 populist leaders in power at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, we find that only 5 (including Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil) have consistently tried to downplay the significance of the virus. But while 12 of the 17 populists in power took the virus seriously, including adopting science-driven policies and giving a prominent role to experts, we found that their approaches in handling it differed. We found that 4 of our 17 populist leaders took a liberal serious response and didn't use the pandemic to crack down on their opponents. But we also found that 5 of our 17 populist leaders took an illiberal serious response, using the pandemic to try to pass controversial legislation, enact harsh lockdowns, and enforce these lockdowns in ways that were biased against their political opponents. 3 of our 17 leaders took intermediate responses. While the 5 leaders who downplayed the crisis represented all of our three types of populists (Socio-Economic, Anti-Establishment, and Cultural), we found that only Cultural Populists took an illiberal serious response, often using the pandemic to gain the upper hand in the cultural conflicts that they used to attain power. We close with a discussion of how Covid-19 is unlikely to kill populism and may even strengthen it in the long-run.
While the perception of populist politicians' responses to Covid-19 is that they've downplayed it, we find that this hasn't been the case for most of the populist leaders currently in power in our database. Of the 17 populist leaders in power at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, we find that only 5 (including Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil) have consistently tried to downplay the significance of the virus. But while 12 of the 17 populists in power took the virus seriously, including adopting science-driven policies and giving a prominent role to experts, we found that their approaches in handling it differed. We found that 4 of our 17 populist leaders took a liberal serious response and didn't use the pandemic to crack down on their opponents. But we also found that 5 of our 17 populist leaders took an illiberal serious response, using the pandemic to try to pass controversial legislation, enact harsh lockdowns, and enforce these lockdowns in ways that were biased against their political opponents. 3 of our 17 leaders took intermediate responses. While the 5 leaders who downplayed the crisis represented all of our three types of populists (Socio-Economic, Anti-Establishment, and Cultural), we found that only Cultural Populists took an illiberal serious response, often using the pandemic to gain the upper hand in the cultural conflicts that they used to attain power. We close with a discussion of how Covid-19 is unlikely to kill populism and may even strengthen it in the long-run.
High Tide? Populism in Power 1990-2020 (with Jordan Kyle). Feb. 7, 2020.
In this piece, we update our Populists in Power database on which democratic countries contain populist leaders through early 2019. We find that the number of populists in power in 2019 was near an all-time high at 19, but that the composition of populist leaders had changed over this period. While in earlier periods, most populist leaders either left-wing populists (which we call Socio-Economic populists) or rose in opposition to a long-entrenched regime (which we call Anti-Establishment populists), most current populist leaders in power are right-wing Cultural Populists. These are leaders like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, who mobilize voters over cultural grievances, including opposition to cultural elites and often on issues involving immigration and religious or ethnic minorities.
In this piece, we update our Populists in Power database on which democratic countries contain populist leaders through early 2019. We find that the number of populists in power in 2019 was near an all-time high at 19, but that the composition of populist leaders had changed over this period. While in earlier periods, most populist leaders either left-wing populists (which we call Socio-Economic populists) or rose in opposition to a long-entrenched regime (which we call Anti-Establishment populists), most current populist leaders in power are right-wing Cultural Populists. These are leaders like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, who mobilize voters over cultural grievances, including opposition to cultural elites and often on issues involving immigration and religious or ethnic minorities.
Op-Eds/Blog Posts
Populist-led Governments are More Likely to be Punished for Rising Covid-19 Deaths. LSE EUROPP Blog. Jan. 28, 2022.
Did Countries with Populist Leaders Suffer More from Covid? LSE Covid-19 Blog. Aug. 23, 2021.
Climate Policy Can Rebuild the Beleaguered Social Democratic Electoral Alliance. TBI Blog Post. Jul. 20, 2021.
Capitalizing on a Crisis? Assessing the Impact of Covid-19 on Populist Parties in Western Europe. LSE EUROPP Blog. Mar. 16, 2021.
Another Populist Moment? Inside Story. Dec. 10, 2020.
Covid-19 and Cultural Populist Parties in Europe: Short-Term Cost, Long-Term Gain? TBI Blog Post. Nov. 19, 2020.
Trump and Bolsonaro's Coronavirus Response was Poor, but That Doesn't Mean all Populists are Bad in a Crisis. The Independent. Aug. 17, 2020.
Did Countries with Populist Leaders Suffer More from Covid? LSE Covid-19 Blog. Aug. 23, 2021.
Climate Policy Can Rebuild the Beleaguered Social Democratic Electoral Alliance. TBI Blog Post. Jul. 20, 2021.
Capitalizing on a Crisis? Assessing the Impact of Covid-19 on Populist Parties in Western Europe. LSE EUROPP Blog. Mar. 16, 2021.
Another Populist Moment? Inside Story. Dec. 10, 2020.
Covid-19 and Cultural Populist Parties in Europe: Short-Term Cost, Long-Term Gain? TBI Blog Post. Nov. 19, 2020.
Trump and Bolsonaro's Coronavirus Response was Poor, but That Doesn't Mean all Populists are Bad in a Crisis. The Independent. Aug. 17, 2020.