1.

Fontos azonban leszögezni, hogy a populizmus nem egy nemzeti sajátosság, hanem korunk
egyik legjelentősebb politikai kihívása, amely világszerte különböző formában párhuzamosan
van jelen (Győri, 2008).

Napjainkra a populizmus mind a politikai világ, mind a tudományos élet egyik

legközkedveltebb fogalmává vált. Továbbá a köznyelvben a kifejezést – általában negatív
jelzőként – újságírók és politikusok aggatják rá számos jelenségre illetve személyre, amely
azonban legtöbb esetben nem adekvát. Ugyanis – a fogalom vitatott jelentéstartalma okán –
populistának tekinti a köznyelv a demagóg, szélsőséges, vagy akár manipulatív
megnyilvánulásokat is (Bíró-Nagy – Győri – Kadlót, 2015). A kifejezés ily módon történő
használata a fogalom sablonosságát eredményezte, mindeközben a tudományos kutatása
csupán gyerekcipőben jár (Bartha, 2017).

A tudományos élet napjainkra ugyan felismerte, hogy a fogalom pontosan nem

meghatározható, és a több évtizedes kutatómunka ellenére csupán a populizmus különböző
megjelenési formáit illetve alapvető jellemvonásait sikerült feltárni (Bíró-Nagy – Győri –
Kadlót, 2015).

A fogalom meghatározását emellett akadályozza az is, hogy kit tekintünk a populizmus

alanyának. Ugyanis a populista jelzővel illethetünk egy mozgalmat vagy pártot, sőt
ráaggathatjuk különböző személyekre is, mivel populista vezetők nélkül nem létezne
populista szervezet sem.

Hátráltatja egyfelől tehát a meghatározást, hogy megkülönböztetjük a populizmus köznapi

és tudományos fogalmát. A köznyelv – ahogy arról már szó volt – a manipulatív,
leegyszerűsítő kommunikáció szinonimájaként kezeli a populizmust, amely az emberek
érzelmeire kíván hatni. Ezzel szemben a tudományos fogalom alatt olyan jelenséget értünk,
melynek keretében a kormányzat, vagy éppen az ellenzék a választók érdekeihez igazodva
cselekszik (Bayer, 2008).

Van Reybrouck szerint – megerősítve az előbbi lexikoni meghatározást – „a populizmus

egyrészt politizálási stílus, amikor az ember nem ódzkodik attól, hogy a tömeget
leegyszerűsítésekkel, üres jelszavakkal és egyetlen mondatba sűrített programcélokkal fogja
meg.” (Van Reybrouck, 2010:13).

Ahogy láthatjuk, a populizmus – szemben a nagyobb politikai ideológiákkal – nem egy

megszilárdult és komplex rendszer, hanem lényegében még egy formálódó, amorf jelenség.

Kivételt képez Győri Gábor, aki számos szempontból vizsgálva a jelenséget, a következő
meghatározást fogalmazta meg: „a populizmus fogalma olyan eszközöket takar, amelyek
elterjedt félelmekre alapulnak [...] és a nép igazi képviseletét sugallják [...] kiemelten a
politikai elittel szemben.” (Győri, 2008:16). Összevetve a fentebbi értelmezéseket azt
láthatjuk, hogy a populizmus alatt politikai aspektusban egy olyan irányvonalat esetleg
eszköztárat értünk, amelynek fő célja a nép megszólítása, akár ígéret akár félelemkeltés
által.
3.
The congruency model of political preference holds that voters seek politicians and parties
similar to their own personality, and that successful politicians “speak the language of
personality (...) by identifying and conveying those individual characteristics that are most
appealing (...) to a particular constituency” (Caprara and Zimbardo 2004, 581).

We expand this argument and theorize that a person is drawn to a populist party when the
anti-establishment message of this party, and its leader, is congruent with one’s personality.

Specifically, populism is “an ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into
two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’, and
which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of
the people” (Mudde 2004, 543).

What exactly is meant by ‘the people’ or ‘the elite’ depends

on the particular political context within which a populist party rallies (Canovan 1981). The
elite – arrogant, greedy, lazy, corrupt, unresponsive to ordinary people, and absorbed by
self-interest (Mudde 2004) – might be a political elite (politicians and parties), an economic
elite (bankers and ‘the rich’), a cultural elite (academics and writers), a media elite
(journalists) or a legal elite (judges).

Previous research has shown that the message of populist parties indeed differs from
the messages of mainstream parties. Based on a systematic content analysis of election
manifestos of parties in five Western European countries, Rooduijn, de Lange and van der
Brug (2014) demonstrate that populist parties are more inclined to make the claim that the
Good people are exploited by an Evil elite than mainstream parties. In sum, all prototypical
populist parties have in common that they express a specific anti-establishment message but
differ in the host ideology they have adopted (Mudde 2004).

To analyze the link between personality and populism we make use of the “congruency
principle”, which holds that voters “select politicians whose traits match their own traits
(Caprara and Zimbardo 2004, 581)”. This model assumes congruency between a voter’s
personality and the image of the party and the leader s/he votes for.

In other words, politicians need to communicate those individual

characteristics that appeal to a specific group of voters by sending a message congruent with
these features.

With the anti-establishment message as a central characteristic of populist parties, we

expect that for populist party supporters the content, structure or symbols of this anti-
establishment message should be congruent with some personality trait and, accordingly,
leading to support for a populist party.
4.
One fundamental characteristic of populism is that it does not constitute a clear ideology in
itself, but adopts its ideas, values and messages to the host environment and attacks the
establishment.

Contrary to this, a common characteristic of all populist politicians and parties is the use of
oversimplified communication panels which are abstract, vague and can be dropped into any
kind of context, if they are adjusted a little bit to the environment. Their frequently used
phrases like “the people”, “foreign powers”, “interest groups”, “evil forces”, “good vs. bad
people” travel easily across countries and appeal to voters.

If populism can travel through context that easily, and similar framing and rhetoric can be
successful across countries, is there a factor then in human nature which is receptive to it? Is
there something in an individual’s psychological build-up that makes the person more
attracted to such talk even if socio-economic, cultural or historical factors would not
necessarily imply it?

If voters cannot comfort themselves by making fully-informed decisions, I

hypothesize that they at least want to comfort their own psychological self by making
“instinctive” decision based on their personality traits in order to reduce the doubts or
possible contradictions about their decisions.

Hawkins (2009) argues that the first important characteristic of populism is that it translates
everything into a moral dimension and even purely technical questions are presented as a
struggle between good and evil.

Jagers and Walgrave (2007, 322) define populism as “a political communication style of
political actors that refers to the people.” By their definition actors can be politicians,
movement or interest group leaders or even journalists, the point is that they use a
communication frame that pretends to speak on behalf of the people. Consequently, they
use a language full of words such as ‘the people’, ‘the public’, ‘the taxpayers’, ‘the residents’.

One the one hand, a large body of scientific literature is concerned with how populist the
politicians and political parties are. Most of these studies try to measure populism by text
analysis. Armony and Armony (2005) analyzed Argentinian Internet forums and presidential
speeches so as to reveal populist patterns. Jagers and Walgrave (2007) performed a content
analysis of Belgian parties’ political broadcasts for the same purpose. Hawkins (2009) built a
large cross-country dataset of elite-level populist discourse in more than fourty current and
past governments in order to perform content analysis. Roodujin and Pauwels (2011)
examined election manifestos in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy.

In the past few years, a growing number of studies has

been published in this field (e.g. Stanley 2011; Hawkins et al. 2012; Akkerman et al. 2013)
that are rather concerned with how to measure the voters’ populist attitudes, or which
personality traits can be linked to populism (Bakker et al. 2015).
Stanley (2011) tested a series of populist attitude questions to see the impact of populist
attitudes on party preferences and voting behavior at the 2010 Slovak national election. His
findings are mixed as nationalist and economic attitudes proved to be significant predictors
of voting behavior, while populist attitudes turned out to be less influential. Stanley
attributed these findings to the post-communist context and to measurement errors, the
fact that the populist parties were in government at that time.

Hawkins et al. (2012) also measure populist attitudes, precisely, affinity for populist
discourse by surveys conducted in the United States at the 2008 national election. The
authors found that populist attitudes are widespread across the whole country and affinity
for populism is stronger among those with lower education, is weakly associated with low
income, strongly linked to identification with third parties and ideological radicalism, and
also correlates with anti-immigrant attitudes.

Akkerman et al. (2013) built their research design on the previously mentioned study by
Hawkins et al. (2012). To strengthen the validity of the results and to avoid simply measuring
anti-elitist attitudes, the authors define, operationalize and measure populism, pluralism
and elitism. The empirical analysis of the Dutch survey data shows that it is possible to
measure populist attitudes on an individual level, and furthermore these attitudes are
significantly correlated with intentions to vote for populist political parties. The authors also
found evidence that right-wing populism is more exclusionist, while left-wing populists are
more willing to listen to others. For further research Akkerman et al. (2013) suggest taking a
step towards exploring who are the populists, and what are their personal characteristics,
socioeconomic status or personal traits.

Several previous studies focused on linking personality traits with political ideologies. Among
others Mondak and Halperin (2008), Verhulst et al. (2010 and 2012), Carney et al. (2008)
worked on connecting certain attitudes, personality traits and ideologies. They tested if
common characteristics like ‘creativity, imagination, curiosity, enthusiasm, open-
mindedness,
tolerance, flexibility’ on the one hand, and ‘toughness, parsimony, obedience, conventional
and moralistic traits’ on the other hand can be linked to personalities and ideologies as well.

5.

In order to identify factors, which can explain the appeal of populist parties and candidates,
Bakker, Rooduijn, and Schumacher (2016) suggest populist voting grows out of psychological
roots. While the personality structure of individuals is assumed to determine political
behavior to some degree (Mondak, 2010), the relationship between personality traits and
voting for populist parties is not uncontested (Schimpf & Schoen, 2017). Specifically, the
argument relies on the assumption of the congruency model of political preference (Caprara
& Zimbardo, 2004), linking voters to candidates with corresponding personalities.
Accordingly, Van Assche, Dhont, et al. (2018) and Van Assche, Van Hiel, et al. (2018)
show that psychological characteristics such as authoritarianism, social dominance
orientation, prejudice, and cynicism predict support for populist parties.
Therefore, Hawkins et al. (2017: 280) make the case that “further study is needed, especially
studies that connect to populist attitudes per se and not just behavioral outcomes.”

are personality traits also associated with becoming more populist throughout an election
campaign, conditional on identifying with a populist party?

Indeed, being anti-immigration is the only appeal that unites all successful populist right
parties (Ivarsflaten, 2008).

Left-wing populism focuses on economic grievances rather than cultural issues (Akkerman,
Zaslove, & Spruyt, 2017), blaming elites for economic and political inequalities (Rooduijn
& Akkerman, 2017).

Research on electoral behavior suggests that support for populist parties is driven by certain
personality traits (Bakker, Rooduijn, and Schumacher, 2016).

edw037

Most recently, populism has been defined as a communication style (Jagers & Walgrave,
2007), a political strategy (Weyland, 2001), and a political ideology (Mudde, 2004).

Aside from two early attempts at the end of the twentieth century to identify populist
attitudes within the United States (Axelrod, 1967; Farrell & Laughin, 1976), it has only been
recently that populist attitudes have received significant at- tention from researchers.
Akkerman et al., (2014; see also Hawkins et al., 2012) de- veloped a one-dimensional
conceptualization of populist attitudes. This measure reflects two of the three key elements
of populism identified above: popular sover- eignty and an antagonism toward what is
perceived to be an evil political elite.

akkkerman et al

Our minimal definition begins with a common starting point: the people. Populists define
“the people” as the core and the heart of democracy. To be sure, this is not unique to
populists: The sovereignty of the people also con- stitutes a core and defining feature of
liberal democracy, often referred to as the representative pillar (Mair, 2002; Mény & Surel,
2002a). However, popu- lists have a very specific understanding of the people. The people
are viewed not only as sovereign, but also as homogeneous, pure, and virtuous. The people
represent the backbone of society; they are the silent majority, consti- tuting the basis of the
good society (Albertazzi & McDonnell, 2008a; Mény & Surel, 2002a; Mudde, 2004; Zaslove,
2008). They are what Taggart (2002) refers to as the heartland.

The people are subsequently contrasted with the elite, that is, those who threaten the purity
and unity of the sovereign people. The elite is seen as “evil,” while the people are seen as
“good.” This distinction between “good” and “evil,” or “pure” and “corrupt,” is an essential
distinction and a defining feature of populism; it further separates the populist concept of
the people from that of the mainstream parties. The tension between “the people” and “the
elite” is Manichean, that is, it has essentially a moral quality (Hawkins, 2009; Mudde, 2004).