Title of Proposed Study:

Voters’ Critical and Ideal Populist Attributes

and the Dimensionality of their Political Decision Making

Background of the Study:

This concept paper is anchored from the truth that every person is a political
being who has active participation in the political process. In this process, the political
man participated through his decision making in all political matters which is concretely
manifested through his ballot. However,
it is a general truth that voters’ decision making is affected by different circumstances.
Today, at least in the Philippines, one of the dominating factors that influence voters’
decision making is Populism.
Coming up with a universal definition “populism” is next to impossibility because
of the number of dimensions and faces that it has as a concept. When Paul Taggart
(2000: 22) tried to solve this problem of definition, he ended up concluding that
“populism is essentially a fractured concept”. However, it was apparent that attributes to
populism is available in numerous literature. It is in these attributes, particularly that of
Paul Taggart and Pierre-Andre Taguieff, which the realization of this concept paper be
possible.
Paul Taggart (2000: 2) identifies six crucial populist characteristics: hostility to
representative politics, idealization of the “heartland, absence of core values, a reaction
to the crisis, populism as containing fundamental dilemmas that makes it self-limiting,
and a context-dependent phenomenon. On the other hand, Pierre-Andre Taguieff
(1995, 27-32) identified five ideal type features of populism: the personal appeal to the
people, the appeal to a classless people, the direct appeal to the authentic, sane,
simple and honest people, the call for purification or redemptive rupture, and the
discrimination among individuals in terms of ethnic origin or cultural characteristics. The
two literatures, of Taggard and Taguieff, can suffice enough in understanding
“populism” attributes. Thus, is intended to create a general conclusion that populism can
be measure out of the attributes. It is also in these literatures a research study, such as
this, can be created out of aggregated populist voters attributes.
On the other hand, the researcher believes that intelligence and moral formation
played a major influence in the voters’ decision making. It is then in these bases that
voters’ decision making can be measured. This research is also hinges on the concept
that voters’ political decision making arises from the interplay of two dimensions of
political judgments: judgment of
facts and judgment of morals. Robert Dahl (1991) associated circumstances in
choosing political alternatives into judgment of facts and judgments about value,
goodness, or moral worth. Dahl stressed that he quality of judgment of fact can
be measured by evaluating one’s political judgments though empirical
information based from factual evidences. On the other hand, the judgment of
values, goodness and moral worth can be appraised based from the person’s belief or
assumption.
Statement of the Problem
 This conceived research study aims to assess the critical and ideal populist
attributes and the dimensionality of political decision making of the voter-respondents.
Moreover, proper mediation between the two populist attributes and dimensionality of
political decision making is significantly related as a whole in assessing the voting
dynamics of the respondents.
Fundamentally, the thrust of this study is to determine the respondents’
dominating populism attribute and the dimensionality of their political decision making.
In this regard, the following data sets have to be generated: (1) the demographic profile
of the respondents in terms of age, sex, and class, (2) the respondents’ dominating
populist attribute, and (3) the respondents’ dimensionality of their political decision
making. In order to answer the major research problem, the following research
questions will be investigated:

1. Is there a significant relationship between respondents’ Critical Populist

attributes and their profile variables: age, sex and class?

2. Is there a significant relationship between respondents’ Ideal Type

Populist attributes and their profile variables: age, sex and class?

3. Is there a significant relationship between respondents’ judgment of facts

as a dimensionality of political decision-making and their profile
variables: age, sex and class?

4. Is there a significant relationship between respondents’ judgment of

morals as a dimensionality of political decision-making and their profile
variables: age, sex and class?

5. Is there a significant relationship between the respondents’ populist

attributes and the dimensionality of their political decision making?