Fairness and Support for Populist Parties

• Published date: 01 June 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00104140231193013
• Author: Sung In Kim,Peter A. Hall
• Date: 01 June 2024
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Comparative Political Studies

2024, Vol. 57(7) 1071–1106

© The Author(s) 2023

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DOI: 10.1177/00104140231193013

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Fairness and Support for

Populist Parties

Sung In Kim

1

and

Peter A. Hall

1



Abstract

On the premise that issues of fairness are important to voting behavior but

often unrecognized, we explore how feelings of unfairness increase support

for populist parties. We distinguish personal unfairness, the view that one’s

own economic situation is unfair, from social unfairness, the view that the

economic situation of others in society is unfair. Based on f‌indings in psy-

chology, we argue that uncertainties associated with the transition to a

globalized knowledge economy heighten people’s feelings of personal un-

fairness and f‌ind empirical support for that contention. We develop argu-

ments about why feelings of personal unfairness should increase support for

the populist right and feelings about social unfairness should increase support

for the populist left and f‌ind empirical support for them. Our results con-

tribute to explanations for why people vote for the populist right rather than

the left and underline the roles that uncertainty and issues of fairness play in

electoral politics.

Keywords

populism, fairness, radical right, radical left, electoral politics

1

Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Peter A. Hall, Department of Government, Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies,

Harvard University, 27 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.

Email: phall@fas.harvard.edu

A large body of research indicates that people whose livelihoods are

threatened by regional economic decline or automation are more likely than

others to vote for candidates of the populist right (Anelli et al., 2021;Autor

et al., 2020;Colantone and Stanig 2018;Im et al., 2019;Kriesi et al., 2008;

Rodrik 2021). But why do they vote for the populist right rather than parties of

the left? In some respects, this outcome is puzzling. Although some populist

right parties defend income maintenance programs, in many developed de-

mocracies the policies of radical left parties, and even some center-left parties,

speak more directly to the material needs of people facing threats of un-

employment or economic deprivation (Enggist and Pingerra 2022;Fenger

2018). The principal appeal of populist right candidates often lies in their

stances against immigration, even though most studies f‌ind that the economic

benef‌its of limiting immigration would be small (Ivarsf‌laten 2008;Ottaviano

and Peri 2012;Rooduijn et al., 2017). Some candidates of the populist right

seek trade protection, but its appeal may also be cultural in nature (Hays et al.,

2019;Mutz 2021).

This puzzle directs our attention to the extent to which electoral politics is

not simply a contest for material resources. Although democratic politics may

ultimately be about “who gets what, when, how”(Lasswell 1936), it also has

other dimensions, visible in the longstanding power of nationalist appeals and

the prominent roles of ethnic or racial conf‌lict in many polities (Bonikowski

2016;Jardina 2019). Scholars seeking to understand the contemporary re-

surgence of support for right populism from these more cultural perspectives

have generally emphasized the extent to which that resurgence represents a

backlash against the growing prominence of post-material values or the status

anxieties aroused by recent efforts to promote gender equality, racial equality,

and multiculturalism (Gest et al., 2018;Gidron and Hall 2017;Norris and

Inglehart 2019). There is much in these perspectives, but it is still puzzling

why people suffering from the effects of economic dislocation or susceptible

to the threat of automation should be especially likely to support parties of the

populist right. Arguments focused on the psychological effects of threats to

status get us only some distance toward resolving this problem (Mutz 2018;

Gidron and Hall 2020).

To these issues, we bring an approach that emphasizes how central

considerations about fairness are to political behavior and electoral politics. In

some respects, that claim may seem obvious. Social democratic parties have

long campaigned on appeals to social justice (Moschonas 2001) and liberal

political theorists have portrayed fairness as the bedrock of social justice

(Rawls 1971). Sandel (2018) notes that moral claims such as these may

motivate voters just as strongly as material concerns do (see also Cavaill ´

e

2023;Rodrik 2018). Many analyses in social psychology also point to the

importance that people attach to issues of fairness (Lind and Tyler 1988). But

scholars of voting behavior have tended to draw a sharp distinction between

1072 Comparative Political Studies 57(7)

moral issues, seen as ones engaging human values, from issues associated

with the distribution of economic resources (cf. Ryan 2014); and many studies

of the relationship between economic developments and votes for populist

parties tend to emphasize the material interests engaged by those develop-

ments rather than concerns of the sort associated with issues of fairness (e.g.,

Anelli et al., 2021;Autor et al., 2020;Broz et al., 2021;Colantone and Stanig

2018).

There is special warrant for approaching support for populist parties from

the perspective of fairness. Several seminal ethnographic studies reveal that

perceptions of unfairness are central to the grievances motivating support for

populist right movements (Cramer 2016;Hochschild 2018); and, inspired by

Runciman’s (1966) research, other studies f‌ind that positional deprivation,

based on changes in a person’s income relative to the incomes of others, or

nostalgic deprivation, def‌ined as decline from an imagined level of prior

social, political, or economic standing, are associated with support for populist

politicians (Burgoon et al., 2019;Gest et al., 2018;Kurer 2020). However, it

has not yet been established whether the concerns about unfairness high-

lighted in this ethnographic research generalize to wider populations; and it

remains unclear whether the political effects of positional deprivation follow

from relative material losses or from feelings of unfairness associated

with them.

The purpose of this paper is to pursue these issues by considering how

beliefs about unfairness might condition support for radical parties. Building

on research in social psychology, we develop a theoretical argument to explain

why individuals who believe that their personal economic situation is unfair

are inclined toward anti-immigrant attitudes and support for populist right

parties, and we explain why those feelings of personal unfairness can be

intensif‌ied by the subjective uncertainty that accompanies contemporary

economic developments. Based on the literature about “beliefs in a just

world,”we develop a parallel argument to explain why perceptions about

unfairness in the economic situation of other people is also conducive to

support for radical parties, but in this case for populist left parties.

1

We then test these arguments empirically. Using economic data, we show

how regional economic shocks and threats of automation amplify feelings of

personal unfairness. With individual-level data from the European Social

Survey for thirteen Western European countries, we examine the association

between different types of feelings of unfairness and attitudes toward im-

migration or redistribution as well as levels of support for parties of the

populist right and left. We f‌ind that people who think that their personal

economic situation is unfair are more likely to embrace anti-immigrant at-

titudes and support the populist right, while those who believe that the

distribution of income or jobs in their society is unfair are more likely to favor

redistribution and the radical left.

Kim and Hall 1073