Rise of Populism: Identity Threats as an Explanation in Relation With Deprivation and Cultural Fear

• Published date: 01 September 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129241246213
• Author: Axel Babst,Martin Groß,Volker Lang
• Date: 01 September 2024
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Political Research Quarterly

2024, Vol. 77(3) 805–820

© The Author(s) 2024

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DOI: 10.1177/10659129241246213

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Rise of Populism: Identity Threats as an

Explanation in Relation With Deprivation

and Cultural Fear

Axel Babst

1

, Martin Groß

1

, and Volker Lang

1

Abstract

This article introduces the thesis of threatened social identities as a new explanatory approach to the emergence of

populist attitudes and tests it explicitly for the f‌irst time using quantitative data. We examine whether SIT indica tors

explain populist attitudes directly and inf‌luence effects of indicators of two established approaches: the losers of

modernization thesis (LOM) and the cultural backlash thesis (CBT). We use a sample represen tative for the German

labor force. Furthermore, we developed items to quantify the recognition of social identities for the f‌irst time with

respect to social class and occupational identities. All four of our SIT indicators—recognition of social class, recognition

of an East or West German identity, political recognition of occupational groups, and identity insecurity—are signif‌icant

predictors of populist attitudes. Based on SEMs, we also conclude that these variables are important antecedents of

previously established indicators of LOM and CBT on populist attitudes. Overall, we conclude that SIT adds to the

literature on the emergence of populism as another complementary explanatory approach. In addition to being effective

as an explanation in its own right, this thesis can also f‌ill theoretical and empirical gaps of the established LOM and CBT.

Keywords

populist attitudes, social identities, social recognition

Introduction

One current challenge to social cohesion in Western de-

mocracies is the growth of populist movements which

polarize societal debates and delegitimize political com-

promises as “a betrayal of the common people by elites”

(Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2019). Scholars have

extensively tried to identify reasons for the rise in populist

attitudes. The ongoing debates center around the “losers

of modernization thesis”(LOM, Gidron and Hall 2017;

Spier 2010) and the “cultural backlash thesis”(CBT,

Norris and Inglehart 2019). However, both theoretical

approaches have not yielded conclusive f‌indings yet.

Moreover, both ideas do not deliver a precise explanation

of how exactly macrostructural changes like moderni-

zation and globalization are supposed to affect populist

attitudes at the microstructural social level. Recent studies

indicate that threats to social identities which result from

large scale social changes contribute signif‌icantly to the

emergence of populist attitudes (Droste 2019;Groß

2021). Based on these initial f‌indings, we introduce so-

cial recognition and identity insecurity as important

mechanisms that connect social change with populist

attitudes. We test the explanatory scope of this innovative

approach in comparison to the more established LOM

and CBT.

Hence, the central question of this paper is: to what

extent do threats to social identities serve as an expla-

nation for the rise of populist attitudes? We use data of an

online survey which is representative of the German labor

force to address this research question. Germany is an

interesting case as populist parties did not have any long-

term success after WWII until the AfD (alternative for

Germany) was founded in 2013. Ten years later this party

is represented in most of the 16 state parliaments and is a

contestant for the second highest share of votes at the

federal level. Within this 10-year span, the party

1

University of Tübingen, Germany

Corresponding Author:

Axel Babst, Institute for Sociology, University of Tübingen, H ¨

olderlinstr.

29, Tubingen 72074, Germany.

Email: axel.babst@uni-tuebingen.de

leadership has changed several times and some of the

regional branches of the movement, which was once

founded as a party critical of the euro and the EU, are

being monitored by the German domestic intelligence

service. Political scientists uniformly classify the party as

populist (Arzheimer and Berning 2019;Decker 2016).

However, few scholars use measurements of populist

attitudes in the context of Germany which we intend to do.

Furthermore, this is the f‌irst study of populist attitudes

using a quantitative measure of social recognition. We

collected information on the perceived recognition of

three different social categories as well as a general

measure for identity insecurity in the form of anomia. We

use social class recognition, perceived occupational rec-

ognition on the part of politicians during the Covid

pandemic, and recognition of an East or West German

identity. The regional dimension of recognition is im-

portant for the German case since previous studies have

shown higher prevalence of populist attitudes in the

Eastern federal states of Germany (Manow 2018;Pesthy,

Mader, and Schoen 2021;Weisskircher 2020).

We organize our paper as follows: The next section

lines out the theoretical framework. The third section of

this paper describes the underlying data and methods in

more detail. In section four, we present the results of our

analyses. We conclude this paper by discussing our

f‌indings in section f‌ive and suggest directions for future

research.

Theory and Hypotheses

We start this section with our understanding of populism

as a “thin ideology”(Mudde 2004;Mudde and Rovira

Kaltwasser 2019). Second, we provide a brief overview of

the state of research on the explanation of populist atti-

tudes to date. Third, we present our new approach for the

explanation of populist attitudes. Based on a short elab-

oration of the importance of intact social identities, we

argue that the identity threat approach is the missing piece

of the puzzle to f‌ill the conceptual gaps in the LOM and

CBT approaches. To conclude the theoretical framework,

we derive our hypotheses for the subsequent empirical

analyses.

Populism as a “Thin Ideology”and Established

Explanatory Approaches

This paper uses the def‌inition of populism as a “thin

ideology.”Cas Mudde and Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser

established this def‌inition, thereby depicting populism as

an antagonist conf‌lict between the common will—

“volont´

eg

´

en´

erale”—of the “pure people”and a “corrupt

elite”that is in power and betrays the people (Mudde

2004, 543; Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2019, 25).

Fundamental for this “ideational approach”is the Man-

ichean worldview of a moral conf‌lict between good and

evil, the anti-elitism, and the sovereignty of the people

(Mudde 2004;Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2019).

Two approaches have emerged as the most frequently

discussed theories for identifying the causes of populism.

These are, f‌irst, the “losers of modernization thesis”

(LOM, Gidron and Hall 2017;Spier 2010) and, second,

the “cultural backlash thesis”(CBT, Norris and Inglehart

2019). Both approaches identify the consequences of

modernization and globalization as main drivers for the

rise of populism. The LOM focuses on economic change

and sees material wealth losses and status anxiety as

decisive reasons for the development of populist attitudes.

The CBT, on the other hand, emphasizes cultural change

and its consequences in the form of cultural threats to

traditional or national identities. The two approaches are

not mutually exclusive but rather complementary.

Losers of Modernization Thesis. The most prominent ex-

planation of the emergence of populist attitudes in

Western democracies is the LOM which focuses on

economic change (Gidron and Hall 2017;Mudde and

Rovira Kaltwasser 2018;Spier 2010). According to the

LOM, globalization and modernization in its form as

mechanization, destabilization of labor relations, and

immigration lead to more competition and pressure for

low-skilled and increasingly also middle status positions

in the labor market. Populist actors often declare them-

selves as advocates of protectionist measures to counter

outsourcing of jobs and the immigration of potential

competitors in the local labor market (Kriesi 2008). They

also argue in a sense of welfare chauvinism and frame

public (monetary) assistance as primarily a privilege of

native people—with nativism being a political highly

contested subject (de Koster, Achterberg, and van der

Waal 2013;Mau and Burkhardt 2009;Mewes and Mau

2012;Van der Waal et al. 2010).

Various scholars have already investigated the LOM.

Overall, lower educational attainment, low income, and

joblessness are possible predictors of populist voting (Lux

2018;Tutic and von Hermanni 2018). Still, the robustness

of these f‌indings is debated. Especially the different op-

erationalizations of populism (votes cast, voting inten-

tions, or appreciation of certain parties as proxy for

populist attitudes) draw criticism (Bergmann et al. 2017;

Lengfeld and Dilger 2018;Schr¨

oder 2018).

An increasing body of literature focuses on the sub-

jective perception of current and anticipated material

hardship. Not only people in low socio-economic cir-

cumstances feel attracted to populist movements but also

members of the middle class may have sympathies for

populist parties (Antonucci et al. 2017;Kraemer 2010;

806 Political Research Quarterly 77(3)