[Analysis] Economic hardship drives the populist vote

Broadly speaking, there are two explanations for the rise in populism. One reading is that economic impoverishment drives less educated, working-class or middle-class voters to the extremities of the political spectrum.

Another explains populism as a hostile cultural response to woke progressivism, of which mass immigration is the ultimate expression. By forcing it down the public’s throat, the elite has driven the common man into the arms of the populist.

Culture first

Ever since Donald Trump was elected as US president in 2016, there has been a tendency among political scientists and commentators to discount economics as a cause of increasing populism in Europe.

“Where populists have succeeded, they have done so by tapping a reservoir of populist sentiment that existed all along,” the political scientist Larry Bartels concluded based on a comprehensive European opinion poll.

Let’s take the recent shock election victory of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands as an example.

Dutch post-election polling suggested people voted for right-wing firebrand Wilders because they agreed with the anti-establishment, anti-immigrant policies he campaigned on.

Some commentators argued that Wilders co-opted forms of economic insecurity like the acute lack of affordable housing in the country and weaponised it against immigrants.

“The logical conclusion is that migration and economic [insecurity] are linked,” wrote political scientist Merijn Oudenamsen.

But this line of argument has been criticised as a form of ‘elite-splaining’ away the inherent racism and Islamophobia of the Dutch voter.

“The evidence people mainly voted for the anti-migration party because they are against migration is overwhelming,” the journalist Jesse Frederik concluded in a richly sourced recent piece on De Correspondent, a Dutch website for longform journalism.

Cultural phenomenon?

It’s difficult to dismiss the significance of anti-immigrant sentiments when it’s the primary reason the voters themselves give.

However, as political economist and sociologist Gábor Scheiring told EUobserver, relying on individual polling data is “a bad way of measuring economic insecurity.”

Scheiring, now a visiting fellow at Harvard, was a member of parliament in Hungary when authoritarian Viktor Orbán came to power in 2010.

“I lived through the collapse of democracy at the hand of a rightwing populist party,” he said. “After I left the country, I used that experience to understand the causes of populism.”

“What I noticed is that there is a tendency among political scientists to frame populism as mostly a cultural phenomenon that has little or nothing to do with economic hardship,” he added. “But economic insecurity often isn’t as clear cut.”

The effects of trade shocks, cheap imports from China, austerity, or robotisation on boosting populism take place over years or decades and affect regions differently and are harder to measure in the usual political surveys.

“But the fact that it doesn’t show up in polls doesn’t mean economic insecurity isn’t an important factor in driving populism,” said Scheiring.

He and his co-authors entered the debate with a first-ever meta-analysis of the causal evidence that economic insecurity significantly catalyses populism, published in late February.

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The point was not to show a correlation but to prove that economic hardship ’caused’ populism. Hence, the studies under review had to be designed to approximate experiments as much as possible.

Research on communities exposed to a singular economic factor that induces insecurity, such as austerity, bank failure, or automation over time, that produced exact data was eligible. But, such research is rare.

The total body of work using the ‘causal inference method’ amounts to just 36 studies globally. Based on these, Scheiring and his team found that economic insecurity explains around one-third of recent spikes in populism, describing the evidence as “overwhelming.”

Parental unemployment

Higher EU financing reduced populist support in Italy, while exposure to trade globalisation increased the populist vote in regions most affected.

Another study found that men exposed to Covid-related conspiracies in Brazil increased support for former president Jair Bolsonaro, while it reduced support among women who had lost their jobs.

The ‘Leave’ share in the Brexit referendum was systematically higher in regions more exposed to increased competition from Chinese imports, while it was lowest in areas that received the highest amount of EU structural funds.

Research in Germany has shown that even something as specific as parental unemployment during late childhood increases the affinity with far-right populist parties later in life.

“The link between economic precarity and increasing populism is absolutely clear,” Scheiring said. “That doesn’t mean that cultural factors are not important. They are, but the economy is at least as important.”

“My point is that the juxtaposition of culture versus economy is not very productive,” he said.

Finding the right language

“If the electoral playing field is centred around cultural issues, the left has no chance to win,” wrote Dutch political scientist Simon Otjes in a recent analysis of the Dutch elections.

“It is advantageous for left-wing parties if the elections focus on economic topics,” Otjes argued.

Europe’s centre-left launched a campaign last week based on vague and generalistic policies aimed at strengthening the welfare state. But for the left to win, it “has to dominate on economic issues” to start winning elections again.

This cannot be achieved with an “abstract story about solidarity,” he said. “Working people must know what they stand to gain in a language they understand.”

He suggests finding inspiration for the right language among labour union leaders.

Scheirings’ research also suggests that finding a narrative that appeals to populist voters may be as much about identifying what is causing economic anxiety in a community in the first place.