Attitudes towards politics and voting for Populist Parties: a comparative perspective

The study populism has been a concern for a long time in the literature of political science, sociology and political psychology. Most studies so far approached populism in a rather broader sense – with a focus on party politics or leadership characteristics. In this scenario, citizens enter the picture as voters for a party that has been defined to be populist, and their attitudes are analysed dependent on this vote choice. Less attention, then, has been devoted to the study of populist attitudes among the citizenry (Akkerman, Mudde & Zaslove, 2014; Hawkins, Riding & Mudde, 2012; Stanley, 2011). The present study focuses on public opinion independently of voting behaviour, and it will try to investigate if there are ‘purely’ populist attitudes.