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How Populist are the People? Measuring Populist Attitudes in Tunisia
Abstract
It is evident that populism, both on the left and on the right, is affecting more and more countries from Europe and Latin America to Asia. The literature on populism has experienced a surge in the last few decades. Most of these works have focused on defining populism (Mudde, 2004; Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2017), measuring populist attitudes (Akkerman et al., 2014; Castanho Silva et al., 2020; Hawkins et al., 1992), and studying its consequences on people’s political behavior (Hawkins & Littvay, 2019; Van Hauwaert & Van Kessel, 2018; Zaslove et al., 2021). The scope of this fascinating research has been unfortunately unexplored in the Arab world. The present study expands this strand of literature by studying the case of Tunisia. Using the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) dataset (wave 5), this paper studies Tunisians’ populist attitudes using a three-dimensional attitudinal model: populism with its diverse components (anti-elitism, people centrism, attitudes towards representative democracy, support for authoritarian leaders), attitudes towards outgroups, and nativism. Specifically, it investigates whether these attitudes are predictive of voting behavior in the 2019 Tunisian elections. Results show that people who endorse these attitudes do not necessarily vote for Kais Saied or other populist parties/leaders. Most importantly, socio-demographic variables such as age and gender are more important predictors of voting for populists in Tunisia than other potential factors such as satisfaction with the government and perception of corruption. These results spur new theoretical and empirical questions about the nature and effect of populism in nascent democracies.
Discipline
Political Science
Geographic Area
Tunisia
Sub Area
None