Authoritarian and Populist Challenges to Democracy Correspond to a Lack of Economic, Social, and Cultural Capitals

Tea Golob, Maruša Gorišek () and Matej Makarovič
Additional contact information
Tea Golob: Faculty of Information Studies, SI-8000 Novo Mesto, Slovenia
Maruša Gorišek: Faculty of Information Studies, SI-8000 Novo Mesto, Slovenia
Matej Makarovič: Faculty of Information Studies, SI-8000 Novo Mesto, Slovenia

Societies, 2023, vol. 13, issue 8, 1-12

Abstract: We explore attitudes toward democracy in relation to social divisions by focusing on the European Union member states and the corresponding EU political field. Positioning in the European political field is addressed through the theory of social fields as provided by Bourdieu and further conceptualized by Fligstein and McAdam. Drawing on the data obtained from the European Social Survey, we conducted a principal component analysis of the attitudes toward democracy and a correspondence analysis between these attitudes and social, cultural, and economic capitals. We demonstrate that attitudes toward challenging the existing representative democratic order can be seen in terms of two distinct dimensions: authoritarianism and populism. The presence of both corresponds to the lack of one’s possession of economic, social, and cultural capitals and the related political habitus. Those who lack these forms of capital are more prone to support strong authoritarian leaders and are also more likely to endorse conspiracy theories. We can relate this to the problems of exclusion and deprivation related to the lack of political habitus required for effective agency in the political field.

Keywords: democracy; authoritarianism; populism; conspiracy theories; political field; habitus; social capital; cultural capital; economic capital; correspondence analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 A14 P P0 P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/13/8/181/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/13/8/181/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsoctx:v:13:y:2023:i:8:p:181-:d:1210815

Access Statistics for this article

Societies is currently edited by Ms. Farrah Sun

More articles in Societies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().