Left Behind Voters, Anti-Elitism and Popular Will

Benoit S. Y. Crutzen, Dana Sisak and Otto H. Swank

Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 2024, vol. 19, issue 2, 127-156

Abstract: Populists are often anti-elitist and advocate for popular will over expertise. We show that these two populist characteristics are responses to mainstream parties leaving behind the majority of voters, the common people. Our model highlights two forces behind electoral success: numbers, which favor the common people, and knowledge, which favors the elite. Electoral competition may lead parties to cater to the elite. We identify conditions under which an elite bias encourages entry with an anti-elite platform. Finally, we identify conditions under which parties follow the common people's opinion when that group would benefit from parties relying on experts.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1561/100.00022027 (application/xml)

Related works:
Working Paper: Left Behind Voters, Anti-Elitism and Popular Will (2020)
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:now:jlqjps:100.00022027

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Quarterly Journal of Political Science from now publishers
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lucy Wiseman ().