The support for populist attitudes. Is it caused by personal of societal threat?

Research on populism usually focusses on the rethoric of political parties. The present study explores populist attitudes at an individual level, and attempts to explain the support for populism on the basis of two different theories. The first of those explains populism as a reaction of the ‘losers of modernisation and globalisation’. According to this theory people opt for populism as a result of socioeconomic vulnerability. The other theory considers populism as the result of the perception of the evolution of society. Populists, according to this explanation, believe that society is in decline and blame the elites and the established politicians and parties for this state of affairs. The explanatory power of these two theories is tested on the basis of the results of a paper-and-pencil survey conducted during the last months of 2013. The pure probability sample consists of inhabitants of Belgium (Flemish and French speaking), aged 25 to 35 (N=1,951). The results indicate that the support for populist attitudes is primarily a consequence of a negative perception on how society is evolving. The personal socioeconomic position and experiences of socioeconomic vulnerability turn out to have only very weak, in fact negligible effects on the support for populism.