Role of Political Trust in the Rise of Populism

DOI

10.2991/hssmee-18.2018.89How to use a DOI?

Keywords

populism, political trust, electoral participation, non-nationalized participation.

Abstract

Explanations on the rise of populism focusing on the public demands for populism have largely been confined to the discussion of economic and cultural factors, while paid little attention on the interaction between economic and cultural factors, and the interaction between the demand-side and supply-side factors. Based on previous theoretical and empirical studies, this paper attempts to complex the model for the rise of populism, explaining the interaction between different factors with the changing levels of political trust. This paper finds that, besides working similar to other demand-side factors on increasing individual propensity to vote for populist parties and to abstain in elections, political distrust creates an environment favorable to populist parties by encouraging individuals’ non-institutionalized participation. In such environment, populist parties can strategically adjust their way to present their ideology and leadership, and further drive public sentiments against or distrusting the establishment which later becomes their electoral assets. In other words, populist distrust enables populist parties to more effectively mobilize their potential voters and gain electoral breakthrough. This paper only serves both as a starting point for discussions on populism incorporating the interaction between different factors, and as an attempt to add to the discussion of political trust another level of implication.

Copyright

© 2018, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Anqi Li
PY  - 2018/09
DA  - 2018/09
TI  - Role of Political Trust in the Rise of Populism
BT  - Proceedings of the 2018 International Symposium on Humanities and Social Sciences, Management and Education Engineering (HSSMEE 2018)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 526
EP  - 530
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/hssmee-18.2018.89
DO  - 10.2991/hssmee-18.2018.89
ID  - Li2018/09
ER  -