Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.20901/pp.10.1.01
The Structure of Populist Ideology: Srbija 2017
Bojan Todosijević
orcid.org/0000-0002-6116-993X
; Institut društvenih nauka Beograd
Ljubomir Hristić
; Institut društvenih nauka Beograd
Abstract
There is a growing perception in the literature on populism that it can be characterized as an ideology that has a specific, albeit ’thin’, content. It is considered that this applies not only to political parties and movements, but also to the attitudes of those who support populist parties and personalities. The Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES, www.cses.org) included in its 5th module the operationalization of populist ideology as a combination of three basic orientations: a negative attitude towards minorities and immigrants, a negative
attitude towards political elites, and an exclusive conception of national identity. In this paper, we analyze the extent to which such a conception of populist ideology has empirical support based on data from Serbia. The data was collected after the 2017 presidential election, using an online survey method. The structural hypothesis on the interconnectedness of the theoretical components of populist ideology was tested. After that, the connection between the dimensions of the components of populist ideology and party preferences was analyzed. The results showed that these three components do not converge towards a more general dimension of populist ideology. It was concluded
that the scale of anti-elitism, in the context of Serbia, is an indicator of the attitude towards the ruling parties, and not just populist antipathy towards the political elite.
Keywords
populism, ideology, elections, Srbija, CSES
Hrčak ID:
241527
URI
Publication date:
23.7.2020.
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