Struktura populističke ideologije: Srbija 2017

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 mod- ule 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 iden- tity. In this paper, we analyze the extent to which such a conception of popu- list 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 preferenc- es was analyzed. the results showed that these three components do not con- verge 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.