Affective polarization, populism, and cultural battles as attitudinal orientations
How are affective polarization, populism, and cultural backlash battles attitudinally connected? A review of the literature on the three phenomena led us to identify several common roots among them at the attitudinal level. Starting with polarization, scholars warn that we are today witnessing an increased affective sorting of citizens around party lines, which is fuelling levels of polarization among voters of contending parties. As typically defined, affective polarization refers to the distance between the affection or positive feelings individuals have toward parties, leaders, and followers whose ideas or political positions they share, and the rejection of parties, leaders, and followers who advocate opposing ideas and opinions (Iyengar et al., 2019). Therefore, affective polarization has two defining components, namely “in-group” affection, i.e. the positive feelings toward their own party, its leaders, and followers, and “out-group” polarization, i.e. the negative feelings toward opposing parties, its leaders, and followers.
The literature on affective polarization has discussed two types of mechanisms that contribute to explaining increasing levels of animosity toward political opponents in consolidated democracies. The first mechanism explains affective polarization as the result of the convergence of partisan identities with many other social identities. As West and Iyengar (2022) argue, partisanship is no longer exclusively synonymous with political preferences, but has become an important social identity which, ultimately, contributes to the strengthening of affective polarization. While partisan and ideological identities have traditionally been aligned, other prominent social identities, such as race, religion, or territorial identity are also increasingly converging into partisanship (Abramowitz and McCoy, 2019; Iyengar et al., 2019). For instance, in the US, Mason (2018) shows that while white evangelicals overwhelmingly support the Republican Party, African Americans tend to identify with the Democratic Party. As the author discusses, this gradual process of alignment of social identities along partisan lines has turned partisanship into a sort of social identity (social sorting), thus making it easier for partisans to infer generalizations about people on the opposite side, even if such inferences are wrong. In the case of Spain, Torcal (2023) argues that citizens have built partisan mega-identities, around which several social and ideological identities converge. These mega-identities have been shaped, firstly, around ideological identities of left and right, which have created two opposing blocks of partisans, and secondly, based on territorial identities, which also favour greater social distancing.
The second account of the rise of affective polarization identifies the perception of a growing ideological distance between parties as its main cause. Thus, recent comparative and experimental studies provide evidence that there is a relationship between ideological and affective polarization, meaning that as the parties are becoming more ideologically distant from each other, voters are too, and, hence, they are increasingly willing to display hostility toward those whom they see as ideological opponents (Rogowski and Sutherland, 2016; Webster and Abramowitz, 2017). In the same vein, in Spain, studies have found a positive relationship between both types of polarization, so that “the greater the ideological polarization of the parties (measured as the distance in ideological positions perceived by voters), the greater the affective polarization of individuals” (Orriols and León, 2020: 12).
These two accounts of the causes of (rising) polarization can indeed be helpful in understanding the emergence of populist parties in western democracies. Given that the populist agenda is typically adopted by parties located at opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, that is, radical-right and radical-left parties, they benefit from the greater ideological sorting and distancing that national electorates are experiencing today. The relationship between polarization and populism indeed works in a virtuous cycle, as the current scenario of greater ideological and social polarization paves the way for the emergence and electoral success of populist parties, and at the same time, populist parties, once on this stage, fuel and receive high levels of affective polarization against and from (mainstream) political opponents (Harteveld et al., 2022; Davis et al., 2024). Indeed, as Torcal and Comellas (2022: 12) have shown, in Spain the emergence of the populist radical-right party Vox was preceded by the existence of high levels of affective polarization that had been produced in the system by the other parties, thus proving that radical right-wing parties tend to prosper and gain visibility in contexts of high polarisation. Bischof and Wagner (2019), using data from 17 European countries between 1973 and 2016, demonstrated that radical-right parties gaining representation in parliament tends to produce a long-term impact on levels of affective polarization within the electorate. In this sense, populist parties tend to both benefit from, and produce, polarization within the political system.
The demand side of populism has also been connected to increasing levels of polarization. According to this view, populism is not only related to what populist parties offer to the public and how they behave (the supply side), but also to the ideas and attitudes of individuals who demand populism (the demand side). In this sense, populism is defined as a set of ideas or ideology (the ideational approach), which is thin-centered, that is, populism cannot stand on its own but must be attached to left- or right-wing ideologies (Mudde, 2004; Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, 2017). According to Mudde (2004), populist parties, both left- and right-wing, share a common understanding of the world, democracy, and political representation, which is based on three essential components: (1) it is people-centered and anti-elite, (2) it entails a clash between the pure people and the corrupt elite, and (3) it claims that politics should be an expression of the general will of the people.
This ideational vision of populism also has the effect of increasing polarization by constructing an anti-establishment political frontier and contesting some of democracy’s basic institutional and procedural norms, such as political representation through parties (Roberts, 2022: 680). As Roberts (2022) argues, populism has a “constitutive” logic vis-à-vis affective polarization, in that it is intrinsic to populism to construct an antagonistic frontier between “the people” and a power elite or establishment, which makes populism intrinsically polarizing. Thus, holding populist attitudes is also potentially connected to higher levels of affective polarization, presumably against mainstream political parties or any other body that breaks down the unified popular subject.
Polarization and populism are also closely related to the third phenomena under analysis, namely cultural backlash. A prominent explanation of the reemergence of populism in western democracies over the past decades has connected it to the conformation of a new societal conflict, which has come to substitute the traditional cleavages, between defenders of materialist or authoritarian values on the one hand, and the champions of more liberal or libertarian views on the other (Norris and Inglehart, 2019). As Norris and Inglehart (2019: 32) argue, this new cleavage has its origins in the “silent revolution” theory of values change, which contends that the levels of existential security achieved by citizens of consolidated western societies in the post-war period led to an intergenerational shift towards more post-materialist values, such as cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism, and support for new issues such as environmental protection, human rights, and gender equality. However, in recent decades, the impact of globalization in labour markets and the mobility of workers has significantly increased the economic and social insecurity of many citizens, especially those who are socioeconomically disadvantaged but who, for a long time, had enjoyed a hegemonic social status. Thus, the cultural backlash theory suggests that the so-called “losers of globalization” (Teney et al., 2014; Kriesi et al., 2012), characterized primarily as elderly, low-educated white males, have staged a backlash against the advancement of progressive values and the displacement of traditional family values. These socially conservative values typically embrace a broad rejection of the “Other”, ranging from immigrants, Muslims, black people, LGBTQ, ethnic minorities, and feminists, among others, and advocate the maintenance of a non-egalitarian status quo by opposing any social transformation that might contribute to social change, such as gender equality or the fight against climate change.
According to Norris and Inglehart (2019), the progressive value change experienced by modern societies has led socially conservative individuals—i.e. those who feel threatened by the breakdown of the status quo—to transfer their votes to (authoritarian)right-wing populist parties, who promise to defend the old order. In this sense, the emergence of radical-right populism in most countries across western Europe and the recent success of right-wing populist leaders such as Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil or Donald Trump in the US (Norris and Inglehart, 2019; Wejnert, 2023; Rennó, 2020) can be seen as the result of a socially conservative counter-revolution prompted by the expansion of cultural liberalism. At the same time, radical-right populist parties have embraced the defence of conservative values as a hallmark, thus sharpening the salience of the cultural cleavage in party competition and fostering polarization among those endorsing socially conservative and socially liberal values. To be clear, however, it is important to note that populism is not essentially connected to a right- or left-wing niche ideology, given that supply-side populism associates with radical platforms both of the left and the right, and not all populist parties advocate for conservative cultural values. Indeed, radical-left parties are advocates of radical liberal values, such as radical feminism and elimination of national frontiers, and their criticism toward democracy tends to focus on the political and/or economic elites within that system rather than the whole liberal system as such (Rooduijn and Akkerman, 2017).
The effect of affective polarization, populist attitudes, and cultural backlash on support for democracy
There is a widespread consensus in the literature that, to some extent or other, affective polarization, populist attitudes, and appeal for cultural backlash values negatively affect individuals’ support for liberal democratic ideals. Although levels of democratic legitimacy have traditionally remained high in Spain, recent evidence has identified an increase in the number of Spaniards who now more strongly support a strong leader than they did a decade ago (Wuttke et al., 2022: 442). Next to this, the existence of very high levels of affective polarization in the country (Reiljan, 2020; Wagner, 2021), the continued success of two populist parties from the extreme-right and -left (Vox and Unidas Podemos), and the salience of public debates around relevant cultural battles beg the question, how are these three phenomena affecting support for democratic government in Spain?
Starting again with polarization, recent evidence, mostly based on the US, has shown that, in contexts of high affective polarization, partisans tend to be more willing to trade off democratic norms in pursuit of their ideological agenda and/or policy representation (Gidengil et al., 2022; Graham and Svolik, 2020; Kingzette et al., 2021). In a similar vein, Torcal and Magalhães (2022), using comparative data from eleven liberal democratic countries, demonstrated that citizens who hold more extreme ideological positions are less supportive of democracy. Furthermore, studies have found that a large proportion of individuals tend to display what has been termed as “democratic hypocrisy,” that is, they tend to disregard democratic norms when their own party is in power and they perceive a threat from the opposing party, and are more respectful of democracy when their party is in opposition, as they feel that democratic norms can protect them (Simonovits et al., 2022).
Second, it is widely believed that populism poses a threat to liberal democracy, as it challenges some of its underpinning values (Müller, 2017; Urbinati, 2019). First, according to the ideational view, populist parties adopt a homogeneous and unitary understanding of the “people,” which leans against pluralism and the protection of minorities (Galston, 2018; Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, 2017). Second, populism is based on the primacy of the “general will of the people,” which cannot be constrained by any other institutional center of power, including parliament or the judiciary (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, 2017). Third, populism advocates a direct relationship between the people and its political leadership and thus rejects political mediation through political parties and elites (Zaslove and Meijers, 2023).
Considering that populist parties often give rhetorical and practical critiques of liberal democracy, it is commonly assumed that populist attitudes tend to be associated with negative views toward representative democracy. However, scholars have not found conclusive evidence of the relationship between populist attitudes and diminished democratic support. Zaslove and Meijers (2023), using data from the Netherlands, found that citizens with stronger populist attitudes are no less supportive of the principle of democracy, although they reject ideas related to mediated representation through political parties and are more supportive of forms of unconstrained majoritarian rule. Drawing on data from four European countries, Wuttke et al. (2023) found that populist and non-populist citizens endorse similarly liberal-democratic institutions, yet citizens with a populist outlook more frequently express contradictory demands that political institutions cannot possibly deliver. Focusing on Spain, Guinjoan (2023) showed that the relationship between populist attitudes and support for liberal democratic values is indeed moderated by ideology, so that right-wing populist individuals tend to display lower levels of support for the granting of civil liberties and the protection of minority rights compared to left-wing individuals who hold populist attitudes.
The third phenomena under investigation, namely support for cultural backlash, has received less attention in relation to support for democratic values and/or liberal democracy more generally. Norris and Inglehart (2019: 102-103) found evidence of a strong linear relationship between holding socially conservative and authoritarian values: individuals with authoritarian values tend to be more conservative toward moral values than other individuals with no authoritarian values. Other studies have focused particularly on the relationship between anti-immigration attitudes (characterized as nativist attitudes) and support for democracy. Kokkonen and Linde (2023) showed significant differences in support for democracy between nativist and non-nativist citizens, with strong nativist individuals granting less importance to living in a democratically governed country and displaying lower levels of diffuse support for democracy, among other negative views toward democracy.