Populists or nativist authoritarians? A cross-national analysis of the radical right

Abstract

Populism is widely considered to be one of the most significant political phenomena of the past decade. Yet for all the scholarly and media attention it receives, how important it is in driving support for populist radical right parties is debatable. Scholars have long theorised that nativism and authoritarianism are likely to be equally if not more important than populism in driving support for populist radical right parties, but the empirical evidence to support this argument has been limited. We conduct a cross-national analysis on a representative sample of voters from the United States, United Kingdom and Australia (n = 4650) to test this proposition. We demonstrate that rather than populism, it is primarily nativism driving support for populist radical right parties. Populism is, therefore, shown to be less important than often suggested.