Nostalgic deprivation and populism: Evidence from 19 European countries

Abstract

Populist parties have been increasingly successful in European politics over the last decade. Although research suggests that nostalgic deprivation – a perceived loss of economic, political or social status — is linked to support for populist parties, the generalizability of this argument across voters and national contexts remains unclear. In this research note, we leverage original representative surveys across 19 European countries to demonstrate that perceptions of declining status are a consistent predictor of populist support. Decomposing nostalgic deprivation into different dimensions, we find that while social, economic and power deprivation have different antecedents, each predicts populist attitudes and voting behaviour. Moreover, we find that nostalgic deprivation predicts support for populist platforms among both left-wing and right-wing respondents, as well as across Eastern and Western Europe. While the antecedents differ across contexts, these findings confirm that perceptions of downward mobility are associated with the rise of populism in Europe.