Left-Right radicalism and Populist attitudes in France and Spain

Abstract

There is little doubt that supply-side populism associates with radical platforms of the left and the right. However, few empirical analyses have focused on the connection between left-right ideological radicalism and populism at the individual level, even less in countries where populist discourses are not only associated with the radical right. This paper considers the association between populist attitudes and ideological radicalism in two countries where left-wing populist parties exist: France and Spain. For that, it uses an approach to political ideology that distinguishes political-economic issues and political-cultural ones. Main results show that radically minded individuals, located at the left and the right of the ideological axis, display stronger populist attitudes in France and Spain. However, differences between the two countries exist that highlight the relevance of context-dependent associations between populism and other (thick) ideologies in the electoral arena. In France, individuals located at the extreme right of the cultural dimension tend to show stronger populist attitudes than those located at the far left. In contrast, in Spain, individuals located at the extreme left of the economic and cultural dimensions display stronger populist attitudes.