Authoritarian Populist Opinion in Europe

Abstract

Recent research in the UK has shown that an authoritarian populist (AP) cluster of attitudes centring on opposition to immigration, cynicism about human rights, disapproval of the EU, support for a robust defence and foreign policy, and a right-wing ideology form a single factor that underpins a range of other political preferences. In this chapter, the authors replicate these analyses for the UK and an additional 11 European countries. The analyses reveal that authoritarian populist attitudes form a single factor in ten of the twelve countries. Across these ten countries, the sources of AP attitudes are very similar, with particularly strong effects for the perceived cultural consequences of immigration. A series of country-by-country cluster analyses of the component measures making up our AP scale identifies the ‘political tribes’ of each country and differentiates between left- and right-wing authoritarian populists and estimates potential support for authoritarian populist parties, demonstrating that potential support for right-wing authoritarian is much larger than indicated by either past vote or current vote intentions.