Different Strokes for Different Folks: Who Votes for Technocratic Parties?

Maria Snegovaya

doi:10.17645/pag.v8i4.3482

Abstract

In this study, I look at two types of political actors commonly described as ‘populist’ in literature—namely, rightwing populists and technocratic leaders like France’s Emmanuel Macron and the Czech Republic’s Andrej Babiš. While both types of political actors tend to emerge as a response to a decline in trust in established parties and adopt platforms with anti-establishment and monist elements, they also possess noticeably different qualities. Unlike rightwing populists, technocrats lack a distinctive ideological profile and tend to adopt more inclusive rhetoric by appealing to a broadly-defined community of people. When contrasted with supporters of rightwing populists, empirical analysis of supporters of Macron’s and Babiš’ parties shows that the two have few commonalities. Relatively few examples of such political leadership, the lack of a distinct ideological profile and the variation of their support bases suggest that one should use caution when conceptualizing technocratic populists as a distinct theoretical type.

Highlights

The increase of populist political leaders across the world in the last decade has attracted considerable attention in political science literature (Gidron & Bonikowski, 2013; Panizza, 2005).Despite the proliferation of varying types of populist figures, recent studies have primarily paid attention to rightwing populist parties in European countries, including Alternative for Germany, UK Independence Party, and France’s National Front (FN, more recently National Rally; Ivaldi, 2018; Schmitt-Beck, 2017; Siri, 2018; Stockemer, 2017)
The results show that while Le Pen’s FN and Okamura’s Freedom and Direct Democracy attract similar social groups from lower socioeconomic strata, as well as voters with Eurosceptic, anti-establishment and anti-immigration attitudes, supporters of the parties led by Macron and Babiš tend to cut across class lines, differ in their positions on Euroscepticism and immigration, and have higher levels of institutional trust
Macron’s voters tend to be more oriented in favor of immigration, while Babiš’ voters do not differ on this issue from voters of other parties. These findings demonstrate that while supporters of the rightwing populist parties tend to have similar attitudinal preferences, voters of parties led by technocratic leaders represent quite different social groups, especially in relation to their socioeconomic status and attitudinal characteristics

Summary

Introduction

The increase of populist political leaders across the world in the last decade has attracted considerable attention in political science literature (Gidron & Bonikowski, 2013; Panizza, 2005).Despite the proliferation of varying types of populist figures, recent studies have primarily paid attention to rightwing populist parties in European countries, including Alternative for Germany, UK Independence Party, and France’s National Front (FN, more recently National Rally; Ivaldi, 2018; Schmitt-Beck, 2017; Siri, 2018; Stockemer, 2017). Studies have referred to the political leadership of Silvio Berlusconi in Italy, Andrej Babiš in the Czech Republic, Emmanuel Macron in France, Donald Trump in the United States, Bidzina Ivanishvili in Georgia, and Rafael Correa in Ecuador as examples of such political actors (Buštíková & Guasti, 2019; de la Torre, 2013). Despite the existence of substantive literature on the rightwing populists and the profiles of their support bases (Pauwels, 2014; Rooduijn, 2018), few studies have focused on the comparison of these figures and technocratic leaders. This article aims to fill that gap In this text, I focus on two countries, France and the Czech Republic, as examples of nations where technocratic leaders (Emmanuel Macron and Andrej Babiš) were electorally successful in the last decade.

Objectives

Results

Conclusion