Populism and Civil Society

Abstract

Since Tocqueville (1835), civil society has been recognized as a cornerstone of liberal democracy. But populists claim to be the only legitimate representatives of the people, leaving no space for civil society. Are populism and civil society enemies? To answer this question, we look at voters’ choices in Europe. We find that individuals belonging to associations are less likely by 1.6–2.8 percentage points to vote for populist parties, which is large considering that the average vote share for populist parties is between 12% and 22%. This result survives a large number of robustness checks.