“We’re not as great as we used to be”: Perceived national status threat and the desire for strong leaders

Abstract

We examined whether perceived national status threat—i.e., perceiving that one’s country’s status on the international scene is in decline—predicts increased desire for a strong conservative or progressive leader through greater national nostalgia and collective angst. A pilot study on strong leaders’ speeches from the 2017 French presidential election campaign first revealed that both conservative and progressive strong leaders use the status threat narrative, albeit in another form. In four quantitative surveys conducted across France, Malaysia and Chile, we then found that national status threat predicted increased desire for both conservative and progressive strong leaders. In France and Chile, but not Malaysia, the underlying path was contingent on the type of leader, such that nostalgia predicted increased desire for a conservative but not a progressive strong leader. Although correlational, our data suggest that decline narratives might provide a fertile ground for the desire for diverse forms of strong leadership.