From the People, Like the People or For the People? Candidate Appraisal Among the French Yellow Vests

Abstract / Résumé

Whereas populist citizens are usually described as being driven by individual discontent, this article builds on the notion that they are also spurred by sociotropic concerns. Taking the French Yellow Vests populist movement and its flagship referendum on popular initiative as a case study, we address the mechanism by which discontent is directed into an instrumental orientation, and how this mechanism translates into voting choice. Using a conjoint experiment, we find that a candidate supportive of citizen initiative referendum garners the most support, especially among protesters with strong people-centric attitudes, even when competing with a candidate signaling her ideological proximity by means of an antielite statement. Results therefore enrich extant literature on voter-politician congruency by suggesting that congruency between people-centrism and the prospects of more direct democracy is a way for populist citizens to make their vote choice.

Version française

Alors que les citoyens populistes sont généralement décrits comme étant motivés par un mécontentement individuel, cet article s’appuie sur l’idée qu’ils sont également poussés par des préoccupations sociotropiques. En prenant le mouvement populiste français des Gilets jaunes et son référendum phare sur l’initiative populaire (RIC) comme étude de cas, nous étudions le mécanisme par lequel le mécontentement pourssuit orientation instrumentale, et comment ce mécanisme se traduit dans le choix du vote. À l’aide d’une expérimentation conjointe (conjoint experiment), nous constatons qu’un candidat favorable au référendum d’initiative citoyenne recueille le plus de soutien, en particulier parmi les manifestants ayant des attitudes fortement centrées sur le peuple, même lorsqu’il est en concurrence avec un candidat signalant sa proximité idéologique au moyen d’une déclaration anti-élite. Les résultats enrichissent donc la littérature existante sur la congruence électeur-politicien en suggérant que la congruence entre le centrage sur l’individu et les perspectives d’une démocratie plus directe est un moyen pour les citoyens populistes de faire leur choix de vote.

Important Figures / Graphiques

Figure 1 - Preferred candidate traits among the French Yellow Vests

Figure 2 - Candidate choice depending on the CIR position of the candidate

Figure 3 - Conditional effects of support for the CIR on candidate choice, depending on populist attitudes (left panel), people- centrism (middle panel), and antielitism (right panel)

Citation

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@article{gonthier_people_2022,
    title = {From the {People}, {Like} the {People}, or {For} the {People}? {Candidate} {Appraisal} {Among} the {French} {Yellow} {Vests}},
    volume = {n/a},
    issn = {1467-9221},
    shorttitle = {From the {People}, {Like} the {People}, or {For} the {People}?},
    url = {http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/pops.12826},
    doi = {10.1111/pops.12826},
    language = {en},
    number = {n/a},
    urldate = {2022-06-16},
    journal = {Political Psychology},
    author = {Gonthier, Frédéric and Guerra, Tristan},
    year = {2022},
    note = {\_eprint: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/pops.12826},
    keywords = {direct democracy, populist attitudes, conjoint experiment, social movement, candidate appraisal, Yellow Vests}
    },
}