Are there signs of issue competition beyond the populist worldview? Testing the hypothesis of a Democratic Renewal Issue in Western Europe from a demand side perspective

Radical parties have been flourishing electorally in the last decade. Scholars have outlined two main streams of explanation, relying on two distinct theoretical frames. On the one hand, radical parties benefit from the polarization in the public opinion of policy issues that are at the core of their political identity, namely immigration and national identity for radical right parties, and social inequalities for radical left parties. On the other hand, radical parties have been numerous to evolve in their strategy and discourses to include a layer of populism that channels voters dissatisfied with their representatives and traditional parties. However, this paper proposes to consider a third explanation: while populism is an attitude that resorts to emotion and the rhetoric of “us versus them” against the political elite, it is worth considering that a genuine demand with specific positions about democratic institutions also exists. One could expect a conflict about how decisions should be made (and not the content of decisions for once), opposing supporters of the current representative system and advocates of a democratic renewal. In consequence, by emphasizing people’s sovereignty and critics against the elite, radical populist parties may be appealing to those who share a populist mindset, but also to those who consider that institutional reforms should occur to create more direct and participative decision-making mechanisms. In order to test out this hypothesis, I make use of an original dataset from a cross-national survey, fielded online in six West European countries (Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain; average sample of 1,200 per country; data collected in March 2019). The questionnaire includes specially designed items on democratic attitudes with the intention to propose a measure of position on the conceptualized democratic renewal issue. Findings show that the posited democratic renewal issue matters for a significant portion of the electorate and that those who position in favor of it are more likely to support a radical party, especially radical right parties. More precisely, parallel paths to radical voting can be distinguished. Left-wingers that support a democratic renewal will tend to favor radical left over the moderate left, but will not turn to the radical right. Similarly, right-wingers will have more chances to support the radical right instead of the moderate right, but they will not consider voting for the radical left. Complementary analyzes also show that the effect of the democratic renewal issue on electoral support for radical parties holds when controlling by various political attitudes, including by political trust and populism. The effect also holds when controlling by other issues, including integration-demarcation issues. In total, findings sustain the existence of a democratic issue and that, although it is not the strongest predictor of radical voting, it is part of the explanation, separately from less actionable political attitudes and separately from policy issues.