Exploring different conceptions of ‘the people’ Evidence from a large-scale survey experiment in the Netherlands

The key concept of populist ideology is ‘the people’. As Mudde puts it: “even the other core concepts, ‘the elite’ and the ‘general will’ take their meaning from it” (Mudde, 2017, p. 31). The populist evaluation of democracy revolves around the people, as the people are the sole source of legitimate political power (Canovan, 1999). However, other than qualifying them as homogeneous and pure, populist ideology says nothing about who the people are. Populist actors must use their particular context to further qualify this concept. The resulting distinction between who does and who does not belong is essential to understanding how populist ideology manifests in that actor and how it shapes their outlook on democracy and society. A comparison of uses of ‘the people’ by different left- and right-wing populist supply-side actors shows that in general, left-wing populist supply-side actors define the people in economical terms; whereas right-wing populist supply-side actors define the people in cultural terms (Castanho Silva et al., 2018; see also Ivaldi et al., 2017; Huber et al., 2022). This study focuses on populist individuals, and seeks to find out if they define ‘the people’ along similar lines. Importantly, populist supply-side actors use their definition of ‘the people’ to construct identities in politics and their success depends on the extent to which populist citizens follow their conception of the people (Mudde, 2017). We expect that populist individuals make a clear distinction between who belongs to the people and who does not. In addition, we expect that individuals’ political orientation is decisive in understanding how they define the people. Specifically, we expect right-wing populists to focus particularly on cultural criteria to form their opinion on the people; whereas left-wing populists tend to emphasise the unifying dimension of the working class and their opposition to economic elites. To test this, we ran a conjoint experiment presenting respondents with hypothetical profiles of persons. We asked them to indicate the extent to which they thought a person was part of the people, but also whether that person’s interests should get more representation in politics, whether that person should have the right to vote and access to social welfare, and finally whether the respondent would prefer to be represented by that person than by a professional politician. This combination of dependent variables gives us a profound insight into whether and how populist individuals define ‘the people’.