There's less than meets the eye: populist attitudes and contention of COVID-19 measures in Croatia

Given that crises and populism usually hold hands, it is reasonable that pandemic populism is a growing research niche nowadays. Although research on the nexus of populism and COVID-19 has spilled much ink, such studies have primarily focused on researching populist parties and actors in the pandemic context. In addition, the scarce literature dealing with the demand side of pandemic populism mainly focuses on studying the effects of populist attitudes on vaccine hesitancy and non-compliance with public health measures. Thus, the individual-level analysis of pandemic populism has so far mainly overlooked whether populism can be a driver of pandemic activism, which should come as a surprise, given that populists (mainly those in the opposition) often used the pandemic as a means of mobilization. Therefore, we still need to see if populist attitudes increase willingness to participate in various forms of activism aimed at contention of COVID-19 measures. Although this relationship might seem straightforward, one must bear in mind that populism is a multi-dimensional construct whose sub-components do not have to follow the same logic about the pandemic. Dimensions such as people-centrism, anti-elitism, and Manichean outlook that make up the nucleus of populism are often only loosely connected, and it is an open empirical question how they relate to the pandemic at the level of attitudes. To tackle this, we use online panel survey data collected in 2023 in Croatia. Croatia seems relevant as it is a country where the levels of populist attitudes are similar to those in other EU countries and because populists, as in other countries, tried to mobilize citizens based on criticizing the lockdown and the government. This makes the Croatian context a case study in which populist attitudes could likely encourage contention of COVID-19 public measures. However, OLS regressions show that only the Manichean outlook significantly affects willingness to participate in contention activism. People-centrism and anti-elitism do not affect the intention to participate in activities that try to contain the measures introduced due to COVID-19. Moreover, these findings remain robust regardless of the type of contention (organizational, virtual, in-person) or its intensity (non-disruptive, disruptive, very disruptive). These results indicate that only the Manichean sub-component of populism has anti-pandemic mobilization potential. All in all, these findings testify that it is necessary to examine further the effects of individual-level populism on different attitudes related to the pandemic and that these relationships may not be as clear as proclaimed.