From Conspiracy to Reality How Conspiracy Beliefs Drive Populist Party Support
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2023-07-14
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en
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Both conspiracy theories and populism are gaining ground in academic research as well as in our political and societal realities. However, primarily the supply-side and populist attitudes have been the topic of research on conspiracy theories and populism. In this thesis, I therefore approach the theme from a new angle and investigate to what extent conspiracy beliefs can explain populist party support among individuals (the demand-side). Populist party support is disaggregated into different dimensions: people-centrism, Manichaeism and anti-elitism. The main theoretical argument holds that citizens’ conspiracy beliefs drive populist party support because populist parties appeal to these beliefs through their rhetoric to generate more political support. After conducting a multi-level regression analysis on 10,271 individuals from 18 European countries, I find evidence for a positive but small effect of conspiracy beliefs on populist party support on all three dimensions of populism. This is in line with the expectations for anti-elitism and Manichaeism, but contradicts existing literature on people-centrism, for which no effect was assumed. More specifically, I also find that the positive relationship between conspiracy beliefs and populist party support is moderated by the outsider status of political parties. Contradictory to my expectations, COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs do not affect populist party support more strongly than generic conspiracy beliefs. This thesis contributes to the current academic lacuna on how conspiracy beliefs influence citizens’ political behaviour.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen