Lane Kenworthy, The Good Society
December 2025

Populist parties contend that “the people” know what the best policies and institutions for a society are, that the populist party or its leader know the will of the people, and that society’s problems are caused by “elites.”¹ According to populists on the left, the elites are business leaders and rich individuals. According to populists on the right, the elites are highly-educated persons and government policymakers.

In recent decades right-wing populist parties have gained vote share in many of the affluent longstanding-democratic countries, as figure 1 shows. These parties’ average share of the vote in legislative elections rose from 1% in the 1980s to 5% in the 2000s to 14% in the first half of the 2020s. Since 2018, their vote share has reached 20% or more in half of these countries.

Figure 1. Right-wing populist party vote share
Vote share in parliamentary elections (lower house where there are two houses). 1979-2025. Data sources: Wikipedia; Andreas Bergh and Anders Kärnä, “Explaining the Rise of Populism in European Democracies 1980-2018: The Role of Labor Market Institutions and Inequality,” Social Science Quarterly, 2022, appendix; Matthijs Rooduijn, Andrea L.P. Pirro, Daphne Halikiopoulou, Caterina Froio, Stijn van Kessel, Sarah L. de Lange, Cas Mudde, and Paul Taggart, “The PopuList: An Overview of Populist, Far-left, and Far-right Parties in Europe,” version 3.0, 2023. Australia: One Nation. Austria: Freedom Party of Austria. Belgium: Flemish Interest. Canada: People’s Party of Canada. Denmark: Danish People’s Party, New Right. Finland: Finns Party (formerly True Finns). France: National Rally (formerly National Front). Germany: Alternative for Deutschland. Ireland: Irish Freedom Party. Italy: Brothers of Italy, Lega Nord. Japan: Japan Innovation Party, Sanseito. Korea: Liberty Unification Party. Netherlands: Forum for Democracy, Party for Freedom. New Zealand: New Zealand First. Norway: Progress Party. Portugal: Chega. Spain: Vox. Sweden: Sweden Democrats. Switzerland: Swiss People’s Party. United Kingdom: UK Independence Party, Reform. United States: Republican Party with Donald Trump as presidential nominee, president, or presumed presidential nominee.

Is this cause for concern? If so, what can be done?

Skip to:

• Should we worry?
• What has caused the rise of right-wing populism?
• What to do
• We need to know more

SHOULD WE WORRY?

In one respect, the rise of right-wing populism is just a normal development in democratic political systems. These parties represent the views of some citizens, and so they get those citizens’ votes.

Some find these parties objectionable because they tend to favor little or no immigration, thereby cutting off opportunity for some of the world’s least advantaged persons. Others object to these parties’ general inward orientation — the fact that they oppose not only immigration but also trade and a decision-making role for supranational organizations such as the European Union and the United Nations.

But the core reason for concern is that some of these parties, or their leaders, are insufficiently committed to democracy — more precisely, to democracy with free and fair political competition and elections, often called “liberal democracy.” In two European nations where such parties have come to power, Hungary and Poland, the party proceeded to weaken democracy by taking steps to enhance its ability to remain in power, such as removing professional civil servants and replacing them with loyalists who attack political opponents, limiting media independence, reducing the judiciary’s authority, and altering electoral rules.² Donald Trump, in his first and second presidential administrations, has signaled that he has similar inclinations. Indeed, he has expressed support for the group that attacked Congress on January 6, 2021 in an attempt to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election.

In an illiberal democracy (“competitive authoritarianism”³), elections continue to be held and they aren’t fake. It’s possible for the opposition to win, as happened in Poland in 2023. However, the ruling party is able to stack the deck in its favor.⁴

WHAT HAS CAUSED THE RISE OF RIGHT-WING POPULISM?

If right-wing populist parties are indeed a threat to democracy, they should be opposed. The best way to do that is by defeating them in elections. To figure out how, it would be helpful to understand why these parties have been getting an increasing share of the vote. There are a number of hypotheses.

Economic hardship, neoliberalism, and inequality

Actual or perceived economic hardship is often cited as a contributor to the appeal of populist parties.⁵ However, a number of studies of individuals find little correlation between people’s economic position or wellbeing and their likelihood of voting for a right populist party.⁶ Some of the countries with the strongest economies in recent decades, in terms of economic growth, employment rates, and high and rising living standards — Norway, Switzerland, Denmark, Austria — are among those in which the vote share of right-wing populist parties has increased the most.⁷ Moreover, public opinion surveys suggest no lasting decrease in people’s satisfaction with the economy in the affluent democracies in the 2000s or 2010s.⁸ Manufacturing is often seen as a real or symbolic indicator of economic health, but manufacturing employment has been declining at a steady pace in nearly every one of the rich democratic countries since 1970.⁹

In 2016, when the UK and US shocked political observers by voting to leave the European Union (“Brexit”) and electing Donald Trump president, it seemed as though the rise of the populist right might be a product of an economic approach — “neoliberalism” — that relied too heavily on markets, had too little government intervention, and featured an insufficiently robust welfare state.¹⁰ But a decade later that hypothesis doesn’t square with the pattern of populism’s rise. France has a more interventionist state than nearly any other affluent country, and the Nordics, Austria, and the Netherlands have long had generous welfare states. Yet these are among the nations in which right-wing populists have made the greatest headway.

Income and wealth inequality have been increasing in most of the affluent democratic nations since the late 1970s. Some studies examining individuals have found a link between economic inequality and preferences or voting for right-wing populist parties.¹¹ However, other studies haven’t.¹² And when examining countries, there appears to be no link between income inequality and vote share for right-wing populist parties.¹³

Is it rising inequality coupled with stagnant living standards that’s to blame? In such a context, citizens might be more receptive to these parties’ claim that immigrants or globalization are the cause of their difficulties and thus more willing to vote for these parties.¹⁴ Here too, however, the country pattern isn’t supportive. Nations with little increase in income inequality and rapid growth of middle-class household income haven’t tended to fare any better at fending off the rise of right-wing populism than countries where inequality has soared and median income has stagnated.¹⁵

Figures 2 and 3 give a sense of how unhelpful economic factors are in explaining the vote share for right-wing populist parties. Figure 2 has a measure of economic insecurity on the horizontal axis. Figure 3 has a measure of income inequality. In both instances, the prediction is for the country pattern to slope up and to the right — the populist right’s vote share should be higher in nations with greater economic insecurity and higher income inequality. But that isn’t what we observe.

Figure 2. Economic insecurity and right-wing populist party vote share
Large income decline: Share of households experiencing a year-to-year income decrease of 25% or more. Average over the 2-year periods between 1985 and 2015. Excludes households that enter retirement between one year and the next. Data source: Jacob S. Hacker, “Economic Security,” in For Good Measure: Advancing Research on Well-Being Metrics beyond GDP, edited by Joseph E. Stiglitz, Jean-Paul Fitoussi, and Martine Durand, OECD, 2018, table 8.4, using data from the ECHP, EU-SILC, CPS, and CNEF (BHPS, SOEP, HILDA, KLIPS, SHP, SLID). Right-wing populist party vote share: 2010-2025. See figure 1 for details. “Asl” is Australia; “Aus” is Austria. The correlation is -.27.

Figure 3. Income inequality and right-wing populist party vote share
Income inequality: Gini coefficient. 1979-2019. Posttransfer-posttax income, adjusted for household size. Data source: Frederick Solt, Standardized World Income Inequality Database, version 9.5, using data from the Luxembourg Income Study, the OECD, and other sources. Right-wing populist party vote share: 2010-2025. See figure 1 for details. “Asl” is Australia; “Aus” is Austria. The correlation is -.15.

Immigration

The most straightforward explanation for the populist right’s rise is antipathy toward immigrants. Reduced immigration is the policy commitment that unites all right-wing populist parties and candidates. Yet it isn’t clear whether this truly has been a driver of voters’ growing attraction to these parties, as public opinion data don’t suggest a reduction in support for immigrants or immigration in most of western Europe.¹⁶ Nor does the volume of immigration correlate with attitudes toward immigration when we compare across nations.¹⁷

Urbanization

As cities in the rich world have revitalized — becoming safer, home to high-paying professional analytical jobs, and more interesting and entertaining — more and more of the population have moved to urban areas. That’s particularly true among the young. As this has happened, some rural economies have struggled and their citizens have come to feel abandoned.¹⁸

One report on France put it as follows: “Millennia of small farming ended here in a few confusing decades…. The consequence: most French towns and villages outside tourist hotspots have lost their reason to exist. If they weren’t already there, nobody would now build them. They are shedding shops, schools, and doctors. Places without post offices and train stations are statistically more likely to vote far right, because residents feel abandoned by the Republic. Workers have moved to cities, especially Paris. The EU’s biggest international metropolis is another French asset, but inside France it stands for arrogance and wealth.”¹⁹

Political dissatisfaction

In some of the rich democracies there’s been a rise in frustration with the functioning of the political system. Has this caused more voters to opt for new or out-of-the-mainstream or extremist parties such as those on the populist right?

That seems unlikely. Some of the nations with the largest increase in right-wing populist vote share — Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden — are ones in which political satisfaction has been rising, not falling.²⁰ And as we see in figure 4, across countries there is a positive correlation — not the expected negative one — between political satisfaction and right-wing populist vote share.

Figure 4. Political satisfaction and right-wing populist party vote share
Political satisfaction: average response to the question “All things considered, would you say you are very satisfied, fairly satisfied, not satisfied, or not at all satisfied with the way democracy works in [your country]?” Scale of 0 to 10. Average over 2000 to 2019. Data sources: Eurobarometer; Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES); Pew Research Center; AmericasBarometer; General Social Survey. Right-wing populist party vote share: 2010-2025. See figure 1 for details. “Asl” is Australia; “Aus” is Austria. The correlation is +.34.

Backlash among cultural traditionalists

As societies get rich enough for their citizens to move beyond a scarcity orientation, views on key cultural issues begin to shift, giving greater priority to fairness for traditional “outgroups” and to individual rights and freedoms.²¹ This shifts happens slowly, mainly via cohort replacement. Cohorts with traditionalist views die and are replaced by cohorts in which post-scarcity attitudes predominate. In the United States, for example, a 2023 Gallup poll found that 55% of Americans age 55 and older wanted immigration reduced, compared to just 16% of those age 18 to 34.²² As this shift away from traditionalist norms happens, according to Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, those who continue to adhere to traditionalist attitudes eventually will feel left behind, having lost their place, their status.²³

This is consistent with what we know about typical voters for right-wing populist parties. “Support for populist parties and candidates in contemporary western democracies is driven primarily not by economic grievances but by cultural concerns. In broad terms, these parties and candidates appeal to people distressed by the pace of social and cultural change in Western societies. Like William F. Buckley’s conservatives in the 1950s, today’s right-wing populists stand athwart history yelling ‘Stop!’ In the United States, changes stemming from the decades-long struggle for racial justice and the decline of organized religion are major sources of distress for this group. Fears about the erosion of local and national identities loom large in many places.”²⁴

According to Norris and Inglehart, this group doesn’t grow larger in size. And their views don’t shift. What changes is that their frustration, their sense of loss, increases their willingness to vote for a party on the extreme end of the political spectrum.²⁵

The supply of right-wing populism

Larry Bartels has undertaken perhaps the most comprehensive study of the rise of right-wing populism, focusing on countries in western Europe.²⁶ He finds that while people who support and vote for such parties do tend to have attitudes such as antipathy toward immigration, skepticism about European integration, and political distrust, voter preferences aren’t the key determinant of populist parties’ vote shares. These attitudes can tell us who is most likely to vote for right-wing populist parties, but not how many people vote for them

We can see this in the over-time developments. As noted above, Bartels finds no increase in the prevalence of these attitudes in the 2000s and 2010s.

We also can see it in the pattern across countries. As Bartels points out, “these parties have long flourished in a variety of places where populist sentiment is relatively scarce. The Swiss People’s Party, for instance, has garnered 25 to 20 percent of the vote in each of the past six elections — more than any other populist party in western Europe — despite Switzerland’s unusually high levels of trust in politicians and satisfaction with the economy, the government, and democracy. Populist parties in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden are among the most successful in western Europe despite those countries having the continent’s most favorable attitudes toward immigrants. Conversely, populist parties were slow to emerge in Belgium, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain — all places where public opinion exhibited more widespread populist sentiment.”²⁷

Bartels concludes that the main driver of right-wing populist party vote totals is the supply of right-wing populism, not the demand for it. What’s happened is that new leaders of right-wing populist parties have been more adept than their predecessors at appealing to citizens who already held these views. As a result, people who already were primed to vote for a single-issue anti-immigration or anti-globalization party have become able to do so instead of having to settle for a mainstream party. As Bartels puts it, “In most democracies most of the time, there is a substantial reservoir of potential support for challenges to the status quo.” Newer right-wing populist leaders have exhibited greater ability to “draw on that reservoir opportunistically to build their brands and jostle for power.”²⁸

What have these newer populist leaders done to make themselves and their parties more appealing? One thing is to shed connections to fascist sympathizers and other extremists. A second is to become staunch defenders of the welfare state, which is well developed and highly popular in most of western Europe, but to argue for excluding immigrants from access.²⁹ A third is to become more effective at channeling feelings of grievance, victimization, exclusion, and anger toward elites and “line-cutters.”³⁰ In some cases personal charisma and media savviness also have contributed, as with Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and Donald Trump in the US.

Causes: summary

Bad or worsening economic conditions don’t seem to have played a large role in right-wing populism’s rise. Traditionalist attitudes on cultural issues, including immigration, are common among persons who vote for right populists, but there haven’t been increases in such views that can account for the rise in right populist vote shares.

The key driver of the over-time increase in the vote shares of right-wing populist parties and of the differences across countries seems to be the supply of effective populist right party leaders. Those leaders have been better able than their predecessors to tap into an already-existing reservoir of potential supporters. Another likely contributor is the society-wide liberalization of cultural views and the population movement to urban areas, which has made the shrinking number of cultural traditionalists and rural dwellers more willing to vote for populists.

WHAT TO DO

The threat to democracy posed by right-wing populists is more acute in nations with a separately-elected executive and/or a “majoritarian” electoral system. In countries with a parliamentary system and proportional representation, right-wing populist parties almost always will be forced to have coalition partners in order to govern, and those partners will have considerable leverage that they can use to safeguard democratic institutions. In a country with a separately-elected president, such as the United States and France, or with first-past-the-post elections in single-member districts, such as the US, the United Kingdom, and Canada, there’s a greater possibility for right-wing populists to win outright.

If and when right-wing populist parties get vote shares large enough that they’re on the verge of either winning a majority or playing a dominant role in a coalition government, we shouldn’t expect ordinary citizens to solve the problem. “Ordinary people in most times and places have cared more for their security, their personal finances, and the validation of their social identities than they have for the upholding of democratic norms and procedures.” We’ve seen this in Nazi Germany, Latin America, Hungary, Poland, and in other contexts.³¹ In the United States, voters’ commitment to democratic principles was tested in 2022, “when scores of Republican members of Congress who had supported or condoned Trump’s ‘stop the steal’ effort following the 2020 election stood for reelection. In contested general elections, they did not fare significantly worse or better than their counterparts who had bucked Trump — the electoral cost of ‘disregarding democratic principles’ was essentially zero.”³² Americans then elected Trump as president again in 2024, and this time (unlike in 2016 and 2020) with a majority voting for him.

What should political elites — party leaders and others in a position to influence party decision making — do in order to preserve liberal democracy in the face of right-wing populism’s rise?

Policy commitments

One dimension has to do with policy commitments. Some say the left needs to return to its pre-neoliberal policy approach, perhaps updated for the 21st century.³³ In this view, it’s the left’s scaling back of its commitment to managing markets that facilitated economic decline and left social democratic and labor parties without a vision of progress to offer voters. Right-wing populists have stepped into this void with promises to return to better economic times — more manufacturing jobs and a firmed-up welfare state (for the native-born only). A different approach with respect to policy holds that the left should tack back toward traditionalism on some key cultural issues, such as immigration, crime, fossil fuels, and transgender rights.³⁴ The aim of these and related strategies is to appeal directly to voters who might otherwise be attracted to the populist right.

The evidence for a policy-centered strategy to forestall the rise of the right has been mixed thus far. Social Democrats in the Nordic countries have put in place a policy package that does exceptionally well at promoting economic security, high living standards for the least advantaged, and equality of opportunity.³⁵ These countries consistently do very well on cross-country comparisons of wellbeing. And they’ve scored at or near the top on life satisfaction for most of the last decade. Yet none of this looks to have been successful at stopping the rise of right-wing populist party vote share (figure 1 above).

Denmark’s Social Democrats advocated a restrictive immigration approach decades ago, and they tightened the restrictions when in power beginning in 2019. Although the populist right’s vote share rose above 20% in the mid-to-late 2010s, it has since fallen to below 10%. So it’s possible this approach is one that can work, though the cost — a relatively harsh approach to immigrants, especially refugees — is one that some will see as too high.³⁶

In the United States, the Democratic Party has moved sharply to the left in recent decades, with Joe Biden widely recognized as the most progressive president at least since Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s. Barack Obama’s back-to-back administrations from 2009 to 2016 pursued a relatively restrictive approach to immigration, with Obama often labeled by detractors as “deporter in chief.” But it didn’t prevent Trump’s rise.

Exclude or include right-wing populists in governing coalitions?

The other strategic dimension has to do with how other parties should treat — define, debate, relate to, ally with, etc. — right-wing populist parties and candidates. One option is to treat right-wing populist parties as extremists, as a threat to democracy itself. So far, this strategy, featuring apocalyptic warnings, doesn’t seem to have had much success in containing or reducing the vote share for these parties.³⁷

A more potent version of this approach is for mainstream parties to refuse to allow right-wing populists to participate in a governing coalition. (This option isn’t available in the United States, which has a two-party majoritarian system.) The hope is that this eventually will lead voters to conclude that voting for right populists is a waste.

The potential weakness of this strategy is that it may feed the grievance narrative on which these parties sometimes thrive. Also, it requires parties of the center-right, the center-left, and perhaps even the far left to commit to sometimes participating in a coalition with other parties that have vastly different policy preferences.

The second option is to treat right-wing populist parties like other parties. This means being willing to allow them to participate in a governing coalition, and perhaps even to lead it. The hope is that this will force such parties to take responsibility for policy decisions, thereby confining them to a reasonably small share of the electorate. Limiting the vote share of right-wing populist parties should help to prevent them from damaging the democratic process.

One case where this seems to have worked thus far is Italy. In 2022, the populist right party got the largest vote share (26%) in the parliamentary election, and its leader, Georgia Meloni, became prime minister. But in office it has behaved like a normal conservative party: “When she [Meloni] first soared in the polls, liberals panicked…. Yet since winning office in 2022 Ms Meloni has proved pragmatic. She has been firm but not xenophobic on illegal migration. She has not waged a culture war, beyond trying to restrict surrogacy. She has cleaved to fiscal discipline, backed Ukraine against Russia, and avoided open conflict with the EU. Her calculation is clear: Italy’s economy depends on European largesse, its companies on the single market, its bonds on the European Central Bank’s support…. The hard right is realizing that to win and then govern is to compromise.”³⁸

Something similar has happened at the local level in the United Kingdom. “When Reform, Nigel Farage’s seven-year-old right-wing populist party, swept to power in ten local councils and two mayoralties in May [2025], there were two schools of thought about what might happen. One was that it would govern as Trumpian insurgents. The other was that, with 8m residents to serve, the upstarts would be exposed as amateurs and their ideas would melt. Neither was quite right. In office Reform’s radicalism has, so far, proved largely symbolic. And the party has tempered its ideas and tried to build a reputation for competence.”³⁹

In the Netherlands, center-right parties agreed to let Geert Wilders’ populist right party lead a coalition government after it was the top vote getter in elections in 2023. Within two years, Wilders and his fellow party leaders had grown frustrated with their inability to convince their coalition partners to go along with their plans for radical reform of the immigration system, so they pulled out of the coalition, forcing new elections in 2025. In the new elections parties on the right again secured a majority of seats, but Gilders’ party was no longer included in the government.

In other countries where right-wing populists have been part of governing coalitions, such as Austria, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, it isn’t yet clear whether this has helped to put a brake on voter support.

The US case: Is democracy doomed?

Among the world’s affluent longstanding-democratic nations, the United States is the one in which, as of late 2025, there has been the most significant weakening of liberal democracy. In the judgment of Steven Levitsky, Lucian Way, and Daniel Ziblatt, “In Trump’s second term, the United States has descended into competitive authoritarianism — a system in which parties compete in elections but incumbents routinely abuse their power to punish critics and tilt the playing field against their opposition.”⁴⁰

Trump 2.0 has degraded democracy in a variety of ways. It has “removed professional civil servants from the Justice Department, the FBI, and other key government agencies and put loyalists in charge who were committed to using those agencies to attack opponents”; “bullied independent media”; “attacked institutions of higher learning”; “sought to politicize the armed forces”; expanded Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and transformed the agency into “a poorly regulated paramilitary force”; routinely subverted the law, by “freezing or canceling spending appropriated by legislators,” “dismantling entire agencies established by Congress,” and “repeatedly imposing tariffs without legislative approval.”

Is this really different from what US presidents have done in the past? Yes, according to Levitsky and colleagues: “overtly authoritarian abuse largely disappeared in the United States after the civil rights reforms of the 1950s and 1960s and the post-Watergate reforms of the 1970s. Since 1974, no government, Democratic or Republican, has engaged in anything remotely like the Trump administration’s politicized attacks on critics and rivals.”

Can the US reverse this degradation? Levitsky, Way, and Ziblatt argue that it can:

A defining feature of competitive authoritarianism is the existence of institutional arenas through which the opposition can seriously contest power. The playing field might be uneven, but the game is still played. The opposing team remains on the field, and sometimes it wins. The most important arena for contestation in competitive authoritarian regimes is elections. Although they may be unfair, elections are not mere window-dressing. Competition is real, and outcomes are uncertain….

The U.S. opposition, moreover, enjoys several advantages over its counterparts in other competitive authoritarian regimes. First, although American institutions have weakened, the United States retains powerful institutional bulwarks against authoritarian consolidation. The judiciary is more independent — and the rule of law generally stronger — than in any other competitive authoritarian regime. Likewise, notwithstanding the Trump administration’s efforts to politicize the military, the U.S. armed forces remain highly professionalized and thus difficult to weaponize. Federalism in the United States remains robust and continues to generate and protect alternative centers of authority; ambitious and powerful governors are already pushing back against Trump’s efforts. Finally, despite worrisome signs of media self-censorship, the United States retains a more vibrant media landscape than Hungary, Turkey, and other similar regimes do. Even though the Trump administration has tilted the playing field, the persistence of these institutional constraints will likely enable the opposition to continue to contest seriously for power. The Democratic Party’s big victories in the 2025 off-year elections showed that U.S. elections remain highly competitive.

The United States also possesses a well-organized and resource-rich civil society. The country’s enormous private sector has hundreds of billionaires, millions of millionaires, and dozens of law firms that generate at least $1 billion a year in revenue. The United States is home to more than 1,700 private universities and colleges and a vast infrastructure of churches, labor unions, private foundations, and nonprofit organizations. This endows U.S. citizens with vast financial and organizational resources for pushing back against authoritarian governments. Such countervailing power greatly exceeds anything available to oppositions in Hungary, India, or Turkey, let alone in El Salvador, Venezuela, Russia, and other autocracies.

The U.S. pro-democracy movement also benefits from a strong and unified opposition party. Most oppositions in competitive authoritarian regimes are fragmented and disorganized.…

Finally, Trump’s limited popularity may hinder his efforts to entrench authoritarian rule. Elected autocrats are far more successful in consolidating power when they enjoy broad public support: Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, Chávez in Venezuela, Alberto Fujimori in Peru, and Vladimir Putin in Russia all had approval ratings above 80 percent when they imposed authoritarian rule. Trump’s approval rating is stuck in the low 40s. Less popular authoritarian leaders, such as Yoon Suk-yeol in South Korea, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, and Pedro Castillo in Peru, often fail.

None of this, Levitsky and colleagues emphasize, guarantees a reversal of the Trump administration’s antidemocratic inroads. But if offers reason for guarded optimism.

WE NEED TO KNOW MORE

What’s the bottom line? Right-wing populism’s rise is relatively new. There is a lot we don’t yet know about its causes and consequences, and about the best way to limit or reverse its damage to democracy. That leaves us with little certainty about how best to proceed.

---

1. Bart Bonikowski, Daphne Halikiopoulou, Eric Kaufmann, and Matthijs Rooduijn, “Populism and Nationalism in a Comparative Perspective: A Scholarly Exchange,” Nations and Nationalism, 2019. ↩︎
2. Larry Bartels, Democracy Erodes from the Top, Princeton University Press, 2022, ch. 7. ↩︎
3. Steven Levitsky, Lucian A. Way, and Daniel Ziblatt, “The Price of American Authoritarianism: What Can Reverse Democratic Decline?,” Foreign Affairs, November-December 2025. ↩︎
4. As Levitsky et al put it, “a defining feature of competitive authoritarianism is the existence of institutional arenas through which the opposition can seriously contest power. The playing field might be uneven, but the game is still played. The opposing team remains on the field, and sometimes it wins.” ↩︎
5. Sung In Kim and Peter A. Hall, “Fairness and Support for Populist Parties,” Comparative Political Studies, 2023; Luigi Guiso, Helios Herrera, Massimo Morelli, and Tomasso Sonno, “Economic Insecurity and the Demand for Populism in Europe,” Economica, 2024; Yoav Roll and Nan Dirk De Graaf, “Income Change and Sympathy for Right‐Wing Populist Parties in the Netherlands: The Role of Gender and Income Inequality within Households,” British Journal of Sociology, 2024; Mark Blyth, “Populists Are Taking Over — Here’s Why Democracy Is Failing,” Social Europe, January 17, 2025; Robert Liñeira and Guillem Rico, “Perceived Social Mobility and Populist Attitudes,” Social Science Quarterly, 2025. ↩︎
6. Jonathan Mijs and Noam Gidron, “The Radical Right’s Rise in Europe Isn’t Fueled by Economic Grievances. Here’s Why,” Washington Post: The Monkey Cage, May 24, 2019; Sheri Berman, “The Causes of Populism in the West,” Annual Review of Political Science, 2021; Yotam Margalit, “Countering Right-Wing Populism: Identifying Its Cultural Roots and Charting a Path Forward,” Washington Center for Equitable Growth, 2025. ↩︎
7. Lane Kenworthy, “Shared Prosperity,” The Good Society; Kenworthy, “Employment,” The Good Society. See also Thomas Carothers and Brendan Hartnett, “Misunderstading Democratic Backsliding,” Journal of Democracy, 2024. ↩︎
8. Bartels, Democracy Erodes from the Top, figure 2.4. ↩︎
9. Lane Kenworthy, “Trade,” The Good Society. Korea is an exception. ↩︎
10. Jonathan Hopkin, Anti-System Politics, Oxford University Press, 2020. ↩︎
11. Sarah Engler and David Weisstanner, “The Threat of Social Decline: Income Inequality and Radical Right Support,” Journal of European Public Policy, 2021; Lukas F. Stoetzer, Johannes Giesecke, and Heike Klüver, “How Does Income Inequality Affect the Support for Populist Parties?,” Journal of European Public Policy, 2023. ↩︎
12. Anton Brännlund and Jan Szulkin, “How Does a Growing Wealth Gap Affect Voting? Evidence from Sweden,” Electoral Studies, 2023. ↩︎
13. Andreas Bergh and Anders Kärnä, “Explaining the Rise of Populism in European Democracies 1980-2018: The Role of Labor Market Institutions and Inequality,” Social Science Quarterly, 2022. ↩︎
14. Ernesto Dal Bo, Frederico Finan, Olle Folke, Torsten Persson, and Johanna Rickne, “Economic Losers and Political Winners: Sweden’s Radical Right,” 2019; Daron Acemoglu, Nicolas Ajzenman, Cevat Giray Aksoy, Martin Fiszbein, and Carlos Molina, “Successful Democracies Breed Their Own Support,” 2023; Brian Burgoon, Sam van Noort, Matthijs Rooduijn, and Geoffrey Underhill, “Positional Deprivation and Support for Radical Right and Radical Left Parties,” Economic Policy, 2023; Martin Lukk, “Politics of Boundary Consolidation: Income Inequality, Ethnonationalism, and Radical-Right Voting,” Socius, 2024. ↩︎
15. Lane Kenworthy, Is Inequality the Problem?, Oxford University Press, 2025, ch. 7. ↩︎
16. Bartels, Democracy Erodes from the Top, figure 4.3 ↩︎
17. Larry Bartels, “The Populist Phantom,” Foreign Affairs, Nov-Dec 2024. ↩︎
18. Katherine Cramer, The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker, University of Chicago Press, 2016; Timothy P. Carney, Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse, Harper, 2019. ↩︎
19. Simon Kuper, “I’m Bullish About France, but Few Agree,” Financial Times, June 27, 2024. ↩︎
20. Lane Kenworthy, “Political Satisfaction,” The Good Society. ↩︎
21. Ronald Inglehart, “Changing Values among Western Publics from 1970 to 2006,” West European Politics, 2008; Christian Welzel, Freedom Rising: Human Empowerment and the Quest for Emancipation, Cambridge University Press, 2013; Ronald Inglehart, Cultural Evolution, Cambridge University Press, 2018. ↩︎
22. Bartels, “The Populist Phantom.” ↩︎
23. Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, Cultural Backlash, Cambridge University Press, 2019. On loss of status, see also Bart Bonikowski, “Ethno-Nationalist Populism and the Mobilization of Collective Resentment,” British Journal of Sociology, 2017; Diana C. Mutz, “Status Threat, Not Economic Hardship, Explains the 2016 Presidential Vote,” PNAS, 2018; Noam Gidron and Peter A. Hall, “Populism as a Problem of Social Integration,” Comparative Political Studies, 2020. ↩︎
24. Bartels, “The Populist Phantom.” ↩︎
25. Norris and Inglehart, Cultural Backlash. ↩︎
26. Bartels, Democracy Erodes from the Top; Bartels, “The Populist Phantom.” ↩︎
27. Bartels, “The Populist Phantom.” ↩︎
28. Bartels, “The Populist Phanton.” See also Laurenz Guenther, “Political Representation Gaps and Populism,” 2025. ↩︎
29. Sheri Berman and Maria Snegovaya, “Populism and the Decline of Social Democracy,” Journal of Democracy, 2019; Catherine de Vries, “Recent Electoral Inroads for the Far Right Reflect Public Dislike of Government Cuts in Public Services,” Financial Times, December 4, 2023; John Burn-Murdoch, “What We Got Wrong About the Populist Right,” Financial Times, July 11, 2024. ↩︎
30. Cramer, The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker; Arlie Russell Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, New Press, 2016; Lilliana Mason, Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity, University of Chicago Press, 2018; Arlie Russell Hochschild, Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right, New Press, 2024. ↩︎
31. Nancy Bermeo, Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times, Princeton University Press, 2003; Matthew H. Graham and Milan W. Svolik, “Democracy in America? Partisanship, Polarization, and the Robustness of Support for Democracy in the United States,” American Political Science Review, 2020; Bartels, “The Populist Phantom.” ↩︎
32. Bartels, “The Populist Phantom.” ↩︎
33. Berman and Snegovaya, “Populism and the Decline of Social Democracy”; Blyth, “Populists Are Taking Over.”; David Broder, “They Were Supposed to Save Europe. Instead, They’re Condemning It to Horrors,” New York Times, 2025. ↩︎
34. John Judis and Ruy Texeira, Where Have All the Democrats Gone?, Henry Holt and Co., 2023. ↩︎
35. Lane Kenworthy, “Social Democratic Capitalism,” The Good Society. ↩︎
36. The Economist, “Denmark’s Left Defied the Consensus on Migration. Has It Worked?,” July 10, 2025; Jeanna Smialek and Amelia Nierenberg, “Denmark Offers Lessons as Europe Toughens Up on Immigration,” New York Times, November 23 2025. ↩︎
37. The Economist, “Can Anyone Stop Europe’s Populist Right?,” December 13, 2025. ↩︎
38. The Economist, “What Elon Musk Gets Wrong About Europe,” September 20, 2025. ↩︎
39. The Economist, “Contact with Reality: Nigel Farage’s Reform UK Has Become More Moderate in Office,” December 13, 2025. ↩︎
40. This quote and those that follow in this section are from Levitsky, Way, and Ziblatt, “The Price of American Authoritarianism: What Can Reverse Democratic Decline?” ↩︎