How ideology shapes the relationship between populist attitudes and support for liberal democratic values. Evidence from Spain

In this paper, I argue that ideology has a moderating role on how populist attitudes shape support for three liberal democratic values: the separation of powers, the granting of civil liberties and the protection of the rights of minorities. Drawing on insights gleaned from the political theory and comparative politics literature, and using an ideational approach to populism, I suggest that leftist and rightist populist individuals’ different understandings of what constitutes the people shape their stances towards democracy. Using data from Spain (N = 3000), I show that right-wing populist individuals display lower levels of support for the granting of civil liberties and the protection of the rights of minorities than their non-populist peers. As for left-wing individuals, populist attitudes are unrelated to the rights of minorities, positively related to the granting of civil rights, and also positively related to some aspects of the separation of powers. The evidence reveals that right-wing populists endorse principles of liberal democracy less strongly compared to non-populist right-wing individuals and to left-wing individuals, and it has important implications on how to understand and tackle populism in modern democracies.