2024/01/01 by Daniel Auer, Markus Freitag · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Populism, Right-Wing Movements
paper · doi:10.1093/poq/nfae056
openalex publication_date 2024/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22
Abstract We argue that threat-induced anger is not a universal driver of populist attitudes and waning political support. Instead, we hypothesize that anger erodes democracy-relevant political attitudes only when a threat affects citizens’ norms and only when blame for said threat is attributed to the domestic political system. We corroborate our hypotheses using data from a unique survey experiment conducted in Germany in 2022, in which we vary the level of responsibility attribution and threat noxiousness by exposing respondents to different threats that were salient during the field phase. The results indicate that citizens differentiate whom they hold accountable, such that it is not necessarily the quality of the threat but the quality of the political response to the threat that determines the future of democracy.