Increase in support for Populist Parties and Movements, in particular
through the use of social media, discussed in the context of the expressive
account of voter behaviour
Chloe Severn
BSc Government III
This paper will use existing literature on the rational choice theory of voter behaviour, in
particular the expressive account, in order to assess the increase in support for Populist
Parties and Movements, or the ‘New-right’
‘New
which has seen a surge in support particularly
through social media. The data-set
data set used is the recently released Demos paper ‘The New Face
of Digital Populism’ (Bartlett et al., 2011) which is the first extensive piece of research into
the use of social media as a new
new development in the growth of populism. It is found that
although a link between the increase in social media political activism and expressive voting
can be found, the direction and significance of the link remains unclear. This paper will
present a description
ription of the expressive and instrumental account of voter behaviour,
underlining those debates that exist within these schools. This will be followed by an outline
of the rise of extremism in the form of the far-right
far right in Europe at present, especially through
thr
the use of social media, discussed in the context of these two rational choice accounts.
Brennan and Buchanan (1984) changed the direction of academic debate surrounding voter
choice, by outlining the expressive theory of voting within the framework of a rational choice
model of voter behaviour this was achieved. The article finds fault with rational choice
orthodoxy where individual voter’s ‘interests’, are concerned. “Any predictive theory of voter
behaviour based on the assumption that voters vote in accordance with their “interest” is, at
best, logically arbitrary” (Brennan and Buchanan, 1984: 185). The article argues that
considering voters as market agents when analysing voter behaviour is a faulty mechanism
Government and Politics Review 2012
due to the lack of any real influence over the final result held by any one individual voter. To
assume that a simple link between a voter’s preference and the alternative that they choose
exists, leads to misleading analysis because; in majoritarian elections one voter would not
influence the alternative that is finally chosen except in some very rare circumstances
(Brennan and Buchanan, 1984).
Since the publication of this article many academics have debated and refined the precise
nature of expressive voting theory, for example, Schuessler (2000)
2000) and Fischer (1996).
Brennan and Hamlin (1998) cover Brennan and Buchanan’s original argument in more depth,
clarifying the divide between the two schools of rational choice theory. The market agent
account of voter behaviour, originally questioned is
is titled the ‘instrumental’ account and the
alternative the ‘expressive’ account. This article also provides a useful summary of the two
accounts. “[…] instrumental account, voters are rational in the sense that they vote for the
electoral outcome (or the candidate associated with that outcome) that they expect to leave
them best off” (Brennan and Hamlin, 1998: 149).
Whereas:
“On the rival expressive account, voters are also taken to be rational but the
requirements of rationality are interpreted differently…given
differently…given the negligible probability
of any particular voter being decisive, the act of voting is effectively de-coupled
de
from
the causal consequences of voting for electoral outcomes…behaviour must be
explained predominantly in terms of those considerations
considerations that are relevant to the voters
expressing a preference in and of itself.” (Brennan and Hamlin, 1998: 149-150)
149
The authors compare the act of voting in the expressive account to the act of cheering for a
football team as opposed to the act of selecting a product within a market environment.
One area of debate in the subsequent literature is the question ‘who are the expressive
voters?’ (Drinkwater and Jennings, 2007) of particular interest within this area of study, is the
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question of whether extremists or moderates are more likely to vote expressively. Brennan
and Hamlin (1998) describe how, as an individual’s ideological position on the liberal to
conservative variable grows stronger (or in other wordswords the more extreme the views of the
voter), the individual’s
ividual’s propensity to vote expressively decreases. However, Greene and
Nelson (2002) find evidence to suggest that this is not the case and use Brennan and Hamlin’s
own model to show that although moderates are more likely to identify with and therefore
wish to align themselves with candidates, extremists in the sample vote more than the
moderates.
A recent Demos paper (Bartlett et al., 2011) presents research in the area of Populist Parties
and Movements (PPAMs) which are often referred to as the ‘far-right’,
‘far right’, despite the findings of
Bartlett et al. that the ideological position of these movements ranges
ranges across the left-right
left
spectrum in respect of varying policy areasareas hence the pseudonym PPAMs. The study was
conducted in a pan-European
European manner and covers all of the prominent organisations; ranging
from street-movements
movements such as the ‘English Defence League’
League’ (EDL) and ‘Casapound Italia’
to parties which hold positions in government such as Geert Wilder’s ‘Freedom party’ in the
Netherlands as well as popular parties which currently do not hold a position in Government
such as ‘Freiheitliche Partei Osterreichs’
Osterreichs’ (FPO) in Austria. The study is unique in that it
makes use of the social media site Facebook’s own market research tools in order to reach
and survey a large volume of those individuals expressing support for PPAMs online. The
paper explains how PPAMss have experienced rapid growth over the past decade. Previously
small extremist parties on the edge of mainstream politics, they are now at times seen as
important members of coalitions and hold power in many countries. The support for PPAMs
however is most
st noticeable online in the form of social media groups and networks; in many
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ways these groups show a more realistic picture of supporters than the formal membership
which is often significantly smaller.
If the expressive account of voter behaviour is used
used in order to understand the motivations for
individuals to vote for a populist party then the rise of PPAM activity online could be argued
to represent a key driver in the increase in support for populist parties in terms of electoral
support. Kuran (1992,, cited in Greene and Nelson 2002) argues that individuals experience
an increase in utility when taking the political position closest to that which others within
their main reference group take. To explain this using Brennan and Hamlin’s (1998) football
analogy, social media sites allow an individual to express their preference for a certain team.
Others in the individuals’ reference group may also express support publicly, with some in
the group imitating the interests of others in order to support the popular
popular team. Each
individual experiences an increase in utility by expressing his or her support, regardless of
any quantifiable policy or political outcome. This occurs in the case of PPAMs with public
support being ultimately expressed through votes. Nelson
Nelson (1994) writes that voting is
imitative- that people are seen to change their political positions in line with their associates.
With the rise of social media it is easy for an individual to see what political views their
associates are expressing and therefore
t
to imitate them.
Bartlett et al. (2011) explain how the influence of social media on political party support is
still under-researched
researched and as such little understood, yet in many ways the research in PPAMs
presented can be found to resonate with many
many aspects of the expressive voting theory.
Bartlett et al. (2011: 43) reject the orthodox view that economic voting theory can best
explain support for populist parties as well as questioning the ‘protest vote’ model for
explaining support. However, an instrumental
instrumental account is considered and this will be
discussed later in this paper.
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An important consideration, when contemplating the expressive nature of the link between an
increase in Populist Party electoral support and the increase in social media support,
suppo is the
extent to which online support is converted to votes. In the research 67% of respondents
reported voting for the Populist Party in the latest election. Although this does show a
majority, it still leaves one third of respondents demonstrating support
support yet not converting this
to votes. However, when controlled for attitudinal and demographic variables the results were
different. Being employed and female dramatically increased the likelihood of voting.
The statistics on those supporters who voted and
and those who did not revealed an interesting
finding, which fits with another dimension of expressive voting theory. The issue of ‘trust’
and ‘trustworthiness’ seemed to be a significant variable in the findings on likelihood of
converting support into votes.
es. Those who reported a lack of ‘trust’ in the government and its
institutions were more likely to vote. All groups except one (The Norwegian Progress Party)
reported lower levels of generalised trust than Euro barometer averages and significantly
lower than
han average trust in the judiciary. Greene and Nelson (2002) include the argument that
taking political positions is predominantly about ‘trust’ or rather communicating to others
one’s own trustworthiness. In a group of people who show lower than average generalised
g
trust as well as trust in institutions such as the judiciary, expressing themselves in order to
communicate their own trustworthiness could plausibly be seen as more important than
average. Greene and Nelson (2002) write that the political position
position may be signalled by
different means apart from simply votingvoting this may provide one explanation for the larger
number of online supporters than voters. In any case, when this is linked with aforementioned
Kuran (1992) increased utility through voting, there
there does appear to be a self-perpetuating
self
cycle of communicating support and acting upon support through social media sites.
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This brings this discussion back to the debate on the expressive or instrumental nature of
voter behaviour, as well as the question
question of whether extremists or moderates are more likely to
be expressive voters. Jennings and Drinkwater (2007) consider this debate and conclude that
it is likely that some voters are more likely to be expressive and others instrumental. They
find that extremists
emists are more likely than moderates to convert support into votes however
they are also more likely than moderates to vote instrumentally. This finding is attributed to
the distance between moderates and candidates being so small as to lead them to not bother
b
voting and if they do, to do so expressively. In addition, however, Brennan and Hamlin
(1998) do explain how in many ways a distinction between expressive and instrumental
behaviour may not be appropriate in certain cases, for example when a citizen’s
citizen’ instrumental
and expressive concerns may align perfectly, leading to an expressive vote which hopes to
achieve some instrumental policy response. In this, the findings of Bartlett et al. (2011) do
provide some significant correlation between these two accounts
accounts and voter behaviour.
Attitudinal factors were found to significantly affect the likelihood of an online PPAM
supporter voting for a populist party. ‘Supporters who listed immigration as one of their top
three concerns were 109% more likely to vote for the party than supporters who did not’
(Bartlett et al., 2011: 78). Immigration is significant because it is one of the factors that is a
formal policy area as well as an expressive concern. By advertising anti-immigration
anti
sentiment, supporters of PPAMs
PPAMs communicate their ideology as effectively as signalling antianti
multiculturalism views, however anti-immigration
anti immigration is a realistic instrumental concern
featuring in party manifestos and linked by supporters to personal circumstance such as
unemployment and as outlined in this paper, an increase in crime. So, in this way it can be
seen that perhaps the instrumental and expressive motivations for voting behaviour can be
seen to mesh.
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Through this discussion it is clear that an argument exists for the increase in PPAM electoral
support being linked to increased online support through an expressive voting mechanism as
well as some support for Brennan and Hamlin’s (1998) acknowledgement that in some
circumstances expressive and instrumental accounts can be seen to mesh.
mesh. However,
However there are
many uncertainties that still exist which will be now be outlined.
Firstly, the debate over whether extremists are more likely to be susceptible to expressive
voting behaviour still rages (Jennings and Drinkwater, 2007). If it is not the case that
extremists are more likely to vote expressively, the link between online support and increased
electoral support would be deemed negligible compared to the online activities of their
mainstream party counter-parts.
parts. An increase in support for populist parties would be more
likely to be explained through other voting behaviour theories such as the ‘protest‘protest vote’
motivations as partly rejected by the Demos paper (Bartlett et al., 2011).
Equally troublesome is the lack of data available on the likelihood of PPAM supporters
voting for the Populist Party if social media influence was removed. This variable would be
difficult to control for due to demographic variations in social media users.
To consider another theory of voter behaviour, sociological,
sociological, such as the writings of Lipset
and Rokkan (1967) the rise in PPAM support also presents further difficulties. Whereas
expressive voting accounts do comment on the propensity for a group mentality or cleavage
to influence voting behaviour, in the case of these parties there is an undeniable cross-over
cross
between the cleavage and the policy. While in previous studies of mainstream party support
there may have been a greater likelihood for a certain ethnicity or religion to support a certain
party as part off a cleavage (Knutsen, 2004; Lipset and Rokkan, 1967), in the case of the
parties referred to in this paper, the cleavage is also the policy. For example, antianti Islamic
policies are not going to be supported by an Islamic cleavage. So, the expressive group
Government and Politics Review 2012
mentality account is hard to extrapolate from the sociological or instrumental motivations for
voting in a way that is unique to these populist parties.
On the other hand, if the discussion is approached from a different angle then the increase in
social media support for PPAMs can be seen as a confirmation of some of those expressive
motivations that authors such as Brennan and Hamlin (1998) have outlined. In essence there
is very little direct involvement between showing support online as opposed to voting
voti for
policy or becoming a formal member of a populist party. It is unlikely to bring about
significant policy change or promote those political concerns in to the mainstream media or
legislative agenda. Therefore, the act of joining a ‘Facebook group’ for
for instance could be
framed as an expressive political act in a new digital age.
In conclusion, this paper has outlined the debates concerning the likelihood of voters of all
political persuasions to vote expressively, it has also discussed the findings, that
t in the digital
age expressive political behaviour is evident in the form of social media usage. The case has
been presented for the existence of a link between an increase in PPAM electoral support and
the increase in social media usage, through the imitative
imitative line of the expressive account of
voter behaviour. It has also been suggested that Nelson’s (1994) findings on trustworthiness
may be significant when considering the increase in support for PPAMs.
However, due to the mesh between the instrumental and expressive concerns of PPAM
support this paper is unable to provide a solely expressive account of voter behaviour with
the data currently available. Further study may include more in-depth
in depth analysis of the
instrumental and expressive concerns of PPAM voters, compared with those concerns of
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online supporters who did not convert support to vote; as well as a comparative study
between those PPAM supporters influenced by social media and those who were not.
.
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List of References
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Available at: http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/thenewfaceofdigitalpopulism
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