From Objectivist Bias to Positivist Bias: A Constructivist Critique of the Attitudes Approach to Populism

Abstract

This article undertakes a critique of the attitudes approach to populism, predicated on survey-based operationalisations of populism as a set of attitudes. Our critique is threefold: first, the move of reducing ‘the elite’ to ‘the politicians’ in survey items – beginning with the foundational Akkerman scale – is at odds with the constructivist underpinnings of Mudde’s ideational definition that this literature largely draws on, where ‘the people’ and ‘the elite’ are understood as contingent constructions that can take on a wide range of meanings depending on the ideological permutation. Second, our corpus linguistics-based overview of empirical patterns within the ‘populist attitudes’ literature indicates a skewed focus on the far right within this literature, contrary to the ideological variability of populism following the ideational definition. Third, the reliance on public opinion surveys points to the danger of reifying public opinion and attributing objective qualities to ‘the people’ as such. In assuming categories such as ‘the elite’ to stand for determinate referents such as ‘the politicians’ in survey-based operationalisations, the positivist bias of the attitudes approach paradoxically mirrors the objectivist bias (following Sartori) of early populism research that reduced the identity of ‘the people’ in populism to determinate socio-structural categories such as the peasantry.