Christopher Wratil will be visiting the department on 17 January 2020. On that occasion, he will give a research talk and present one of his papers. Read the abstract below. 

Christopher is Assistant Professor at University College London. He works on democratic representation and various themes in political behavior and EU studies. Read more about Christopher Wratil.

ABSTRACT:

Never Mind, I'll Find Someone Like Me: The Relationship between Perceived Representation and Populism

The rise of populist forces in Western democracies is often linked to failures of representation by political parties and candidates in electoral contests. If voters do not feel represented by any political actor at choice, they may become discontent with politics and develop stronger populist attitudes that are mobilized by populist entrepreneurs. However, to date we lack empirical tests that identify the causal effect of representation failures on populist attitudes and vote choice. We address this lacunae through two survey experiments conducted in 12 European Union countries as well as the United States involving more than 25,000 subjects. The first experiment manipulates citizens' perceptions of being represented by national parties in the European elections campaign 2019, and identifies the effect of perceived representation on populist attitudes. The second experiment relates to a U.S. Congressional election and identifies the effect of perceived representation on vote choice for a populist House candidate. Our results show that while poor representation triggers populist attitudes with non-populist individuals in the context of a European election campaign, it does not affect citizens' voting intentions for a populist candidate in U.S. House elections. These results suggest that populist attitudes are bound up with representative performance, but this may, at least in an experimental context, not affect vote choice.