Authoritarian Populist Opinion in Europe

The paper extends work done on authoritarian populism (AP) in the UK to 11 other European countries: France, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Poland, Italy, Spain, Romania, Lithuania, and Holland. Representative sample surveys with a common set of questions were conducted in each of these countries and in the UK in November 2016. The paper shows that authoritarian populist attitudes (anti-immigrant, anti-EU, anti-Human Rights and pro a robust foreign policy) form a single AP factor or scale in ten of the twelve countries surveyed (the two exceptions are Romania and Lithuania). Across these ten countries the sources of AP attitudes are also very similar, with particularly strong effects being observed for the perceived cultural consequences of immigration. The paper uses cluster analysis to show that authoritarian populism is not an exclusively right-wing mindset among European mass publics. Analysis of voting data shows that the reservoir of support for authoritarian populist parties is much larger than either the current electoral strength of such parties or the proportion of the population that intends to vote for them at the next general election would suggest.