The spatial determinants of the prevalence of anti-elite rhetoric across parties |
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Authors: | Luigi Curini |
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Institution: | 1. Department of Social and Political Sciences, Università degli Studi di Milano, Milan, Italyluigi.curini@unimi.it |
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Abstract: | AbstractThe article investigates whether there are specific spatial conditions that make a party more likely to pay closer attention to anti-elite rhetoric than to alternative issues in its political confrontation with other parties. The article first treats anti-elitism as a non-policy vote-winning strategy that could be valued positively by a broad class of voters across ideological lines (its ‘quasi-valence’ attribute). It is then shown that the incentive of a party to embrace such a strategy grows as the ideological space separating that party from the other(s) shrinks. This hypothesis receives empirical support from the 2014 Chapel Hill Expert Survey Data. |
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Keywords: | Anti-elite rhetoric ideology Europe expert survey polarization valence issues |
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