idw | In recent decades, income and wealth disparities have widened significantly in many European countries. At the same time, support for populist parties has grown. Previous studies have already pointed out that rising inequality may be contributing to the growth of populist movements. But how can this correlation be explained? Why are more and more people turning to populist parties?

A new study by Prof. Dr. Heike Klüver and Prof. Dr. Johannes Giesecke from the Department of Social Sciences (Institut für Sozialwissenschaften, ISW) at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU) and their former colleague Prof. Dr. Lukas F. Stoetzer (now at Universität Witten/Herdecke) shows that it is not only social inequality, as measured by objective figures on the distribution of income and wealth, that plays a role here. Rather, what is crucial is how people process such information, what conclusions they draw from it and what feelings it evokes. ‘When people have the impression that wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few, they are more likely to develop populist attitudes,’ says Heike Klüver, chair of Comparative Political Behavior at ISW. ‘This perception shapes political attitudes regardless of what the objective distribution actually looks like.’

Source: Informationsdienst Wissenschaft.