Taking democracy's temperature: The (in)stability and covariates of populist attitudes

Abstract Populism among citizens is often perceived as a problem for democracies due to its rejection of representative practices. In response, scholars have put forward new democratic designs that enhance the democratic system's inclusiveness and popular control, thereby aiming to decrease populism among citizens, or so‐called populist attitudes. However, it is not known whether populist attitudes are even changeable, and whether they respond to such democratic improvements or merely reflect the populist ideas supplied by populist parties. This paper explores the behavior of populist attitudes over time and considers possible drivers of populist attitudes change. For doing so, it conducts a latent growth curve analysis of panel data from the Netherlands and Great Britain spanning approximately four years and containing 16 and 6 waves, respectively. The analyses show that populist attitudes fluctuate over time, and that changes in populist attitudes are associated with changes in democratic satisfaction. This implies that populist attitudes could function as a thermometer of a political system's perceived democratic quality.