IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cog/poango/v8y2020i1p226-238.html

Populism and Political Knowledge: The United States in Comparative Perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Henry Milner

    (Chair in Electoral Studies, Department of Political Science, University of Montreal, Canada)

Abstract

This article addresses the link between political knowledge and populist attitudes in the United States (US) in comparative perspective. At the beginning of the new decade, populism in the US is associated with support for the Republican party and Donald Trump in particular, and that is how I address it here. Using secondary data from a number of related studies, we find that, overall, support for Trump is not only negatively related to political knowledge, but also to other factors that make his supporters unaware of their being misinformed. This is because, more than for others, partisan cues serve them as a basis for their factual beliefs about political actors and events and assessments of the beliefs of others. While political knowledge has long been comparatively low in the US, as I show in the early part of the article, the relationship between misinformation and populism (i.e., support for Trump) is seen as a new and especially worrisome element. In the concluding section I address what, if anything, could be done to address this situation.

Suggested Citation

  • Henry Milner, 2020. "Populism and Political Knowledge: The United States in Comparative Perspective," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(1), pages 226-238.
    • Handle: RePEc:cog:poango:v8:y:2020:i:1:p:226-238
    DOI: 10.17645/pag.v8i1.2560
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandgovernance/article/view/2560
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17645/pag.v8i1.2560?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alabrese, Eleonora & Becker, Sascha O. & Fetzer, Thiemo & Novy, Dennis, 2019. "Who voted for Brexit? Individual and regional data combined," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 132-150.
    2. Lau, Richard R. & Patel, Parina & Fahmy, Dalia F. & Kaufman, Robert R., 2014. "Correct Voting Across Thirty-Three Democracies: A Preliminary Analysis," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 44(2), pages 239-259, April.
    3. Barber, Michael & Pope, Jeremy C., 2019. "Does Party Trump Ideology? Disentangling Party and Ideology in America," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 113(1), pages 38-54, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cristine de Clercy, 2020. "On the Intersection of Leadership and Populism in North America and Europe," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(1), pages 107-110.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Henry Milner, 2020. "Populism and Political Knowledge: The United States in Comparative Perspective," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(1), pages 226-238.
    2. Alsalem, Amani & Fry, Marie-Louise & Thaichon, Park, 2020. "To donate or to waste it: Understanding posthumous organ donation attitude," Australasian marketing journal, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 87-97.
    3. Crescenzi, Riccardo & Di Cataldo, Marco & Giua, Mara, 2020. "It’s not about the money. EU funds, local opportunities, and Euroscepticism," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    4. Jonathan Knuckey & Myunghee Kim, 2020. "The Politics of White Racial Identity and Vote Choice in the 2018 Midterm Elections," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 101(4), pages 1584-1599, July.
    5. Andrés Rodríguez-Pose & Neil Lee & Cornelius Lipp, 2021. "Golfing with Trump. Social capital, decline, inequality, and the rise of populism in the US," Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 14(3), pages 457-481.
    6. Arye L. Hillman & Ngo Long, 2022. "Immigrants as future voters," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 190(1), pages 149-174, January.
    7. Sonja Settele, 2019. "How Do Beliefs about the Gender Wage Gap Affect the Demand for Public Policy?," CEBI working paper series 19-13, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. The Center for Economic Behavior and Inequality (CEBI).
    8. Eugenio Levi & Isabelle Sin & Steven Stillman, 2021. "Understanding the Origins of Populist Political Parties and the Role of External Shocks," CESifo Working Paper Series 9036, CESifo.
    9. Afful-Dadzie, Eric & Afful-Dadzie, Anthony, 2017. "Liberation of public data: Exploring central themes in open government data and freedom of information research," International Journal of Information Management, Elsevier, vol. 37(6), pages 664-672.
    10. Thiemo Fetzer, 2019. "Did Austerity Cause Brexit?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(11), pages 3849-3886, November.
    11. Sergei Guriev & Elias Papaioannou, 2022. "The Political Economy of Populism," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 60(3), pages 753-832, September.
    12. Cipullo, Davide & Reslow, André, 2019. "Biased Forecasts to Affect Voting Decisions? The Brexit Case," Working Paper Series 2019:4, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
    13. Polyzos, Stathis & Samitas, Aristeidis & Katsaiti, Marina-Selini, 2020. "Who is unhappy for Brexit? A machine-learning, agent-based study on financial instability," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    14. Simon Rudkin & Lucy Barros & Paweł Dłotko & Wanling Qiu, 2024. "An economic topology of the Brexit vote," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 58(3), pages 601-618, March.
    15. Stephen Drinkwater, 2021. "Brexit and the ‘left behind’: Job polarization and the rise in support for leaving the European Union," Industrial Relations Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(6), pages 569-588, November.
    16. Tarek A. Hassan & Stephan Hollander & Laurence Van Lent & Ahmed Tahoun, 2024. "The Global Impact of Brexit Uncertainty," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 79(1), pages 413-458, February.
    17. Barton, Jared & Pan, Xiaofei, 2022. "Movin’ on up? A survey experiment on mobility enhancing policies," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    18. Alabrese, Eleonora & Fetzer, Thiemo, 2018. "Who is NOT voting for Brexit anymore?," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 394, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    19. Clem Brooks & Elijah Harter, 2021. "Redistribution Preferences, Inequality Information, and Partisan Motivated Reasoning in the United States," Societies, MDPI, vol. 11(2), pages 1-16, June.
    20. Madio, Leonardo & Principe, Francesco, 2023. "Who supports liberal policies? A tale of two referendums in Italy," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 232(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cog:poango:v8:y:2020:i:1:p:226-238. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: António Vieira or IT Department (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cogitatiopress.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.