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Article

Authoritarian and Populist Challenges to Democracy Correspond to a Lack of Economic, Social, and Cultural Capitals

by
Tea Golob
1,
Maruša Gorišek
1,2,* and
Matej Makarovič
1,3
1
Faculty of Information Studies, SI-8000 Novo Mesto, Slovenia
2
Institute for Developmental and Strategic Analysis, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
3
School of Advanced Social Studies, SI-5000 Nova Gorica, Slovenia
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Societies 2023, 13(8), 181; https://doi.org/10.3390/soc13080181
Submission received: 8 June 2023 / Revised: 27 July 2023 / Accepted: 3 August 2023 / Published: 4 August 2023
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Abstract

:
We explore attitudes toward democracy in relation to social divisions by focusing on the European Union member states and the corresponding EU political field. Positioning in the European political field is addressed through the theory of social fields as provided by Bourdieu and further conceptualized by Fligstein and McAdam. Drawing on the data obtained from the European Social Survey, we conducted a principal component analysis of the attitudes toward democracy and a correspondence analysis between these attitudes and social, cultural, and economic capitals. We demonstrate that attitudes toward challenging the existing representative democratic order can be seen in terms of two distinct dimensions: authoritarianism and populism. The presence of both corresponds to the lack of one’s possession of economic, social, and cultural capitals and the related political habitus. Those who lack these forms of capital are more prone to support strong authoritarian leaders and are also more likely to endorse conspiracy theories. We can relate this to the problems of exclusion and deprivation related to the lack of political habitus required for effective agency in the political field.

1. Introduction

In this article, we explore the attitudes towards democracy, which are seen as a contested and complex issue in a world of increased uncertainties, mass-mediated reality, and unprecedented technological development. In recent decades, human societies have been marked by incomprehensible structural and cultural changes, which are undermining fundamental building blocks of social institutions—including democracy. According to the Democracy Report in 2022, the level of democracy enjoyed globally by the average person had fallen to 1986 levels; it continued to stagnate in the following year [1]. This means that the progress of the recent years of democratization has diminished. In addition, the number of countries leaning toward authoritarianism is three times higher compared to the democratic ones [2].
Although some authors [3,4] warn about the crisis of liberal representative democracy, it is still considered to be the principal form of government, which is, at least comparatively, more likely to secure human rights and civil liberties, peace [5,6], and overall human development [7]. It requires and provides grounds for public and civil consent and active participation within social and political spheres, where multiple voices can be heard and considered. What is good for society is, or at least should be, depending only on what freely organized people choose [8]. As such, it is also claimed to be a universal value [9].
Even in the comparatively stable democracies in the European Union, the attitudes and perceptions of democracy have therefore become a burning topic and the utmost important research problem. Several authors write about the democratic backlash in Europe in the sense of the deterioration of the rule of law [10], civil and political liberties, accountability, and political participation [11,12,13]. They observe the changing attitudes towards democracy in certain countries [14], fading trust of people in public institutions [15], and the rise of populism that is often associated with it [16].
These issues are related to another problem that needs to be addressed. Modern democracies strongly rely on ongoing public deliberations that are conditioned by normative consensus as well as the consensus on the basic claims about reality. The exchange of rational arguments is only possible when people can agree on the basic criteria for considering different claims as true or false. The lack of such consensus significantly contributes to the erosion of modern democracies. Both the dissonance in these basic claims as well as the ultimate skepticism and distrust towards the modern democratic systems, is clearly embodied in the support for conspiracy theories, which makes them another obstacle to the functioning of democracies [17,18].
Several researchers have sought the roots of these problems in the significant—and often increasing—social inequalities and exclusion in developed democracies. Lind [19] describes a ‘’new class war’’ between the global managerial elite of college-educated professionals with significantly more influence and the working-class majority. They have different world views and political preferences, which leaves a significant group of people unheard [20]. Babones similarly names this ‘’the tyranny of experts’’ [21]. Guilluy [22] illustrates these dynamics in the case of France and the division between winners of the global economy living in metropolitan areas and the losers, pushed to the periphery of the big cities, left behind, excluded, and inaudible. However, empirical research does not offer consistent findings on the relationship between inequality and democratic backsliding [23,24].
Nevertheless, various authors observe the associations between social exclusion and the challenges democracies face. Spruyt et al. [25] have thus found support for populism among the social groups who face difficulties in finding a positive social identity, and Manunta, Becker, Easterbrook, and Vignoles [26] have connected it to the feelings of relative deprivation that lead to frustrated belonging. It is noteworthy that those studies observe limited populations in Flanders and France, respectively. Furthermore, researchers have observed the influence of social exclusion on political preferences and political participation. Subjective status in terms of social position influences political preferences, such as support for redistributive policies and ideological principles [27], attitudes toward inequality [28], and meritocracy [29].
Researchers have found similar connections when researching beliefs in conspiracy theories. Biddlestone et al. note that conspiracy theories are especially attractive to those that feel excluded and isolated and are seeking social connections and bonds [30]. Belief in conspiracy theories is also associated with a lack of agency, low feelings of control in the sociopolitical domain, and feeling underprivileged [31]. This suggests that the prevalence of belief in conspiracy theories, which is emerging as a pressing problem in contemporary societies, could be observed from the same point of view as the attitudes toward democracy.
The existing literature offers a great amount of discussion on the role of inequality and social exclusion in attitudes toward democracy and democratic behaviors. However, it often provides rather generalized explanations focused on class dynamics and/or focuses its findings on only one aspect of attitudes (populism, voting behavior) and empirically observed it on a smaller scale.
This article contributes significantly to the existing literature in three ways. First, it empirically explores attitudes toward democracy in relation to social divisions in a more comprehensive manner by focusing on several aspects of attitudes toward democracy in the European Union. Drawing on the data from the European Social Survey, we observe how people can be categorized in terms of different kinds of attitudes toward democracy and conspiracy theories.
Second, our study is not limited to a national or local case but applied to the European Union, thus enabling far broader generalizations about the challenges to modern democracies.
Finally, the attitudes towards democracy are placed in a well-established and elaborated theoretical framework of social fields provided by Bourdieu [32] and further conceptualized by Fligstein and McAdam [33]. We, therefore, observe how to designate people in different groups based on their different positions within the social structure related to the possession of key resources. This approach enables us to comprehend the differences between groups of people and to discern underlying factors conditioning their emergence and maintenance.
Bourdieu claimed that society is composed of different intertwined fields (e.g., political, cultural, economic, etc.), which are organized in terms of their own logic of operation. The functioning of the field and the interactions within it are prescribed by the type and amount of resources that agents possess and execute. Bourdieu called those resources economic, cultural, social, or symbolic capitals (Bourdieu’s key concepts).
Fields can be seen as a set of ever-existing and obligatory frames that shape our experiences. Each field has specific operating rules. They can be defined as local orders, where “interactions between more and less powerful collective groups according to rules and shared meanings take place” [34] (p. 11). All participants seek to enhance their capitals and related positions within a field according to their interests. However, the primary distribution of capitals defining one’s initial position in a field is of great importance, which can be observed in distinctive cultural tastes (Bourdieu), persisting social inequalities, and marginalization. For example, observe similar social class inequalities can be observed in the educational attainment of children among rather different Western countries, which can be explained by the fact that it is not only parental economic capital but also their cultural and social capitals that influences children’s educational attainment [35].
In this paper, we address the national environments of EU countries as a complex system of strategic action fields [33], which are nested not only within national social frames and boundaries but also within European political settings. It is, therefore, a European political field, which we observe as a place of conflict, where actors possess certain types and amounts of capital, exercise specific habitus and related actions, and, on that basis, strategically attempt to improve their position. Their strategic actions are, however, conditioned by the comprehension and understanding of the “feel for the game” within the field, as Bourdieu would describe it, which is dependent on the capitals and habitus that one has. The national political fields nested within the European political field are organized according to the logic of representative democracy, and individuals can either accept and support this logic, or they can challenge it.
On that basis, we propose the following research questions:
  • What is the role of one’s positioning in the field in the categorization of different attitudes toward democracy?
  • What is the role of particular capitals in those categorizations?
  • What is the relation between one’s positioning in the field and his/her inclination toward conspiracy theories?
Based on the theoretical premises, we hypothesize that individuals deprived in terms of various types of capital are more likely to challenge modern democratic systems. Being deprived of certain resources, they feel excluded and disorientated. They are less equipped for the symbolic battlefield and, as such, less likely to participate in political activities actively. Extensive literature connects different forms of capital with the individual traits we observe. For instance, lower levels of cultural (in terms of educational level) and social capitals have been associated with lower levels of political participation [36,37,38,39] and dissatisfaction with democracy [40], while lower levels of economic capital (in terms of social class) have been connected to the belief in conspiracy theories [41]. We address these issues more comprehensively with the aim of categorizing different kinds of attitudes and designating different groups of people on that basis. More specifically, in our empirical research, we test the following hypotheses:
H1: 
Being endowed with more economic, social, and cultural capitals makes one more likely to support the existing conception of democracy based on representation and the rule of law.
H2: 
Individuals who are deprived of capitals are more likely to support conspiracy theories.

2. Materials and Methods

We use the dataset from the European Social Survey Round 10 Democracy, Digital Social Contacts (ESS), collected from September 2020 to May 2022 [42]. We use the data from the 25 European countries in the survey until May 2022. While we use this complete sample to develop our categorization of the perspectives towards democracy, our further analysis is limited to the political field of the European Union. For this purpose, we apply them to the 19 EU member states in the sample (i.e., Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Sweden).
The survey assesses the attitudes towards democracy mainly through the following items with 0–10 Likert scale responses:
  • How important is it for you to live in a country that is governed democratically?
  • How acceptable for you would it be for [country] to have a strong leader who is above the law?
  • How important do you think it is for democracy in general that the views of ordinary people prevail over the views of the political elite?
  • How important do you think it is for democracy in general that the will of the people cannot be stopped?
We analyze the responses to these questions through principal component analysis (PCA) to identify the key latent variables summarizing the attitudes towards democracy, including the role of the people, the elites, the rule of law, and the idea of a strong ruler. These latent variables are then applied in the k-means cluster analysis to distinguish between the key categories in the population regarding the attitudes toward democracy.
To assess the resources available to individuals in terms of capitals, we apply the following approximate measures from the ESS questionnaire:
  • The highest educational level achieved by the respondents to indicate their cultural capital (originally in 27 ISCED categories, recoded into five main categories);
  • Household’s total net income after tax and compulsory deductions from all sources to indicate their economic capital (originally in deciles, recoded into pentiles);
  • Respondents’ generalized trust (“Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted, or that you can’t be too careful in dealing with people?”) to indicate their social capital (originally a 0–10 Likert scale, recoded into five categories).
To identify the tendency of respondents to accept conspiracy theories, the level of agreement with the following statement is used: “A small secret group of people is responsible for making all major decisions in world politics”. The five-level Likert scale for this purpose ranges from “agree strongly” to “disagree strongly”.
To test our hypotheses, we apply multiple correspondence analysis (MCA). This enables us to check how the categories endowed with certain types of capital correspond to the categories based on attitudes toward democracy, participation, and conspiracy theories.

3. Results

3.1. Challenging Representative Democracy: Populism and Authoritarianism

The principal component analysis of the variables referring to the attitudes towards democracy extracts two components of major significance, explaining 41.2% and 29.7% of the variance, respectively. After the orthogonal (varimax) rotation, the two components can be interpreted as populist and authoritarian. The first component or dimension can be called populist as it is strongly related to the belief that it is important for democracy that the views of the ordinary people should prevail over the views of the political elite and that the will of the people cannot be stopped. The second dimension can be called authoritarian since it is closely positively related to the belief that living in a democracy is not that important and that a strong leader who is above the law is acceptable. Since liberal democracy in Europe is based on the principles of representation (with people not ruling directly but through the elites) and the rejection of authoritarian leaders above the law, both populism and authoritarianism can be seen as challenges to the existing order in the political field. The results of the principal component analysis are presented in Table 1.
Based on the PCA results, as far as attitudes toward democracy are concerned, the respondents can be roughly positioned in the political field in a two-dimensional space combining their scores on the dimensions of populism and authoritarianism. On this basis, using these scores, we apply k-means cluster analysis that enables the distinction between four groups. We call those with high scores for populism and authoritarianism Authoritarian Populists. Their direct opposite, namely the people with low scores on both dimensions, can be called Democratic Elitists, as democracy is the opposing concept to authoritarianism, and elitism is typically seen as opposing to populism. In addition, we can note the two other combinations, namely Democratic Populists and Authoritarian Elitists. It should be stressed that the designations of these four groups should be taken in relative, not in absolute terms. Respondents in the EU typically object to a strong leader above the law (with an average agreement score of 2.3) and support the idea that the views of ordinary people prevail over the views of the political elite with a mean score of 7.3 (in both cases on the scale from 0 to 10). The terms “authoritarians” and “elitists thus” imply those with a less decisive rejection of the authoritarian leader and those who show less enthusiasm for the prevalence of the views of the people over the views of the elite. For example, among the authoritarian populists, the mean support for an authoritarian leader is 5.2; for the views of the people prevailing over the elite, it is 5.3.
With 41.3%, democratic populists are the most common category in the European countries included in our study. They are followed by democratic elitists (27.9%), while authoritarian populists (18.1%) and authoritarian elitists (12.8%) are somewhat less frequent. The combination of authoritarianism and populism seems to be connected to the belief in conspiracy theories. While the Spearman correlation coefficient between the dimension of authoritarianism and belief in the global conspiracy is a rather modest 0.23 (significance level < 0.00), the connection becomes clearer when combining it with populism and comparing our four groups in this regard. In other words, 36.6% of authoritarian populists (more than twice as much as among the democratic elitists) agree or strongly agree with the claim that “a small secret group of people is responsible for making all major decisions in world politics”. The prevalence of these groups and some of their features are presented in Table 2.

3.2. Populism and Authoritarianism Are Related to Deficits in Economic, Cultural, and Social Capital

We apply MCA to analyze the relationship between the four categories of attitudes toward democracy, as well as economic, social, and cultural capital. Most of the variance in the model (81.2%) is explained by the first (horizontal) dimension, while the first two dimensions combined explain 87.4% of the total variance, thus providing a rather comprehensive insight. The results are presented in Figure 1.
Democratic elitism clearly corresponds to higher amounts of resources in terms of capitals. They are more likely to belong to the wealthiest (5th) pentile in terms of income, have a graduate or postgraduate tertiary education, and tend to have very high trust in people in general.
Authoritarian populists, in contrast, are the closest in relative terms to the 2nd pentile of the income groups and are rather unlikely to have any tertiary education or a high level of generalized trust. Authoritarian elitists, again, are negatively related to tertiary education and higher income levels, while they correspond closely to low and very low generalized trust. Finally, the democratic populists have a significantly less distinctive social (class) basis. They comprise a wider variety of social groups than the other three categories.
The results speak in favor of H1, which states that being endowed with more economic, social, and cultural capitals makes one more likely to support the existing conception of democracy based on representation and the rule of law, which is most consistent with the position of democratic elitism, which is most typically supported by people with the highest amounts of resources. The results are rather robust even if one applies alternative indicators, such as participation in voluntary associations instead of generalized trust as a measure of social capital, parents’ education as an indication of cultural capital, or occupational positions as approximations of Goldthorpe’s class model.
As the political field of the European Union involves people from different nation-states with their own specific features, this diversity should also be noted. To maintain clarity, we project the three groups of the EU member states (instead of each one individually) as a passive variable to the MCA coordinate plot. The results indicate a highly unequal distribution of economic, cultural, and social capitals between the citizens of different member states and substantial differences in attitudes towards authoritarianism and populism. The citizens of European old democracies (democratic from before WW2 or being democratized immediately after it) lean comparatively more towards support for democracy (most notably democratic elitism), and those from new (post-communist) democracies are relatively more inclined towards authoritarian populism. Respondents from the middle group—or medium democracies (Greece, Portugal, and Spain) are not connected to any particular attitude towards democracy, but they are more likely to correspond to relative deprivation in economic, social, and cultural capitals.

3.3. Deprivation of Different Capitals Corresponds to the Beliefs in Conspiracy Theories

The belief in conspiracy theories, indicated by supporting the claim that a small secret group of people is responsible for making all major decisions in world politics, should not be underestimated, as 26.3% of European Union residents in the (post-stratified) sample agree or strongly agree with it. They also closely overlap with the believers in the claims that “groups of scientists manipulate, fabricate, or suppress evidence in order to deceive the public” or that “the coronavirus is the result of deliberate and concealed efforts of some government or organization”.
The results of correspondence analysis between the belief in a small group taking all major decisions and the (lack of) economic, cultural, and social capitals are presented in Figure 2. The two-dimensional model provides a very good explanatory mechanism, as its first dimension explains 80.1% of the total variance, while the two dimensions combined explain 84.9%.
Again, significant correspondence can be noted. People with vocational or lower education, belonging to the lowest income pentile and with very low generalized trust, are much more likely to agree strongly with the conspiracy claim. With secondary education, low or medium generalized trust, and shifting to the second income pentile, the agreement with the conspiracy claim becomes more moderate. Tertiary undergraduate education and the fourth income pentile correspond to moderate disagreement regarding the global conspiracy. A strong disagreement, finally, corresponds to the high or very high generalized trust, the highest income pentile, and graduate and postgraduate tertiary education.
Projecting the distinction between old and new democracies to the MCA plot as a passive variable indicates a correspondence between the member states and the belief in a world conspiracy, together with the territorial disparities in economic, cultural, and social capital, as confirmed above. Respondents from the old democracies are far more likely to reject conspiracy claims than those from more recently democratized countries.
The results support H2, which states that individuals deprived of capitals are more likely to support conspiracy theories.

4. Discussion

The recent decline in democracy can be seen in the context of contested and uncertain social conditions. Due to unprecedented social transformations conditioned by digitalization and signified by various crises (i.e., economic, climate, health, etc.), people often feel disorientated and lack agency and control of their own life situation. They often distrust established social institutions and their representatives and are more prone to endorse conspiracy theories. Accordingly, they can deny support to democratic leaders and seek the solution from strong authoritative political figures. In contrast, people can also become more empowered and perceive the existing political order in terms of the advantages for their own life situation.
In the context of the EU countries, we can observe that the important factors conditioning one’s attitudes toward democracy are related to one’s access to and possession of economic, social, and cultural capitals. By drawing on the theory of (strategic) social fields [33,43], we can show that the attitudes towards democracy are intertwined with one’s positioning in the national and European political field, which reflects the ways that people perceive and respond to social reality. Those ways of perceiving and acting can be defined by using Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, which is conditioning how we respond to the field settings and relations within it. The attitudes toward democracy and related issues are therefore ensuing from one’s (political) habitus.
In Bourdieu’s [32] sense, habitus is a schema of dispositions imposing the structure of the field and orienting a routine action. Habitus is, therefore, the social structure imprinted in individuals’ cognitive dispositions, which entail the subjective framework for actions. It signifies and influences not only how we think about the world but also embodies the system of dispositions that we bring into the field. It underlines the way we walk, the way we talk, and how we think and speak [43]. Although individualized throughout, habitus reflects a shared cultural context. The shared culture of the specific group is inscribed into the individual mindset and reproduced through interactions in the field, which “is always a constitutive response to pre-existing social conditions” [44] (p. 514).
A habitus thus ensues from the social world and simultaneously represents a foundation for the creation of the social world. The relationship between the field and the habitus is dialectical, while certain habitus can be formed, function, and be valid only within a certain field [32]. In this paper, habitus is a puzzle of different dispositions gained in different life stages according to participation in particular fields. Each part of the puzzle is activated in different social contexts, and triggers are considerations of the social context and concrete actions. In that regard, we see that habitus plays a crucial role in the ongoing battle between actors for improving their position within a field, in addition to the capitals, which define one’s initial position and consequent actions.
Attitudes towards democracy are related to specific habitus (reflected in certain values), which is conditioned by the cultural, social, and economic capitals one possesses. Based on one’s position in the fields, the related attitudes are either challenging or support existing representative democracy.
The (imperfect) implementation of the principles of representative democracy and the rule of law can be seen as the operating rules of the political field in the European Union. Liberal democracy inevitably implies at least some elitist elements: its representative nature, rule of law, and separation of powers give a significant role to the elected and appointed decision-makers in the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of power. In addition, the effective participation of an “ordinary” citizen beyond simple voting requires certain competencies that are far from self-evident.
These established rules can be challenged from various perspectives. Authoritarians may see democracy as irrelevant and unnecessary, perhaps even harmful due to its presumed ineffectiveness. Anti-elitists (or populists) may object to its representative nature, as it seems to give the main say to the elites, not the people. Both, however, may question the rule of law because, in some situations, they might place either a strong leader and/or the will of the people above the law. In addition, a common implicit populist belief (also implied in the survey questions in this research) in the form of a unified will of the people may favor authoritarian tendencies.
Despite such potential common points, authoritarianism and populism should be clearly distinguished as separate dimensions on the conceptual level. Some populists may support an autocratic leader, seeing him as an embodiment of the will of the people against the presumably evil and conspiratorial “elite”. Other populists may instead embrace a radical vision of participatory democracy, undermining elites and leaders in general. Our results show that the distinction between the two dimensions underlining the four categories of attitudes toward democracy is not only conceptual but also empirical.
Our results support a growing body of recent research that connects the democratic backlash and the rise and persistence of figures such as former US President Trump or Hungarian Prime Minister Orban to the problems of social deprivation and exclusion [21,22,25,26]. The finding that the operating rules of the political field are particularly challenged by the groups lacking economic, social, and cultural capitals is consistent with the recent critique of the gap between the well-educated, cosmopolitan elite, particularly rich in cultural capital, and those who feel left behind [19,20,22].
We further extended the same logic to the question of belief in conspiracy theories, as it is a pressing problem that can have a severe influence on social and political processes. While there are various individual-level factors and motives believed to be causing belief in conspiracy theories (e.g., psychological, epistemic, existential, and social [31]), the literature suggests that the question also needs to be addressed from the structural level [45]. Our research supports this, as we find a clear connection between individuals’ positioning in the field and their support for conspiracy theories. In other words, individuals deprived of social, cultural, and economic capitals are not only more likely to have challenging attitudes toward existing representative democracy and the rule of law but are also more likely to believe in conspiracy theories.
These findings also align with a considerable body of recent research that connects attitudes toward democracy with populism [46,47,48,49]. Individuals more inclined to conspiracy thinking are those more likely to reject the political system and feel distrust towards public officials [50]. In line with this, Drochon [45] sees conspiracy theories not as a cause but as a symptom of disappointment over democracy. Furthermore, belief in conspiracy theories has often been associated with an individual’s feelings of exclusion and isolation [31,50].
Our research also shows significant territorial disparities within the EU political field. There is a correspondence between living in new democracies, lacking economic, social, and cultural capital, inclining towards populism and authoritarianism, and believing in a global conspiracy. The key resources needed for successfully playing in the political field instead of challenging its principles are far from equally distributed within the EU. This also aligns with some existing research observing the differences in attitudes towards democracy between Central and Eastern European countries (younger democracies) compared to Northern and Western European countries [51,52,53,54]. Consistently with some historical experience, younger democracies may be at greater risk of falling back to authoritarianism and populism, as demonstrated a century ago with the autocratization after the First World War and in recent decades with the rise of populism and still weak constitutional liberalism and the rule of law [55].
This article offers novel and more generalizable empirical evidence in comparison to the existing literature that observed similar connections in specific environments. It offers a consistent and comprehensive theoretical interpretation that sheds light on some of the aspects connected to the attitudes towards democracies and belief in conspiracy theories often overlooked. Instead of simply condemning or even expressing disgust about populism, authoritarianism, and conspiracy theories, a better way to protect our democracies is to improve the understanding of the grievances related to a series of corresponding deprivations and deficiencies of resources and address them more systematically.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, T.G., M.G. and M.M.; methodology, T.G., M.G. and M.M.; validation, T.G.; formal analysis, M.M.; investigation, T.G. and M.G.; resources, M.G.; data curation, M.M.; writing—original draft preparation, T.G., M.G. and M.M.; writing—review and editing, T.G., M.G. and M.M.; visualization, M.M.; funding acquisition, T.G. and M.M. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding

This research was funded by the Slovenian Research Agency research program, grant number P1-0383 Complex Networks. The APC was funded by the Slovenian Research Agency research program, grant number P1-0383 Complex Networks.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Ethical review and approval were waived for this study because all the data were secondary and obtained from publically accessible source.

Informed Consent Statement

Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.

Data Availability Statement

All data are obtained from a freely and publicly accessible database of European Social Survey Round 10 Democracy, Digital Social Contacts.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; or in the decision to publish the results.

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Societies 13 00181 g001
Figure 1. The correspondence between attitudes to democracy and different capitals.
Figure 1. The correspondence between attitudes to democracy and different capitals.
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Societies 13 00181 g002
Figure 2. The correspondence between a conspiracy belief and different capitals.
Figure 2. The correspondence between a conspiracy belief and different capitals.
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Table 1. Extracting the two dimensions behind the expressed attitudes towards democracy.
Table 1. Extracting the two dimensions behind the expressed attitudes towards democracy.
ComponentsPopulismAuthoritarianism
Eigenvalue1.6501.188
Proportion explained0.4120.297
Cumulative proportion0.4120.709
Loadings
after varimax rotation		Democracy important0.103−0.673
Accepting strong leader0.1020.738
Prevail over elite0.704<0.1
Will of the people not stopped0.695<0.1
Table 2. Prevalence and selected features of democratic and authoritarian elitists and populists in the European Union.
Table 2. Prevalence and selected features of democratic and authoritarian elitists and populists in the European Union.
Key FeaturesDemocratic ElitistsDemocratic PopulistsAuthoritarian PopulistsAuthoritarian Elitists
Relative frequency 127.9%41.3%18.1%12.8%
Mean support for the acceptability of having “a strong leader who is above the law”.0.930.735.925.22
Mean support for the belief that it is important for democracy “that the views of ordinary people prevail over the views of the political elite”5.328.748.515.33
Proportion believing “a small secret group of people is responsible for making all major
decisions in world politics”.		17.6%27.8%36.1%26.8%
1 Weighted to account for the sampling design and the actual sizes of the included countries.
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Golob, T.; Gorišek, M.; Makarovič, M. Authoritarian and Populist Challenges to Democracy Correspond to a Lack of Economic, Social, and Cultural Capitals. Societies 2023, 13, 181. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc13080181

AMA Style

Golob T, Gorišek M, Makarovič M. Authoritarian and Populist Challenges to Democracy Correspond to a Lack of Economic, Social, and Cultural Capitals. Societies. 2023; 13(8):181. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc13080181

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Golob, Tea, Maruša Gorišek, and Matej Makarovič. 2023. "Authoritarian and Populist Challenges to Democracy Correspond to a Lack of Economic, Social, and Cultural Capitals" Societies 13, no. 8: 181. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc13080181

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