Semester

Spring

Date of Graduation

2022

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Type

PhD

College

Eberly College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Political Science

Committee Chair

Erik S. Herron

Committee Member

Matthew L. Jacobsmeier

Committee Member

Mason W. Moseley

Committee Member

William I. Brustein

Abstract

Using the question of what is driving the support for populists in the mid-late 2010s in Western Europe and the United States as the starting point, this dissertation attempts to answer a number of different questions related to populists: Were the reasons behind support for populists in countries that saw an increase in support for populisms similar to those that saw a decrease in support? Are the reasons for supporting right-wing populists different from more general ethnocentric populists? Are the reasons that Americans supported Donald Trump similar or different from the reasons behind support for Western European populists? Following migration-related crises in the 2014-2015 time period, many parts of Western Europe and the United States saw an increase in electoral support for populist actors. This dissertation argues that the activation of status threat, or the perception that a dominant social and/or ethnic group’s position is being threatened by an influx of newcomers, along with ingroup salience and outgroup bias, are key factors that helped increase electoral support for populist actors. The results provide a complicated picture on the state of populism in Western Europe and the United States; while there is evidence of a growth in outgroup bias in Western Europe, this is not the case in the United States. However, there is evidence of a convergence between Trump supporting Republicans and Western European populists.

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