Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP13103
Authors: Yann Algan; Elizabeth Beasley; Daniel Cohen; Martial Foucault
Abstract: We examine the dislocation from the traditional left-right political axis in the 2017 French election, analyze support for populist movements and show that subjective variables are key to understanding it. Votes on the traditional left-right axis are correlated to ideology concerning redistribution, and predicted by socio-economic variables such as income and social status. Votes on the new diagonal opposing “open vs closed society” are predicted by individual and subjective variables. More specifically, low well-being predicts anti-system opinions (from the left or from the right) while low interpersonal trust (ITP) predicts right-wing populism.
Keywords: populism; inequality
JEL Codes: P26
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| low life satisfaction (I31) | support for antisystem candidates (D79) |
| low life satisfaction (I31) | extreme political views (P26) |
| low interpersonal trust (IPT) (Z13) | support for right-wing populism (P14) |
| low interpersonal trust (IPT) (Z13) | rejection of redistributive policies (D72) |
| shift in political affiliations (D72) | individual experiences over class identity (P36) |