Democratic capacities, political efficacy and populist attitudes:

A conceptual and empirical exploration

Márton Bene and Zsolt Boda

Abstract
The paper interprets populism as a symptom of mismatch between how the democratic polity
operates and how citizens conceive their own aspirations, needs and identities vis-à-vis the
polity. However, democracy requests certain attitudes, skills, and investments from citizens:
political engagement, a reflective attitude, scrutiny of the power holders and balancing trust-
based cooperation with critical reactions towards political authorities. We assume that people
are more prone to lean towards populism if they perceive their personal capacities and
institutional opportunities to influence politics as being limited. While this limitation may be
caused by external factors and contexts, in this paper we focus on individual-level variables.
Using the concept of political efficacy and proposing measures of democratic capacities the
paper, undertaking an exploratory approach, develops the concept of democratic efficacy and
studies the attitudinal factors and personal features that predict populist sentiments. The
hypothesis is proposed that democratic capacities combined with political efficacy feelings
protect against the populist appeal – which is desirable according to the normative stance of the
paper. Data from an international online survey is used to test and corroborate the hypothesis.

Keywords: populism, attitudes, political efficacy, democratic capacities, political skills

Declaration: This paper has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020
research and innovation program under grant agreement No 822590. Any dissemination of
results here presented reflects only the author’s view. The Agency is not responsible for any
use that may be made of the information it contains.

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Introduction
Obviously, the roots of populism are manifold. Hawkins and Rowira Kaltwasser (2019) argue
that populist attitudes are present in any society, but specific context and factors are needed to
activate them. The latter refer to the ‘supply-side’ of populism in terms of politicians and
political entrepreneurs who exploit the existing problems and frame them along the populist
discourse. The former, according to Hawkins and Rowira Kaltwasser (2019: 8), is usually an
intentional failure of democratic representation, a “situation in which politicians act knowingly
against one set of constituents in order to benefit others. The result is a feeling of indignation
and resentment.” Busby et al. argue that any perception of “elite malfeasance” or “normative
democratic threat”, such as corruption, may activate populist attitudes (Busby et al. 2019: 375).
However, apart from external factors and contexts, individual-level characteristics may also
help the activation of populist sentiments as there are differences between people in their
receptivity to the populist appeal. Democracy puts burdens on the citizens as it requests certain
skills, attitudes and investments: political engagement, a reflective attitude, scrutiny of the
power holders and balancing trust-based cooperation with critical reactions towards political
authorities (Caprara 2017). It is easy to understand how contextual and ‘supply-side’ factors of
populism in terms of representation gap, elite malfeasance, corruption, ineffective policies and
growing inequalities trigger frustration, anger, and, potentially, populist choices from citizens.
But one can argue that the growing complexity of today’s society in general, and governance
in particular, increasingly challenges citizens’ commitment to democratic action. Facing the
complexity of globalization, the plurality of interests and values in politics, the flooding of
information to cope with, and the sometimes painfully slow institutional responses to social
problems one may easily feel frustrated and inefficacious – and, as a consequence, become
either cynical or be tempted by the populist appeal. In fact, citizens, particularly the youth, are
expressing a growing discontent with democracy as it is (Foa and Mounk, 2017). Discontent or
frustrated citizens may withdraw from politics, or, alternatively become active and try to change
politics. Passivity and cynicism, if pervasive, ultimately endangers the functioning of
democracy (Agger et al. 1961). However, activism and participation may also be destructive,
as populist mobilization (see Anduiza et al., 2019) illustrates: discontent and criticism without
reflective engagement may lead to demagoguery, belief in conspiracy theories and support for
oversimplified solutions. In this sense and from the citizen perspective, populism might be
interpreted as a specific mindset or coping strategy, a reaction to the perceived
unresponsiveness of the political system and the lack of self-efficacy feeling in politics—
attitudes that are captured by the concept of political efficacy. In other words, populism is a
potentially negative consequence of declining trust in, and popular support for, institutions and
policies – the challenge is to regain popular support (as a condition of democracy) or at least
reflective engagement without the ills of populism (see Urbinati 2014).
Arguably “democracy is a moral enterprise that rests largely upon the public morality of its
citizens” (Caprara 2017: x). If there is a mismatch between how the democratic polity operates
and how citizens conceive their own aspirations, needs and identities vis-à-vis the polity, this
situation might be blamed either on the polity and/or the citizens. This paper investigates the
citizen side. We assume that certain individual characteristics rooted in efficacy feelings as well
as political skills and knowledge may protect against the populist appeal. This is not to deny
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that social problems and other contextual circumstances may exist and, sometimes
understandably, trigger anger or even populist action. As Margaret Canovan argued, populism
is the necessary ’redemptive’ face of democracy and the ’legitimacy of democracy as a
pragmatic system (…) always leaves room for populism that accompanies democracy like a
shadow’ (Canovan 1999:16).
Populism has an ambivalent relationship to democracy. While Canovan and others argue that
populism is an essentially democratic phenomenon and has a corrective potential (Mudde and
Rovira Kaltwasser 2012; Taguieff 1995), the mainstream populism research following the
ideational perspective points to those features of populism which are hardly compatible with
the institutional and ideological complexity of liberal democracies: anti-pluralism, uncritical
majoritarianism and a Manichean worldview (Rummens 2017; Urbinati 2017). This paper
subscribes to this approach, and considers populism more as a potential threat to, than a useful
corrective mechanism of, democracy. Given this explicit normative stance of our approach the
main question we address is which individual political attitudes and traits may provide a
protective shield against the populist appeal. We believe that answering this question may
provide a starting point to elaborate and test proposals on how to increase personal capacities
against the challenge of populism.
Our paper is an exploratory study which proposes a new concept, that of democratic efficacy,
as an analytical tool to study populist attitudes. The concept builds on the notion of political
efficacy and combines it with features and attitudes that we labelled democratic capacity
measures. We expect that low levels of external political efficacy as well as high levels of
internal political efficacy predict stronger populist attitudes–but we assume that democratic
capacities decrease this effect. We test and corroborate our hypothesis on the data of an original
international survey. We will also show that the two dimensions of political efficacy feelings
combined with democratic capacities depict complex interactions concerning populist attitudes.
The rest of the paper is structured as follows. In the next section we present the concepts that
are used in the empirical analysis: populist attitudes, political efficacy measures and the notion
of democratic efficacy. Than we introduce the research questions and hypotheses as well as the
dataset and the method. The subsequent section will summarize our results. Finally, a short
discussion and conclusions are offered.

Populist attitudes, political efficacy and democratic capacities

This section introduces the concepts that our analysis is based upon. First, we shortly present
the concept of populist attitudes that we use in our analysis as dependent variable. Equally
shortly will we talk about political efficacy, because these notions are well-known in political
science. We will expand more on the idea of democratic capacities which lead to our core
concept: democratic efficacy.
Populist attitudes
In recent years, populism research has expanded into two new directions. While before
populism research has been focusing on defining populism and describing related meso-level
political phenomena (populist movements, parties, leaders and discourses), recently research

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has improved our understanding of populism in terms of policy making (e.g., Bartha et al.
2020), on one hand, and the micro- or individual level of political attitudes, on the other.
Developments concerning the individual level have been substantially advanced by the
introduction of populism scales measuring attitudes which predict voting for populist parties.
The first such scale was proposed by Hawkins et al. (2012) further developed and popularized
by Akkerman et al. (2014). Other, slightly modified versions have also been proposed in the
literature (e.g., Castanho Silva et al. 2019). The scales are based on the ideational approach of
Cas Mudde defining populism as a thin ideology along the attitudes of people-centrism, anti-
elitism, anti-pluralism and Manichean outlook on social conflicts (Mudde 2004). Their
empirical validity and distinctness from other measures is proven (Castanho Silva et al. 2019;
Geurkink et al. 2020).
Populist attitudes predict voting for populist parties, both left and right – it is actually the only
measure to predict vote for these ideologically different parties (Geurkink et al. 2020).
However, populist attitudes are widely present in today’s societies and are not confined to the
voters of populist parties (Hawkins and Rowira Kaltwasser 2019). That is why we use measures
of populist attitudes as dependent variable instead of populist party support, unlike Geurkink et
al. (2020), Krause & Wagner (2019), and Magni (2017). We focus on specific individual factors
behind the openness to general populist appeal which is a broader category than populist party
support.
What are the predictors of populist attitudes? Strangely, the literature is rather scarce on the
roots of populist arguments, as the focus has been more on what populist attitudes explain.
Evidences are not straightforward: different papers have partly contradictory findings, while
they generally agree that effect sizes are small. On a Swiss sample Bernhard & Hänggli (2018)
found that several variables have statistically significant, although rather weak effect on
populist attitudes. Both education and income levels have negative, while age and
unemployment as well as being male have positive effect. However, the analysis of Rico et al.
(2017) on a Spanish sample offer partly different results. They found also that education has a
rather weak negative, while age has a similarly weak positive effect on populist attitudes, but
income level and being unemployed is unrelated to them. Flemish data of Spruyt et al. (2016)
confirm the (weak) negative effect of education and the (weak) positive effect of age, but
political interest seems to weaken populist sentiments, while Bernhard & Hänggli (2018) found
a positive influence of political interest on populism. Relative deprivation was found to enhance
populist attitudes by Spryt et al. (2016), but subjective social status has no effect in Abadi et al.
(2020). Finally, several studies demonstrated the role of emotions, particularly that of anger on
populist attitudes (Abadi et al. 2020; Spruyt et al. 2016). All in all, socio-demographic factors
seem to have a limited predictive power, if any. Populist attitudes appear as political, and maybe
emotional, phenomena. In this sense our endeavor to understand them in the light of political
efficacy feelings and democratic capacities seems legitimate.

Political efficacy
The concept of political efficacy was originally formulated to capture citizens’ subjective
attitudes toward politics, more specifically, their notions about their role and position within

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the political system. As Campbell and his colleagues (1954), the inventors of the term, put it:
“Sense of political efficacy may be defined as the feeling that individual political action does
have, or can have, an impact upon the political process, i.e., that it is worthwhile to perform
one’s civic duties. It is the feeling that political and social change is possible, and that the
individual citizen can play a part in bringing about this change” (187). Over the next few
decades, as an important predictor of political participation, the concept of political efficacy
gained huge popularity in political behaviour research (see, Abranson & Aldrich, 1982; Finkel,
1985; Robinson, 1976; Verba & Nie, 1972). At the same time, the term has undergone some
significant alterations since its birth. Most importantly, the original concept has been broken
into two separate components: one external and one internal variant (Balch, 1974). External
political efficacy refers to “beliefs about the responsiveness of governmental authorities and
institutions to citizens demand” (Niemi et al, 1991: 1408), thus it represents a subjective
perception of the role of citizens in general within the political system, while internal political
efficacy refers to “beliefs about one’s own competence to understand, and to participate
effectively in, politics” (Niemi et al. 1991: 1407), thereby indicating a subjective conception of
the role of respondents in particular within the political system. Although the concept of
political efficacy has remarkably inflated and its numerous variants and subtypes have appeared
in the literature in recent decades (see, Kaid et al. 2007; Pingree 2011; de Zúñiga et al. 2017),
the external – internal distinction is widely acknowledged and its validity has been subsequently
demonstrated (Craig et al. 1990, Geruking et al. 2020).
In our endeavor of analyzing political attitudes in relation to populist sentiments and
constructing the concept of democratic efficacy building on the notion of political efficacy
seemed especially useful, since it captures not only the (dis)satisfaction with the political
system, but the subjective assessment of one’s own political capacities as well; and it is a strong
predictor of political participation. It was proven that political efficacy is both analytically and
empirically distinct from measures of populist sentiments (Geurkink et al. 2020).
However, the concept of political efficacy has some shortcomings from our perspective. First,
although political efficacy predicts political participation, it says nothing about the ‘quality’ of
it: whether it is about democratic participation or populist, even radical, extremist mobilization.
Political mobilization as such is not a cure against the ills of populism, because populism itself
also mobilizes citizens (Anduiza et al., 2019). From our normative standpoint what is needed
to make political efficacy truly democratic is reflective engagement which does not exclude a
critical stance towards politics, but rather scrutinizes not only the power holders, but their
critiques as well. Populism typically mobilizes through a charismatic leader—therefore, it is
closer to what Inglehart (1977) called elite-directed participation, as contrasted to elite-
challenging forms of participation (even if discursively populism is critical towards elites).
Inglehart argued that the latter is more difficult to achieve, because it requires more political
skills – a point that we build on.
Over the last few years the measures and concepts of political efficacy have been multiplied.
The newly-formed variants of political efficacy, such as informational political efficacy (Kaid
et al. 2007), governmental political efficacy (de Zúñiga et al., 2017) or epistemic political
efficacy (Pingree, 2011), may be suitable to investigate specific aspects more closely. Some of
these variants of political efficacy move beyond the attitudinal measure of efficacy, introducing
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“objective” measurable elements, like political knowledge or cognitive skills rooted in self-
efficacy (Pingree 2011). These conceptual innovations also illustrate the point that it is
meaningful to expand or further develop the notion of political efficacy which is the very
essence of our project.
The literature is relatively scarce concerning the relationship between political efficacy and
populism. Studies explored it through measuring the association between political efficacy
attitudes and the support for populist parties (e.g. Geurkink et al., 2020; Krause & Wagner,
2019; Magni, 2017; Rooduijn et al., 2016), since the theoretical case seems compelling:
dissatisfaction with politics is expected to manifest itself in anti-elitism. However, empirical
evidences are contradictory. While Rooduijn (2016) found a negative association between
external political efficacy and populist party support, Magni (2017) argues that the relationship
exists, but only if mediated by emotions. Krause and Wagner (2019) demonstrated the
association exclusively with regard to non-established populist parties. However, other studies
did not find any relationship between external political efficacy and populist party support
(Giebler et al., 2020; Van Hauwaert & Van Kessel, 2018).
Even less is known about the effect of internal political efficacy on populism. Rico et al. (2019)
argue that stronger internal political efficacy feelings predict greater openness to the populist
appeal, because for someone who believes in their political competences it is easier to identify
with populist arguments that emphasize the primacy of common people over the political elites.
They find empirical support for their thesis in a Spanish survey. However, Van Hauwaert an
Van Kessel (2018) did not find any relationship between populist party support and internal
efficacy feelings that they use as control variable in their model.
Summing up, the relationship between populism and political efficacy remains unsettled. A
fundamental lacuna in the literature is, however, that the relationship between political efficacy
and populist attitudes has not been explored–populism at the individual level was measured
with populist party support, although we know that populist attitudes are widely present in the
society and are not confined to the voters of populist parties. Therefore, in our study we measure
populism through populist attitudes instead of party support and hope to get a more precise
picture on the populism–political efficacy nexus. Based on the theoretical arguments and the –
somewhat inconclusive – empirical findings we hypothesize that low external political efficacy,
especially combined with high internal efficacy, predicts stronger populist attitudes.

Democratic capacities
Evidence shows that subjective efficacy feelings correlate with existing political skills which
can be developed. For instance, Gastil & Xenos (2010) show that communication has a positive
effect on internal efficacy. Deliberation plays an important role as a means of developing
political skills and internal efficacy. The more one discusses politics, the more likely one is to
come away from those experiences feeling more confident in their political skills, eliciting a
“virtuous” circle between participation and individual self-efficacy. According to the self-
efficacy theory (Bandura 1982) even short-term gains in efficacy can accumulate over time.

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It is intuitively compelling that some kind of knowledge, personal resources and ‘skills’ are
needed to effectively participate in politics (Kirlin 2005). Indeed, Verba et al. (1995) found that
skills are a strong predictor of political participation, while Kaid et al. (2007) argue that political
information and skills are useful to understand, and ultimately influence, the causes of young
people’s political passivity, cynicism, and mistaken political choices.
These are not only pragmatic considerations, but ideas founded in a normative theory of
democracy which impose certain requirements not only at the level of political system or the
elite, but also at that of citizens.1 According to these, ideal democracy can only work if citizens
have certain democratic capacities. First, some degree of information is needed and desired to
substantively participate in politics since in democratic settings citizens have the responsibility
to make decisions on the most important political questions (Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996).
Consequently, citizens need to have some general political knowledge, but also keep up with
the day-to-day political processes.
However, having political knowledge and being up-to-date are not enough to make informed
political decisions. Citizens have to be reflective and conscious about their decisions (Dewey,
1954) and avoid strong emotional attachments to parties or leaders because this may undermine
reflexivity and introduce serious biases in reasoning and evaluation of political information
(Shapiro & Bloch-Elkon, 2008; Petersen et al, 2013).
Further, the idea of democracy is based on some core values that citizens are required to
embrace in order to make it work properly. First, citizens’ political and legal equality is a
prerequisite of democracy (Dahl, 1956). Second, the normative justification of democracy rests
upon the premise that citizens are capable of making free and autonomous decisions (Lakoff,
1990). Third, democracy is a social activity where individuals have to consider that others also
have legitimate interests, opinions, and values. Citizens have to tolerate and listen to opinions
different from their own, because democracy is based on the idea of exchanging and confronting
competing views and interests (Arendt & Kohn, 1968; Mutz, 2006). These values correspond
to the three core values of democracy. Namely, the equality of interests, political autonomy and
reciprocity, as conceptualized by Brettscheneider (2006).
Therefore, we assume that besides their ‘quantitative’ effect in terms of participation, political
capacities can bring in a ‘qualitative’ aspect as well: they may provide protection against
populism and other non-democratic political action. Therefore, our concept of democratic
efficacy builds on both political efficacy and democratic capacities. However, the question is
how do define those skills and capacities which may enhance the quality of democratic politics.
There seems to be a paradoxical situation concerning the scholarship on political skills. While,
on one hand, it is acknowledged that being involved in politics, especially under the increasing
institutional complexities of today’s liberal democracies, necessitates some knowledge and
skills (Verba et al. 1995), research has largely neglected the latter especially in terms of
operationalisation (see on this: Kirlin 2005).
The Civic Voluntarism Model of Verba et al. (1995: 304) provides a definition of “civic skills”,
as “organizational and communication skills, which allow the use of time and money effectively

1
The following few paragraphs are based on Bene & Boda (2020).

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in a political arena.” Verba et al. (2009) also uses the term “civic skills” to describe “skills
which are relevant for political competence.” Specifically, these authors define civic skills to
include competency in English, vocabulary, writing letters, going to meetings, taking part in
decision making, planning or chairing a meeting, and giving a presentation or speech. To
measure these abilities, scholars surveyed if respondents have within the past six months:
written an official letter, gone to a meeting where they took part in decision making, planned
and/or chaired a meeting, or given a presentation or a speech. Verba et al. (1995) argue that
civic skills better predict political participation than a number of socio-demographic variables,
including job level, free time, organizational affiliation or religiousness. However, we think
that their operationalization of civic skills reflects a circular logic, as it is measured through
political activities. Moreover, it is conceptualized in a restricted manner, focusing on the micro-
context of individual political participation. Our aim is to develop measures of democratic
capacities which reflect a broader perspective on political action and democratic commitment.
We find the approach of “civic education” more fruitful both from a conceptual and an
operational perspective. Civic education has a long tradition in the US, and while its objective
is strictly practical (educating the youth for democracy) it builds on a normative model of
democratic action and its prerequisites. Concerning the latter, a widely used framework presents
four interrelated components which can be broken down into specific variables and measures
(Patrick 2003). The components are:
- Knowledge for citizenship. Political knowledge; knowing how democracy and its
institutions work.
- Cognitive civic skills. Gathering information about politics; critical thinking.
- Civic dispositions. Democratic values; commitment to the common good.
- Participatory civic skills. Taking part in public discussions, political action.
In our conceptualization of democratic capacities we explicitly build on these components
which are rooted in normative democratic theory as shortly presented above. We believe that
political knowledge and information are crucial: Bartels (1996) and Kuklinski et al. (2000)
provide evidence that voter ignorance can have a direct impact; election outcomes can be
determined by voters who vote contrary to what they should or likely would have voted for had
they had been fully informed. Thus, misinformed or under-informed citizens may distort
democratic decision making. Given populists’ leaning towards oversimplified solutions one
may assume that supporters of populism are less knowledgeable concerning politics. The role
of political knowledge and information has been analyzed in studies about political efficacy as
well: Kaid et al. (2007) found that informational efficacy based on political knowledge and
information has a positive effect on political participation. Research has also demonstrated that
media use, and news consumption in particular, enhances efficacy, understanding of public
affairs, and political engagement (Pinkleton and Austin, 2001; Scheufele and Nisbet, 2002). It
is observed that a higher consumption of news on public affairs increases civic knowledge,
which in turn strengthens the belief that one can understand the political system well enough to
participate effectively in it (de Zuniga et al. 2010).
Equally important is the role of “civic dispositions” in the normative model of civic education.
Democracy as a moral enterprise cannot thrive without citizens who are committed to the

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democratic ideals, values and norms. In this perspective democratic capacities should be more
than instrumentally useful skills and competences.
Summarizing the above arguments, we define democratic capacities as those political
competences, knowledge, information and democratic commitment which enable citizens to
effectively participate in democratic politics. Democratic capacities can be grouped into four
clusters: knowledge, information, dispositions and civic competences – we argue that the latter
includes also the ability to accept compromise, be reflexive and avoid extreme partisanship.

Democratic efficacy
Based on the controversial relationship of populism to liberal democracy put forth above we
expect democratic capacities to predict weaker populist attitudes. We assume that democratic
capacities imply an acceptance of tolerating political differences, the need for compromise, a
better understanding of complexity in decision making and these characteristics are hardly
compatible with the anti-pluralism, uncritical majoritarianism and Manicheanism of populism.
More specifically, we expect democratic capacities to moderate or suppress the positive effect
of high internal and low external political efficacy on populist attitudes. We assume that the
strongest protection against the populist appeal is offered by high democratic efficacy, that is
high internal and external political efficacy combined with strong democratic capacities. We
propose the concept of democratic efficacy as a combination of political efficacy feelings and
democratic capacities.
The concept of democratic efficacy seeks to capture those individual features which predict a
democratically committed political engagement. It combines subjective (attitudinal) and
‘objective’ (measurable individual skills and knowledge) elements, assuming that these are
equally important predicting personal engagement in politics and more specifically, the nature
of that engagement. While political efficacy is about subjective attitudes toward politics that is
crucial as a motivational background of political behavior, democratic behavior requires some
objective capacities as well. The concept has been developed especially as an analytical lens to
study populism, but we believe that it can be meaningfully applied in other contexts and
problems as well.
We conceptualize democratic efficacy not as a linear, but as a two-dimensional concept. It
would not make sense to simply add the measures of democratic capacities to those of political
efficacy: we believe it is conceptually more sound and more interesting to capture the different
combinations of the two sets of measures.
Theoretically, pairing the two concept makes sense only if they are not highly correlated with
each other. As long as people with high level of political efficacy are exactly those who have
complete democratic capacities, the democratic component would not make any substantial
contribution to the original concept: the two scales measure the same latent concept. Connecting
the term of political efficacy to the democratic capacities is meaningful if the latter makes
relevant distinctions within categories of political efficacy and help to differentiate between
people with the same level of PE.

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Using ESS data Bene and Boda (2020) performed a chi-squared independence test to check
whether the two categorical-level variables (PE and democratic capacities) are related in any
way. The two components are not entirely independent of each other. A significant (p < .001),
but modest (Cramer’s V = .213) relationship exists between the democratic capacities
component and the political efficacy component.

Research questions, hypotheses, data and method

The general question behind the research addresses the way democratic capacities interact with
political efficacy feelings and how they relate to populist attitudes. Our assumption is that
internal and external political efficacy affect populist attitudes, but they do so differently for
people with and without democratic capacities. We hypothesize that high democratic efficacy,
that is, high internal political efficacy combined with high external efficacy and democratic
capacities, is the best combination in the resistance to populist attitudes.
Hence our hypotheses:
H1. Democratic capacities moderate the effects of (a) external and (b) internal political efficacy
on populist attitudes.
- H1a: low external political efficacy predicts stronger populist attitudes for people
having incomplete democratic capacities, but it is ineffective in case of people with
complete democratic capacities
- H1b: higher level of internal political efficacy predicts stronger populist attitudes for
people having incomplete democratic capacities, but it is ineffective in case of people
with complete democratic capacities
- H1c: High democratic efficacy (high political efficacy values + democratic capacity)
offers the strongest protection against the populist appeal.
In order to measure populist attitudes we use a slightly modified version of the Akkerman-scale,
based on existing items by Castanho Silva et al. (2019), consisting of People-Centrism (e.g.
‘Politicians should always listen closely to the problems of the people’), Anti-Elitism (e.g. ‘The
political elites have failed to protect our cultural identity’), and Manichaean Outlook (e.g. ‘You
can tell if a person is good or bad if you know their political views’). Finally, we added three
items to measure Nativism, such as ‘The political elites have failed to protect our cultural
identity.’ Each variable was measured on a 7-point Likert-scale. Since the Cronbach-alpha
value of the 12 items was only 0.62, we eliminated the most poorly performing item from each
dimensions. The remaining 8 items’2 coherence was satisfactory (alpha = 0.67). We created an
aggregate variable as a means of the 8 items (M = 5.06, SD =0.82).

2
People-centrism: (1)„Politicians should always listen closely tot he problems of people”; (2) „The will of
people should be the highest principle of a country’s politics. Anti-elitism: (3) „The government is pretty much
run by a few big interests looking out for themselves”; (4) „Quite a few of the people running the government
are crooked”. Manichaen outlook: (5) „You can tell of a person is good or bad if you know their political views”;
(6) „The people I disagree with politically are just misinformed”. Nativism: (7) „The political elites have failed to
protect our cultural identity”; (8) „People who are born in [our country] should be given priority over
immigrants in the employment and housing market”.

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The concept of external political efficacy was measured with two items (“The political system
in my country allows people like me to have a say in what the government does” and “I cannot
effectively influence politics in my country”) on a 1-7 Likert-scale, but since their association
was low (alpha = 0.48) we opted for the first item since it refers more to the system and less the
respondent (M = 3.94; SD = 1.77).
Internal efficacy was measured through two items ( “I am able to take an active part in groups
involved in political issues” and “I am confident that I am able to participate in politics”),
measured on a 7-point Likert-scale. Since their internal coherence is high (alpha = 0.83), the
variable was created as their mean (M = 4.03; SD = 1.56).
Based on our theoretical discussion, we differentiate between people with complete and
incomplete democratic capacities. We consider people have complete democratic capacities if
they (1) have a certain level of political knowledge; (2) consume political news at least
sometimes; (3) identify with basic democratic values; (4) are not extremely partisan and (5)
accept that compromises are part of the political life. Therefore, for measuring democratic
capacities we included items on political knowledge, information, democratic values and skills.
Since we understand democratic capacities as something people can have or not have in the
minimum form we settled, we defined each of them as dummy variables, where those who meet
the pre-defined minimum criteria are considered having the particular capacity.
The most common way to measure political knowledge is the application of factual survey
questions referring to “political institutions’ formal arrangements and their decision-making
procedures, current political/policy facts and politicians’ party identification” (Strabac &
Aalberg, 2011). However, structural political knowledge measure if people can see the
interrelatedness of political concepts (Hutchens et al., 2015). We measured political knowledge
as a dummy-variable through the answers given to two, mutually exclusive statements:
according to the first the government should lower taxes, while the second stated that the
government should increase welfare spending. The significant negative correlation between the
answers signals that the majority understood that the two statements did not hold together;
however, those who “strongly agreed” (6, 7) or “strongly disagreed” (1, 2) with both statements
were considered as those respondents were qualified as lacking political knowledge (1 = 65%).
Inspired by the Media System Dependency (MSD) theory, we accept that news consumption
may be connected to political efficacy as well (McLeod et al. 1999; Nisbet, 2008). We measured
the information efforts of respondents through the frequency of following political news on a
Likert-scale (1 – every day, 7 – never). Again, we created a dummy-variable, setting the
threshold at 3 on the Likert-scale, so those were considered to have the democratic capacity of
news consumptions who consume news at least “some day”
In order to measure democratic dispositions we asked the respondents’ agreement with three
statement on political equality3, tolerance4 and autonomy5. As the coherence between the three

3
„I think it is important that every person in the world be treated equally.”
4
„It is important to listen to people who are different from me even if I disagree with their views.”
5
„It is important to me that I am free to make my own decisions, independently of others.”

11
items is relatively high (alpha = 0.73) we created a dummy-variable, the threshold being the
“somewhat agree” (5 on the Likert-scale) with each of the value statements (1 = 75%).
We wanted to avoid measuring political skills through participation, because it may have
interfered with political efficacy. Therefore, we included an item measuring the openness
towards compromise, assuming that people with civic experience and skills recognize the
importance of compromise in politics, on one hand; while populism is taken to be antithetical
to pluralism and compromise, on the other (Mudde 2004). The item measures the agreement
with the statement (” The main task of politicians is to work out viable compromises between
different opinions.”) on a Likert-scale where we coded 0 those responses which do not agree (1
– 3) with it (1 = 95%).
In a similar vein, we included several items measuring extreme partisanship (“When I speak
about this party, I refer to them as ‘my party’.” “If this party does badly in the opinion polls,
my day is ruined.” “When people praise this party, it makes me feel good.”) in 7-point Liker-
scales. Extreme political polarization is growing problem which undermines democracy and
which is fueled also by the Manichean features of populism (Somer et al. 2020). Extreme
partisanship expresses a lack of political wisdom and civic skills. The coherence of the
partisanship items is very high (alpha = 0.86), therefore we used their means and coded 0 the
mean value above 6 which indicates an extreme level of partisanship as the maximum value is
7.
Summarizing the democratic capacity measures: we created a dummy-variables and coded 1
the respondents who do not have contradictory expectations towards the government (political
knowledge = 1), seek information on politics with some frequency (information = 1), accept
basic democratic values (values = 1), agree with the role of compromise in politics (compromise
= 1) and are not extremely partisan (non-partisanship = 1).
The following variables were used as controls: the strength of national identity, worries about
the future, gender, age, type of settlement, subjective welfare, education level and country of
residence.
We test our hypotheses on an international database comprising responses on an original online
survey taken in 2019 from 15 European countries (Germany, the UK, Czechia, Hungary, Italy,
the Netherlands, Poland, France, Slovakia, Lithuania, Denmark, Turkey, Spain, Greece, and
Bosnia and Herzegovina). Our desired representative sample size amounted to approximately
500 respondents per country, while quotas based on current census data were set up for gender,
age and geographical region. The fundamental eligibility criterion for respondents was having
lived in their current country of residence for at least 10 years, which we consider a sufficient
time frame to feel at home in the country of residence. The questionnaire of the survey was
developed by the researchers of the DEMOS project and the survey was administered by the
University of Amsterdam.6 Table 1 presents the correlations between the most important
variables.

6
We wish to express our gratitude to David Abadi (University of Amsterdam) for his extensive work on
preparing the database.

12
 Table 1. Correlations between the variables
pop ee ie know v_tol v_eq v_aut news non- comp nat.i insec gend age eco edu
part. d

populis -.10*** .06*** -.31*** .15*** .17*** .27*** .09*** -.27*** .06*** .10*** .33*** -.02* -.02 .00 -.07***
m

external .41*** .07*** .02 .00 -.08*** .10*** -.21*** .06*** .14*** -.11*** -.02 -.09*** .12*** .03*
eff

internal -.02 .08*** .05*** .02 .27*** -.26*** .04*** .09*** -.03** -.13*** -.05*** .09*** .10***
eff

knowled -.14*** -.20*** -.18*** -.06*** .14*** -.02 -.05*** -.15*** -.03** .01 .02* .04***
ge

v_tolera .49*** .50*** .19*** -.11*** .13*** .07*** .10*** .04*** .00 .01 .05***
nce

v_equali .45*** .14*** -.08*** .14*** .01 .13*** .05*** .02 -.04*** .01
ty

v_auton .19*** -.10*** .12*** .06*** .12*** .06*** .07*** -.01 .02
om

news -.09*** .04*** .09*** .06*** -.11*** .11*** .06*** .13***

cons.

non- .-.04** -.10*** -.09*** .02 .04*** -.06*** .03**

partis.

compro .05*** .03* .04*** .01 .02 .00

mise

nat.ident -.06*** .01 .16*** .06*** -.05*

insecurit .09*** -.08*** -.10*** -.02*

gender -.03** -.01 -.02

age -.01 -.02*

eco .06***

educatio
n

dem. -.17*** .05*** .08*** -.02* .09*** .02 .10***

capacitie
s

Findings
For the analysis we used OLS regression. Because of the nested (country-level) data structure
countries were built in the model as fixed effects. As robustness check, we ran the model with
clustered standard error and as multilevel random intercept model, but it yielded the same
results (in terms of the sizes and significance of the effects), therefore we opted for the OLS +
country-level fixed effect alternative.

13
 Table 2. OLS regression models on populist attitudes

populist attitudes populist attitudes populist attitudes

std. std. std.
Predictors Estimates p Estimates p Estimates p
Error Error Error
(Intercept) 3.96 0.08 <0.001 4.46 0.08 <0.001 4.52 0.09 <0.001

external eff -0.05 0.01 <0.001 -0.20 0.01 <0.001 -0.23 0.01 <0.001

internal eff 0.06 0.01 <0.001 -0.07 0.01 <0.001 -0.08 0.01 <0.001

dem. cap. -0.23 0.02 <0.001 -0.22 0.02 <0.001 -0.35 0.11 0.001

gender -0.07 0.02 <0.001 -0.07 0.02 <0.001 -0.07 0.02 <0.001

age 0.02 0.01 0.010 0.02 0.01 0.004 0.02 0.01 0.003

eco.status 0.01 0.00 0.077 0.01 0.00 0.149 0.00 0.00 0.328

domicil [town] -0.05 0.02 0.016 -0.04 0.02 0.022 -0.05 0.02 0.015

domicil -0.05 0.02 0.056 -0.04 0.02 0.071 -0.04 0.02 0.064
[countryside]

education -0.03 0.00 <0.001 -0.03 0.00 <0.001 -0.03 0.00 <0.001

nat. identity 0.08 0.01 <0.001 0.08 0.01 <0.001 0.08 0.01 <0.001

uncertainty 0.15 0.01 <0.001 0.15 0.01 <0.001 0.15 0.01 <0.001

ext * int 0.04 0.00 <0.001 0.04 0.00 <0.001

ext * dc 0.13 0.03 <0.001

int * dc 0.06 0.03 0.029

(ext * int) * dc -0.04 0.01 <0.001

Observations 8046 8046 8046

R2 / R2 adjusted 0.223 / 0.221 0.241 / 0.238 0.250 / 0.247

Table 2 shows the model summaries. The first model suggests that while the increase in external
efficacy depresses the likelihood of populist attitudes, the higher level of internal efficacy result
in more populist views. At the same times people with complete democratic capacities have
lower populist scores than those with incomplete capacities. Also, the two-way interaction in
model 2 demonstrates that the effects of external and internal efficacy are not independent from
each other (Figure 1). It seems that internal efficacy leads to more populist attitude only for
people whose confidence in the responsiveness of political system is weaker. In case of people

14
who perceive the system to be open to citizens’ demands, the lower internal efficacy result in
more populist attitudes than the higher self-confidence. Overall, it seems that when people are
disappointed in the system, they are more populist in general, and the belief in their own
political capabilities has only secondary importance, but when they are less skeptical with the
system, the higher confidence in themselves leads to more populist attitudes. Based on these
considerations it seems that the both low external and high internal efficacy values are
associated with strong populist attitudes, yet the worst case scenarios are the two extremes, the
combination of low external and low internal as well as of the high external and internal political
efficacy. This is worrisome as while external efficacy in general is able to decrease the openness
to populism, when it is paired with strong political self-confidence this beneficial effect is
counteracted.
Figure 1. Interaction effect of external and internal political efficacy on populist attitudes
(model 2)

However, in line with our hypothesis, the significant three-way interaction effect in model 3
demonstrate that this association between political efficacy and populist attitudes differ across
people with incomplete and complete democratic efficacy. While it is difficult to interpret the
nature of this three-way relationship based on the coefficients, Figure 2 and 3 can offer some
important insights about this association. The left sides of both figures show the interaction
effect of internal and external political efficacy on populist attitudes for people having
incomplete democratic capacities, while the right sides are for those who have complete
democratic capacities. Figure 2 depicts the effects of external efficacy when combined with
different level of internal efficacy, while Figure 3 present the same association from the
perspective of the effect of internal political efficacy. When looking at respondents with
incomplete democratic capacities, we find similar patterns than in the previous two-way
interaction. We can see again that while lower level external efficacy is associated with strong

15
populist attitudes, the higher level of external efficacy goes with weaker populist attitudes only
for people who has lower level of internal efficacy (left side of Figure 2). In other words, people
who do not believe in their own political abilities will be less populist, if their views about the
responsiveness of the political system is more positive. However, those who believe in
themselves very much will be more populist when their external efficacy is increasing. When
we turn to this association from the viewpoint of internal political efficacy (left side of Figure
3), we can see the same story from a different angle. In general, for those who have incomplete
democratic capacities, the higher internal political efficacy result in more populist attitudes, but
this effect is weaker again when someone has lower level of external efficacy, and on the lowest
level of perceived responsiveness the higher internal efficacy mitigate the extremely high
populist attitudes. Repeatedly, these findings indicate that the combination of low level of
external and internal efficacy results in similarly strong, even a bit weaker populist attitudes
than the combination of high level of both for people who have incomplete democratic
capacities. For these people, the growth of both dimensions of political efficacy do not prevent
from populist attitudes, moreover their high level combination result in extremely populist
attitudes. The least populist scenario is when high external efficacy is combined with low
internal efficacy, but when the latter increases it will mostly produce more populist attitudes:
the more people believe in their own political abilities, the more populist they are in so far as
they are not overly pessimistic about the responsiveness of the system and have incomplete
democratic capacities.
The right sides of these figures shows that this association between higher level of internal
efficacy and populist attitudes is counteracted by complete democratic capacities. For people
who have complete democratic capacities, the stronger political confidence does not lead
significantly more populist attitudes (right side of Figure 2). This way the key in the explanation
of populist attitudes will be the external political efficacy: for these people the more trust in the
responsiveness of the political system will result in less populist attitudes irrespective of the
level of internal political efficacy (right side of Figure 3). In contrast, the effect of internal
political efficacy is essentially turned off by democratic capacities. Consequently, the
combination of high level of external efficacy and complete democratic capacities is extremely
beneficial against populism at any level of internal efficacy.

16
Figure 2. Three-way interaction effect of external political efficacy and democratic capacities
on populist attitudes (model 2)

Figure 3. Three-way interaction effect of internal political efficacy and democratic capacities
on populist attitudes (model 2)

To see the differences in populist attitudes across groups with different combinations of external
and internal political efficacy and democratic capacities, Table 3 shows the mean values in each

17
group. The thresholds to class respondents to ‘high’ and ‘low’ efficacy groups were based on
the mean values of these variables (external efficacy = 3.94, internal efficacy = 4.03). The
descriptive findings underline what we found in our model 3. In groups where people has
incomplete democratic capacities, in each external efficacy group there is large difference
across different levels of internal efficacy. Among people with higher external efficacy level
there is almost 0.5 point difference between those who have high and low internal efficacy,
while this variance is close to 0.2 point in the low external efficacy groups. In each external
efficacy groups people with higher internal efficacy level are more populist than those with
lower internal efficacy. In contrast, in the groups where people have complete democratic
capacities, sharper differences exist only based on external efficacy, internal efficacy do not
play any major role in this case. In general, people with lower level of external efficacy are
more populist than those with higher confidence in system responsivity. (Note that the
descriptive statistics in Table 3 do not include the control variables therefore they cannot be
directly compared to the results of the regression model.)

Table 3. Mean populist attitude scores in political efficacy and democratic capacities groups on a 1
– 7 scale (where higher values show stronger populist attitudes)
incomplete democratic complete democratic
capacities capacities
ee+ ie + 5.29 4.75
ee+ ie - 4.83 4.78
ee- ie + 5.43 5.04
ee- ie - 5.26 5.05
Notes: + refers to respondents with respective efficacy score over the sample average score,
while – indicate respondents with score below the average.

Our findings offer a nuanced picture on the interactions between efficacy feelings, capacities
and populist attitudes and do not corroborate all our hypotheses. Concerning H1a, it is true that
low external political efficacy predicts stronger populist attitudes, but we cannot say that it is
ineffective for people with complete democratic capacities. Democratic capacities do not seem
to have mitigating effect on populist attitudes in case of low external efficacy feelings. We have
to reject also that high democratic efficacy (high political efficacy values + democratic
capacity) would offer the strongest protection against the populist appeal (H1c). The interaction
models clearly show that although high external efficacy predict lower populist attitudes, high
internal efficacy is associated with stronger populism even in case of the presence of democratic
capacities. Paradoxically, high political efficacy values are associated with slightly lower levels
of populism for people with weak democratic capacities.
However, H1b is corroborated: higher level of internal efficacy predicts stronger populist
attitudes, but it is ineffective for people with complete democratic capacities. Overall, it seems
that the main function of democratic capacities in this equation is to counteract the effect of
internal political efficacy on populist attitudes and connect them only to the level of external
efficacy. This way, these capacities constitute a ‘safety net’ against the negative effect of
political confidence. Therefore, our main point, that is, that democratic capacities reduce the

18
populist appeal seems valid by eliminating the effect of internal political efficacy on populist
attitudes.

Post-hoc tests
In order to gain a deeper understanding about the complex association between efficacy
feelings, democratic capacities and populist attitudes we also ran some post-hoc tests. First,
while we define the concept of ‘democratic capacities’ in a deductive, theory-guided way, it is
important to uncover which elements of the concept matter in this ‘safety net’ effect. Therefore,
we re-ran the models with different reduced forms of the ‘democratic capacities’ variable by
omitting one or some of the variables (Table 4).
Findings show that if we leave out any of the components, the three-way interaction effects still
remain very similar to the overall effect. Also, in separation it is only the political knowledge
that produce similar effect, but in a much weaker and barely significant form. Both the lack of
extreme partisanship and political knowledge can result in significant effects when they are
combined with any other components, but with weaker effect sizes than the original model.
However, if any of these two variables are not involved, the remaining three components
(democratic values, news consumption, and compromise) cannot yield significant ‘safety net’
effect in any composition. Yet, any added components to the powerful combination of the lack
of partisanship and political knowledge can strengthen the effect size even if the increase is
minor in case of the compromise variable. However, if there are at least three components
including either political knowledge and lack of partisanship, the effect size cannot remarkably
increased by adding a fourth one.
Based on this analysis it seems that the ‘safety net’ effect does not require to have complete
democratic capacities: a minor effect can be reached via only political knowledge, or the
combination of the lack of partisanship with any other factors. However, for the stronger effect
the coexistence of lack of partisanship, political knowledge and either news consumption or
democratic values is needed. To sum up, it is confirmed that a stronger ‘safety net’ effect is the
result of the combination of certain democratic capacities rather than of any of its elements.

19
 Table 4. The coefficients of three-way interactions in models with alternative democratic capacities
variable
Alternative composition of the Coef. of Alternative composition of the Coef. of
democratic capacities variable the three- democratic capacities variable the three-
way way
interaction interaction
knowledge – values – news – partisan - -.04*** knowledge – values -.02***
compromise
knowledge – values – news – partisan -.03*** knowledge – news -.02***
knowledge – values – news – -.02** knowledge – partisan -.02***
compromise
knowledge – values – partisan – -.04*** knowledge – compromise -.01**
compromise
knowledge – news – partisan – -.04*** values – news .01
compromise
values – news – partisan - compromise -.04*** values – partisan -.04***
knowledge – values – news -.02** values – compromise .00
knowledge – values – partisan -.04*** news – partisan -.04***
knowledge – values – compromise -.02*** news – compromise .00
knowledge – news – partisan -.03*** partisan – compromise -.03***
knowledge – news – compromise -.02*** knowledge -.01*
knowledge – partisan – compromise -.03*** values .01
values – news – partisan -.04*** news .01
values – news – compromise .01 partisan -.02#
news – partisan – compromise -.04*** compromise .01

In a second post-hoc analysis, we tested if this effect differs across the different dimensions of
populism (Table 5). In each four dimension there are significant negative three-way interaction
effects even if it is marginal in case of people-centrism, but stronger effects were found in case
of Manicheism and nativism. Consequently, democratic capacities can be particularly effective
when the positive associations between internal efficacy and Manicheism and nativism need to
be neutralized. The explanation is that these are probably the least democratic dimensions of
populism.

20
 Table 5. The coefficients of three-way interactions
in models with alternative populist attitude
variables
populist dimensions Coef. of the three-way
interaction
people-centrism -.01#
anti-elitism -.02*
Manicheism -.07***
nativism -.04**

Discussion and conclusion

Populism can be interpreted as a sign of mismatch between citizen expectations concerning the
democratic functioning of the political system and the way the system actually operates.
Addressing the populist challenge may require institutional changes, and a better involvement
of citizens in politics. However, populism cannot be properly addressed by citizen mobilization
and participation alone, since populist politics is also about mobilizing dissatisfied citizens. The
complex relationship between populism and political participation is reflected in our data in the
varied association between populist attitudes and political efficacy feelings – the latter being a
recognized predictor of political participation. People reporting high internal efficacy and low
external efficacy feelings exhibit the strongest populist attitudes – together with those who score
high in terms of both internal and external efficacy feelings.
One may argue that citizen participation in politics should be meaningful in substantial terms
and give a sense of true influence in order to neutralize the populist appeal. We cannot but agree
with this proposal. However, in order to realize it changing the operation of the political system
(e.g. provide more fora for participation) might not be enough if citizens are not prepared to
cope with the complexity of democratic politics. The starting point of our study was that certain
democratic capacities of the citizens help them to meaningfully participate in politics which is
good for democracy from a normative point of view and which reduces the populist appeal.
Our findings show complex interactions between political efficacy and populist attitudes. The
complexity of this relationship may explain the somewhat contradictory results of previous
studies, although differences between their results and ours may stem from the fact that in order
to measure populism we used a populist attitudes scale instead of populist party support.
Our findings corroborate the initial hypothesis on the role of democratic capacities in reducing
the populist appeal. We constructed the scale of democratic capacities on the basis of theoretical
arguments and included indicators of political knowledge, political information, commitment
to democratic values and political competences. The empirical analysis shows that the concept
is a robust one, especially when it comes to decrease the strength of populist attitudes for those
who have high internal efficacy feelings. This finding suggest that self-confidence in politics
(expressed by high internal efficacy feelings) is not necessarily good and can lead to strong
populism if it is not combined with democratic capacities.

21
We argue that this finding has both theoretical and practical implications. In theoretical terms
it brings further nuances to the debate on the democratic nature of populism. While it does not
offer an ultimate argument against the democratic aspects of populism, it certainly shows that
from a normative point of view there are concerns about them beyond the usual claims about
the conflict of populism with liberal values and institutions, since self-confident, but
democratically poorly capacitated people are especially affected by the populist appeal. In
practical terms our finding suggests that developing democratic capacities of citizens may
provide protection against the populist appeal. Whether and how democratic capacities can be
developed is, of course, another issue.

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