Right-wing populist party supporters: Dissatisfied but not direct democrats

European Journal of Political Research ��: ��– ��, 2016 1doi: 10.1111/1475-6765.12166

Right-wing populist party supporters: Dissatisfied but not direct democrats

SHAUN BOWLER,1 DAVID DENEMARK,2 TODD DONOVAN3

& DUNCAN McDONNELL4

1University of California-Riverside, USA; 2University of Western Australia, Australia; 3Western Washington

University, USA; 4Griffith University, Australia

Abstract. Right-wing populist parties tend to combine criticism of how liberal democracy functions withcalls for greater direct democracy.But do their voters share that support for direct democracy? In this article,survey data is used to examine, first, whether right-wing populist candidates in Australia, Canada and NewZealand were more supportive of direct democracy than candidates of other parties. Second, the views ofright-wing populist voters about the functioning of democracy and direct democracy are investigated.Whileright-wing populist candidates turned out to be far more likely to support direct democracy, right-wingpopulist supporters did not mirror the candidates. Although these were among the most dissatisfied withhow democracy worked, they did not necessarily favour referendums more than other voters. The findingshave implications both for how we conceive of the relationship between populism and direct democracy andthe remedies proposed for redressing populist discontent.

Keywords: populism; populist parties; direct democracy; stealth democracy; referendums

Introduction

The success of right-wing populist parties in established democracies over the past threedecades has given rise to a rich body of literature explaining their emergence, electoralperformances, core policies, party organisations and experiences in government (e.g., Betz1994; Kitschelt & McGann 1995; Mudde 2007; Albertazzi & McDonnell 2015). Whilediffering on definitional questions, most of the work to date agrees that populists exploitthe gap between what the ideal of democracy promises (‘government of the people, bythe people, for the people’) and what liberal democracies actually provide (‘limited andrestrained majority rule in the name of the people’).1 As Mény and Surel (2002: 9) observe,‘populist movements speak and behave as if democracy meant the power of the peopleand only the power of the people’. In line with this, populists seek to promote and exploitdissatisfaction with how democracy currently functions, along with offering solutions as tohow power can be restored to ‘the people’.

One of the main solutions proposed by populists is the introduction of direct democraticmeasures – especially referendums – in order to give the people greater voice. As Mudde(2007: 152) notes regarding the referendum, ‘virtually all populist radical right partiescall for its introduction or increased use’. Some, like the United Kingdom IndependenceParty (UKIP) and the French Front National (FN, National Front) also advocate citizens’initiatives that would allow the public to propose referendums on key issues by collecting acertain number of signatures. Indeed, this support for amore plebiscitary form of democracyis one of the features that distinguish the populist radical right of the late twentieth and

C© 2016 European Consortium for Political Research

2 SHAUN BOWLER ET AL.

early twenty-first centuries from previous groups of the extreme right. Far from being anti-democratic per se, radical right and other new right-wing populist parties present themselvesas the ‘real’ defenders of democracy, intent on restoring popular sovereignty, which theyclaim is under threat from a series of elites and ‘dangerous others’ (Albertazzi &McDonnell2015: 5–6).

However, while right-wing populism’s relationship to democracy has been extensivelydiscussed and the support of its leaders for direct democracy widely noted, researchers havealmost entirely overlooked the question of whether these views are shared by the widerpublic who support the party. In other words, we know little about whether dissatisfactionwith the functioning of democracy translates into support for direct democracy amongpopulist parties’ voters.Most of the few studies of relevance to this question have focused oncases inWesternEurope (Bengtsson&Mattila 2009;Webb 2013;Pauwels 2014).While thesesuggest that there is indeed a correlation between support for direct democracy and right-wing populism in the European countries they examine, there have been no studies focusedon whether this holds for right-wing populist parties in established democracies elsewhere.We therefore do not know: does support for right-wing populist parties in establisheddemocracies always go together with democratic disaffection and a desire for more directdemocracy? Are right-wing populist voters more dissatisfied with the way democracy worksin their own country and do they support direct democracy – and, specifically, referendums –more or less than their parties’ candidates, and more or less than the voters of other parties?

This article examines precisely these questions. To do so, it looks at the views ofcandidates and voters from the only right-wing populist parties to have enjoyed electoralsuccess in recent decades in Australia, Canada and New Zealand: One Nation (ON)in Australia, New Zealand First (NZF) and Canada’s Reform Party/Canadian Alliance(RP/CA).2 Since RP/CA no longer exists and ON teetered on the brink of extinctionfor many years after its initial rise, we use data from the period around the beginningof the twenty-first century when all three parties were clearly right-wing populist andelectorally successful.We focus our analysis on three critical historical elections when theseparties attracted significant electoral support and presented voters with highly salient andprogrammatically based bids for office (thus exposing them to the parties’ case for directdemocracy). In short, if a significant link between support for right-wing populism and directdemocracy exists in these advanced democracies, it should be present in these three elections.

In the next section, by way of establishing the theoretical connection between right-wingpopulism and direct democracy, we outline how such parties have expressed support forgreater direct democracy and examine research on populist supporters’ attitudes towarddirect democracy. Thereafter, we use candidate and voter survey data, first, to examine thepositions and attitudes held by candidates in our three parties vis-à-vis direct democracyand, second, to explore ON,NZF and RP/CA voters’ feelings about direct democracy, alongwith the factors that promote or constrain support for referendums. As expected, right-wing populist candidates turned out to be far more likely to support direct democracy thancandidates of the major parties in their countries. However, right-wing populist supportersdid not mirror the candidates. Although they were among the most dissatisfied with howdemocracy worked in their countries, they did not necessarily favour referendums morethan other voters. In the concluding section, we propose several analytic implications forour findings.


RIGHT-WING POPULIST PARTY SUPPORTERS 3

Right-wing populism and direct democracy

While there has been a long debate about how to define populism – stretching back toand beyond the classic study by Ionescu and Gellner (1969) – an increasing consensus hasemerged in recent decades among scholars concerning its key elements. As Canovan (1981:294) observes, ‘all forms of populism without exception involve some kind of exaltationof and appeal to “the people” and all are in one sense or another anti-elitist’. This formsthe basis for the oft-cited definition of populism by Mudde (2004: 544) as ‘an ideology thatconsiders society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups,“the pure people” versus “the corrupt elite”, and which argues that politics should be anexpression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people’. While this serves as a goodminimal definition of populism, we would add that, for right-wing populists, ‘the people’ aresaid not only to be under attack from above by the elites, but also by the presence in societyof ‘others’ (e.g., immigrants, welfare abusers, indigenous citizens with special entitlements)who do not share the values of the people (Albertazzi & McDonnell 2015: 5).

Irrespective of ideological differences between populist parties, all of them share theclaim that democracy has been stolen by corrupt elites from the sovereign ‘people’ (Mény &Surel 2004: 173–196).Populists therefore present themselves as the ‘real’ democrats who willrestore sovereignty to its true owner, the people. One of the key mechanisms proposed fordoing so is the introduction of direct democratic reforms.This association between populismand direct democracy dates back to the earliest occurrences of populist parties in establisheddemocracies, with the American Populist Party of the 1890s the archetype (Burnham 1970).In the late-twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, populist parties have consistentlycalled for direct democratic reforms, especially greater use of referendums. Of course, mostpopulists in advanced democracies have been right-wing since it is only in the current decadethat non right-wing populist parties such as Podemos in Spain, Syriza in Greece and theFive-Star Movement in Italy have emerged and enjoyed electoral breakthroughs. For easeof comparison, we therefore focus our discussion here on cases of right-wing populists inWestern Europe and advanced non-European democracies (however, our findings shouldinform future research comparing new left-wing populists with right-wing ones).

The programmes of a number of the major Western European right-wing populistparties express clear support for greater direct democracy. For example, in its 2011 generalelection manifesto, the Perussuomalaiset (PS, Finns Party3) stated that ‘referendums atthe municipal level should be introduced’ (Finns Party 2011) while the Dansk Folkeparti(DF, Danish People’s Party) says in its core policy document that government in Denmark‘should be developed yet further through direct democracy’ (Danish People’s Party 2002).While such calls are light on supportive content, UKIP in its 2014 ‘Policies for People’document provides more detail. It supports the recall of MPs if 20 per cent of voters in agiven constituency ‘sign a recall petition within eight weeks’ and promises to ‘introduce theCitizens’ Initiative to allow the public to initiate national referendums on issues of majorpublic interest’ (UKIP 2014). Underlining the prominence given to direct democracy byUKIP and other contemporary European populist movements, the cross-party grouping inthe European Parliament, formed in May 2014 by UKIP, the Sweden Democrats and otherpopulist Eurosceptic movements, was named ‘Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy’(EFDD).



We also find strong support for direct democracy in the programmes of our threenon-European right-wing populist parties during the periods we examine them (see theparty platform statements in Online Appendix A). ON in Australia proposed the use ofwhat it termed ‘Community Based Referendums’. These would allow citizens to initiatereferendums through collecting 400 signatures and submitting the proposal to the ElectoralCommission. If the Commission granted its approval, the referendum’s sponsors wouldthen have to collect further signatures from at least 2 per cent of the population in agiven state, after which a bill would be presented to parliament. If parliament did notpass it, the bill would be ‘automatically referred for referendum at the same time asthe next election’ (see www.gwb.com.au/onenation/qldstate/cbr.htm). In Canada, RP/CAproposed mechanisms for referendums and recall in its platforms (Barney & Laycock 1999).In line with the party’s contention that democratic representation had been corruptedby the traditional parties, the RP/CA argued that direct democracy would ‘enable thecommon sense of the common people to emerge and be recognized’ (Barney 2002: 178–179). Finally, NZF opposed the resistance of Labour and National governments to makereferendums binding, contending that ‘ordinary’ and ‘common’ New Zealanders wouldfeel they had more political say if some elements of Citizen Initiated Referendums werebinding (Karp & Aimer 2002). The party leader, Winston Peters, also used popularpetitions in an attempt to force a referendum about the country’s ties to London’s PrivyCouncil.

In sum, right-wing populist parties tend to express support in their programmes fordirect democracy and, in particular, for referendums. As mentioned earlier, this has beenwidely noted in the literature both generally on populism and, more specifically, on right-wing populism (Taggart 2000;Mudde 2007; Rooduijn 2014). One issue largely neglected bystudies on populism,however, is whether this support for direct democracy,and referendumsin particular, is shared (a) by the candidates of right-wing populist parties and (b) by thecitizens who vote for these parties. Moreover, the evidence that does exist on the topiccomes exclusively from Western Europe. While there is only one dedicated study directlyrelevant to this (by Pauwels – discussed below), we can draw several useful insights fromrecent studies of European ‘stealth democrats’.

Most notably, Webb (2013) has looked at voters in the United Kingdom who are, as heputs it, of a ‘stealth democratic orientation’.4 Those who voted for UKIP (and the extremeright British National Party) score higher on his ‘stealth democracy’ scale than supportersof mainstream parties (Webb 2013: 771). He finds that ‘stealth democrats’ tend to supportreferendums and argues that this is because ‘direct democracy and stealth democracy arelogically compatible through their shared connectionwith the populist worldview’.However,populist voters’ endorsement of mechanisms such as referendums does not mean thatthey desire active involvement in the political process. As Webb (2013: 768) observes,stealth democrats do not shy away from referendums ‘so much as other, more active andtime consuming forms of political participation, both mainstream and deliberative’. Webb’sconclusions echo those of research conducted in Finland by Bengtsson and Mattila (2009:1045), who present evidence showing that voters support ‘simultaneously both more directdemocracy and more stealth democracy’. Again similar to Webb’s research in the UnitedKingdom,Dalton et al. (2001: 147; emphasis in original) have shown that ‘direct democracyattracts greater support from those Germans who are least interested in politics’. They



conclude that popular support for direct democracy reflects disaffection with the politicalstatus quo (Dalton et al. 2001: 150).

Of greatest relevance to us, however, is the study by Pauwels (2014), which looks atpopulist parties of both the left and right in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands. Hefinds that ‘the call for more decision making through referendums is an important motive tovote for populist parties in general, be they of the national, neoliberal or social populist type’(Pauwels 2014: 159). In all three countries, dissatisfaction with democracy, a desire for ‘directdecision making without intermediary structures’ and voting for right-wing populist partiesgo together (Pauwels 2014: 163). In the next section, we therefore investigate whether thesame combination of attitudes is characteristic also of our three non-European advanceddemocracies.

Right-wing populist candidates and voters in Australia, Canada and New Zealand

Our cases in this study are the only three electorally successful right-wing populist parties ofrecent decades in Australia, Canada and New Zealand: ON, RP/CA and NZF, respectively.They were selected because all three parties were recognised by scholars as being right-wing populist (e.g.,Mughan et al. 2003: 618;Betz & Johnson 2004) and they remain the threemost successful and prominent right-wing populist parties to date in advanced parliamentarydemocracies outside Europe. They were, thus, sufficiently salient to convey to voters theirstrident ideological politics and their calls for implementing various mechanisms involvingdirect democracy. In short, all three, in the periods we analyse them, were ascendantright-wing populist parties that challenged the centrism of mainstream politics, rejectedpolicies of large-scale immigration and special provisions for certain groups (e.g., French-speakers in Quebec in the case of RP/CA and Indigenous Australians in that of ON) andsupported greater direct democracy.On this basis, the authors secured permission from thoseresponsible for the national election surveys in each of these countries to introduce surveyitems measuring respondents’ attitudes toward referendums – thus gaining the rare abilityto explore voters’ views on direct democracy in the context of respondents’ attitudes towardthe politics of the day.

These data allow us to explore the key analytical theme in this article: the extent towhich right-wing populist parties’ candidates and supporters are comparable in their supportfor the parties’ programmatic commitment to implement direct democracy provisions, andmore specifically, referendums. Because some new populist parties tap voter disaffectionand secure a significant share of their electoral support through negative protest votingrather than advocacy of procedural reform (Denemark & Bowler 2002), our study aimsto establish the degree to which right-wing populist parties have persuaded voters of thepositive, programmatic priority of instituting direct democracy processes or, alternatively,have built a largely inadvertent support for referendums because they tie the hands of thepolitical status quo. To do so, we employ surveys of candidate attitudes in each of our threecase study countries before turning to electorate surveys to gauge the sentiments of voters.5

Our survey of party candidates in each country shows that ON, NZF and RP/CAcandidates were far more likely to support the use of direct democracy than their majorparty counterparts. As Table 1 illustrates, 89 per cent of ON candidates in 2001 supporteddirect democracy – 24 percentage points higher than candidates and MPs of Australia’s



Table 1. Party candidates’ positions on the use of referendums: Percentage responding that referendums are‘good things’

% responding thatreferendums are‘good things’

Australia 20011

Liberals 65

Nationals 65

Australian public 66

Labour 71

Democrats 84

Greens 86

One Nation Party 89

Canada 1999/20002

New Democratic Party 15

Liberal 37

Canadian public 57

Progressive Conservatives 61

Reform Alliance 100

New Zealand 19993

Labour 28

Alliance 48

National 51

ACT 53

Green 54

New Zealand public 74

New Zealand First 81

Notes: See Online Appendix for details on all measures. 1Asked of MPs, candidates and the public: ‘Overall,do you think that referendums are good things, bad things, or do they make no difference?’. 2Asked of MPs,MLAs and the public: ‘Overall,do you think that referendums are good things,bad things,or do theymake nodifference?’. 3Asked of candidates, MPs, and the public: ‘Overall, do you think that referendums and citizeninitiated referendums are good things, bad things, or do they make no difference?’.Sources: 2001 Australian Election Study candidate survey and 2001 Australian Election Study voter survey(Bean et al. 2001); Survey of Canadian candidates conducted in 1999 and 2000, and a 2000 Institute forResearch onPublic Policy survey;1999NewZealandElection Study candidate survey and 1999NewZealandElection Study (Vowles et al. 1999).

governing centre-right Liberal and National parties and 18 percentage points higher thanthose of the Australian Labor Party. The candidates closest to those of ON – as we mighthave expected given the traditional support of such parties for direct democracy –were thoseof the Greens with 86 per cent. The results from the candidates’ survey in Canada were veryclear-cut. Support among RP/CA candidates and MPs was more than 60 percentage pointsgreater than among parliamentary candidates and MPs from the governing Liberal Party.Finally, support among NZF candidates and MPs in 1999 was 30 percentage points higher



than among candidates and MPs from the governing centre-right National Party. The levelof candidate support closest to right-wing populist candidates in New Zealand was that ofthe Greens, with 54 per cent – still 27 percentage points below the NZF result.

In sum, ON, RP/CA and NZF candidates’ positions and those of their parties’ formalplatforms (see the statements in Online Appendix A) confirm these three right-wingpopulist parties as distinctive in their commitment to the promotion of direct democracy.This set the parties apart from their mainstream national counterparts in terms of embracingreferendums as a way to involve citizens in the process of governance. What now remainsto be established is whether supporters of the three parties are similarly distinctive in theirviews of direct democracy. Given that right-wing populist parties are deeply critical of howcontemporary liberal democracies function (Taggart 2000; Mény & Surel 2002), we expectthat voters of our three parties will be more dissatisfied than the average voter with howdemocracy works in their country. Likewise, given the established patterns of attitudesamong right-wing populist voters in Western Europe (Pauwels 2014), we expect right-wing populist party voters in Australia, Canada and New Zealand to be more supportive(compared to supporters of other parties) of direct democracy, particularly the use ofreferendums.

To examine these attitudes, we analyse responses to surveys conducted during generalelections when the three right-wing populist parties were at their zenith as vehicles of theseissues and concerns. More specifically, we employ national opinion surveys conducted inconjunction with general elections in Australia in 2001, Canada in 2000 and New Zealandin 1999. These data allow us to see whether supporters of right-wing populist parties didin fact hold attitudes about the functioning of democracy and about direct democracy thatwere different from those expressed by supporters of other parties, controlling for a batteryof other factors.

We group our tests of voters’ attitudes into two sets: (1) estimates of voters’ satisfactionwith how democracy works in their countries, as displayed in Table 2; and (2) estimates oftheir attitudes about referendums, as displayed in Table 3. These descriptive data show that,as anticipated,right-wing populist voters are among those least satisfiedwith howdemocracyworks in their country. In Australia and New Zealand, they were the most dissatisfied –44.4 per cent of ON voters and 51.6 per cent of NZF voters – while, in Canada, voters forthe RP/CA were surpassed on this measure only by those of the Quebec separatist party,the Bloc Quebecois (BQ).6

The bivariate results in Table 3, however, provide little backing for the idea thatright-wing populist voter dissatisfaction with the functioning of democracy translated intostronger support for direct democratic reforms than that found among voters of otherparties. In fact, Table 3 shows a noticeable lack of any distinctive pattern of supportfor referendums among populist party voters in Australia, New Zealand and Canada. InAustralia and New Zealand, the proportion of right-wing populist supporters who agreedthat ‘referendums are a good thing’ was at or below the national average, and comparablewith parties at the low end of the spectrum. Canadian right-wing populist voters show onlya slightly above-average level of support for referendums as being good things for dealingwith ‘important’ and ‘controversial’ issues. Thus, despite these parties’ much-celebratedcalls for reining in governmental power and opening up decision making to the inputof the ordinary person, there was no distinctively strong support among their voters for



Table 2. Citizens’ attitudes toward politics, by party vote in Australia, New Zealand and Canada1

Party name

% unsatisfied withthe way democracy

works here

Australia

Liberal 8.1

Labor 37.6

National 15.1

Democrats 31.7

Greens 39.4

One Nation 44.4

Australia overall 26.3

N 1,954

New Zealand

National 32.8

Labour 34.3

Alliance 45.3

ACT 44.3

Greens 37.1

New Zealand First 51.6

New Zealand overall 38.3

N 5,650

Canada

Liberal 20.3

Conservative 31.7

NDP 36.8

Bloc Quebecois 50.4

Reform/Alliance 41.0

Canada overall 34.6

N 3,498

Notes: Chi2 tests show significant differences (p < 0.000) by party in each country. The number of casesreflects overall total respondents (voters and non-voters).SeeOnlineAppendix B for details on all measures.1The Australian patterns are for Senate vote; the NewZealand patterns are for party vote; and the Canadianresults are for reported vote in the post-election survey.Sources: 2001 Australian National Election Study (see Bean et al. 2001); 1999 New Zealand Election Study(see Vowles et al. 1999); 2000 Canadian Election Study (see Blais et al. 2000).

referendums. Indeed, as Table 3 shows, populist party supporters in Australia and NewZealand were among the least likely to feel that referendums ‘get the parties’ attention’.

A likely important factor for explaining this lack of enthusiasm for referendums issuggested by the patterns of belief (again shown in Table 3) that referendums are ‘toocomplicated for the average voter’. In Australia, supporters of ON were the most likelyto agree that referendums were too complex – a pattern echoed by NZF voters, except



Table 3. Citizens’ attitudes towards referendums by party vote in Australia, New Zealand and Canada (%)

Party nameReferendums getparties’ attention

Referendums are toocomplicated

Referendums are agood thing1

Australia House Senate House Senate House Senate

Liberal 62.2 64.1 41.6 40.8 71.7 73.6

Labor 52.6 53.2 48.3 50.1 61.2 57.6

National 56.8 58.9 32.0 37.8 69.7 72.6

Democrats 59.6 57.6 50.5 47.9 63.6 65.7

Greens 59.8 62.4 33.3 32.3 74.0 77.1

One Nation 57.1 55.1 58.7 50.6 64.6 67.8

Australia overall 57.3 44.3 65.9

N 1,907 1,905 1,945

New Zealand Party Electorate Party Electorate Party Electorate

National 89.8 89.0 18.9 16.9 74.6 74.5

Labour 86.2 86.6 23.1 22.6 73.6 73.8

Alliance 88.4 85.5 17.7 19.6 75.6 74.9

ACT 85.2 85.9 10.5 14.1 74.9 74.5

Greens 88.9 87.8 16.1 17.3 78.4 85.0

New Zealand First 87.8 87.8 22.5 24.1 71.6 73.2

New Zealand overall 87.1 20.4 74.4

N 4,685 4,758 4,494

Canada Ref1 Ref2

Liberal 18.5 16.7

Progressive Conservative 16.2 15.0

NDP 18.5 14.8

Bloc Quebecois2 21.3 22.9

Reform/Alliance 25.5 21.6

Canada overall 21.4 19.0

N 1,378 1,385

Notes: See Online Appendix for details on all measures. 1The 2000 Canadian Election Study askedrespondents two questions, presented here as Ref1 and Ref2: Ref1: Percentage saying have referendumson important issues regularly versus having them occasionally, rarely or never. Ref2: Percentage sayinghave referendums on controversial issues regularly versus having them occasionally, rarely or never. 2BlocQuebecois percentages are from the pre-election study’s intended vote.Sources: 2001 Australian National Election Study (see Bean et al. 2001); 1999 New Zealand Election Study(see Vowles et al. 1999); 2000 Canadian Election Study (see Blais et al. 2000).

when compared with NZ Labour. The issue of direct democracy mechanisms being toocomplicated for ‘ordinary people’, who are, nonetheless, attracted to right-wing populistparties’ criticisms of the political status quo, is taken up in the bivariate and multivariatemodels below.

One of the most parsimonious ways to establish whether supporters of the three right-wing populist parties hold distinctly higher levels of political dissatisfaction than other voters



but are not distinctly more supportive of direct democracy is to compare the percentage ofright-wing populist voters holding various political attitudes with those of voters supportingthemajor parties and other, smaller parties.Table 4 presents these percentages and usesChi2

tests to establish the significance of the difference in the percentages for these three groupsof voters. It does so for the key attitudinal measures at the heart of our analysis: satisfactionwith democracy, the three component measures of political disaffection and respondents’interest in politics, along with respondent attitudes toward referendums.

Overall, the results in Table 4 confirm that right-wing populist party voters in all threecountries held significantly higher levels of political disdain and were significantly moredissatisfied with the way democracy worked than voters for the major parties and othersmaller parties. In Australia,ON voters were consistently the most disdainful of the politicalprocess and least satisfied with the way democracy worked. NZF voters were the mostlikely to feel that politicians do not care and that voters have no say, and were also themost dissatisfied with the way democracy worked in their country, though they shared withvoters of other small parties the highest levels of distrust for government. In Canada,RP/CAvoters were also consistentlymore disdainful of the political process thanmajor party voters;however, their disaffection with the way democracy worked was echoed by voters for othersmall parties,particularlyBQ supporters,whose platformwas premised on calls forQuebec’sindependence from Canada. In terms of voters’ interest in politics, ON supporters hadsignificantly lower levels of political interest than other Australian voters, while interestamong RP/CA voters was no different to that of other voters in Canada. It was only inNew Zealand that populist voters were more interested in politics than non-populist voters.

The bivariate results in Table 4 demonstrate that right-wing populist party supporters’attitudes toward referendums were not distinctive when compared to other categories ofvoters. Canada’s RP/CA supporters were the only right-wing populist voters who heldslightly (but not significantly) higher regard for referendums.The only significantly differentscore among Australia’s ON voters concerned viewing referendums as ‘too complicated’ –a score which NZF voters shared with major party supporters. Overall, then, Table 4 pointsto right-wing populist party supporters as being distinctive in their political disaffection anddissatisfaction, but as largely indistinct in their views on referendums.Multivariate analysisin the following section tests if these relationships hold while controlling for a variety ofattitudinal and demographic factors.

Model specification

Logistic regression allows us to test how the attitudes of supporters of various parties mayhave differed when gender, education, interest in politics, age, economic concerns (Mughanet al. 2003), union membership, employment status and key attitudes are accounted for.Ourmodels are estimated with a vote choice dummy variable representing supporters of eachparty that received significant numbers of votes in the election. Supporters of the right-wingpopulist party in each country are used as the reference group to compare the effects of theother party dummy variables.7 This allows us to present the results in such a way that thecoefficients represent whether or not supporters of a specific party have attitudes that aresignificantly different from attitudes held by right-wing populist voters, all other factors inthe model being equal.



Table4.

Popu

listp

arty

supp

orters

inAustralia,N

ewZealand

andCan

ada:Po

litical

disaffection

andattitude

stowarddirect

democracy

(percentages

andChi

2 )

Australia

New

Zea

land

Can

ada

Partyvo

teNo

Yes

prob

.X2

Partyvo

teNo

Yes

prob

.X2

Allian

ceOthers

No

Yes

prob

.X2

Politicaldisaffectionandpoliticalinterest

Unsatisfie

dwiththe

way

democracy

works

ONP

5644

0.00

NZF

4852

0.00

Allian

ce59

410.00

Majors

7921

Majors

6634

Majors

7723

Others

6238

Others

5743

Others

5446

Politicians

don’t

know

/carefor

ordina

rype

ople

ONP

3565

0.00

NZF

2773

0.00

Allian

ce25

750.00

Majors

5644

Majors

4456

Majors

4456

Others

4456

Others

4357

Others

2773

Political

corrup

tion

iswidespread

(NZ:D

on’ttrust

gove

rnmen

t)

ONP

3664

0.00

NZF

5941

0.00

Allian

ce24

760.00

Majors

5842

Majors

6931

Majors

4258

Others

5347

Others

5743

Others

2674

Votemak

esno

differen

ce;voters

have

nosay

ONP

5644

0.00

NZF

3070

0.00

Allian

ce31

690.00

Majors

8317

Majors

4456

Majors

4456

Others

7426

Others

4756

Others

2872

Gen

eral

interestin

politics

ONP

2773

0.50

NZF

1783

0.00

Allian

ce11

890.74

Majors

2278

Majors

2773

Majors

1288

Others

2278

Others

2674

Others

1387

(Continued)



Table4.

Con

tinu

ed

Australia

New

Zea

land

Can

ada

Partyvo

teNo

Yes

prob

.X2

Partyvo

teNo

Yes

prob

.X2

Allian

ceOthers

No

Yes

prob

.X2

Viewson

referendum

s

Referen

dumsare

good

(CAN:H

old

refson

impo

rtan

tissues)

ONP

3466

0.76

NZF

2773

0.41

Allian

ce75

250.11

Majors

3466

Majors

2773

Majors

8218

Others

3268

Others

2674

Others

8020

Referen

dumsge

tpa

rties’attention

(CAN:R

efsgo

odon

controversies)

ONP

4555

0.75

NZF

1387

0.69

Allian

ce78

220.15

Majors

4159

Majors

1288

Majors

8416

Others

4357

Others

1486

Others

8119

Referen

dumsare

toocomplicated

ONP

4951

0.09

NZF

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Table 5. Australian voters’ attitudes toward democracy and referendums compared to One Nation partyvoters (logistic regression)

Australia

Unsatisfied withthe way democracy

works hereReferendumsare good things

Referendumsget parties’attention

Referendumsare too

complicated

Liberal vote −1.85** (0.29) −0.24 (0.28) 0.11 (0.26) 0.07 (0.27)

Labor vote −0.50* (0.27) −0.61** (0.28) −0.12 (0.26) 0.22 (0.26)

National vote −1.09** (0.43) 0.08 (0.41) 0.02 (0.37) −0.09 (0.36)

Democrats vote −0.49 (0.32) −0.52 (0.33) 0.03 (0.31) 0.42 (0.31)

Greens vote −0.32 (0.34) 0.01 (0.37) 0.21 (0.33) −0.39 (0.34)

Politicaldisaffection scale

−0.36** (0.07) −0.23** (0.07) 0.37** (0.07)

Support forAboriginals

0.10 (0.07) 0.08 (0.06) −0.02 (0.06) −0.04 (0.06)

Support furtherimmigration

−0.01 (0.07) 0.05 (0.07) 0.07 (0.06) −0.16** (0.06)

Retrospectivefinances

0.30** (0.08) −0.05 (0.07) 0.03 (0.07) 0.17** (0.07)

Prospectivefinances

0.51** (0.08) 0.03 (0.08) −0.00 (0.07) −0.14* (0.08)

Female −0.09 (0.14) −0.01 (0.12) 0.03 (0.11) −0.10 (0.11)

Age −0.01** (0.01) 0.00 (0.00) 0.02** (0.00) 0.02** (0.00)

High education −0.19 (0.17) 0.45** (0.16) 0.05 (0.14) −0.22 (0.14)

Interest in politics 0.04 (0.09) 0.49** (0.08) 0.20** (0.07) −0.05 (0.08)

Union membership 0.02 (0.16) 0.33** (0.15) −0.03 (0.13) −0.08 (0.13)

Unemployment −0.37* (0.22) 0.32* (0.19) 0.06 (0.17) −0.23 (0.17)

Constant −2.62** (0.50) −0.95** (0.46) −1.28** (0.43) −0.45 (0.43)

Observations 1,524 1,490 1,484 1,480

Log likelihood −696.58 −850.00 −969.07 −957.37

Pseudo R2 0.18 0.09 0.04 0.06

Notes: Logit coefficients, with standard errors in parentheses. Attitudes are predicted by dummy variablesrepresenting party vote, with One Nation vote as the reference category (controlling for several additionalattitudinal and demographic variables). Coding of the voter’s party status based on their Senate vote. SeeOnline Appendix B for details on variable coding. **Voters who are significantly more (or less) likely thanOne Nation voters to offer the survey response (at the 0.05 level of significance). *Significant at the 0.1 level.Source: 2001 Australian Election Study (see Bean et al. 2001).

Tables 5, 6 and 7 present results of the multivariate analysis for Australia, New Zealandand Canada in the 2001, 1999 and 2000 elections, respectively.Thesemodels also account forhigh profile social issues expected to have attracted distinctive voter support to these right-wing populist parties, including immigration and opposition to specialised governmentalsupport for indigenous citizens (see Denemark & Bowler 2002; Sayers & Denemark 2014).Finally, because new right-wing populist parties may attract a significant share of theirvoter support by voicing critiques of the political orthodoxy and the failings of traditionalparties, we include a three-measure political disaffection scale. This scale was produced bycreating a single factor analysis score for three of our respondents’ political perceptions:



Table 6. NewZealand voters’ attitudes toward democracy and referendums compared to NewZealand Firstparty voters (logistic regression)

New Zealand


works hereReferendumsare good things

Referendumsget parties’attention

Referendumsare too

complicated

National vote −0.70** (0.18) −0.11 (0.22) 0.17 (0.30) 0.34 (0.25)

Labour vote −0.54** (0.17) −0.20 (0.21) −0.26 (0.29) 0.37 (0.23)

Alliance vote −0.20 (0.21) −0.12 (0.25) −0.13 (0.34) 0.10 (0.28)

ACT vote −0.02 (0.21) −0.13 (0.25) −0.30 (0.33) −0.16 (0.30)

Greens vote −0.31 (0.23) −0.13 (0.27) −0.08 (0.37) 0.16 (0.31)

Politicaldisaffection scale

−0.11** (0.05) −0.11* (0.06) 0.02 (0.05)

Support forAboriginals

−0.13** (0.03) −0.04 (0.03) 0.15** (0.04) 0.00 (0.04)

Support furtherimmigration

−0.08** (0.03) 0.01 (0.04) 0.07 (0.05) −0.23** (0.04)

Retrospectivefinances

0.23** (0.04) 0.04 (0.05) 0.01 (0.06) 0.01 (0.06)

Prospectivefinances

0.24** (0.04) −0.11** (0.05) −0.07 (0.06) −0.09* (0.05)

Female −0.19** (0.07) 0.09 (0.09) 0.12 (0.11) 0.15 (0.10)

Age 0.00* (0.00) −0.01** (0.00) 0.00 (0.00) 0.02** (0.00)

High education −0.10 (0.10) −0.37** (0.11) −0.12 (0.15) 0.24* (0.13)

Interest in politics 0.04 (0.06) −0.01 (0.07) 0.28** (0.08) 0.08 (0.07)

Union membership −0.06 (0.11) 0.09 (0.13) 0.19 (0.17) 0.14 (0.14)

Unemployment 0.17 (0.19) −0.00 (0.24) 0.14 (0.31) 0.19 (0.25)

Constant −1.07** (0.34) 2.11** (0.41) 0.43 (0.52) −2.18** (0.45)

Observations 3,393 2,940 3,083 3,092

Log likelihood −2160.92 −1653.14 −1138.39 −1451.73

Pseudo R2 0.04 0.01 0.02 0.03

Notes: Logit coefficients, with standard errors in parentheses. Attitudes are predicted by dummy variablesrepresenting party vote, with NZF vote as the reference category (controlling for several additionalattitudinal and demographic variables). Coding of the voter’s party status based on their party vote. SeeOnline Appendix B for details on all variables. **Voters who are significantly more (or less) likely thanNZF voters to offer the survey response (at the 0.05 level of significance). *Significant at the 0.1 level.Source: 1999 New Zealand Election Study (see Vowles et al. 1999).

politicians being out of touch with ordinary people; political corruption as being widespread(government distrust in New Zealand); and voters having no say (Denemark & Bowler2002).

These attitudes closely parallel those noted by various studies analysing politicaldisaffection and its linkage to citizens’ declining sense of political responsiveness andtrust (Nye et al. 1997; Klingemann 1999; Dalton 2004). We measure respondents’ level ofsatisfaction with democracy as a separate factor, given that a number of studies show thismeasure taps perceived performance of the political system. In other words, ‘satisfactionwith democracy’ is a measure of output or ‘supply’, while the political disaffection measures



Table 7. Canadian voters’ attitudes toward democracy and referendums compared to Reform/Alliance partyvoters (logistic regression)

Canada


works here

Referendums aregood on important

issues

Referendums aregood on

controversial issues

Liberal vote −0.68** (0.11) −0.32* (0.19) 0.17 (0.21)

Conservative vote −0.17 (0.16) −0.30 (0.29) 0.29 (0.22)

New Democrat vote 0.26 (0.18) −0.36 (0.32) −0.16 (0.35)

Bloc Quebecois vote 0.61** (0.14) −0.31 (0.26) 0.24 (0.25)

Political disaffection scale 0.19** (0.08) 0.28** (0.09)

Support for Aboriginals −0.13** (0.04) 0.06 (0.08) 0.12 (0.09)

Support further immigration −0.27** (0.07) −0.15 (0.12) −0.19 (0.13)

Worse retrospective finances 0.48** (0.07) 0.21* (0.12) −0.01 (0.13)

Worse prospective finances 0.17** (0.07) −0.29** (0.13) 0.34** (0.14)

Female −0.15* (0.08) 0.22 (0.15) −0.16 (0.16)

Age 0.01** (0.00) −0.01** (0.01) −0.00 (0.01)

High education −0.25** (0.10) −0.22 (0.17) −0.31* (0.18)

Interest in politics −0.08 (0.02) −0.02 (0.03) −0.02 (0.03)

Union membership 0.01 (0.09) 0.18 (0.16) 0.13 (0.17)

Unemployment 0.18 (0.20) 0.01 (0.36) −0.08 (0.39)

Constant −1.31** (0.26) −0.72 (0.46) −1.90** (0.52)

Observations 3,025 1,141 1,173

Log likelihood −1784.64 −573.10 −538.52

Pseudo R2 0.07 0.03 0.03

Notes: Logit coefficients, with standard errors in parentheses. Attitudes are predicted by dummy variablesrepresenting party vote, with Reform/Alliance vote as the reference category (controlling for severaladditional attitudinal and demographic variables). Coding of the voter’s party status based on their partyvote. See Online Appendix B for details on all variables. **Voters who are significantly more (or less) likelythan Reform/Alliance voters to offer the survey response (at the 0.05 level of significance). *Significant atthe 0.1 level.Source: 2000 Canadian Election Study (see Blais et al. 2000).

are more critical sentiments reflecting ‘demand’ for a more responsive system of governance(see Gunther et al. 2007). As Dalton (2004: 39) explains, ‘individuals may be satisfied withdemocracy as a process, despite their growing cynicism of politicians and the institutions ofrepresentative democracy’.Nonetheless, since they are parallel measures of political disdain,we exclude the political disaffection scale in models predicting satisfaction with democracy.8

Results and discussion

Tables 5, 6 and 7 report results for the estimates of partisan differences in attitudes aboutthe functioning of democracy and support for direct democracy in Australia, New Zealand,and Canada, respectively.A positive sign for the party coefficients illustrates that supportersof that party were more likely than populist party voters to agree with the statement in the



column heading, while a negative sign illustrates they were less likely than populist votersto agree. A larger absolute value for the coefficient represents a greater difference betweenvoters of that party and right-wing populist party voters.

The multivariate estimates in Table 5 demonstrate that ON voters were significantly lesssatisfied with Australian democracy than those voting for the three mainstream Australianparties (Liberal, Labor and National) though they were not significantly different in theirattitudes to voters for otherminor parties like theAustralianDemocrats and theGreens.Wesee a similar pattern in NewZealand (Table 6) and Canada (Table 7).NZF voters weremoredissatisfied with the way democracy worked than voters of the two major parties (Nationaland Labour). However, they were not significantly different in this sense to those voting forNew Zealand’s three other minor parties. Canadian RP/CA voters were more dissatisfiedthan voters of the mainstream Liberals, but they were not significantly different to thosevoting for the Progressive Conservatives and the New Democratic Party. The only voters inany of the three countries to exhibit significantly higher levels of dissatisfaction than right-wing populist voters were BQ supporters – a likely reflection of BQ voters’ support forQuebec’s independence from Canada. Overall, the attitudinal patterns in Tables 5, 6 and 7confirm our expectation that right-wing populist party voters were more dissatisfied thanmost others with the way representative democracy worked in their countries.

Though the attitudes of right-wing populist party supporters with respect to the politicalstatus quo and the political system are in line with our expectations, the same cannot besaid of their attitudes toward direct democracy. The general lack of partisan differencesin the likelihood of viewing referendums ‘as a good thing’ is surprising, given that weexpected to find distinctive and stronger support for referendums among right-wing populistparty voters compared to voters of other parties. Instead, the multivariate estimatesdemonstrate that support for referendums among ON voters and NZF voters was by andlarge indistinguishable from voters for other parties – even those of parties in government.ON supporters were significantly more likely than Labor supporters to feel referendumswere good things. Otherwise, as with all the party comparisons in New Zealand, our resultsfail to show right-wing populist supporters holding distinctive attitudes toward referendums.RP/CA voters were more likely than Liberal voters to agree that referendums should beheld regularly on important issues, but they were no different from other voters on thisitem, and no different from all other party’s voters on the second measure of attitudesabout referendums in Canada.These results underscore the absence in Canada of distinctivepopulist voter attitudes on referendums. At least in part, this could reflect the fact that the2000 election had another party embracing an anti-status quo platform – the BQ with itshistory of campaigning for a referendum to secure independence for Quebec.

We do find that, independent of party vote, political disaffection was a significantpredictor of voter attitudes towards referendums in each country. However, contrary toour expectations, disaffection in Australia and New Zealand was associated with viewingreferendums as bad things, with viewing referendums as failing to get the parties’ attention,and (in Australia) with referendums being seen as too complicated. Clearly, Australia’s andNew Zealand’s most politically dissatisfied voters did not see referendums as efficaciousmechanisms for controlling governmental power. This would seem to run counter to claimsthat greater use of direct democracy might combat the ‘democratic malaise’ found in manyestablished democracies. It also contrasts with the idea that support for direct democracy



is concentrated among disaffected voters at the periphery of politics – that is, the idea thatsupporters of direct democracy are ‘closer to the populism of Jörg Haider or Ross Perotthan to the Greens’ ideology’ (Dalton et al. 2001:150). In Australia, we suspect this mayto some extent reflect residual feelings about the 1999 republic referendum, which wasdefeated in part because many voters regarded it as ‘the politicians’ referendum’, since itgave the voters a choice between having a head of state elected by parliament (not thepeople) or remaining with the status quo (McAllister 2001: 260). In New Zealand, thelink between disaffection and suspicion about referendums likely reflected governmentsrepeatedly ignoring the results of non-binding citizen-initiated referendums conducted theresince 1993 (Karp & Aimer 2002: 146).

Results from Canada, however, are consistent with our initial expectations about thelink between disaffection and support for direct democracy. Politically disaffected votersin Canada were significantly more supportive of having regular referendums on ‘importantissues’ and on ‘controversial’ issues.This relationshipmatches findings fromNorway,Swedenand Finland (Donovan & Karp 2006). It may reflect the fact that right-wing populists hadno monopoly on disaffection in Canada. Disaffection was high among RP/CA voters, butwas even higher among voters in Quebec who supported the BQ – a party with a history ofadvocating the use of sovereignty referendums.

In sum, while we do find links between voting for right-wing populist parties anddisaffection with how democracy was working, particularly in Australia and New Zealand,we find no link between voting for right-wing populist parties and attitudes aboutreferendums – despite these parties having clear positions in support of direct democracy.Furthermore, we find no consistent link between the independent effect of disaffection withdemocracy (or satisfactionwith democracy) and attitudes concerning referendums.9 Overall,these right-wing populist parties do not appear to have convinced their voters that directdemocracy represented a viable mechanism for making political power more accountable.At the same time, it seems likely that voter reticence to support direct democracy involvedtheir unwillingness to support mechanisms that might require their active participation inthe processes of politics,deemed bymany people (regardless of party) to be too complicated.

Conclusion

Right-wing populists in established democracies propose scathing critiques of how liberaldemocracy functions and often promise to resolve this (at least in part) by introducinggreater direct democracy. However, there has been little research offering insights intowhether right-wing populist voters share this enthusiasm for direct democratic measures.Despite the findings of a recent European study (Pauwels 2014) showing a strong correlationbetween dissatisfaction with democracy, support for direct democracy and voting for right-wing populist parties in three Western European countries, our results point to a far moretenuous linkage in three non-European advanced democracies.

There are a number of reasons why, despite these right-wing populist partieschampioning direct democracy, their supporters do not seem to be motivated by calls forgreater direct participation. Most simply, our results may reflect what political strategistshave long known: that it is easier to sell negative and attacking sentiments than tobuild positive, purposive support for political alternatives. The policy radicalism of these



right-wing populist parties depended on issues such as opposition to immigration andminority rights in order to make electoral inroads and secure the support of disaffectedvoters (Denemark & Bowler 2002; Sayers & Denemark 2014). But, perhaps because directdemocracy is premised on greater citizen involvement in the complexities of the politicalprocess, these three populist parties did not elicit the same support for referendums amongtheir supporters.

This tension between citizens’ critical sensibilities and the form of political changethey support raises a larger set of important questions about the threads linkingpolitical engagement, democratic criticism and the avenues open to building democraticaccountability (including through direct democracy). Though populist party supporters inAustralia, New Zealand and Canada held distinctively strong levels of political disdain anddissatisfaction with the democratic processes of their countries, their critical sensibilitiesdid not extend to support for the direct democracy mechanisms endorsed by their ownparties as ways to effect political control. It may therefore be the case, much as Hibbingand Theiss-Morse (2002) have shown in their research on American stealth democrats, thatmany citizens, including the supporters of parties like ON, NZF and the RP/CA, remainedprimarily disaffected but unengaged free riders, who hoped others would rein in the abusesof government.

As discussed earlier, Pauwels’ (2014: 158–159) research in Western Europe showsthat support for populist parties reflected these parties’ support for direct democracy,with no intermediary buffer between government and citizens. This sort of active, directdemocratic engagement, of course, depends on political interest, education and the willto become involved. Perhaps, as Norris (1999, 2011) contends, citizens’ critical awarenessof governmental procedure and performance fuels high expectations that, if not met, maymotivate a new activism. However, Dalton and Wattenberg (2002: 277) remind us that, inan era of weaker partisan loyalties, which has undermined collective vehicles of politicalchange, citizens who often are not policy aware or particularly sophisticated in their politicalknowledge,may be prone to ‘specious policy arguments’ and calls for radical change,withoutnecessarily embracing the complexities required to realise those changes.

All told, our findings suggest, first, that populism, political disaffection and the call fordemocratic change do not always cohere in a single form or produce a single agenda.Populist voters do not necessarily represent a vanguard for active, political reform, butmay be the expression of a political disconnect between increasingly critical citizens andpolitical processes they oppose or simply do not trust (but do not want to directly control).In short, the political voice of populist supporters, though it may be commonly motivated bydisaffection, sustains a variety of ways to harness that disdain and recast democratic politics.

This points to a second reason why right-wing populist voters may not supporttheir parties’ direct democracy policies. Because right-wing populism is inherently anti-establishment, these parties tap into the cynicism held by voters who dismiss the politicalstatus quo as being controlled by ‘special interests’ or ‘out of touch’with the common person.Populist appeals for greater direct citizen participation may not connect with voters’ desirefor more active engagement with referendums, but those appeals may nonetheless serve asrhetoric that adds to these parties’ aura of challenging the status quo and empowering theordinary voters, despite the latter not necessarily caring about having direct votes on policymatters.



Third, and finally, direct democracy may not mean the same thing to party elites andvoters. Given the range of ways that direct democracy can function, calls for the use ofreferendums by elites, even from those in populist parties,may not appear to populist votersas mechanisms that will promote greater direct citizen control. Survey respondents who areasked about ‘referendumuse’might, in their responses,be considering standard referendumscontrolled by the government, non-binding referendums that are less directly democratic, orbinding citizen-initiated referendums. Future research could provide valuable answers onthis issue by examining how (or if) supporters of populist parties make such distinctions.

We conclude therefore that the relationship between right-wing populist voting,dissatisfaction with democracy and consequent support for direct democracy is morecomplex than it appears – a complexity with a number of important implications forconsidering the nature of democratic governance and citizen perceptions of the politicalprocess. For many supporters of right-wing populist parties in established democracies,it may be the case that, while they want ‘better’ or ‘different’ or ‘less’ establishmentpolitics, they do not necessarily want more participation via referendums. In line with thefindings of work on stealth democracy (Hibbing & Theiss-Morse 2002), while these citizensare dissatisfied with how liberal democracy currently functions, they are not necessarilyenthused by more direct democracy. This, we contend, does not imply that right-wingpopulist voters are anti-democratic per se, but it does suggest that remedies for theirdiscontent might focus more on promoting the responsiveness of mainstream parties (Mair2013) than on forging these voters’ active engagement in the political process.

Supporting Information

Additional Supporting Information may be found in the online version of this article at thepublisher’s web-site:

Appendix A: Populist Party Policy Statements on ReferendumsAppendix B: Variable Codes and Measures; Descriptives Table and Robustness Table

Notes

1. See Sartori’s discussion of limited and restrained majority rule as the working principle of democracy(Sartori 1987: 32).

2. We define a right-wing populist party as ‘electorally successful’ if it has received over 5 per cent of thevote at a general election on at least one occasion.

3. The PS was previously known in English as ‘The True Finns’.4. These tend to be ‘less well-educated, less politically interested and efficacious individuals who recoil from

political debate and have little desire to participate in political activity beyond the minimum necessaryto hold untrustworthy elites in check’ (Webb 2013: 750).

5. The 2001 Australian Candidate Study (Gibson et al. 2002) was the sixth candidate survey conductedin parallel with the Australian Election Survey of the country’s voters. Based on a sampling frameof all major party candidates and candidates of parties that were expected to win more than10 per cent of House of Representatives first preference votes, candidates in the first week following theelection were mailed a questionnaire along with a covering letter from the candidates’ party. Questionsclosely echoed those asked of voters, except for a section on the candidate’s background and theirviews on the election and campaign. The response rate was 56.8 per cent. The Canadian candidate dataderive from a 1999 postal survey of 395 Members of the Legislative Assembly, Members of Parliament,



and candidates for the Legislative Assembly and Parliament in four provinces: Ontario, Saskatchewan,Alberta and British Columbia. A purpose-built survey was designed and administered, with itemsasking candidates about various aspects of referendums and direct democracy. A total of 180 candidatescompleted the survey, giving a response rate of 46 per cent. The 1999 New Zealand Candidate Survey(Vowles et al. 1999) was comprised of a 22-page questionnaire sent to 452 candidates nominated by theLabour, National, ACT, Alliance, Greens and NZF parties as part of the NZES post-election surveyprocess. Candidates were asked questions about their political background and activities, campaigning,and opinions, in addition to their views on the electoral system and various political issues. An overallresponse rate of 62 per cent was achieved, producing 232 completed questionnaires.

6. The BQ, whose central policy was Quebec’s separation from English-speaking Canada, tapped thedissatisfaction of those in Quebec who supported Canada’s dissolution (Sayers & Denemark 2014: 7).

7. We use party vote to distinguish the parties’ supporters, given the fact that very few respondents usedparty identification measures to indicate support for the three populist parties, as one might expect foremergent minor parties, for which socialised partisan affinities are virtually non-existent. In Canada, forexample, where the RP/CA had just emerged as a formal entity, only 2.2 per cent of CES respondentsidentified with RP/CA, while 17.1 per cent indicated they gave their vote to RP/CA. In New Zealand,1.6 per cent of respondents identified with NZF, but 4.2 per cent voted for that party. In Australia,2.3 per cent identified with ON in 2001, while 3.5 per cent indicated they gave ON their House vote, and5.2 per cent said they voted ON in the Senate.We use Senate votes in the Australian multivariate models,given the higher numbers of respondents voting for minor parties in the upper chamber election – dueto the lower electoral threshold (14.3 per cent of votes cast in a typical election) created by the Senate’sproportional representation-single transferable vote rules (unlike the Lower House’s 50%+1 thresholdproduced by the alternative vote rules used to elect a member of the House of Representatives).

8. Abbreviated models predicting attitudes toward referendums, which included all the key independentvariables, were run as logit models with and without the ‘satisfaction with democracy’ measure in orderto test for the robustness of the multivariate models in this study. These models yielded essentially nochanges, thus confirming that the results are robust. See Online Appendix B for these results.

9. Alternate specifications of attitudes about referendums that replace the disaffection scale with the‘satisfaction with democracy’ item produce similar results.

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Address for correspondence: Duncan McDonnell, School of Government and International Relations,Griffith University, Brisbane, Queensland, 4111, Australia. Email: [email protected]


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Right-wing populist party supporters: Dissatisfied but not direct democrats