Matthew Rhodes-Purdy
Biographic Data
| ID | 234205 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Matthew Rhodes-Purdy |
| GIVEN NAMES | Matthew |
| FAMILY NAME | Rhodes-Purdy |
| SIGNATURE | RHODES-PURDY M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Clemson University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5791-3332 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 134 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Response to Joseph Masco and Lisa Wedeen’s review of The Age of Discontent
Raising the Red Flag
The recent surge of global populism has led many intellectuals to call for new forms of democratic elitism. Yet research into the sources of support for political organizations and regimes predicts that suppressing opportunities for public participation will likely exacerbate antisystem political tendencies. We cite the recent protests in Chile, a nation that has employed democratic elitism more effectively than perhaps any other, as illustrative…
Fear or Loathing
Ethnonationalist politics have been on the rise in the United States since the 2008 financial crisis, culminating with the rise of Donald Trump. We examine why two seemingly unconnected things—economic crises and prejudice—so often arise simultaneously. Combining theories of economics and emotions, we connect economic crises and prejudice through the role of emotional response to crises, namely anger and anxiety. We use two survey experiments in …
White Identity, Anti-Elitism, and Opposition to Covid-19 Restrictions in the United States
As groups began to gather to protest COVID-19 restrictions, it became readily apparent that these groups were filled with overwhelmingly white protesters, and were led by organisations that often espoused a white nationalist message. We examine the effects of white identity on opposition to COVID-19 restrictions using original survey data. We find that white identity predicts opposition to COVID-19 mitigation measures, and that this effect persis…
Populist Psychology
Historical trends seem to show that populism, defined here as movements that self-identify as representatives of a unified good people confronting a corrupted or malevolent elite, tends to co-occur with major economic disruptions. However, research into this connection provides us with a puzzle: while populist surges often come in the wake of economic crises, cultural variables tend to be better predictors of support for populism in public opinio…
Procedures Matter
Many scholars assume that policy performance determines popular support for political systems. Yet in the wake of recent economic crises, patterns of performance and regime support have diverged in many countries, and popular perceptions of performance often fail to reflect the actual quality of governance. To resolve these paradoxes, I draw on recent scholarship on regime support and procedural fairness. I show that strong voice (the ability of …
Lock them up! Punitive aggression and populism as political vigilantism
Measuring Simultaneous Emotions
Studies on discrete emotions typically work to evoke one emotion at a time. Yet many political phenomena cause multiple emotions. Threats, for example, cause, anger, and fear, have diametrically opposing behavioral consequences. As a result, the effect of experimental treatments can be masked by the countervailing influence of emotions with similar affect. This issue is exacerbated by existing measures of negative emotions, such as the Positive a…
The perils of personalism
What impact does personalism, or presidential dominance of a weakly organized ruling party, have on the level of democracy? We argue that presidents who dominate their own weakly organized parties are more likely to seek to concentrate power, undermine horizontal accountability, and trample the rule of law than presidents who preside over parties that have an independent leadership and an institutionalized bureaucracy. Independent party leaders, …
Critical Debates in Populism Studies
Beyond the Balance Sheet
Most studies on regime support focus on performance, or policy outputs, as the principal causal variable. This study challenges this conventional wisdom by focusing on two countries where performance and support do not match. Chile is the economic envy of every country in the region, yet support has been surprisingly anemic since the return of democracy in the early 1990s. By contrast, Venezuela managed to maintain extremely high levels of suppor…
Participatory Governance in Latin America
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
The Engagement Curve
Considerable research has been conducted on the relationship between socioeconomic inequality and political engagement. However, there is little consensus on the exact nature of the relationship, and considerable variation in the relationship exists even among countries with similar levels of inequality. This lack of clarity in the literature exists because the impact of inequality on engagement is not constant, but changes depending on the strat…
Translated Abstracts
Entre los diferentes efectos de la extrema desigualdad socioecon6mica, el relativo a los patrones de involucramiento politico es uno de los mas corroborados. Sin embargo, esta relaci6n varia bastante de pais en pais, de un modo que no puede ser explicado unicamente por el nivel objetivo de desigualdad. En este sentido, sostenemos que la relaci6n entre desigualdad e involucramiento politico es moderada por el contexto politico. Mas especificamente
Descriptive Representation and Regime Support in Latin America
Does descriptive representation matter? We analyze the impact of descriptive representation on regime support among women and the self-identified indigenous population in Latin America. We find that having a female president does not have a consistent impact on regime support among Latin American women, but that the election of an indigenous president has significantly boosted regime support among indigenous people in Bolivia. We suggest that eth…
Participatory Populism
Two apparently contradictory features have characterized the group of left-wing populists who have come to power in Latin America in recent years. First, these leaders share a tendency to centralize power in their own hands. Yet at the same time populist regimes have created new opportunities for ordinary citizens to participate directly in politics through the sponsorship of participatory governance programs. These apparently contradictory tacti…
Populist Psychology
Historical trends seem to show that populism, defined here as movements that self-identify as representatives of a unified good people confronting a corrupted or malevolent elite, tends to co-occur with major economic disruptions. However, research into this connection provides us with a puzzle: while populist surges often come in the wake of economic crises, cultural variables tend to be better predictors of support for populism in public opinio…
The perils of personalism
What impact does personalism, or presidential dominance of a weakly organized ruling party, have on the level of democracy? We argue that presidents who dominate their own weakly organized parties are more likely to seek to concentrate power, undermine horizontal accountability, and trample the rule of law than presidents who preside over parties that have an independent leadership and an institutionalized bureaucracy. Independent party leaders, …
Participatory Populism
Two apparently contradictory features have characterized the group of left-wing populists who have come to power in Latin America in recent years. First, these leaders share a tendency to centralize power in their own hands. Yet at the same time populist regimes have created new opportunities for ordinary citizens to participate directly in politics through the sponsorship of participatory governance programs. These apparently contradictory tacti…
Raising the Red Flag
The recent surge of global populism has led many intellectuals to call for new forms of democratic elitism. Yet research into the sources of support for political organizations and regimes predicts that suppressing opportunities for public participation will likely exacerbate antisystem political tendencies. We cite the recent protests in Chile, a nation that has employed democratic elitism more effectively than perhaps any other, as illustrative…
Measuring Simultaneous Emotions
Studies on discrete emotions typically work to evoke one emotion at a time. Yet many political phenomena cause multiple emotions. Threats, for example, cause, anger, and fear, have diametrically opposing behavioral consequences. As a result, the effect of experimental treatments can be masked by the countervailing influence of emotions with similar affect. This issue is exacerbated by existing measures of negative emotions, such as the Positive a…
Descriptive Representation and Regime Support in Latin America
Does descriptive representation matter? We analyze the impact of descriptive representation on regime support among women and the self-identified indigenous population in Latin America. We find that having a female president does not have a consistent impact on regime support among Latin American women, but that the election of an indigenous president has significantly boosted regime support among indigenous people in Bolivia. We suggest that eth…
Beyond the Balance Sheet
Most studies on regime support focus on performance, or policy outputs, as the principal causal variable. This study challenges this conventional wisdom by focusing on two countries where performance and support do not match. Chile is the economic envy of every country in the region, yet support has been surprisingly anemic since the return of democracy in the early 1990s. By contrast, Venezuela managed to maintain extremely high levels of suppor…
Lock them up! Punitive aggression and populism as political vigilantism
Procedures Matter
Many scholars assume that policy performance determines popular support for political systems. Yet in the wake of recent economic crises, patterns of performance and regime support have diverged in many countries, and popular perceptions of performance often fail to reflect the actual quality of governance. To resolve these paradoxes, I draw on recent scholarship on regime support and procedural fairness. I show that strong voice (the ability of …
Participatory Governance in Latin America
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Critical Debates in Populism Studies
Participatory Populism
Two apparently contradictory features have characterized the group of left-wing populists who have come to power in Latin America in recent years. First, these leaders share a tendency to centralize power in their own hands. Yet at the same time populist regimes have created new opportunities for ordinary citizens to participate directly in politics through the sponsorship of participatory governance programs. These apparently contradictory tacti…
The Engagement Curve
Considerable research has been conducted on the relationship between socioeconomic inequality and political engagement. However, there is little consensus on the exact nature of the relationship, and considerable variation in the relationship exists even among countries with similar levels of inequality. This lack of clarity in the literature exists because the impact of inequality on engagement is not constant, but changes depending on the strat…
Translated Abstracts
Entre los diferentes efectos de la extrema desigualdad socioecon6mica, el relativo a los patrones de involucramiento politico es uno de los mas corroborados. Sin embargo, esta relaci6n varia bastante de pais en pais, de un modo que no puede ser explicado unicamente por el nivel objetivo de desigualdad. En este sentido, sostenemos que la relaci6n entre desigualdad e involucramiento politico es moderada por el contexto politico. Mas especificamente
Descriptive Representation and Regime Support in Latin America
Does descriptive representation matter? We analyze the impact of descriptive representation on regime support among women and the self-identified indigenous population in Latin America. We find that having a female president does not have a consistent impact on regime support among Latin American women, but that the election of an indigenous president has significantly boosted regime support among indigenous people in Bolivia. We suggest that eth…
Beyond the Balance Sheet
Most studies on regime support focus on performance, or policy outputs, as the principal causal variable. This study challenges this conventional wisdom by focusing on two countries where performance and support do not match. Chile is the economic envy of every country in the region, yet support has been surprisingly anemic since the return of democracy in the early 1990s. By contrast, Venezuela managed to maintain extremely high levels of suppor…
Participatory Governance in Latin America
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Critical Debates in Populism Studies
Measuring Simultaneous Emotions
Studies on discrete emotions typically work to evoke one emotion at a time. Yet many political phenomena cause multiple emotions. Threats, for example, cause, anger, and fear, have diametrically opposing behavioral consequences. As a result, the effect of experimental treatments can be masked by the countervailing influence of emotions with similar affect. This issue is exacerbated by existing measures of negative emotions, such as the Positive a…
The perils of personalism
What impact does personalism, or presidential dominance of a weakly organized ruling party, have on the level of democracy? We argue that presidents who dominate their own weakly organized parties are more likely to seek to concentrate power, undermine horizontal accountability, and trample the rule of law than presidents who preside over parties that have an independent leadership and an institutionalized bureaucracy. Independent party leaders, …
Populist Psychology
Historical trends seem to show that populism, defined here as movements that self-identify as representatives of a unified good people confronting a corrupted or malevolent elite, tends to co-occur with major economic disruptions. However, research into this connection provides us with a puzzle: while populist surges often come in the wake of economic crises, cultural variables tend to be better predictors of support for populism in public opinio…
Procedures Matter
Many scholars assume that policy performance determines popular support for political systems. Yet in the wake of recent economic crises, patterns of performance and regime support have diverged in many countries, and popular perceptions of performance often fail to reflect the actual quality of governance. To resolve these paradoxes, I draw on recent scholarship on regime support and procedural fairness. I show that strong voice (the ability of …
Lock them up! Punitive aggression and populism as political vigilantism
Fear or Loathing
Ethnonationalist politics have been on the rise in the United States since the 2008 financial crisis, culminating with the rise of Donald Trump. We examine why two seemingly unconnected things—economic crises and prejudice—so often arise simultaneously. Combining theories of economics and emotions, we connect economic crises and prejudice through the role of emotional response to crises, namely anger and anxiety. We use two survey experiments in …
White Identity, Anti-Elitism, and Opposition to Covid-19 Restrictions in the United States
As groups began to gather to protest COVID-19 restrictions, it became readily apparent that these groups were filled with overwhelmingly white protesters, and were led by organisations that often espoused a white nationalist message. We examine the effects of white identity on opposition to COVID-19 restrictions using original survey data. We find that white identity predicts opposition to COVID-19 mitigation measures, and that this effect persis…
Raising the Red Flag
The recent surge of global populism has led many intellectuals to call for new forms of democratic elitism. Yet research into the sources of support for political organizations and regimes predicts that suppressing opportunities for public participation will likely exacerbate antisystem political tendencies. We cite the recent protests in Chile, a nation that has employed democratic elitism more effectively than perhaps any other, as illustrative…
Response to Joseph Masco and Lisa Wedeen’s review of The Age of Discontent
Political science (15 works) · Law (14 works) · Politics (12 works) · Law (10 works) · Political economy (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Populism (7 works) · Populism, Right-Wing Movements (7 works) · Economics (6 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (6 works)