Three-Pronged Resentment

How Status Insecurity, Relative Deprivation, and Powerlessness Mediate Between Social Positions and Populist Attitudes

Bibliographic Data

ID3757538
AuthorsKoen Abts (0000-0001-8546-8347, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium, corresponding author), Julius Maximilian Rogenhofer (0000-0001-9660-0868, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium)
Year2024
Volume69
Issue14
Pages1754-1774
Publication date2024-04-06
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Behavioral Scientist (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-7642 • E-ISSN: 1552-3381
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/00027642241240362
OpenAlexW4394012894
LanguageEN
Citations received12
References cited43

Populist attitudes are frequently tied to a specific social position, namely the constituent's status as a "loser of globalization." Adding nuance to this explanatory framework, we investigate whether and how resentment mediates between social positions and populist attitudes. We distinguish three constitutive components of resentment-status insecurity, relative deprivation, and powerlessness-and analyze to what extent these sentiments explain the prevalence of two key populist attitudes: anti-elitism and demands for popular sovereignty. Using survey data from the Belgian National Election Study 2014, we show that although both populist attitudes are more likely among individuals of low socioeconomic status, this effect is mediated by a sense of group relative deprivation (anti-elitism and popular sovereignty) and feelings of powerlessness (anti-elitism). The effect of individual-level status insecurities on populist attitudes is, however, not significant. These results suggest that people do not simply adhere to antagonistic and people-centric views about politics because they experience economic precariousness; they embrace populist attitudes if their vulnerability is perceived in terms of a threatened sense of group position and understood as the outcome of an unjust society, wherein they feel powerless to alter their circumstances

Criminology · Economic growth · Economics · Political science · Politics · Relative deprivation · Resentment · Social deprivation · Sociology · Political Conflict and Governance · Populism, Right-Wing Movements · Psychology · Social Psychology · Sociology and Norbert Elias

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