What Potential Dangers Do Populist Attitudes Harbor? the Link between a Lack of in-Group Recognition and out-Group Derogation.

The elections to the European Parliament at the latest have shown that populist parties are in a position to encourage sections of the population to vote for them on a relevant scale. The literature to date has largely focused on how populist attitudes arise and offers a variety of potential explanations. But what are the consequences of populist attitudes on the other side? And are the effects of populist attitudes and the success of populist parties equally distributed across all population groups? More specifically, do certain social groups within societies have to fear a decline in their freedom and safety due to rising populism? The paper addresses this research question and draws on the theory of threatened social identities to discuss this question. Initial empirical studies have shown that a lack of social recognition can be perceived as threatening to social identities and that populist attitudes can emerge or be reinforced as a result. However, the Social Identity Theory (SIT) goes one step further and postulates that individuals resort to counter-strategies in order to preserve their positive self-worth. One of these counter-strategies is the derogation of relevant out-groups. If one's own social identity is threatened, the devaluation of out-groups helps to ensure that one's own in-group is just as good in comparison as it was before the threat occurred, even if both groups have lost ground in absolute terms. But under what conditions do individuals resort to this strategy? Based on data from the German Longitudinal Election Survey (GLES) cross-sectional study conducted in 2021, I find that the level of social recognition is negatively associated with populist attitudes. Furthermore, those who feel not recognized and state extreme populist attitudes are significantly more likely to derogate migrants.