DP13103 The rise of populism and the collapse of the left-right paradigm: Lessons from the 2017 French presidential election

We examine the dislocation from the traditional left-right political axis in the 2017 French election, analyze support for populist movements and show that subjective variables are key to understanding it. Votes on the traditional left-right axis are correlated to ideology concerning redistribution, and predicted by socio-economic variables such as income and social status. Votes on the new diagonal opposing “open vs closed society” are predicted by individual and subjective variables. More specifically, low well-being predicts anti-system opinions (from the left or from the right) while low interpersonal trust (ITP) predicts right-wing populism.

£6.00

Citation

Algan, Y, E Beasley, D Cohen and M Foucault (2018), ‘DP13103 The rise of populism and the collapse of the left-right paradigm: Lessons from the 2017 French presidential election‘, CEPR Discussion Paper No. 13103. CEPR Press, Paris & London. https://cepr.org/publications/dp13103