Populist Voters Vs Populist Leaders: Tentative Research Design

The "populist moment" has taken too long and the "populist mood" has been spreading to new parties on both the right and left sides of ideological spectrum. Populism studies, on the one hand, stretch the original concept of populism, while, on the other, truncating it to include its new varieties. Political science has accumulated a large body of scholarly literature dealing with the "populist supply", populist leaders: their ideas and discourse (ideational approach), charisma and personalism (political-strategic approach), the leader's style and behavior (sociocultural approach), and even socially desirable or aversive personality traits of populist leaders (psychological approach). Significantly fewer studies examine "populist voters" and their demand for populists as an "escape from freedom." These are mainly quantitative studies that record relationship between the populist vote and the growing voters' dissatisfaction with the mainstream parties, the disappointment with the main competitors, the decrease in the levels of institutional trust, and economic challenges of globalization (Rodrik) or multiculturalism and immigration policy (Norris & Inglehart).