What Works Against Populist Rhetoric? The Effects of Counter-Arguments on Democratic Attitudes

Politicians use populist rhetoric – arguments that portray politics as an enduring conflict between “the good people” and “the evil elites” – to generate support for attacks on constitutional safeguards, the media, and minorities. Yet, little is known about how to counteract such rhetoric. We utilize a pre-registered survey experiment in the UK (n 4000) to investigate the effects of counter-arguments put forward by fellow citizens. We hypothesize pluralist and democratic elitist counter-arguments to be promising antidotes to populist rhetoric and test to what extent such arguments can strengthen liberal democratic attitudes and weaken populist majoritarian ones. We find that populism can be challenged successfully but not with all types of counter-arguments. Pluralist appeals can decrease support for populist majoritarian democracy, while elitist counter-arguments have no effect on democratic attitudes. Additional analyses suggest that counter-arguments might also affect how voters evaluate candidates. These results contribute by demonstrating the potentials of counter-arguments in strengthening the resilience of liberal democracies vis-à-vis populist challenges.