The first central scientific objective of the project was to analyze ill health as a determinant of populism. To achieve this objective, three studies have been carried out. The study “The Populist Backlash against Globalization: A Meta-Analysis of the Causal Evidence” performs the first systematic review and meta-analysis of the evidence of a causal association between economic insecurity and populism. The study identifies and reviews 36 papers and presents a concise narrative summary and numerical synthesis of the key findings. Although the study finds significant heterogeneity in several dimensions, all papers report a significant causal association. A recurrent magnitude is that economic insecurity explains around one-third of recent surges in populism. The study finds significant evidence for publication bias; however, the causal association between economic insecurity and populism remains significant after controlling for this publication bias.
The second study related to the first objective, “The gendered effect of self-rated health and equal access to health care on populist voting: Multilevel mediators and moderators,” presents a multilevel analysis of 20 European countries and 23,000 individuals, combining data from the Eurostat, the Varieties of Democracy Institute, and the seventh wave of the European Social Survey with a detailed module on social inequalities in health. The study breaks down the individual-level mechanism for the likely impact of ill health on supporting populist parties. Second, the study considers country-level contextual factors that could potentially ameliorate or exacerbate these effects.
The third study related to objective one, “‘They are taking our healthcare:’ Health and attitudes towards immigration in Europe,” develops a theoretical framework for why some natives perceive competition for health services with immigrants. The study tests this empirically using data from ten rounds of the European Social Survey, covering 212,097 respondents in 30 European countries between 2002 and 2020. Fitting two-way fixed effects pooled OLS models, the study finds a consistent and robust association between self-rated health and anti-immigration attitudes. Structural equation models demonstrate that perceived competition for public health, distrust in political institutions, and fear of losing access to public health services mediate the effect, feeding respondents’ propensity to restrict immigrants’ social rights.
The second central scientific objective of the PHASE project was to analyze the impact of populist governance on health. The fellow partnered up with external collaborators as part of the CIVICA university network and won a multidisciplinary grant to study how populists managed the COVID-19 crisis. The study “Welfare, democracy and populism under the corona crisis” aims to understand how populist governments differ in their welfare and health-related policy responses to the pandemic in the context of the demise of democratic institutions. With the help of research assistants, a novel multilevel dataset was assembled comprising qualitative and quantitative data on the COVID-19 pandemic in the selected countries. The dataset comprises internationally comparable data on welfare and health policy responses to the pandemic in countries with populist governments across the globe. The study presents a novel theoretical framework for why populist regimes differed in their policy responses to the pandemic.
The PHASE project’s third and last scientific objective was to analyze the details of the populism-health association using the case study method. The study, “The political consequences of populist health crisis management: The political economy of coronavirus responses in Hungary,” offers a political-economic approach to populism and argues that there is a discernible policy logic behind the government’s responses that fit well into its socioeconomic strategy that unfolded over the past decade.
A significant part of the project was devoted to training and knowledge transfer, improving the fellow’s research-related and grant wiring and management skills and social capital, significantly enhancing the fellow’s academic career prospects. Attending the supervisor’s lab meetings opened the opportunity to interact with collaborators and included methods sessions to discuss quantitative modeling questions of ongoing paper projects. The fellow completed several training courses, including the 50th GESIS Spring Seminar on Causal Inference and the ECPR Winter Methods School on Causal Inference. The training activities included a one-on-one career coaching project with Karen Kelsky, head of the “The Professor is In” consultancy, including career strategy advice, writing cover letters, formatting CVs, and writing diversity statements. In short, the project helped the fellow to take the next career step as a committed, internationally leading academic.
