The ontological core of political radicalism. Exploring the role of antagonist, dogmatic, and populist beliefs in structuring radical ideologies

ABSTRACT

Scholars have extensively explored the ideological stances of radical individuals, often concentrating on voting and policy preferences. This paper seeks to identify the foundational elements—such as antagonism, dogmatism, and populism—that constitute the ontological core of radical belief systems and gauge their prevalence in the general population. Utilizing data from the 2019 Belgian National Electoral Study, we adopt a person-centred approach to categorize individuals into various ideological profiles. Contrary to the prevailing assumption that radical individuals are “extreme” versions of mainstream voters, we provide evidence that they possess a distinct understanding of politics and society. We also found that political radicalism is not monolithic, comprising various nuanced and alternative non-mainstream configurations of beliefs. Additionally, we note that, compared to radical right voters, radical left voters are less inclined to embrace a black-and-white view of politics. Education, subjective social class, institutional trust, and powerlessness impact individuals' adherence to different belief systems.

KEYWORDS:

• Populism
• belief systems
• radicalism
• vote choice
• latent class analysis

Acknowledgement

We wish to express our gratitude to the audience of the seminar organized by the Institute for Social and Political Opinion Research (KU Leuven) for their helpful feedback on previous drafts of the manuscript. We would also like to thank the participants of the Helsinki Conference on Emotions, Populism, and Polarization for their comments and conversations. We are also thankful to two anonymous reviewers whose constructive input significantly contributed to the clarity and enhancement of the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 To be sure, we do not strictly adhere to Laclau’s own definition of radicalism, ontology, or populism but, rather, we borrow from Laclau’s works a series of theoretical intuitions that inform our understanding of how (radical) discursive practices are constantly constructed, contested, and transformed.

2 Our goal is not to provide a comprehensive study of radical ideological thinking nor to account for the complexity of all forms, instances, and variants of radicalism. Similarly to what Mudde (2010) has done for populist radical right ideology, our purpose is to show that there are sound theoretical reasons to expect that contemporary political radicalism revolves around a few ontological elements that are shared by different types of radical individuals.

3 Because of the outbreak of the COVID virus in the fall of 2020, the fieldwork was interrupted two times and terminated on October 31st, irrespective of the status of the data collection. This has led to a higher non-response rate compared to previous BNES rounds.

4 In this case, we do not include the place of residence of the respondent (French-speaking Belgium or Flanders) since it would be collinear with the vote for either populist right or left.

5 The presence of this class of individuals is not only relevant theoretically and in line with previous literature on the topic (for a discussion see, Kinder, 2006). It also improves the validity of our typology by avoiding losing track of these individuals in averaged scores.

6 For the sake of clarity, we report raw percentages for the class assignment. Approximately 30% of Flemish respondents belong to the Pro-system profile. On the contrary, only 13% of the French-speaking Belgians are considered Pro-system. Concerning the radical profile, approximately 25% of the French-speaking respondents are considered radical while only 11% of the Flemish sample belongs to the radical profile.

7 The complete regression table, including the controls, is reported in the Appendix S1.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek.

Notes on contributors

Alberto Stefanelli

Alberto Stefanelli is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Sociological Research at KU Leuven and a Visiting Researcher at the Department of Political Science at Yale University and at the Department of Sociology at New York University. His research interests include radicalism, voting behaviour, democratic erosion, and political methodology.

Bart Meuleman

Bart Meuleman is Professor at the Centre for Sociological Research at KU Leuven. His research focuses on cross-national comparisons of value and attitude patterns, such as ethnic prejudice, egalitarianism, and support for the welfare state. He has a special interest in the application of multilevel modelling and structural equation modelling on comparative survey data. His research was published in, among others, Annual Review of Sociology, Social Science Research, European Sociological Review, Public Opinion Quarterly, Journal of Cross-cultural Psychology, and Journal of European Social Policy.

Koen Abts

Koen Abts is Research Manager at the Centre for Sociological Research (CeSO) at KU Leuven (Belgium) and responsible for the building of the Belgian Online Probability Panel – an infrastructure by a consortium of all Belgian universities. His research focuses on the effect of resentment and cultural, economic and political attitudes as well as on populism and populist radical right.