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Explaining the salience of anti-elitism and reducing political corruption for
political parties in Europe with the 2014 Chapel Hill Expert Survey data
Polk, J.; Rovny, J.; Bakker, R.; Edwards, E.; Hooghe, L.; Jolly, S.; Koedam, J.; Kostelka, F.;
Marks, G.; Schumacher, G.; Steenbergen, M.; Vachudova, M.; Zilovic, M.
DOI
10.1177/2053168016686915
Publication date
2017
Document Version
Final published version
Published in
Research & Politics
License
CC BY
Link to publication
Citation for published version (APA):
Polk, J., Rovny, J., Bakker, R., Edwards, E., Hooghe, L., Jolly, S., Koedam, J., Kostelka, F.,
Marks, G., Schumacher, G., Steenbergen, M., Vachudova, M., & Zilovic, M. (2017).
Explaining the salience of anti-elitism and reducing political corruption for political parties in
Europe with the 2014 Chapel Hill Expert Survey data.
Research & Politics
,
4
(1).
https://doi.org/10.1177/2053168016686915
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Research and Politics
January-March 2017: 1 –9
© The Author(s) 2017
DOI: 10.1177/2053168016686915
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Introduction
What explains variation in the salience of anti-elite rhetoric
and reducing political corruption for parties across Europe?
These questions have been significant to the party systems
of central and eastern Europe since their transitions from
communism (Engler, 2016; Hanley and Sikk, 2016;
Vachudova, 2009), but corruption has also been a persistent
problem in southern Europe (Charron et al., 2014; Putnam
et al., 1994). The rise of the 5 Star Movement in Italy,
Syriza in Greece, and Podemos in Spain illustrates the con-
temporary relevance of anti-elite rhetoric and political
competition surrounding corruption. Politicizing corrup-
tion can be electorally advantageous for certain types of
parties (Bågenholm and Charron, 2014; Hanley and Sikk,
2016), and anti-elite/establishment rhetoric is a key feature
of populist (Mudde, 2004) and challenger parties (Hobolt
and De Vries, 2015). Most recently, the “Brexit” vote in the
United Kingdom makes apparent the significance of anti-
elite/establishment rhetoric for European politics.
In this article we examine these issues via two new items
in the 2014 wave of the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES).
In the process, we also introduce this most recent round of
the longest-running expert survey on party positioning in
European democracies, and cross-validate the CHES data
with party positions derived from party manifestos and
country-level information on political corruption. We show
two things: political corruption is much more salient among
parties from countries with poor quality of government
Explaining the salience of anti-elitism
and reducing political corruption for
political parties in Europe with the 2014
Chapel Hill Expert Survey data
Jonathan Polk
1
, Jan Rovny
1,2
, Ryan Bakker
3
, Erica Edwards
4
,
Liesbet Hooghe
5
, Seth Jolly
6
, Jelle Koedam
5
, Filip Kostelka
2,7
,
Gary Marks
5
, Gijs Schumacher
8
, Marco Steenbergen
9
,
Milada Vachudova
5
and Marko Zilovic
10
Abstract
This article addresses the variation of anti-corruption and anti-elite salience in party positioning across Europe. It
demonstrates that while anti-corruption salience is primarily related to the (regional) context in which a party operates,
anti-elite salience is primarily a function of party ideology. Extreme left and extreme conservative (TAN) parties are
significantly more likely to emphasize anti-elite views. Through its use of the new 2014 Chapel Hill Expert Survey wave,
this article also introduces the dataset.
Keywords
European Union, expert survey, political parties, anti-elite, corruption
1
University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden
2
Sciences Po, Paris, France
3
University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA
4
University of Miami, OH, USA
5
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA
6
Syracuse University, NY, USA
7
University of Montreal, Quebec, Canada
8
University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
9
University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
10
George Washington University, Washington DC, USA
Corresponding author:
Jonathan Polk, Box 711, Gothenburg 40530, Sweden.
Email: jonathan.polk@gu.se
686915RAP
0010.1177/2053168016686915Research & PoliticsPolk et al.
research-article2016
Research Article
2 Research and Politics
(QoG), whereas anti-elite salience is more a function of
ideology. Extreme leftist and extreme socially conservative
parties are most likely to oppose political elites, while the
national origin of a party is largely irrelevant. Taken
together, this provides an important contribution to our
understanding of party competition. Although it may
first appear intuitive that the anti-corruption and anti-
establishment foci of political parties would be two sides of
the same coin, in fact these have different causal logics.
The first depends largely on the corruption problems that
confront a society. The latter arises in conjunction with the
ideological moorings of a party.
Similarities and differences in
the salience of anti-elite and anti-
corruption party appeals
Recent years have witnessed the electoral rise of anti-estab-
lishment movements and political parties (Hanley and Sikk,
2016; Hobolt and De Vries, 2015). These challengers tend
to rely on anti-elite rhetoric, pointing out the supposed dis-
tance, lack of understanding, and political corruption of
political leaders (Pop-Eleches, 2010), who—these oppo-
nents contend—are aloof from both the needs and interests,
as well as the mores, of “ordinary citizens.” European polit-
ical arenas thus currently face calls for political renewal
that combine anti-elite and anti-corruption voices. Political
parties on the ideological extremes should thus be more
likely to rhetorically emphasize the shortcomings of the
political system, be it by pointing out the aloofness of its
political elite or by pointing out its corrupt character (Jagers
and Walgrave, 2007; Rooduijn and Pauwels, 2011). Both
orientations are features of populism, a thin ideology most
readily found in parties of the radical right and radical left
(Mudde, 2004, p. 549; Rooduijn et al., 2014, p. 564).
Research suggests that other features of political parties
will enhance the salience of both anti-elite and anti-corrup-
tion rhetoric. Recently created political parties can present
themselves as clean and untainted in comparison with
established political actors. Similarly, it is easier for parties
in opposition to blame parties in government for the prob-
lem of political corruption; this is particularly true for chal-
lenger parties (Hobolt and De Vries, 2015) that have not yet
participated in government. In line with Bågenholm and
Charron (2014) we expect that the salience of anti-estab-
lishment and anti-corruption rhetoric will be greater for
new parties than for older established competitors, and
greater for parties in opposition than for those in
government.
Canonical studies of the radical right highlight the fusing
of anti-corruption with anti-elite rhetoric (see e.g. Kitschelt
and McGann, 1995, Chapter 5) and anti-establishment par-
ties frequently break through in high corruption environ-
ments (Hanley and Sikk, 2016), but anti-elite and
anti-corruption rhetorics function according to somewhat
divergent logics. Although populist messages often stress
the corruption of elected officials (Abts and Rummens,
2007, p. 408), an emphasis on reducing political corruption
does not necessarily make a party populist. We go on to
show that while the salience of anti-elite rhetoric is closely
associated with (extreme) ideological views of political par-
ties, anti-corruption salience mostly occurs in political sys-
tems plagued by higher rates of political corruption.
When evaluating the effect of ideological extremism
on anti-elite rhetoric, we differentiate between economic
left-right and placement on the socio-cultural (GAL-TAN)
dimension, which spans from social liberalism to social
conservatism. Left-wing populism tends to stress economic
issues (March, 2007), whereas right-wing populist parties
tend to be extreme in their authoritarianism and national-
ism (Mudde, 2007). Both extremes, the economic left and
the cultural right, should be more inclined to criticize the
political establishment in much the same way as they have
opposed European integration (Hooghe et al., 2002; Otjes
and Louwerse, 2015).
Hypothesis 1: Parties of either the economic left or the
socio-cultural right will be more likely to emphasize
anti-elite, anti-establishment rhetoric.
The salience of reducing political corruption differs across
the regions of Europe (Engler, 2016; Hanley and Sikk,
2016). While southern and eastern European countries are
regarded as having widespread corruption at the highest
levels of government (see Wachs, 2014), the prevalence of
corruption is considerably lower in the west and the north
of the continent (Charron et al., 2014). Following these
authors, we anticipate that high levels of corruption in a
country will generate a demand for anti-corruption policies
among voters and that parties in these systems will be more
likely to pick up on this demand (Bågenholm and Charron,
2014, p. 909).
Hypothesis 2: Parties in countries with high levels of
political corruption will be more likely to stress the
importance of reducing political corruption.
The next section moves on to describe the data with which
we test these expectations.
The 2014 CHES
Administered in 2014 to 337 political scientists specializ-
ing in political parties and European integration, the 2014
CHES, available at chesdata.eu, provides information about
the positioning of 268 parties on political ideology,
European integration, and various policy areas.
1
The survey
covers political parties in 31 countries, including all
European Union member states, plus Norway, Switzerland
Polk et al. 3
and Turkey.
2
The 2014 survey has been combined with
prior waves to produce a trend file with five time points
from 1999 to 2014, making the CHES the longest-running,
most extensive expert survey on political parties in Europe.
Prior waves of the CHES data have been cross-validated
with a variety of alternative sources of party positioning
information (Bakker et al., 2015; Hooghe et al., 2010;
Marks et al., 2007; Steenbergen and Marks, 2007). These
show a high level of correlation, particularly with place-
ments derived from aggregate voter placements, a finding
consistent with other research (Dalton and McAllister,
2015; Rohrschneider and Whitefield, 2012).
3
For the first time, the 2014 CHES included questions
about the “salience of anti-establishment and anti-elite rhet-
oric” and the “salience of reducing political corruption” for
the political parties of Europe. All experts were asked to
provide salience scores for all parties in a given party sys-
tem on these two questions; responses could range from 0
(not at all important) to 10 (very important).
Figure 1 displays the party-based salience of reducing
political corruption aggregated to the country level. It shows
that political corruption is a more salient issue in southern
and eastern Europe, but considerably less salient in northern
and western Europe. Turning to cross-validation for the
CHES salience of reducing political corruption variable,
the Manifesto Project Dataset includes party-level data on
the percentage of quasi-statements in a party’s manifesto
devoted to political corruption (per304). Specifically, the
category refers to the “Need to eliminate political corruption
and associated abuses of political and/or bureaucratic
power” (Volkens et al., 2016). This variable correlates with
the CHES salience of reducing political corruption variable
at r = 0.47, which is a relatively strong correlation given that
many parties have 0s in the manifesto data, meaning that no
quasi-statements in the manifesto pertained to reducing
political corruption.
4
Figure 2 shows variation in the salience of anti-
establishment and anti-elite rhetoric across the party
families of Europe. Consistent with our expectations,
we see that this type of rhetoric is much more important
to the parties of the extreme left and extreme right than
the more centrist party families. Cross-validation exer-
cises for this new CHES salience variable are more dif-
ficult because of data limitations. To our knowledge,
there are no existing party-level measures of anti-estab-
lishment and anti-elite rhetoric salience. But as men-
tioned above, anti-elite and anti-establishment positions
are a core feature of populism, and we therefore validate
our measure of the salience of anti-elite sentiments with
a method (Rooduijn and Pauwels, 2011) that uses a dic-
tionary of populist words to identify the degree of pop-
ulism in the election manifestos of parties. Rooduijn
and Pauwels (2011) developed language-specific dic-
tionaries for the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and the
Figure 1. Country-level variation in corruption salience, unweighted by party vote share. (Source: CHES 2014).
4 Research and Politics
United Kingdom and we used them to identify the
degree of populism in recent election manifestos. The
two measures correlate reasonably well (r = 0.51). The
main outliers are the Italian parties Democratic Party
(PD), The Five Star Movement (M5S) and Lega Nord
(LN). Remarkably, the text analysis method categorizes
the latter two as much less populist than the PD. The
placements of these three parties by experts seem to
have more face validity. Without these three outliers the
correlation between the two variables is r = 0.75.
As an additional check on the face validity of the anti-
establishment/anti-elite question, Figure 3 depicts the corre-
lation between a party’s position on European integration
and the salience it places on anti-elite and anti-establishment
rhetoric. As one would expect, these variables correlate
rather highly with one another (r = −0.70) and show that par-
ties that oppose European integration generally emphasize
anti-elite/anti-establishment rhetoric whereas pro-EU parties
are much less likely to use this type of rhetoric.
In the next section, we present a more detailed examina-
tion of variation in the salience of reducing political corrup-
tion and anti-elite/anti-establishment for political parties
across European countries.
Anti-elite and anti-corruption salience
for political parties across Europe
We model anti-elite and anti-corruption salience as a function
of a set of party and country-level predictors: first, we model
the effect of economic (left-right) and social (GAL-TAN)
placement of political parties, and add their quadratic terms
given our expectation that extreme parties emphasize anti-
elite and anti-corruption topics.
5
Variable age measures the
number of years a party has existed since 1945 in western
Europe, and since 1990 in eastern Europe (Döring and Regel,
2016). Since an age effect is likely to be non-linear, we also
include a squared term for age. The variable In_government is
a dummy variable scored 1 for parties that were in govern-
ment in 2014. We weight each party (observation) by its vote
share in the most recent national elections to reflect the fact
that larger parties tend to be more significant actors in party
systems. At the country-level, we use the PRS Group’s
International Country Risk Guide (ICRG) country-level indi-
cator of QoG. This variable is the mean value of the ICRG
variables measuring corruption, law and order, and bureau-
cratic quality, and was taken from the QoG Institute’s Basic
Dataset (Dahlberg et al., 2016).
6
The variable ranges from 0
to 1 with higher values indicating higher QoG. The terms u
j
and
e
ij
represent the country- and party-level random com-
ponents respectively. Given the multi-level nature of our data,
we specify a random intercept multi-level model as follows
salience econ
ij
=+
ββ
ββ
01
*_left_right
econleftright__
ij
ij
+* +
2
2
334
2
678
2
9
*+*
+* +* +Age +*
galtan galtan
NewAge In_
ij ij
ij ij ij
β
ββββ
ggovernment
+Qualityof government+u+e__
ij
jjij
β
10
*
Figure 2. Salience of anti-establishment and anti-elite rhetoric, by party family. (Source: CHES 2014).