Summary
Cultural backlash is the thesis that rising support for authoritarian-populist parties is largely a reaction against progressive value change, more than a revolt of the economically left-behind. The political scientists Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris set it out in a 2016 working paper, then a 2019 book. It builds on Inglehart’s ‘silent revolution’: post-war security moved younger, college-educated generations towards cosmopolitan, socially liberal values. Older and less educated groups, they argue, came to feel like “strangers from the predominant values in their own country”.
The two explanations can combine; it “may not be an either/or question”. Reviewing the book, Ron Johnston judged its statistical evidence unconvincing.
Rationale
Their surveys find every generation’s values tightening in insecure times and easing afterwards. That lends some weight to Part 1’s worry about climate work “carrying scarcity-and-threat framing”, though a survey answer isn’t a disposition.