ABSTRACT
This analytical chapter aims at understanding which factors, or combination of factors, explain the different levels of populism’s social acceptability in different countries over time. The first section operationalizes and calibrates the three outcomes: overall populism, right-wing populism, and left-wing populism. The same process is followed for the four conditions: corruption, accountability and responsiveness, ideological convergence of the political system, and economic performance. The second section tests the impact of the conditions through fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA). The results show that the conditions tested in this chapter explain fairly well the levels of acceptability for overall populism but leave unexplained both its ideological sub-dimensions: right- and left-wing populism. As Chapter 8 demonstrates, the introduction of levels of stigma of the fascist past produces much better results, especially concerning right-wing populism.
