Populism and the return of the “Paranoid Style”: Some evidence and a simple model of demand for incompetence as insurance against elite betrayal

• Published in: Journal of Comparative Economics 2018-12, Vol.46 (4), p.988-1005
• Main Authors: Tella, Rafael Di, Rotemberg, Julio J.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Betrayal; Corruption; Incompetence; Populism
• ISSN: 0147-5967; 1095-7227
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jce.2018.03.001

•We study a model where voters prefer a less competent policy maker, other things equal.•The key assumption is that, besides income, voters care about being “betrayed”.•Data from the week before the Trump Presidential election show that Clinton is regarded as more competent, even by Trump supporters.•Priming voters about the importance of competence leads them to vote for Clinton, except for rural voters and low education whites living in urban and suburban areas, who are 5 percentage points more likely to vote for Trump. We present a simple model of populism as the rejection of “disloyal” leaders. We show that adding the assumption that people are worse off when they experience low income as a result of leader betrayal (than when it is the result of bad luck) to a simple voter choice model yields a preference for incompetent leaders even if all leaders have the same underlying probability of betrayal. These deliver worse material outcomes in general, but they reduce the feelings of betrayal during bad times. Some evidence consistent with our model is gathered from the Trump–Clinton 2016 election: on average, subjects primed with the importance of competence in policymaking decrease their support for Trump, the candidate who scores lower on competence in our survey (even amongst Trump supporters). But two groups respond to the treatment with a large (approximately 5 percentage points) increase in their support for Donald Trump: those living in rural areas and those that are low educated, white and living in urban and suburban areas.