How Cultural Values Shape Expectations of Public Service Provision

• In Event: Voting and Elections in the Global South

Abstract

As populist candidates gain appeal in various countries, social scientists debate the main causes of support for populism. Is it primarily a result of material anxieties of voters left out of economic transformations? Or a backlash against progressive policies on cultural issues, such as LGBTQ and abortion rights? In this study, I argue that voters perceive material and cultural issues as inseparable. With evidence from Brazil, I show that voters perceive candidates with shared cultural values as more ethical. Because voters believe ethical candidates provide better public services, candidates with shared cultural values are also seen as suited to voters’ material interests. Moreover, voters rely more on cultural values to form expectations about candidates with no electoral record. When voters cannot rely on candidate records, cultural values become a more valuable heuristic, going to greater lengths to help form expectations.

I field a conjoint survey experiment with 2,747 Brazilians over 18 years old. Before analyzing candidate profiles, participants are asked to state their positions on abortion and LGBTQ rights. Participants then analyze fictitious candidate profiles, each with a randomly generated position on abortion or LGBTQ rights. After analyzing candidate profiles, participants state if they expect each candidate to be ethical and a good public service provider. The design allows testing if cultural values drive perceptions of ethics and public service provision.

Across all study participants, candidates with shared cultural values are perceived as more ethical and better public service providers. Further, I design the experiment so that a group of randomly selected participants analyzes profiles that omit candidates’ track records, whereas other participants analyze profiles that reveal records of ethical behavior or public service provision. Participants rely more heavily on cultural values when records are omitted. This shows that while cultural values drive perceptions of candidates, the effect weakens when candidate records are known.

These findings have major implications for our understanding of support for populism and the role of cultural values in elections. First, voters do not view their cultural and material interests separately. This helps us understand cases where people seem to vote against their material interests by choosing populist candidates. Second, because voters rely more on cultural values when candidate records are unknown, outsider candidates with populist rhetoric have incentives to emphasize their cultural values, which is perceived as a signal of candidate ethics for like-minded voters. By shedding light on the behavior of voters and incentives of candidates, we can better understand the role of cultural values in boosting support for populism.

Author

• Leonardo Falabella, The London School of Economics and Political Science