2025 | Lukas F. Stötzer, Johannes Giesecke and Heike Klüver

Perceived inequality as fertile ground for populism

Why are more and more people turning to populist parties? A new study by Lukas F. Stoetzer, Johannes Giesecke, and Heike Klüver shows that not only actual social inequality matters, but also how unequal people perceive their society to be. Those who believe that wealth and influence are concentrated in the hands of a few are more likely to develop populist attitudes – regardless of how strong objective inequality actually is.

Over the past decades, income and wealth disparities have widened significantly in many European countries. At the same time, support for populist parties has increased. Previous research has shown that rising inequality tends to foster populist movements. The new study, published in the European Journal of Political Research, goes a step further by exploring why and how this link emerges. The authors argue that it is not so much the economic structures themselves that fuel populism, but rather the perception that society is unjustly organized and that political elites primarily serve the interests of the wealthy.

Drawing on data from nearly 40,000 individuals across 20 European countries, the researchers find that people who perceive their society as highly unequal are 2.7 percentage points more likely to support a populist party than those who view their society as fairer. This relationship is particularly pronounced for larger right-wing populist parties such as the Danish People’s Party (DF) and the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), but it also holds for other populist parties.

A complementary experiment conducted in Germany, Denmark, and Italy further shows that information about actual wealth distribution increases perceptions of inequality—and strengthens populist attitudes. However, in the short term, this does not immediately translate into a higher intention to vote for populist parties.

The findings highlight that populism is driven not only by material inequality, but also by the feeling of living in an unfair society.

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1 – Lea Kobal (@leyko) / Unsplash / |eat the rich|