Research-based perspectives on the connection between economic policy and rising support for authoritarian populism

Key Takeaways

• Factors including declining job quality, immigration, and financialization of the economy have had an impact on people’s support for populist political candidates.
• Potential remedies include labor and tenant organizing, place-based investments, and learning from previous efforts to support displaced workers.
• To strengthen support for democracy and ensure a dynamic economy in which workers and families can thrive, economic policies must be designed and assessed based on their ability to support economic security, push back against demographic cleavages, and rebuild the social and political fabric that connects us to each other.

Overview

In 2025, the Washington Center for Equitable Growth began to explore the evidence behind a link between the effects of economic policies and global support for authoritarian populist candidates for political office. We saw the U.S. experience as part of a global trend and wanted to investigate whether the design and implementation of economic policies have an impact on the growing frustration that voters around the world are feeling. We also know how important it is to understand what the growing body of research says about the risk factors that might prevent the U.S. economy from achieving shared prosperity, as well as mitigating factors.

To dive into these issues and theories more deeply, we partnered with Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, a leading political economist and director of the American Democracy Initiative at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and a visiting fellow with Equitable Growth. To incorporate evidence across multiple academic disciplines and perspectives, we commissioned a series of essays  from economists, political scientists, and other social science researchers about the causes and effects of people’s perspectives on the economy.

We first published an introductory essay that summarized the literature on support for authoritarian populism and laid out our reasons for doing this work. We also held two public events that brought together researchers, advocates, journalists, and policy leaders to discuss the ways in which economic policies have affected people’s political preferences, as well as potential solutions to strengthen support for democracy. In the coming months, we will publish a synthesis piece with criteria for policymakers looking to enact economic policies while keeping the effects on democracy in mind. 

This column summarizes the 14 essays in our series, breaking them down into two categories: those that explore the factors driving support for authoritarian populism globally and those that dive into remedies to reverse this trend. Let’s turn now to the first group.

Economic and cultural factors driving support for populist candidates

Many essays in our series focus on the economic and cultural factors that have shaped political preferences, from declining job quality to immigration and trade shocks.

Declining job quality

An essay by Erin Kelly discusses the ways in which job quality has declined throughout the past several decades and the areas on which policymakers should focus their attention to improve not just job quality, but also the dignity that comes with quality employment. These areas include:

• Diminished purchasing power for low-wage workers
• Unstable work schedules
• Lack of paid leave
• Limited advancement opportunities for low-wage workers
• Lack of job security
• Work design and autonomy
• Gaps in worker voice

Threats or perceived threats to worker dignity and social status

Tarik Abou-Chadi and Justin Gest in separate essays detail the ways in which economic and cultural changes threaten social status or lead to a sense of loss, compared with previous generations (a term called nostalgic deprivation). One overarching finding is that the fear or perception of impending loss of social status is stronger in shaping people’s political behavior than the actual experience of loss.

Standard measures of the economy that do not reflect people’s experience of the economy

Jonathan Cohen and Katherine Cramer discuss the ways in which U.S. macroeconomic indicators, such as Gross Domestic Product and the Dow Jones industrial average (an index of 30 corporations listed on U.S. stock exchanges), fail to capture the majority of Americans’ experiences of the economy and how that leads to distrust of government. They propose alternatives to better measure and respond to people’s experiences of the economy, centering on actual well-being.

Immigration

Sirus Dehdari explores how economic factors, such as rising unemployment and immigration, are intertwined. His analysis shows that people tend to turn to authoritarian populists, who lean into anti-immigration discourse, when they are unhappy with economic conditions and/or perceive immigrants to be worsening economic conditions.

Corporate governance and financialization of the economy

Lenore Palladino’s essay focuses on the ways in which the U.S. corporate governance framework prioritizes shareholder primacy over gains to and protections for workers, and the ways in which that has helped usher in declining support for democratic norms. She additionally explores the increasing financialization and extractive nature of the U.S. economy, which rewards rent-seeking instead of productivity and innovation—to the detriment of workers and society. Palladino suggests employee ownership, employee inclusion in governance, and reorienting finance toward productivity and innovation as remedies.

Trade shocks

David Autor, David Dorn, and Gordon Hanson analyze how the U.S. response to the China trade shock ultimately shaped political behavior in the most impacted regions of the country. They determine that areas with high concentrations of manufacturing jobs prior to 2000 faced weakened job and wage growth opportunities for mostly White male manufacturing employees and increased in-migration by U.S.-born Hispanics and foreign-born women accepting lower-paid service jobs, stoking resentment.  

The concentration of wealth and power

Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson describe U.S. right-wing populism as differing from its counterparts in other countries due to the geographic differences and electoral consequences of such differences in the U.S. political system. The wealthy in the United States are uniquely able to exploit geographic animus among nonurban areas to gain support for their priorities, such as deregulation and lower taxes. To counter these forces, the authors write, policies must be carefully designed, and policymakers must take advantage of political windows in ways that respond to voters’ needs while diminishing the political power of the wealthy.

Relatedly, Andrea Campbell explores in her essay the ways in which the U.S. tax system has become more regressive over time due to the political clout of the wealthy in shaping tax policies and racial resentment about tax expenditures, which are exploited by politicians and the wealthy alike.

Other cultural considerations

Yotam Margalit argues in his essay that economic factors are insufficient in understanding rising support for authoritarian populists. “That support should instead be understood predominantly as a result of anxiety about cultural and demographic shifts and people’s sense that core aspects of their identity are under threat,” he writes. Fear of demographic and cultural change, as well as resentment among rural voters, are the top factors driving voters toward populists both in the United States and abroad. He posits that a focus on increasing solidarity and connection can counter the trend.

Remedies for reversing the rise of populism

Several essays in our series grapple with the questions of how the trend of rising support for authoritarian populists might be reversed and how to better meet people’s economic needs. Beyond suggested remedies from several of the above authors, evidence-based solutions include place-based investments, unionization, and better designed programs to support economically displaced people.  

Place-based investments

Tim Bartik describes the ways in which state and federal governments should target aid to distressed places specifically to boost the creation of good jobs in cost-effective ways and that flexibly meet the needs of distressed communities.

Meanwhile, Gbenga Ajilore discusses the assets and opportunities for economic growth in rural communities. He describes previous attempts to direct federal support to rural economic development and lessons from which to learn and build on while giving rural communities agency to determine their futures and strengthening support for democracy.

Unionization

Research suggests that worker organizing for better jobs and housing conditions is an effective way to counter the trends. In addition to Erin Kelly’s essay, described above, two others also discuss ways to strengthen worker dignity and foster social connection toward democratic aims.

• An essay by Adam Dean and Jamie McCallum explores the deterioration of job quality due to “the decline of labor unions, the erosion of workplace protections, the rise of precarious employment, deindustrialization, and shifts in employer strategies designed to place more economic risk onto workers,” including the outsourcing of roles such as janitorial services. Unions, in contrast, not only strengthen economic and working conditions for their members, but also better connect members with each other across race, ethnicity, and class, thereby strengthening social ties.
• Jamila Michener shares examples of how organizing broadly, and tenant organizing specifically, connects communities across demographic cleavages while enhancing democracy through real political wins that respond to their material interests, leading to a transformed economy.

Lessons from previous economic displacement programs

Lessons learned from prior periods of large-scale economic displacement and previous attempts at policy solutions to address it can shape the policies necessary to support workers today who face social and economic changes, such as the effects of AI on the labor market. In his essay, Jacob Leibenluft uses the example of the Trade Adjustment Assistance program to explore lessons learned from previous trade-based economic displacement and what policymakers should do differently to respond to large-scale economic change.

Conclusion

The essays in this series underscore a variety of economic and cultural shifts that have made people anxious about their status and the broader economy in the United States and around the world, which research shows influence their voting behaviors. Additionally, one of our assumptions going into this project, which was supported by the research, was that threats to democracy also threaten shared prosperity, and vice versa.

It is possible to reverse the trend of rising support for authoritarian populism, but doing so requires economic policies to be designed in ways that support economic security, push back against demographic cleavages, and rebuild the social and political fabric that connects us to each other. Economic policies also must be assessed based on their ability to strengthen support for democracy and ensure a dynamic economy in which workers and families can thrive.

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