But a recently published article suggests that, under certain circumstances, voters appreciate a candidate precisely because they recognize him as a “lying demagogue” and thus perceive him to be their “authentic champion” for challenging a political establishment they regard as illegitimate. Remarkably, the claim of “The Authentic Appeal of the Lying Demagogue: Proclaiming the Deeper Truth about Political Illegitimacy,” published in the February issue of American Sociological Review, is that such “aggrieved” voters may recognize a candidate as insincere and inconsiderate but support him because of his perceived authenticity.
“The key to our theory is that when a candidate asserts an obvious untruth especially as part of a general attack on establishment norms, his anti-establishment listeners will pick up on his underlying message that the establishment is illegitimate and, therefore, that candidate will have an ‘authentic’ appeal despite the falsehoods and norm-breaking,” said Ezra Zuckerman Sivan, a professor and deputy dean at MIT Sloan.
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The lying demagogue appears authentically appealing under two experimental conditions. First and foremost, there must be either a representation crisis (where the establishment candidate appears to be self-serving) or a power-devaluation crisis (where that candidate appears biased in favor of an upstart group). When there is no crisis, the lying demagogue is seen as less authentic than the incumbent candidate, even among the demagogue’s “natural constituents.” Second, even if there is a crisis, only those subjects who identify with the aggrieved social category (outsiders if it’s a representation crisis; former establishment if it’s a power-devaluation crisis) will see the lying demagogue as authentically appealing.
The authors argue that both crises were at play in the 2016 election. Then-candidate Donald Trump responded to the power devaluation crisis – where the formerly powerful group feels unfairly treated — with his “Make America Great Again” slogan. And Trump responded to the representation crisis — where the establishment seems to favor an incumbent group – with his “drain the swamp” pledge. Both messages had particular resonance with the white working class, as demonstrated by recent research including a recent Sociological Science article by Stephen Morgan and Jiwon Lee of Johns Hopkins University.
“If the key to the authentic appeal of the lying demagogue is that he is signaling a willingness to be regarded as a pariah by the establishment, Trump was certainly a credible pariah,” the paper concludes. “In this sense, his statements reminded his voters that he is a pariah just like them.”
“I need to stress that there appears to be nothing special about Trump voters,” Zuckerman Sivan said. “Anyone can find a lying demagogue authentically appealing if they are feeling sufficiently aggrieved. Indeed, our experiments work regardless of whether the subjects were Trump voters or Clinton voters; and whether they were male or female. The larger implication is that we should try and grapple with why so many 2016 voters felt that the system was in a legitimacy crisis.”
