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Varieties of Anti-Establishment Appeals: Valence, Ideology, and Support for Outsiders


Journal article


Lautaro Cella
Working Paper, 2026

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Cite

APA   Click to copy
Cella, L. (2026). Varieties of Anti-Establishment Appeals: Valence, Ideology, and Support for Outsiders. Working Paper.


Chicago/Turabian   Click to copy
Cella, Lautaro. “Varieties of Anti-Establishment Appeals: Valence, Ideology, and Support for Outsiders.” Working Paper (2026).


MLA   Click to copy
Cella, Lautaro. “Varieties of Anti-Establishment Appeals: Valence, Ideology, and Support for Outsiders.” Working Paper, 2026.


BibTeX   Click to copy

@article{lautaro2026a,
  title = {Varieties of Anti-Establishment Appeals: Valence, Ideology, and Support for Outsiders},
  year = {2026},
  journal = {Working Paper},
  author = {Cella, Lautaro}
}

Abstract

Outsider candidates who criticize political elites have surged globally. While most studies treat anti-elite rhetoric as a “thin” ideology, I examine variation in its content. I distinguish between two types of anti-establishment appeals: valence-base appeals, highlighting the political establishment’s governance failures, and ideological appeals portraying mainstream parties as indistinguishably neoliberal or statist. I illustrate this distinction by conducting computational text analysis of speeches from Argentina’s 2023 presidential election. Outsider Javier Milei employed anti-establishment rhetoric more frequently than his rivals, combining both types but emphasizing pure valence critiques of the establishment over solely ideological ones. I then test the effects of these appeals on support for outsiders through a survey experiment in Argentina. I find that in contexts of weak partisanship, valence-based anti-establishment appeals—especially those focused on corruption— boost support across the electorate, while the effect of ideological appeals depends on voters’ prior ideological leanings.


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