Menu

What Drives Support for Outsiders? The Power of Valence and Ideology in Anti-Establishment Appeals


Journal article


Lautaro Cella
Working Paper (Under Review), 2025

Cite

Cite

APA   Click to copy
Cella, L. (2025). What Drives Support for Outsiders? The Power of Valence and Ideology in Anti-Establishment Appeals. Working Paper (Under Review).


Chicago/Turabian   Click to copy
Cella, Lautaro. “What Drives Support for Outsiders? The Power of Valence and Ideology in Anti-Establishment Appeals.” Working Paper (Under Review) (2025).


MLA   Click to copy
Cella, Lautaro. “What Drives Support for Outsiders? The Power of Valence and Ideology in Anti-Establishment Appeals.” Working Paper (Under Review), 2025.


BibTeX   Click to copy

@article{lautaro2025a,
  title = {What Drives Support for Outsiders? The Power of Valence and Ideology in Anti-Establishment Appeals},
  year = {2025},
  journal = {Working Paper (Under Review)},
  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 analyzing 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 poor performance and 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.


Tools
Translate to