The Campaign Company specialises in social research and behaviour change. This is your guide to what we’ve been reading. Here’s what’s coming up this week:
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Hello and welcome to the TCC Weekly – the Friday bulletin for people who know their ‘Daisy’ from their ‘Rosebud’.
The Weekly is always a bathroom showroom of cheap plugs, and this week is no different, with the politics section looking at Warring Fictions, a book-length essay on left populism, written by TCC’s very own Chris Clarke who wants us to stress that his views are solely his own! We also examine what other EU countries think about Brexit – and what this tells us about engagement. And our Values Lab doffs its cap to the subject of deference.
And of course, there’s Charlie’s Attic, the part of your Friday bulletin that bows to no man in its quest for socio-psychological memes and morsels.
David Evans
Director
The opposite of left populism
We recently enjoyed the Guardian’s populism test, which uses a short series of questions to place you on a spectrum from left to right – and from populist to non-populist (see below, taken from original source). It’s an interesting variation on the traditional spectrum.
What’s striking, looking at the national leaders the Guardian have already placed on there, is the emptiness of the bottom left corner – ‘non-populist left’. Is it possible to be far left – or far right, for that matter – while eschewing anti-establishment paranoia and us-and-them rhetoric? Or does that in itself make you a ‘centrist’.
This is the topic explored in a recent book-length essay, Warring Fictions, published online here (and on Kindle here) by TCC’s very own Chris Clarke. Chris’s premise is that differences between centre left and far left relate not to values and radicalism, but to belief or non-belief in three populist narratives: the Dark Knight, the Puppet Master and the Golden Era. It’s a different way of looking at the disputes that have consumed Labour and the left in recent years, and should be an interesting read. There are a number of extracts published online, so do take a browse!
Understanding and engagement
We were interested, this week, in a piece by Social Europe on what other member states think of Brexit. It’s authored by Denis McShane, who writes that “95 percent of reporting and discussion in the UK media has been about internal Westminster politics.” Swedish academics, for instance, feel that Brexit has bolstered support for the EU. Even Hungary are resistant to “overtures from London.”
The article is important from a Brexit perspective, revealing the myopia that has made negotiations hard. But it also tells a story about engagement more generally, and the need to engage with, understand, and develop serious insight about how stakeholders and communities are feeling. Too often in consultation or engagement projects the assumption made by decision-makers is that others are starting from the same position and set of assumptions as they are…
The Values Lab is based on the Values Modes segmentation tool – created by Cultural Dynamics and used by TCC– which divides the population into ethics-driven Pioneers, aspirational Prospectors, and threat-wary Settlers. Take the test here to see which you are.
Deference and values
The Guardian’s populism test got us thinking about right-wing populism as well as left-wing populism. One of the most curious aspects of right populism is that it’s simultaneously anti-elite and pro-authority.
With this in mind, we thought we’d test the values attribute ‘deference’, which uses a statement about respect for authority.
“I believe it is important to show respect to people in authority. I think people should be patient.”
Pioneers
Prospectors
Settlers
Agree or strongly agree
22%
35%
36%
Disagree or strongly disagree
19%
7%
10%
The first thing that’s striking about the results is the high agreement with the deferential statement, compared with the levels of disagreement (we haven’t shown those with only very mild agreement or mild disagreement). This may partly be because of how the question is framed, with words like ‘patience’ and ‘respect’ being positive normative words. It may also, to some extent, be because the research is from a couple of years back, before the rise of populism.
What is also interesting is the similar levels of deference among Prospectors and Settlers. Settlers are a volatile group, and are more likely than Prospectors to feel very strongly either way – and thus, potentially, to drive populism. But Prospectors have some similar instincts. Jonathan Haidt’s excellent article on this subject looks at how coalitions can form between these sorts of groups.
Perhaps the most curious aspect, however, is the way that the strong Settler respect for rules and authority has be coupled so much, in recent years, with a willingness to embrace insurgency. UKIP, for example, was an overwhelmingly Settler phenomenon. Likewise, the Leave campaign. What the table above shows is that Settlers are drawn to forms of authority – just not, it would seem, to the forms of authority which we currently have.
And finally this week, Charlie’s Attic, the socio-psychological renegade cop, who doesn’t play by the rules but gets results…sometimes:
