Keywords: Political behavior, participation and culture

Does popular discontent with democracy lead to support for antisystem parties, or does the rise of such parties and movements erode public support for democratic governance? This paper addresses this question using two unique sources of data for a large sample of global democracies. First, we use smooth country-year panels of democratic support for 120 countries over 24 years, drawing in data from 11 survey projects estimated by a Bayesian latent variable model; second, we combine this with a new worldwide dataset of populist parties coded for all democracies between 1980 and 2017 - the first such dataset of its scope. The dynamic panel nature of our estimates then permit a rigorous test of the relationship between democratic support and voting for populist parties. We find consistent evidence: declining support for democratic governance has a positive effect on populist vote share, but the election of populist parties to office predicts recovery in democratic support.