What effect does populism have on public attitudes toward International Organizations (IOs)? In this article, we differentiate for the first time between populist communication – understood as IO criticism in line with populist core ideas – and populist voting as political behavior among citizens. We argue, first, that populist voters – that is, citizens voting for a populist party – are more critical of IOs. Second, IO-critical communication based on the democratic deficit of global governance and the loss of national sovereignty that populist parties often adopt have a substantially damaging impact on public IO attitudes. Third, we propose that the negative effect of IO-critical communication should be stronger among populist voters, and, fourth, considerably vary among groups of different educational levels. To test our theoretical expectations, we first turn to World Values Survey data (7th wave) and demonstrate that populist voters are significantly more skeptical of IOs than non-populist voters, while the effect of populist voting is strongest for more educated citizens. Second, we use a preregistered survey experiment to explore the effect of IO-critical communication on IO favorability and determine if populist voting and educational levels moderate these communication effects. Our findings reveal that IO-critical communication substantially decreases confidence in IOs. Populist and non-populist voters do not differ in their susceptibility, yet IO-critical communication exerts its greatest effects among the higher educated.

民粹主义对公众对国际组织（IO）的态度有何影响？在本文中，我们首次区分了民粹主义传播（理解为符合民粹主义核心思想的 IO 批评）和作为公民之间政治行为的民粹主义投票。我们认为，首先，民粹主义选民——即投票支持民粹主义政党的公民——对国际组织更为挑剔。其次，民粹主义政党经常采取的基于全球治理的民主赤字和国家主权丧失的对信息战的批评性沟通，对公众的信息战态度产生了重大破坏性影响。第三，我们认为，批评IO的沟通的负面影响在民粹主义选民中应该更强，第四，不同教育水平群体之间的负面影响差异很大。为了检验我们的理论预期，我们首先转向世界价值观调查数据（第七波），并证明民粹主义选民比非民粹主义选民对国际组织的怀疑程度明显更高，而民粹主义投票对受教育程度较高的公民的影响最强。其次，我们使用预先注册的调查实验来探索 IO 关键沟通对 IO 好感度的影响，并确定民粹主义投票和教育水平是否会调节这些沟通影响。我们的研究结果表明，IO 关键通信大大降低了对 IO 的信心。民粹主义和非民粹主义选民的敏感性并无差异，但对信息作战至关重要的沟通在受过高等教育的人群中发挥了最大的影响。