Populism and Support for Limiting the Power of Constitutional Courts: The Case of Germany

Given the rise of populism around the globe, do populist citizens support the exceptional authority of national constitutional courts to make decisions on controversial issues? Or do these individuals view constitutional courts just like any other political institution? To investigate this question, we embedded an experiment in a national survey in Germany in early 2020 that varied the institution (i.e., the federal constitutional court (FCC), the parliament and the EU) and its decision on a controversial civil liberties issue. The results clearly show that citizens with populist attitudes judge the FCC like any other political institution in terms of their willingness to restrict its authority. In contrast, individuals with non-populist attitudes endorse the exceptional status of the FCC compared to other institutions. The study suggests that the FCC may lose its venerate status as the ultimate guardian of democracy among the nontrivial portion of citizens who favor populism. Theoretically, the results support a “fusion” model that assumes populists’ support for power curbing includes the constitutional court in “the system” they disparage.