Authoritarianism and Support for Populist Radical Right Parties

2021 ◽  
pp. 115-144
Author(s):  
Erik R. Tillman
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Study Data ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
The Political ◽  
Populist Radical Right ◽  
National Election Study ◽  
Radical Right Parties ◽  
Immigration Attitudes ◽  
Party Support ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines the relationship between authoritarianism and the likelihood of voting for populist radical right parties in Western Europe. Radical right parties share an ideology based around nativism, authoritarianism, and populism. This ideology appeals to high authoritarians because it promises tough measures to preserve social cohesion, so high authoritarians are more likely to vote for radical right parties. This prediction is tested using national election study data from a range of West European countries. The results show that high authoritarians are more likely to vote for radical right parties, but even more so if they have weaker attachments to the political mainstream. The final set of analyses examines whether economic anxieties or anti-immigration attitudes moderate this relationship. While economic anxieties matter little to radical right party support, high authoritarians who oppose immigration are more likely to vote for a radical right party. These findings build on existing research by providing a stronger explanation of previous findings linking anti-immigration attitudes or cultural anxieties to radical right party support.

Cultural Backlash or Worldview Evolution?

2021 ◽  
pp. 167-188
Author(s):  
Erik R. Tillman
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Traditional Values ◽  
Demographic Groups ◽  
Populist Radical Right ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Radical Right Parties ◽  
Party Support ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines the relationship between authoritarianism, age, and radical right party support. This book’s worldview evolution proposes that the relationship between authoritarianism and radical right party support should be stronger among younger voters. However, a rival cultural backlash argument suggests that the relationship should be strongest among older voters, who were socialized in an era of traditional values and less diversity. The analysis finds evidence consistent with the worldview evolution argument while leading to a rejection of the cultural backlash hypothesis. Neither older voters nor older high authoritarians are more likely to support radical right parties. However, the relationship between authoritarianism and radical right party support is stronger among younger voters in each country besides the United Kingdom. This finding suggests that the worldview evolution is driven more by younger voters with fewer prior party attachments, and it also should lead to a rejection of the claim that populist radical right party support comes mostly from ageing demographic groups who will soon be replaced in the electorate.

scholarly journals Taking the Relationship Between Populism and Healthcare Seriously: A Call for Empirical Analysis Rather Than Moral Condemnation Comment on "A Scoping Review of Populist Radical Right Parties’ Influence on Welfare Policy and its Implications for Population Health in Europe"

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martijn Felder ◽  
Iris Wallenburg ◽  
Syb Kuijper ◽  
Roland Bal
Keyword(s):  
Scoping Review ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Review Of The Literature ◽  
Welfare Policies ◽  
Populist Radical Right ◽  
Radical Right Parties ◽  
Firm Basis ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Do So

In this commentary, we reflect on Rinaldi and Bekker’s scoping review of the literature on populist radical right (PRR) parties and welfare policies. We argue that their review provides political scientists and healthcare scholars with a firm basis to further explore the relationships between populism and welfare policies in different political systems. In line with the authors, we furthermore (re)emphasize the need for additional empirical inquiries into the relationship between populism and healthcare. But instead of expanding the research agenda suggested – for instance by adding categories or niches in which this relationship can be observed – we would like to challenge some of the premises of the studies conducted and reviewed thus far. We do so by identifying two concerns and by illustrating these concerns with two examples from the Netherlands.

The Strategic Adaptation of the Populist Radical Right in Western Europe

2019 ◽  
pp. 837-862
Author(s):  
Elie Michel
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Strategic Adaptation ◽  
Populist Radical Right ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
Radical Right Parties

Populist radical right parties have long been considered to mobilize their voters on specific issues, which they are deemed to “own.” Voters support these parties largely because of their “nativist” agenda, and more precisely because of their stance against immigration. In fact, research had established a “winning formula” of electoral persuasion for radical right parties, referring to a combination of “economically neoliberal” and “authoritarian” appeals that would jointly explain the strong electoral support. However, populist radical right parties have transformed their positions, through “second order messages,” by investing in a socioeconomic issue agenda. These parties can increase their electoral support by siding with their working class voters on redistributive issues, particularly through a welfare chauvinist frame. This chapter argues that populist radical right parties have strategically shifted on this latter dimension in order to adapt to their voters’ preferences. It shows that, in view of increased electoral persuasion, populist radical right parties modify some of their positions to tailor them to their working-class core electoral clientele.

Authoritarianism and the Evolution of Voting Behaviour

2021 ◽  
pp. 189-212
Author(s):  
Erik R. Tillman
Keyword(s):  
Radical Right ◽  
Voting Behaviour ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Popular Narrative ◽  
Religious Conflicts ◽  
Radical Right Parties ◽  
Democratic Parties ◽  
Party Support ◽  
Social Democratic Parties ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter analyses the evolution of the relationship between authoritarianism and party support from 1990 to 2017. The chapter presents the analyses of eight different countries, and two conclusions emerge. First, high authoritarians have shifted towards radical right parties over the past three decades though there was no prior cross-national relationship between authoritarianism and party support in each country. As a result, different mainstream parties in each country have lost support as high authoritarians increasingly vote for PRR parties. This finding challenges the popular narrative that PRR parties have gained at the expense of social democratic parties, which only holds true in certain countries. The analysis also shows that low authoritarians have shifted towards left-liberal parties such as the greens, further contributing to the worldview evolution. As high authoritarians move towards radical right parties and low authoritarians towards left-liberal parties, traditional centre-left and centre-right parties that were based on twentieth-century class and religious conflicts struggle for support, particularly as generational replacement results in the depletion of their traditional voters.

Do religious voters support populist radical right parties? Opposite effects in Western and East-Central Europe

2021 ◽  
pp. 135406882098518
Author(s):  
Kamil Marcinkiewicz ◽  
Ruth Dassonneville
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Far Right ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Populist Radical Right ◽  
Religious Devotion ◽  
Radical Right Parties

The rise of populist radical right parties fuels a discussion about the roots of their success. Existing research has demonstrated the relevance of gender, education and income for explaining the far-right vote. The present study contributes to the aforementioned debate by focusing on the role of religiosity. The data collected in the eighth round of the European Social Survey (2016) allow examining in more detail the political relevance of attendance at religious services and other measures of religious devotion. This study focuses in particular on 15 countries, 11 from Western Europe and 4 from East-Central Europe. In none of the Western European countries is there evidence of a positive relationship between religiosity and vote for a populist radical right party. In fact, in many countries of this region more religious voters are substantively less inclined to support far-right movements. The situation is different in parts of East-Central Europe. In Poland, and to a weaker extent also in Hungary, the probability of a vote for right-wing populists increases with religiosity.

scholarly journals The Surge of Economic Nationalism in Western Europe

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 128-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Italo Colantone ◽  
Piero Stanig
Keyword(s):  
Sovereign Debt ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Adjustment Costs ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Shocks ◽  
Political Effects ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
Radical Right Parties ◽  
Main Message

We document the surge of economic nationalist and radical-right parties in western Europe between the early 1990s and 2016. We discuss how economic shocks contribute to explaining this political shift, looking in turn at theory and evidence on the political effects of globalization, technological change, the financial and sovereign debt crises of 2008–2009 and 2011–2013, and immigration. The main message that emerges is that failures in addressing the distributional consequences of economic shocks are a key factor behind the success of nationalist and radical-right parties. We discuss how the economic explanations compete with and complement the “cultural backlash” view. We reflect on possible future political developments, which depend on the evolving intensities of economic shocks, on the strength and persistence of adjustment costs, and on changes on the supply side of politics.

Migration and the Extreme Right in Western Europe

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harry Nedelcu ◽  
Chris Miller
Keyword(s):  
Full Text ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Political Mobilization ◽  
Causal Link ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Radical Right Parties ◽  
And Migration ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship between migration and extremist parties has been an overlapping topic in studies of party systems, citizenship, and migration. This body of work has collectively challenged the view that the success of radical right parties in Western Europe is an unavoidable consequence of increased immigration flows. Through a review of four recent studies, this article will attempt to unpack recent scholarly literature with the aim of investigating the salience of the causal link between immigration and the success of radical right parties. The four works studied arrive at separate conclusions due to their different conceptual understandings of agency in party systems as well as their assumptions about the nature of political mobilization. While three feature the mobilization of immigration as an electoral issue as being an important factor for the success of far right parties, one makes the claim that national definitions of citizenship shape both responses to migration within the host state as well as the space available for the radical right.   Full text available: https://doi.org/10.22215/rera.v6i1.209

Populist radical right parties and mass polarization in the Netherlands

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruno Castanho Silva
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Control Model ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Synthetic Control ◽  
The Public ◽  
Populist Radical Right ◽  
Radical Right Parties ◽  
Mass Level

Radical parties have been found to succeed under conditions of mass polarization. It is argued that their message resonates better with voters at the extremes of an ideological spectrum. This paper investigates if the reverse also holds, meaning that radical parties may contribute to the polarization of the public. I test this claim in the Netherlands, a country that has experienced the rise of populist radical right parties since 2002, using a synthetic control model built with a pool of comparable countries and Eurobarometer survey data. Results show that, after the rise of Pim Fortuyn and Geert Wilders, the level of polarization among the Dutch public increased more than it otherwise would have. These findings contribute to understanding the connection between elite- and mass-level polarization, and the consequences of populist radical right parties’ emergence in Western Europe.

The Radical Right in the Nordic Countries

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anders Widfeldt
Keyword(s):  
Nordic Countries ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
The Political ◽  
Policy Influence ◽  
Center Stage ◽  
Populist Radical Right ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
Political Impact ◽  
Political Center ◽  
Radical Right Parties

This chapter deals with the Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. For many years these four countries were neatly split into a dichotomy, with relatively strong populist radical right parties in Denmark and Norway and less successful counterparts in Finland and Sweden. Since about 2010, however, the populist radical right now has a firmly established foothold in all four countries. In addition, populist radical right parties have moved from isolation to acceptance in three of the studied countries, entering government in Norway and Finland and exerting considerable policy influence in Denmark. Exploring this development, the chapter deals with the origins, ideologies, electoral support, and political impact of the main Nordic populist radical right parties. It is argued that they will not disappear from the political center stage, and that the Swedish radical right can be expected to eventually obtain a position of legitimacy and influence.

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