Citizens' candidates? Labour market experiences and radical right-wing candidates in the 2014 Swedish municipal elections

This article uses Swedish register data to study the labour market experiences of radical right-wing candidates. We look at different measures of economic insecurity (labour market participation trajectories, experience of unemployment in social networks, relative decline of men’s income and relative growth of jobs for foreign-born workers vis-a-vis natives) and examine whether they are predictors of candidates running for the Sweden Democrats, the main radical right-wing party in Sweden, as opposed to another mainstream political party. We find some confirmation for the notion that radical right-wing candidates are citizens’ candidates (Bó, Finan, Folke, Persson and Rickne, 2018) as far as labour market experiences of radical right-wing candidates are markedly different from mainstream party candidates. Those with turbulent or out-of-labour market labour market trajectories are much more likely to run for the Sweden Democrats, as opposed to other parties. Additionally, the same is true for candidates embedded in social networks with higher levels of unemployment, while working in high skilled industry markedly lowers probability of running for the Sweden Democrats, especially for male candidates with low educational attainment. We find no confirmation for decline in relative status of men and mixed results for ethnic threat hypothesis.

Early EEG responses to pre-electoral survey items reflect political attitudes and predict voting behavior

Self-reports are conventionally used to measure political preferences, yet individuals may be unable or unwilling to report their political attitudes. Here, in 69 participants we compared implicit and explicit methods of political attitude assessment and focused our investigation on populist attitudes. Ahead of the 2019 European Parliament election, we recorded electroencephalography (EEG) from future voters while they completed a survey that measured levels of agreement on different political issues. An Implicit Association Test (IAT) was administered at the end of the recording session. Neural signals differed as a function of future vote for a populist or mainstream party and of whether survey items expressed populist or non-populist views. The combination of EEG responses and self-reported preferences predicted electoral choice better than traditional socio-demographic and ideological variables, while IAT scores were not a significant predictor. These findings suggest that measurements of brain activity can refine the assessment of socio-political attitudes, even when those attitudes are not based on traditional ideological divides.

To which extent do political parties utilize similar frames?

How parties compete by utilizing frames in the public debate is not well understood. A widespread understanding is that parties tend to compete by talking past each other, i.e. when they utilize dissimilar frames. This article relies on a unique data set of parties’ framing of four individual policy questions over two decades in Denmark to examine frame overlap, i.e. when parties adopt similar frames. Results show that parties utilize similar and dissimilar frames in the public debate. However, a high degree of frame similarity was generally found across parliamentary blocs (between the leading mainstream party from each bloc, their leading junior coalition partner, and the two blocs) and most often a very high degree of overlap was found within parliamentary blocs (between the leading mainstream party and its junior coalition partner). This result suggests a need to rethink thoroughly how to understand and study interaction among parties utilizing frames.

Authoritarianism and Potential Support for the Radical Right in Ireland

Although the radical right is gaining support in many West European societies, there remain a few states such as Ireland without a successful radical right party. This absence raises the question of whether unique historical or cultural factors prevent the rise of the radical right in these countries or whether it is contingent. This chapter examines potential electoral support for a radical right party in Ireland. It presents the results of a novel survey experiment, in which voters read about the formation of a hypothetical new party and expressed their willingness to vote for it compared to existing parties. The results show that high authoritarians express greater willingness to vote for a hypothetical new radical right party compared to a hypothetical new mainstream party, while low authoritarians display the opposite pattern. In addition, high authoritarians express greater concern about declining social cohesion in Ireland. Because authoritarianism does not structure voting behaviour, a new radical right party could draw high authoritarians from all of the established parties. These results confirm that the same latent patterns of radical right party support exist in Ireland as in other West European societies and challenge arguments emphasizing cultural uniqueness.

A Religious Vaccination? How Christian Communities React to Right-Wing Populism in Germany, France and the US

Right-wing populists across Western democracies have markedly increased references to Christianity in recent years. While there is much debate about how and why they have done so, less attention has been paid to how Christian communities react to this development. The present study addresses this gap through a comparative analysis of Christian responses to right-wing populist politics in Germany, France and the US. It relies on quantitative studies, survey data and the qualitative analysis of 39 in-depth interviews with right-wing populist leaders, mainstream party politicians and church officials. The findings of this analysis suggest a potential ‘religious vaccination effect’ among Christian voters against right-wing populism but underline its connection to elite actor behaviour. Specifically, the availability of a ‘Christian alternative’ in the party system, as well as religious leaders’ willingness and ability to create a social taboo around the populist right seem critically to impact religious immunity to populism.

How Do Mainstream Parties ‘Become’ Mainstream, and Pariah Parties ‘Become’ Pariahs? Conceptualizing the Processes of Mainstreaming and Pariahing in the Labelling of Political Parties

How does a political party become ‘mainstream’? And what makes some parties receive arguably the opposite designation – ‘pariah party’? This conceptual article examines the processes by which parties’ mainstream or pariah status must be constructed, negotiated and policed, not only by political scientists in the pursuit of case selection, but by several actors actively involved in the political process, including media actors and political parties themselves. It explains how these actors contribute to these processes of ‘mainstreaming’ and ‘pariahing’, considers their motivations and provides illustrative examples of how such processes take place. As such, the article moves beyond the literature on the ways in which mainstream parties seek to deal with or respond to threats from a variety of pariah parties, instead paying attention to how those parties have been constructed as pariahs in the first place, and how these processes simultaneously contribute to the maintenance of mainstream party identities.

Chasing the Other “Populist Zeitgeist”? Mainstream Parties and the Rise of Right-Wing Populism

This article answers the question of why certain European mainstream parties have changed their policy positions on the GAL-TAN (Green/Alternative/Libertarian vs. Traditional/Authoritarian/Nationalist) dimension in recent years. I argue that these changes can be explained through the electoral success of new right-wing populist parties and the ideological proximity of conservative mainstream parties towards these parties. These arguments were tested with econometric models of mainstream parties’ policy positions in 11 Western European democracies between 2002 and 2019. The results indicate that mainstream parties chase the other “populist zeitgeist” by changing their policy positions on the GAL–TAN dimension in response to the electoral success of right-wing populist parties. Mainstream parties respond to this threat by closing the distance to these parties on the GAL–TAN dimension. However, this responsiveness is largely constrained to conservative mainstream parties. The findings have important implications for understanding mainstream party responsiveness towards rivalling right-wing populist parties.

Crisis and Convergence: How the Combination of a Weak Economy and Mainstream Party Ideological De-Polarization Fuels Anti-System Support

When do radical parties gain support? Previous studies cite the economy and mainstream party ideological convergence as important. Responding to earlier inconsistent findings, I provide evidence for an interactive approach. Anti-system parties succeed when mainstream parties are simultaneously presiding over an ailing economy and failing to provide the diversity of political opinion for the electorate to meaningfully challenge the policies associated with this malaise, through which dissatisfaction with the status quo could otherwise be channeled. Two studies support this “crisis and convergence” model. At the aggregate-level, the anti-system vote is strongest during times of negative economic growth and widespread mainstream party ideological de-polarization. At the voter-level, the link between negative economic evaluations and radical party voting is stronger during establishment convergence and, vice versa, personal perceptions of convergence are themselves more closely related to support for these parties when the macroeconomy is sickly. Mainstream party homogeneity radicalizes the economic vote and strengthens anti-system challengers.