47 (potential) reasons for voting for the Radical Right

by

Why is there support for the Radical Right?

I’ve just submitted the final (hopefully) draft of a chapter that I’m preparing for Jens Rydgren’s forthcoming Oxford Handbook of the Radical Right. The job description was to Explain Electoral Support for the Radical Right (read the pre-print here). In 8000 words or less. Sure thing. No pressure.

Potential causes of Radical Right voting
Outside Europe, believing in Hell is one probable cause

Given the formidable size of the literature on the Radical Right, I had to be brutal. The chapter organises the presumptive causes of right-wing voting along the lines of the familiar Micro-Meso-Macro scheme, focusing on a number of landmark studies on the one hand and some of the latest research on the other. I aim at weighing the evidence in favour and against some prominent hypotheses about the conditions for Radical Right party success, including the pure-protest hypothesis, the charismatic-leader hypothesis, and the silent-counter-revolution hypothesis. Following that, I discuss what we know about the effects of a host of meso- and macro-level factors, and point out some directions for further research. I concludes that Radical Right mobilisation is now the rule rather than the exception, and that we should perhaps focus on understanding why they are not successful in some cases.

Post-Truth Politics Disclaimer:

I completely made up that number

Related posts:

Default ThumbnailThe Rise of Illiberal Democracy – in 1997 Default ThumbnailProtest, Neo-Liberalism or Anti-Immigrant Sentiment: What Motivates the Voters of the Extreme Right in Western Europe? Four far-right links I liked 1Four far-right links I liked Default ThumbnailExtreme Right Bibliography Updated

21 thoughts on “47 (potential) reasons for voting for the Radical Right”

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.