Religion as Catalyst or Restraint of Radical Right Voting?

It is often found that religious people are underrepresented among the radical right electorate, despite radical right parties’ claim of being defenders of the Judeo-Christian society. This study investigates this paradoxical finding and examines to what extent two dimensions of religion – practice and belief – play a role in voting for a radical right party across seven West European countries. Using the European Values Study from 2008, it was found that religiously active people are indeed less likely to vote for a radical right party, because they tend to vote for a Christian party. However, the study challenges the common wisdom that religion alone is a restraint on radical right voting and shows that orthodox believers in three countries – Belgium, Norway and Switzerland – feel more threatened by the presence of immigrants and therefore are more likely than their mainstream counterparts to vote for a radical right party.     

Populist Radical Right Parties in the Nordic Region: A New and Distinct Party Family?

The Nordic countries are no longer characterized by a stable five‐party system. Not only have small Christian parties and Green parties emerged in most countries, so‐called ‘populist radical right parties’ have also been increasingly successful in recent decades. This article examines to what extent the populist radical right parties in the Nordic countries represent a new party family. Based on various and original data, including archive material, interviews with key representatives, party manifestos and expert surveys, the processes of deciding party names, the development of transnational linkages and ideological transformation are analyzed. The article demonstrates that even though the Danish People's Party, the True Finns and the Sweden Democrats have different historical legacies, they have converged ideologically (i.e., socioeconomically centrist and socioculturally authoritarian), adopted similar names and are on the verge of becoming a more formalized transnational actor. The Progress Party in Norway is better seen as a hybrid between a populist radical right party and a more traditional conservative party. The findings challenge several classifications in the extensive literature on populist radical right parties. Most importantly, the True Finns should be included as a populist radical right party, whereas the Norwegian party should be treated more carefully. Furthermore, Nordic populist radical right parties are no longer – if they have ever been – so‐called ‘neoliberal populists’. Finally, the findings suggest a re‐freezing of the Nordic party systems in which a phase of divergence has been replaced by a phase of convergence.     

Systems Theory and Complexity: A Potential Tool for Radical Analysis or the Emerging Social Paradigm for the Internationalised Market Economy?

The aim of this paper is to critically assess the claims of systems theory and complexity in the analysis of social change and particularly to examine the view that—if certain conditions are met—both could potentially be useful tools for radical analysis. The conclusion drawn from this analysis is that, although systems theory and complexity are useful tools in the natural sciences in which they offer many useful insights, they are much less useful in social sciences and indeed are incompatible, both from the epistemological point of view and that of their content, with a radical analysis aiming at systemic change towards an inclusive democracy.     

Separate,Unequal, and Ignored? Interjurisdictional Competition and the Budgetary Choices of Poor and Affluent Municipalities

The fundamental value underlying the design of a fragmented system of local governance is consumer sovereignty. This system functions as a market‐like arrangement providing citizen‐consumers a choice of jurisdictions that offer different bundles of public services and taxes. However, the same choice also can facilitate class‐based population sorting, creating regions where fiscally wealthy jurisdictions coexist with impoverished ones. Some argue that the public market enhances the power of all consumers, whether poor or rich. Even if the poor are concentrated in some jurisdictions, they can exercise their voice to ensure that their government responds to their service needs. But does the voice of the poor matter as much as the voice of the rich in determining service levels in the local public market? Comparing the budgetary choices in poor and affluent municipalities, this article shows that in highly fragmented regions, some municipal services are provided the least in communities where they are needed the most.     

Voting for development? Ruling coalitions and literacy in India

Across the world, governments skew the distribution of state resources for political gain. But does such politicisation of resource allocation affect development trajectories in the long run? We focus on the long-term effects of voting for the ruling coalition on primary education in India. Using a close-election instrumental variable design and drawing on a new socio-economic dataset of India's state assembly constituencies in 1971 and 2001, we examine whether areas represented by members of ruling coalitions experienced greater increases in literacy over 30 years. We find no evidence of this being the case, in the overall data or in relevant sub-samples. The null results are precisely estimated, and are consistent across OLS and 2SLS specifications and several robustness checks. These findings suggest the politicised distribution of some funds in the short run does not affect long-term development trajectories.     

Intergovernmental Relations in the UK: Time for a Radical Overhaul?

Brexit and the coronavirus pandemic have put relationships between the UK government and its devolved counterparts under growing strain. Tensions generated by both of these developments have exposed the inadequacies of the existing, under-developed system for bringing governments together in the UK. The limitations of the current system include the ad hoc nature of intergovernmental meetings, and their consultative rather than decision-making character. Drawing upon an analysis of how intergovernmental relationships are structured in five other countries, the authors offer a number of suggestions for the reconfiguration of the UK model. They explore different ways of enabling joint decision making by its governments, and argue against the assumption that England can be represented adequately by the UK administration. Without a serious attempt to address this dysfunctional part of the UK’s territorial constitution, there is every prospect that relations between these different governments will continue to deteriorate.     

Measuring Ethnic Voting: Do Proportional Electoral Laws Politicize Ethnicity?

I develop four related measures of the “ethnicization” of electoral behavior. Each measure increases as ethnic identity becomes more central to vote choice, but the measures differ along two theoretical dimensions. The first dimension contrasts a group‐based perspective (which focuses on cohesion in the voting patterns of group members) with a party‐based perspective (which focuses on the composition of groups supporting political parties). The second dimension contrasts a fractionalization perspective (which assumes that more groups or parties cause more problems) with a polarization perspective (which assumes that problems are greatest when there are two equal‐sized groups or parties). Using survey data to implement the measures in 43 countries, the article shows that proportional electoral laws are associated with lower levels of ethnicization—the opposite of what is widely assumed. I argue that the lower levels of ethnicization in PR systems should be unsurprising.     

Sympathy for the ‘devil’? Voting for populists in the 2006 and 2010 Dutch general elections

What motivations do voters have to vote for populist parties? How do their motivations differ from those of voters for mainstream parties? Analyzing new empirical material – the Dutch elections of 2006 and 2010 – we demonstrate that policy preferences, protest attitudes and evaluations of party leaders are important reasons to vote for populist parties. Yet only protest attitudes distinguish voters for populist parties from voters for mainstream parties; evaluations of party leaders turn out to be equally important for both. We theorize how protest attitudes and party leader evaluations overlap and employ an exploratory simulation technique to test this. We find that populist parties differ strongly from each other with regard to the specific patchwork of motivations of their voters.     

Who Votes for the Future? Information,Expectations, and Endogeneity in Economic Voting

Voters’ four primary evaluations of the economy—retrospective national, retrospective pocketbook, prospective national, and prospective pocketbook—vary in the cognitive steps necessary to link economic outcomes to candidates in elections. We hypothesize that the effects of the different economic evaluations on vote choice vary with a voter’s ability to acquire information and anticipate the election outcome. Using data from the 1980 through 2004 US presidential elections, we estimate a model of vote choice that includes all four economic evaluations as well as information and uncertainty moderators. The effects of retrospective evaluations on vote choice do not vary by voter information. Prospective economic evaluations weigh in the decisions of the most informed voters, who rely on prospective national evaluations when they believe the incumbent party will win and on prospective pocketbook evaluations when they are uncertain about the election outcome or believe that the challenger will win. Voters who have accurate expectations about who will win the election show the strongest relationship between their vote choice and sociotropic evaluations of the economy, both retrospective and prospective. Voters whose economic evaluations are most likely to be endogenous to vote choice show a weaker relationship between economic evaluations and their votes than the voters who appear to be more objective in their assessments of the election. Economic voting is broader and more prospective than previously accepted, and concerns about endogeneity in economic evaluations are overstated.     

Why is there no Radical Right Party in Ireland?

The rise of the radical or extreme right parties in Europe – parties usually noted for strong, sometimes racist anti-immigrant ideologies – has attracted a great deal of attention in political science. Ireland, despite having some conditions favourable to the growth of such a party has no radical right party. This paper argues that that this is because the ‘space’ usually occupied by such parties – for young, poor people disaffected by economic change – is taken up by Sinn Féin, which though it has similarities to radical right parties, differs markedly in its attitudes to immigrants. It goes on to explain the special circumstances that prevent nationalist parties in Ireland from presenting overtly anti-immigrant platforms. The focus on anti-immigration and liberal economic policies for such parties may mean that other parties with strong resemblances are excluded from studies they might usefully be included.     

Selfish and Cooperative Voting: Can the Majority Restrain Themselves?

At every scale from small committees to national elections, voters face tradeoffs between self-interest and the common good. We report three experiments in which participants vote for policies with real payoffs at stake. We manipulate self-interest by randomly assigning participants to two groups in society with different policy payoffs. Participants in the majority group are confronted by a simple choice between a policy that is better for themselves or a policy that is best for society. Overall, we find a clear effect of self-interest: Participants are more likely to choose the policy that earns them more money, compared to participants in the other group, even when the policy is detrimental to the common good. Simultaneously, we observe considerable levels of cooperative voting among participants in the majority, ranging from 47% to 79% across different payoff regimes. Finally, participants were not more cooperative when voting compared to when they chose between the same policies with a lottery or leader institution, departing from the hypothesis that voting institutions promote cooperative motives. We discuss implications for multiple literatures about voting behavior.

     

Ethnic Heterogeneity and Public Support for Welfare: Is the American Experience Replicated in Britain,Sweden and Denmark?

The link between ethnic heterogeneity and public support for welfare policy is debated. The thesis of a negative relationship is supported by much American research. Historically the race issue has blocked a number of American welfare schemes; across the United States ethnically heterogeneous states have less generous benefits, and citizens having negative attitudes towards blacks often oppose welfare. The research question is: To what extent will increased ethnic heterogeneity in European countries establish the same mechanisms? Three theoretical positions are discussed: the position that the American experience is unique; the position that it is generalisable; and a middle position of it being contingent on institutional settings. The latter position predicts that the American experience can be avoided, especially in social democratic welfare regimes where the ethnicity issue has not been politicised. Empirically the article is based on survey data from the United Kingdom, Sweden and Denmark, in which a number of American items were directly replicated. Despite indications of American uniqueness and welfare‐regime effects, the findings support the position that the in‐group/out‐group mechanisms found in the United States are being replicated in Europe.     

Racial or Spatial Voting? The Effects of Candidate Ethnicity and Ethnic Group Endorsements in Local Elections

With the growth of Latino and Asian American populations, candidates frequently must appeal to diverse electorates. Strategies for doing so include emphasizing candidates’ racial/ethnic identity and securing endorsements from racial/ethnic groups. While many scholars focus on candidates’ racial/ethnic attributes, ethnic group endorsements are understudied. Whether such endorsements induce voters to choose ideologically similar candidates (spatial voting), or choose based on race/ethnicity (racial voting) is unclear. We address this question by examining elections in multiethnic local settings. Using original surveys and exit polls, we create comparable measures of candidate and voter ideology, and examine how race/ethnicity and ideology affect voters’ choices. We also embed experiments that manipulate ethnic group endorsements. We find that ideology influences voters’ choices, but that ethnic group endorsements weaken spatial voting. The latter effect among whites is driven by racial/ethnic stereotypes. These reactions explain why some candidates seek such endorsements and why others might prefer to avoid them.     

Is Ethnic Diversity Bad for Any Dimension of Social Capital? Trust,Networks and Voluntarism in Norwegian Communities

Ethnic diversity has been posed as a threat to social capital, but results from existing research are inconclusive. This study takes as its starting point that different aspects of social capital may be influenced differently by ethnic diversity and uses one specific welfare state context – Norway – to explore such variations. Analysing an original dataset, nine different measures are used to explore three dimensions of social capital in 61 communities in Norway, amongst the majority population and residents with immigrant background. The results suggest, first, a differentiated impact of ethnic heterogeneity on trust. Ethnic diversity is negatively associated with spatially bounded forms of trust, but not with generalized trust. Second, a negative association with traditional forms of voluntarism is found – albeit this latter relationship is much weaker than the former. Third, the results suggest that these relationships are fairly similar across different (immigrant) groups. Although residents with immigrant background typically express lower levels of generalized trust than the majority population, the relative differences between residents living in diverse or homogeneous communities are limited. Given its strong institutions Norway could be seen as a least likely case for studying the impact of ethnic diversity on social capital. On the one hand, effects are more limited than what has been found in studies from the United States. On the other hand, the fact that effects are found on community trust and volunteering indicates that this type of societal model can indeed be affected by ethnic diversification.     

Ethnic minority voters in the UK 2015 general election: A breakthrough for the Conservative party?

It was widely reported that the 2015 UK general election represented a breakthrough election for the Conservative party among ethnic minority voters – specifically that their vote share among minorities increased, and overtook that of Labour for the first time among some groups. I show that analysis using more representative data yields markedly different results. Looking at (i) party preference from 2010 to 2015, and (ii) reported vote shares from a nationally representative probability survey, I show that the Conservatives increased their support among Hindus - but the Labour party gained in support elsewhere. This is due to movement away from the Liberal Democrats, 2010 minority supporters of the Liberal Democrats moved to supporting Labour rather than the Conservatives in 2015 at a ratio of 2:1. There is also considerable individual-level volatility in party support among ethnic minorities, which is masked by a high level of stability at the aggregate level.     

Voting Rights for Whom? Examining the Effects of the Voting Rights Act on Latino Political Incorporation

This study applies insights from principal‐agent models to examine whether and how the language assistance provisions of the Voting Rights Act, Sections 203 and 4(f)(4), affect Latino representation. Using panel data from 1984–2012, we estimate two‐stage models that consider the likelihood and extent of Latino board representation for a sample of 1,661 school districts. In addition, we examine how policy design as well as federal oversight and enforcement shape implementation and compliance with the language assistance provisions. Our findings not only provide the first systemic evidence that the language assistance provisions have a direct effect on Latino representation, but also link the efficacy of the language assistance provisions to the duration and consistency of coverage and the presence of federal elections observers. Overall, our study underscores the continued need for federal government involvement in protecting the voting rights of underrepresented groups, in this case, language minority citizens.     

Threshold Insurance Voting in PR Systems: A Study of Voters’ Strategic Behavior in the 2010 Swedish General Election

This study investigates strategic voting for small parties in proportional representation systems, in previous work sometimes referred to as threshold insurance voting (Cox, 1997). Starting from theories of rational voting (Downs, 1957), three conditions for threshold insurance voting are developed: the voter considers potential government outcomes, votes for a party at risk of falling below an electoral threshold, and votes for another party than his or her most preferred one. The conditions are tested on the case of the 2010 Swedish general election. Using extensive data material and a conditional logit model of vote choice, the results show that in this election voters cast strategic votes for at least one of the small parties, the Christian Democrats which was included in the incumbent government coalition.     

The 2015 Norwegian Local Elections: Support for Governing Radical Right Progress Party Plummets and Great Gains for Greens in ‘Second-Order’ Elections

Two years into the first term of the right wing Conservative/Progress Party coalition government, the 2015 Norwegian local elections displayed many features of a ‘second-order’ election: the governing parties lost considerable support, minor parties did well and voter turnout was low. For the second local elections in a row, political circumstances prevented the far right Progress Party from mobilizing on the anti-immigration issue, adding to the burdens of governing nationally for the first time. The Green Party leveraged its 2013 entry into the national parliament into record support, consolidating the progress made in the 2011 local elections. Although the elections were shaped by national politics, municipal and county variation shows that local political factors did matter.     

Comparing Radical Right Parties in Government: Immigration and Integration Policies in Nine Countries (1996–2010)

This article investigates the direct influence of radical right parties on immigration and integration policies by comparing the output of 27 cabinets of varying composition in nine countries in the period between 1996 and 2010. A Nationalist Immigration and Integration Policy index has been developed to measure legislative changes with regard to citizenship and denizenship, asylum, illegal residence, family reunion and integration. The comparative analysis of immigration and integration legislation shows that the policy output of cabinets including radical right parties deviates significantly from centre-left and centre cabinets, but does not differ much from that of centre-right cabinets. The quantitative analysis makes clear that although parties matter, radical right parties do not matter in particular. A case by case analysis confirms that the direct impact of radical right parties on policy output has been severely limited by the difficulties these parties face in adapting to public office.     

Getting the Balance Right? Party Competition on Immigration and Conflicting Ideological ‘Pulls’

Will a plurality of cleavages ‘pull’ parties in different directions? Are these strains particularly troublesome when competing on issues that lack an obvious dimensional fit? Are some parties more likely than others to experience these tensions? And does it matter? While the essence of the party‐political space has received substantial coverage, less attention is paid to the effects that multidimensionality may have on issue competition. Comparing British and Swedish parties, this article analyses how any contradictory positions have been negotiated, and when such tensions are likely to emerge.