Gendering the vote for populist radical-right parties

ABSTRACT

Why do more men than women vote for populist radical-right (PRR) parties? And do more men than women still vote for the PRR? Can attitudes regarding gender and gender equality explain these differences (if they exist)? These are the questions that Spierings and Zaslove explore in this article. They begin with an analysis of men's and women's voting patterns for PRR parties in seven countries, comparing these results with voting for mainstream (left-wing and right-wing) parties. They then examine the relationship between attitudes and votes for the populist radical right, focusing on economic redistribution, immigration, trust in the European Union, law and order, environmental protection, personal freedom and development, support for gender equality, and homosexuality. They conclude that more men than women do indeed support PRR parties, as many studies have previously demonstrated. However, the difference is often overemphasized in the literature, in part since it is examined in isolation and not compared with voting for (centre-right) mainstream parties. Moreover, the most important reasons that voters support PRR parties seem to be the same for men and for women; both vote for the populist radical right because of their opposition to immigration. In general, there are no consistent cross-country patterns regarding gender attitudes explaining differences between men and women. There are some recurring country-specific findings though. Most notably: first, among women, economic positions seem to matter less; and economically more left-wing (and those with anti-immigrant attitudes) women also vote for the PRR in Belgium, France, Norway and Switzerland; and, second, those who hold authoritarian or nativist views in combination with a strong belief that gays and lesbians should be able to ‘live their lives as they choose’ are disproportionately much more likely to vote for PRR parties in Sweden and Norway. Despite these findings, Spierings and Zaslove argue that the so-called ‘gender gap’ is often overemphasized. In other words, it appears that populist radical-right parties, with respect to sex and gender, are in many ways simply a more radical version of centre-right parties.     

The gender gap in populist radical-right voting: examining the demand side in Western and Eastern Europe

ABSTRACT

In most countries, men are more likely to vote for parties of the populist radical right (PRR) than women. The authors argue here that there are two mechanisms that might potentially explain this gender gap: mediation (women's attitudes and characteristics differ from men's in ways that explain the PRR vote) and moderation (women vote for different reasons than men). They apply these two mechanisms to general theories of support for PRR parties—the socio-structural model, the discontent model, and the policy vote model—and test these on a large sample of voters in seventeen Western and Eastern European countries. The study shows that the gender gap is produced by a combination of moderation and mediation. Socio-structural differences between men and women exist, but the extent to which they explain the gender gap is limited, and primarily restricted to post-Communist countries. Furthermore, women generally do not differ from men in their level of nativism, authoritarianism or discontent with democracy. Among women, however, these attitudes are less strongly related to a radical-right vote. This suggests that men consider the issues of the radical right to be more salient, but also that these parties deter women for reasons other than the content of their political programme. While the existing research has focused almost exclusively on mediation, we show that moderation and mediation contribute almost equally to the gender gap.     

Gender,populist attitudes,and voting: explaining the gender gap in voting for populist radical right and populist radical left parties

Empirical studies have demonstrated that compared to almost all other parties, populist radical right (PRR) parties draw more votes from men than from women. However, the two dominant explanations that are generally advanced to explain this disparity – gender differences regarding socio-economic position and lower perceptions regarding the threat of immigrants – cannot fully explain the difference. The article contends that it might actually be gender differences regarding the conceptualisation of society and politics – populist attitudes – that explain the gender gap. Thus, the gap may be due, in part, to differences in socialisation. The article analyses EES 2014 data on voting for the populist radical right and the populist radical left in nine European countries. Across countries, the gender gap in voting for the PRR is indeed partly explained by populist attitudes. For populist radical left parties, the results are less clear, suggesting that populism has different meanings to voters on the left and on the right.     

Tax revolts,direct democracy and representation: populist politics in the US and Canada

ABSTRACT

This paper examines ideological foundations of the ‘tax revolt’ theme in American and Canadian conservative politics, through an examination of two of its most notable expressions. One was the use of direct democracy in California in the late 1970s and early 1980s to reduce property taxes. The other was the Reform Party of Canada’s blending of appeals for more extensive direct democracy and lower taxes from the late 1980s through 2000. Each of these relied on a critique of ‘representational failure’ in their respective political orders. The popularity of direct democracy across North America has been aided by the right-populist analogy between a market that enables consumer sovereignty and direct democratic instruments that facilitate end runs around legislatures – the sites of representational failure – to allow unmediated registration of the people’s low tax, anti-statist will. Employing analytical methods and theoretical perspectives developed by Michael Freeden and Michael Saward, I identify shared and distinctive conceptual and strategic/rhetorical elements in the two cases, and suggest ways of developing a ‘hybrid’ approach to the study of populisms.     

Assessing the diversity of anti-establishment and populist politics in Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract

The more populism enters public debates, the more it needs close scrutiny. Central and Eastern Europe offers a useful context for exploring the diversity of parties identified as populist. Anti-establishment rhetoric provides a suitable conceptual starting point because of its pervasive role in the region’s political discourse. Using a new expert survey, this article details the relationship between anti-establishment salience and political positions, showing that anti-establishment parties occupy a full range across both economic and cultural dimensions and many occupy more centrist positions. Narrowing the focus to content analysis of anti-establishment parties’ thin ideology in the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia, it is concurrently found that for many actors (including those usually labelled as populist) anti-establishment rhetoric is indeed predominant, yet not always extensively combined with other elements of populism: people-centrism and invocation of general will. The findings are important for understanding multiple varieties of anti-establishment politics also beyond the region.     

Public campaign financing and the rise of radical-right parties

While public campaign financing is often thought of as a way to “level the playing field” of elections, I argue that such policies may have unintended second-order consequences. Namely, that increasing the degree to which public funding drives political campaigns disproportionately aids radical-right parties. This is a counter-intuitive result, as public financing of elections has recently become an important issue for those on the political left as a method to restore power to the majority. Rather, it seems to aid not only those on the right, but those on the political fringe. Through a cross-national analysis of 328 lower-house elections in 20 advanced democracies, I demonstrate that public financing serves to significantly increase vote-share of the radical-right.     

Framing blame: toward a better understanding of the effects of populist communication on populist party preferences

Although previous research has argued that the media play a crucial role in populism’s success, we know too little about how populist messages affect preferences for populist parties. To advance this knowledge, we conducted an experiment in which the core of populist rhetoric – constructing the people as innocent in-group opposed to the establishment as culprit out-group – was manipulated in news articles. The findings indicate that when political elites are blamed for a salient national problem, people are more likely to vote for a populist party and less likely to vote for the largest party in government. Populist vote intentions are indirectly affected via blame perceptions. These findings offer important insights into the media’s role in the electoral success of populism.     

Immigrant protest: an introduction

The last decade has witnessed an explosion of ‘immigrant protests’, political mobilizations by irregular migrants and pro-migrant activists. This special issue on ‘immigrant protest’ has emerged in response to this rise in the visibility of immigrant protests, and its central aim is to contribute to the growing body of scholarship on migrant resistance movements and to consider the implications of these struggles for critical understandings of citizenship. This introduction maps out some of the central issues and themes emerging from the contributions to this issue, exploring the tensions between integrationist and autonomous approaches and theories of migrant activism and resistance and between migrant and activist strategies of invisibility and visibility. By bringing immigrant protests to the heart of debates about citizenship, we hope to further extend discussions about the limits and the possibilities of citizenship as the material and conceptual horizon of critical social analysis and political participation and practice today.     

Empirical social choice: an introduction

The year 2012 was the 30th anniversary of William H. Riker’s modern classic Liberalism against populism (1982) and is marked by the present special issue. In this introduction, we seek to identify some core elements and evaluate the current status of the Rikerian research program and its empirical applications. Special attention is given to three phenomena and their possible empirical manifestations: The instability of social choice in the form of (1) the possibility of majority cycles, (2) the non-robustness of social choices given alternative voting methods, and (3) the possibility of various forms of manipulation of the decisions (heresthetics). These topics are then connected to the contributions to the current special issue.     

Cause and consequence in legislation: an introduction

Abstract. Legislation has traditionally been studied from different but usually limited perspectives. To analyse the process of law-making as an extended process including the causes as well as the consequences of legislation, the initiation as well as the implemention of legislative decisions, may contribute to a better understanding of the effects and limits of contemporary politics, to the meaning of different policy styles, and to the role of interest groups both before and after formal decision making has taken place. It may also sharpen our awareness of the basic assumptions from which participants in the political process proceed and direct our attention to changes in the prevailing patterns in political decision making and their possible consequences.     

Beyond protest and discontent: A cross‐national analysis of the effect of populist attitudes and issue positions on populist party support

Studies on populist parties – or ‘supply‐side populism’ more generally – are numerous. Nevertheless, the connection with demand‐side dynamics, and particularly the populist characteristics or tendencies of the electorate, requires more scholarly attention. This article examines in more detail the conditions underlying the support for populist parties, and in particular the role of populist attitudes amongst citizens. It asks two core questions: (1) are populist party supporters characterised by stronger populist attitudes than other party supporters, and (2) to what extent do populist (and other) attitudes contribute to their party preference? The analysis uses fixed effect models and relies on a cross‐sectional research design that uses unique survey data from 2015 and includes nine European countries. The results are threefold. First, in line with single‐country studies, populist attitudes are prominent among supporters of left‐ and right‐wing populist parties in particular. Second, populist attitudes are important predictors of populist party support in addition to left‐wing socioeconomic issue positions for left‐wing populist parties, and authoritarian and anti‐immigration issue positions for right‐wing populist parties. Third, populist attitudes moderate the effect of issue positions on the support for populist parties, particularly for individuals whose positions are further removed from the extreme ends of the economic or cultural policy scale. These findings suggest that strong populist attitudes may encourage some voters to support a populist party whose issue positions are incongruous with their own policy‐related preferences.