Daphne Halikiopoulou on how right-wing populists get votes
'Vote for me, I'm not a Nazi'
Right-wing populism is on the rise. There’s Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni, former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro and Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban.
There’s also Marine Le Pen in France, the Danish People’s Party as well as the UK Independence Party and its former leader Nigel Farage.
In the United States, of course, we have former Republican president Donald Trump.
But what causes people to vote for far-right populist parties? What public concerns are these parties tapping into that help them reach the heights of political power?
Daphne Halikiopoulou is the chair in comparative politics at the University of York and formerly a professor of comparative politics at the University of Reading. Her research looks at party politics and voting behavior with a focus on right-wing populism and nationalism in Europe.
Halikiopoulou is the co-author with Tim Vlandas, professor of comparative social policy at Oxford University, of Understanding right-wing populism and what to do about it. She is also the co-author with Sofia Vasilopoulou, professor of international studies at King’s College London, of The Golden Dawn’s ‘Nationalist Solution’: explaining the rise of the far right in Greece.
I recently spoke with Halikiopoulou about right-wing populism, the social factors that feed these movements, how they have evolved over time and other important issues. You can listen to the audio of that conversation below.
Halikiopoulou has done work illustrating that to increase their electoral chances, far-right populist parties must mobilize grievances such as economic or security threats.
When economic and cultural interests align: The anti-immigration voter coalitions driving far right party success in Europe, European Political Science Review, 2020.
Birds of a feather? Assessing the prevalence of anti-immigration attitudes among the far-right electorate, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2020.
She has also done work showing that by excluding others on the basis of ideological as opposed to biological reasons, far-right populists are now able to redraw national identities in a way that lets them hijack liberal rhetoric.
The Paradox of Nationalism: The common denominator of radical right and radical left Euroscepticism, European Journal of Political Research
The civic Zeitgeist: nationalism and liberal values in the European radical right, Nations & Nationalism
In addition, her research focuses on how certain welfare state policies may help reduce the likelihood that people will support far-right populism by decreasing their exposure to things such as unemployment or low income.
Risks, Costs and Labour Markets: Explaining cross-national patterns of far right-wing party success in European Parliament Elections, Journal of Common Market Studies, 2015 (awarded Best Paper by the American Political Association).
Does unemployment matter? Economic insecurity, labour market policies and the far right vote in Europe, European Political Science
Halikiopoulou and I talked about a range of issues including how right-wing populism differs by region, the threat of far-left populism, far-right populism in Russia, the erosion of democracy from within and much more. I hope you enjoy the discussion.
Thank you for this - I really appreciate how you are using this substack to explore and explicate academic writing, in addition to providing political-interpretive commentary. I am troubled, though, by the focus on "populism" in academia. It seems to me that "populism" is often a hardly-veiled critique, and I am not sure it should be. Doubtless there are troubling patterns of credulity among politically right-leaning people, but it seems to me that much of what is captured by the concept of "populism" is simply non-academically-trained people trying to think for themselves. And there is very respectable philosophical warrant for that. I'm just re-reading Hannah Arendt's "Thinking and Moral Considerations" lecture, which provides a nice summary of her diagnoses for the "banality" of evil - which occurs when people refuse to stop and think about social conventions that upend their understanding of morality. In short, I think "populism" is to the academic left what "wokism" is to the non-academic right.....But I am very open to being told that I am wrong!;)
Look forward to the post! And I am definitely open to thinking about the ways that politicians might prey on this. I would vote for "non-academic" rather than "uneducated" because I think that there are many people who are highly educated, critical thinkers, who are not trained into the jargon of contemporary academia (perhaps for the better).....