Extreme Right-Wing Voting in Western Europe
This chapter attempts to explain why extreme right-wing parties are popular in some European Union countries & not in others, an important question because of the growing differences in attitudes among EU member states. Data from several national & international surveys conducted in the 1990s (a total of 49,801 respondents) on right-wing voting behavior in 16 West European countries were analyzed in relation to national differences in social structure, public opinion, economic conditions, political conditions, characteristics of extreme right-wing parties, & relations between individual-level & contextual characteristics. The findings show that, across countries, people who were poorer, un- or under-employed, less educated, non-religious, younger, & male tended to vote for right-wing parties. Between-country differences were explained more by public opinion; in particular, in countries where more people had anti-immigrant attitudes & expressed dissatisfaction with democracy, there was greater support for extreme right-wing parties. Tables, Figures. J. Stanton