Suchergebnisse

The victory of the Brexit camp in the 2016 United Kingdom (UK) referendum on whether to stay or leave the European Union (EU) represents a turning point in the history of European integration. This chapter juxtaposes economic and cultural factors, and briefly discusses the left-right dimension and nationalism as drivers of Euroscepticism. It first provides a brief theoretical overview that contextualises party-based and public Euroscepticism. The chapter proceeds with a focus on the economy and public Euroscepticism in the UK: it theorises economic insecurity and also discusses why it could potentially lead to a Leave vote. It follows by locating the findings in the context of other studies on the topic, outlining the profile of the Brexit voter in terms of their economic and cultural background, as well as his/her attitudes on various social issues. The chapter further discusses how to operationalise key factors related to economic insecurity and presents authors' results.

Does the economy affect patterns of far‐right party support across countries? This article reconceptualizes micro‐level analyses that focus on the effect of unemployment through a framework of costs, risks and the mediating role of labour market institutions. It then derives several hypotheses and tests them on the results of the previous three EP elections in all EU Member States. Findings from multiple regression analyses indicate that unemployment, real GDP growth, debt and deficits have no statistically significant effect on far‐right party support at the national level. By contrast, labour market institutions influence costs and risks: where unemployment benefits and dismissal regulations are high, unemployment has no effect, but where either one of them is low, unemployment leads to higher far‐right party support. This explains why unemployment has not led to far‐right party support in some European countries that experienced the severity of the 2008 eurozone crisis.

While the 2014 European Parliament elections were marked by the rise of parties on the far right‐wing, the different patterns of support that we observe across Europe and across time are not directly related to the economic crisis. Indeed, economic hardship seems neither sufficient nor necessary for the rise of such parties to occur. Using the cross‐national results for the 2004, 2009 and 2014 EP elections in order to capture time and country variations, we posit that the economy affects the rise of far right‐wing parties in more complex ways. Specifically, we compare the experience of high‐debt countries (the 'debtors') and the others (the 'creditors') and explore the relationship between far right‐wing party success on the one hand, and unemployment, inequality, immigration, globalisation and the welfare state on the other. Our discussion suggests there might be a trade‐off between budgetary stability and far right‐wing party support, but the choice between Charybdis and Scylla may be avoided if policy‐makers carefully choose which policies should bear the brunt of the fiscal adjustment.

This edited volume traces the rise of far right vigilante movements – some who have been involved in serious violence against minorities, migrants and other vulnerable groups in society, whereas other vigilantes are intimidating but avoid using violence. Written by an international team of contributors, the book features case studies from Western Europe, Eastern Europe, North America, and Asia. Each chapter is written to a common research template examining the national social and political context, the purpose of the vigilante group, how it is organised and operates, its communications and social media strategy and its relationship to mainstream social actors and institutions, and to similar groups in other countries. The final comparative chapter explores some of the broader research issues such as under which conditions such vigiliantism emerges, flourishes or fails, policing approaches, masculinity, the role of social media, responses from the state and civil society, and the evidence of transnational co-operation or inspiration. This is a groundbreaking volume which will be of particular interest to scholars with an interest in the extreme right, social movements, political violence, policing and criminology.

This working paper argues with extensive statistical analysis that the rise of far-right parties in Europe has less to do with the economic crisis and unemployment levels as such but more with specific labour market policies and institutions. The authors show that the deregulation of employment protection legislation and the reduction of employment benefits have in many countries intensified the support for these far-right parties.

What is the impact of unemployment on far-right party support? This article develops a framework that links unemployment to far-right party support, while taking into account both the heterogeneity of the workforce and the role of labour market policies. More specifically, we focus on unemployment as a driver of economic insecurity and examine its effect on outsider and insider labour market groups. We identify the extent to which two labour market policies—unemployment benefits and Employment Protection Legislation (EPL)—mediate the effect of unemployment on economic insecurity, thus limiting the impact of unemployment on far-right party support. We carry out a large N analysis on a sample of 14 Western and 10 Eastern European countries between 1991 and 2013. We find that unemployment only leads to higher far-right support when unemployment benefits replacement rates are low. The results with regard to the mediating effect of EPL are more complex as EPL only mediates the impact of unemployment when we take into account the share of foreign-born population in the country.

This article focuses on the prevalence of anti-immigration attitudes among the far-right electorate. Drawing on the distinction between the predictive power of immigration concerns, and the question of how widespread these concerns are among the far-right voter pool, we proceed in two steps. First, we assess the extent to which anti-immigration attitudes are a necessary condition for voting far-right; and second, we examine whether far-right voters with different levels of anti-immigration attitudes exhibit similar individual and attitudinal characteristics. Using data from the 8th wave of the European Social Survey (ESS) we find that, surprisingly, anti-immigration attitudes are not a necessary condition for voting for the far-right as approximately one third of far-right voters have no concerns over immigration. We further show that far-right voters with different levels of immigration concerns have different profiles when it comes to other predictors of the far right-vote including ideological affinity, attachment to the EU and government satisfaction. Our contribution is significant as we suggest that there are different routes to voting for the far right by groups with different grievances, including non- immigration related.