Welfare state policies and far right party support: moderating ‘insecurity effects' among different social groups

Abstract

This article examines the interplay between social risks, welfare state policies and far right voting. Distinguishing between compensatory and protective policies and using data from seven waves of the European Social Survey (ESS) and social policy datasets, the article tests a range of hypotheses about the extent to which welfare state policies moderate the insecurities that drive particular social groups to vote for the far right. Empirical findings confirm theoretical expectations that several welfare state policies reduce the likelihood of supporting the far right among individuals exposed to high risks including the unemployed, pensioners, low-income workers, employees on temporary contracts, individuals in large families, and individuals who are disabled/permanently sick. These findings suggest that in order to understand why some individuals vote for the far right, one should not only focus on their risk-driven grievances, but also on policies that may moderate these risks.

Keywords:

• Welfare state
• Western Europe
• far right parties
• economic insecurity
• social policies
• European Social Survey

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to participants of the ‘Between Populism and Capitalism’ workshop held at Konstanz University in September 2019, the audience of the DSPI colloquium at Oxford in February 2019, and participants of the mini-conference on populism in Europe held during the 2018 APSA conference for helpful discussions and comments. We would also like to thank Neha Hui and Michael Ganslmeier for providing excellent support with the data collection and empirical analyses. The anonymous reviewers and editors of West European Politics also provided us with very helpful constructive feedback. Finally, we are grateful to Marius Busemeyer and Philip Rathgeb for extensive comments on previous versions, and for putting together this special issue.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Note that a third effect is – by design – empirically unobservable: the existence of the welfare state also fundamentally reshapes the prevalence and extent of most social risks, but this effect can never be observed since it would require comparing the current risk distribution to a counter factual reality without the welfare state, a well-known problem in studies on redistribution, disposable income inequality and market income inequality (Brandolini and Smeeding 2011).

2 See Section A.1 in Online Appendix for a list of parties and countries and the distribution of far right party support in our sample.

3 See Section A1.4 in Online Appendix for histograms of these variables.

4 The full results for all variables are shown in Section A3 of the Online Appendix – but note that the interaction effects can only be interpreted from the interaction plots shown in Section A4.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tim Vlandas

Tim Vlandas (PhD, LSE) is Associate Professor of Comparative Social Policy and a Fellow of St Antony’s College at the University of Oxford. His research explores the relationship between electoral politics, public policies and economic outcomes. It has been published in Comparative Political Studies, Socio-Economic Review, Journal of Common Market Studies, Politics&Society, Journal of European Social Policy, European Political Science, European Journal of Industrial Relation, Social Policy and Administration, Political Science Research and Methods, Basic Income Studies, Political Quarterly, European Political Science Review, Review of European Economic Policy, French Politics, Nations&Nationalism, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Journal of International and Comparative Social Policy and Comparative European Politics. He has been awarded research prizes by the European Network for Social Policy Analysis and the American Political Science Association. [[email protected]]

Daphne Halikiopoulou

Daphne Halikiopoulou (PhD, LSE) is Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Reading. She is interested in party politics and voting behaviour with a focus on the far right, populism and nationalism in Europe. She is the author of The Golden Dawn’s ‘Nationalist Solution’: Explaining the Rise of the Far Right in Greece (with Sofia Vasilopoulou) and numerous articles on European far right parties. Her research appears in the European Journal of Political Research, Journal of Common Market Studies, European Political Science Review, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Government and Opposition and Nations and Nationalism, among others. Her article ‘Risks, Costs and Labour Markets: Explaining Cross-National Patterns of Far Right Party Success in European Parliament Elections’ (with Tim Vlandas) has been awarded Best Paper by the American Political Science Association (APSA). She is joint Editor-in-Chief of the journal Nations and Nationalism and co-editor of the Springer book series in Electoral Politics. [[email protected]]