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Extreme‐Right Voting in Western Europe: The Role of Social‐Cultural and Antiegalitarian Attitudes
Author(s) -
Cornelis Ilse,
Van Hiel Alain
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
political psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.419
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1467-9221
pISSN - 0162-895X
DOI - 10.1111/pops.12187
Subject(s) - social dominance orientation , authoritarianism , voting , social psychology , prejudice (legal term) , psychology , biology and political orientation , ethnic group , politics , voting behavior , political science , democracy , law
The joint impact of antiegalitarian attitudes and social‐cultural attitudes on citizens’ tendency to vote for extreme right‐wing political parties was investigated. In the first study, we explored these attitudes in representative samples of seven W estern E uropean countries. In a follow‐up study, we predicted respondents’ likelihood of voting for a D utch right‐wing party on the basis of the measures of social‐dominance orientation (as an indicator of antiegalitarian attitudes) and right‐wing authoritarianism (as an indicator of social‐cultural attitudes). Our findings demonstrated that voting for extreme right‐wing parties was associated more consistently with antiegalitarian attitudes than with social‐cultural attitudes. Moreover, the effect of antiegalitarian attitudes was partly mediated by migration attitudes (Study 1) and ethnic prejudice (Study 2). We discuss the finding that antiegalitarian attitudes are more strongly related to extreme right‐wing voting than social‐cultural attitudes.