A CULTURAL BACKLASH ALL OVER EUROPE? INVESTIGATING THE LINK FROM VALUES TO VOTES IN A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

A common strand in the literature on electoral behavior in Western democracies explains voter support for far-right parties through increasing alienation of social conservatives from mainstream society in the context of progressive value change. This account of electoral change relies on a pathway from social conservatism to authoritarian personality traits and subsequent electoral behavior, and it also predicts when that sequence is most likely to be triggered. This dissertation critically reviews the theoretical argument for the mechanism, maps voters' attitudes on relevant issue dimensions, and then subjects the argument to an empirical test in a comparative European perspective using analyses of survey data. At the theoretical level, many authors converge on a reading of electoral change benefitting the far right as driven by newly emerged cultural preferences. The argument is made most forcefully by Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart in their theory of a "cultural backlash". But upon closer inspection, the argument is not persuasive. Norris and Inglehart's pathway to the renewed popularity of the far right in Western countries relies on a congruence of socially conservative and authoritarian attitudes that is not convincingly demonstrated. And the wider literature that aligns with their argument often suffers from blending different types of cultural issues into single indicators, which may mask differences between countries in how preferences on individual items are associated with far-right support. In order to clarify whether there is a uniform cultural backlash that has boosted the European far right, the empirical part of the dissertation proceeds in several steps. First, three dimensions of socio-cultural issues are identified in the relevant literature: nationalism and European integration, immigration, and traditional morality. For each of these dimensions, attitudes between supporters of the far right and supporters of other parties are compared. A uniform pattern emerges across countries for attitudes towards immigration and European integration. The domain of traditional morality, by contrast, shows considerable divergences across countries. The pattern of socially conservative supporters of the far right, that are alienated by a progressive societal mainstream, does not hold everywhere. In the next two chapters, several hypotheses are developed to investigate the predictive power of socially conservative attitudes on support for far-right parties. They include both individual-level predictors and contextual variables that should moderate the hypothesized link if the theory holds. Multilevel logistic regression techniques are employed to test the hypotheses. But the results often do not match the theoretical predictions. Evidence for a cultural backlash, in the form of an association between socially conservative attitudes and far-right support, is absent in many countries. And where the link is confirmed, there is a mismatch between these findings and the long-running historical trends that are invoked in the literature to explain cultural change, and by implication also cultural alienation, in Western societies. Conversely, in countries where the theorized conditions for a cultural backlash are met, the evidence for this dynamic is particularly weak. The final chapter then concludes by discussing what these findings mean for our understanding of today's European far-right. It is possible that far-right electorates across Europe exhibit enduring differences in their socio-cultural attitudes. Alternatively, it may be that the diverging findings on this dimension reflect a process of interaction between national history, public opinion patterns and far-right party strategies. In any case, in light of the evidence accumulated throughout the analysis, the argument for a universal backlash against progressive norms and ideals as the driver of the resurging far-right in European societies is found unconvincing.