Scholarship on far right parties in Post-Communist Europe has borrowed findings and analytical frameworks from studies on the Western European far right. Similarly, studies on Western European far right parties have increasingly referenced instances of far right success in post-communist states. These parties are similar in their Euroskepticism and exclusionary populism. However, little work has compared voters for the far right between regions. Different political opportunity structures have consequences for far right voter profiles in four important respects. First, the linkage between anti-immigrant attitudes and far right support is stronger in Western Europe. Second, far right voters in Western Europe are less religious than their post-communist counter-parts. Third, post-communist far right voters are economic leftists, whereas rightist attitudes toward income redistribution slightly predict a far right vote in Western Europe. Finally, far right voters in Western Europe are more satisfied with democracy as a regime type.
Support for Western Europe’s far-right is majority-male. However, given the sweeping success of the party family, literature on this ‘gender gap’ belies support given to the radical right by millions of women. We examine differences between men and women’s support for far-right parties, focusing on workplace experience, positions on economic and cultural issues, and features of far-right parties themselves. We find that the received scholarship on blue-collar support for far-right populists is a largely male phenomenon, and women in routine nonmanual (i.e. service, sales, and clerical) work are more likely than those in blue-collar work to support the far-right. Moreover, while men who support the far-right tend to be conservative on other moral issues, certain liberal positions predict far-right support among women, at both the voter and party level. Our analysis suggests that gender differences may obscure the socio-structural and attitudinal bases of support for far-right parties and have broader implications for comparative political behavior and gender and politics.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.