Negative partisanship towards the populist radical right and democratic resilience in Western Europe

Meléndez, Carlos; Kaltwasser, Cristóbal Rovira

doi:10.1080/13510347.2021.1883002

Cited by 50 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…This is because mainstream supporters will feel directly attacked and because many have a deeply rooted disapproval of the populist and nativist claims. Carlos Meléndez and Cristóbal Kaltwasser (2021) report that over half of all Europeans indicate they would never vote for the populist radical right, which is a higher level of negative partisanship than reported regarding any other party family. By shifting the playing field to the question of how politics is done , sustained PRR presence realigns and crystallizes the mainstream into an anti-populist camp (Moffitt 2018).…”

Section: Prr Parties Affective Polarization and Political Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This approach to politics as a moral struggle between a clear-cut ‘ingroup’ and ‘outgroup’, expressed in antagonistic party messages, can be expected to amplify negativity towards political outgroups among PRR supporters. In turn, opponents of PRR parties can be expected to react strongly to the attacks implied in these messages and, realigned into an ‘anti-populist’ camp (Moffitt 2018), to be disapproving of PPR parties and their supporters in response (Mendélez and Kaltwasser 2021). This dislike of the PRR might well be amplified by the strong stigma attached to these parties' nativist agenda (Blinder et al 2013; Harteveld et al 2019).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Affective Polarization and the Populist Radical Right: Creating the Hating?

2021

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Do populist radical right (PRR) parties fuel affective polarization? If so, how and under which circumstances? Based on a comparative cross-country analysis covering 103 elections in 28 European countries and an examination of longitudinal data from the Netherlands, we show that PRR parties occupy a particular position in the affective political landscape because they both radiate and receive high levels of dislike. In other words, supporters of PRR parties are uniquely (and homogeneously) negative about (supporters of) mainstream parties and vice versa. Our analyses suggest that these high levels of antipathy are most likely due to the combination of these parties' nativism and populism – two different forms of ingroup–outgroup thinking. Our findings also suggest that greater electoral success by PRR parties reduces dislike towards them, while government participation appears threatening to all voters except coalition partners.

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Section: Prr Parties Affective Polarization and Political Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Affective Polarization and the Populist Radical Right: Creating the Hating?

2021

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“…Similarly, Gidron et al ( forthcoming ) show that radical-right parties in Western Europe tend to be more disliked than their ideological extremism would predict. We can couple this policy extremism with Bolsonaro's blatantly hostile and populist rhetoric, which is also theorized to evoke strong negative feelings amongst voters (Meléndez and Kaltwasser 2021 ). Indeed, Meléndez and Kaltwasser ( 2021 ) have recently shown that the Populist Radical-Right party family has the highest number of negative identifiers in Western Europe.…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Negative partisanship is particularly important for understanding political attitudes in Eastern Europe (Rose and Mishler 1998 ) and several Latin American countries (Haime and Cantú 2022 ), contexts in which positive identification with parties is low and political competition is often dichotomized. Further, the rise of negative partisanship in Western Europe (Meléndez and Kaltwasser 2021 ) and the United States (Abramowitz and Webster 2016 ) suggests negative partisanship can exert independent effects on political behaviour even in more established, high-partisan polities. Therefore, rather than acting as a unique example, Brazil is one of many potential cases where affective polarization may be better understood through the lenses of negative partisanship rather than strong in-group attachments or ideological disagreements.…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Them’ without ‘us’: negative identities and affective polarization in Brazil

Areal

2022

Political Research Exchange

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High levels of hostility between those on opposing sides of politics have led to a burgeoning literature on the concept of affective polarization. Though a globally widespread phenomenon, extant literature has generated theoretical expectations and empirical findings mostly inspired by the United States and Western Europe. By studying the case of Brazil, I argue and show that traditional explanations do not provide satisfactory accounts of affective polarization in contexts where politics is only weakly structured by ideology or partisan attachments. I argue and show that in such contexts the concept of negative political identities can provide a much better explanation for why politics is so divisive. Using both the 2014 and 2018 waves of the Brazilian Electoral Studies (BES) and independently collected survey data ( N = 1732), I provide robust empirical findings supporting the primacy of negative political identities over traditional explanations. Negative identification with the out-party/leader has a strong effect on dislike towards out-voters even when controlling for instrumental evaluations of political elites. This paper contributes to the comparative research agenda on affective polarization outside Western contexts, as well as to the study of negative political identities.

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“…The choice to include party cues from the Progress and Labour Party stems from their position as antagonists in the Norwegian party system and that they have been part of the right-and left-leaning government alternatives. Previous research has also indicated that populist-right parties are subject to intense loathing from supporters of mainstream parties, and it is therefore useful to include cues from parties associated with both mainstream and populist parties (Harteveld et al, 2021;Meléndez and Kaltwasser, 2021). Likewise, studies on outparty cues indicate that they could have a stronger influence when assigned to parties characterized as populist-right (Bolin et al, 2021).…”

Section: Experimental Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

How negative out-party affect influenced public attitudes about the coronavirus crisis in Norway

Ryan

2022

Front. Polit. Sci.

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Research on affective polarization and negative partisanship toward disliked out-parties has increased significantly in recent years. However, there are surprisingly few studies that actually examine its political consequences, especially outside of the US. This study relies on two survey experiments to examine how dislike toward out-parties affected how Norwegian citizens evaluated the country's response to the coronavirus crisis. The first experiment follows the example of previous research on the US case and tests how out-party dislike measured before the coronavirus outbreak affected subsequent attitudes about how Norway and the conservative government had managed the crisis. The second experiment then randomly assigns party cues to a policy proposal included in the country's economic rescue package and tests whether like-dislike party evaluations moderate the effect of receiving the party cues. Overall, the results show that out-party dislike predicted attitudes to the government's response, but, contrary to studies focusing on the US case, this effect was either nonexistent or weaker for those who rated the country's response. Additionally, while out-party cues polarized opinions to the proposal, the moderating effect of out-party dislike was only more consistently found for those who received party cues from the populist-right party.

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Negative partisanship towards the populist radical right and democratic resilience in Western Europe

Cited by 50 publications

References 42 publications

Affective Polarization and the Populist Radical Right: Creating the Hating?

Affective Polarization and the Populist Radical Right: Creating the Hating?

‘Them’ without ‘us’: negative identities and affective polarization in Brazil

How negative out-party affect influenced public attitudes about the coronavirus crisis in Norway

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