Wednesday, June 26, 2013
C2.17 (Oudemanhuispoort)
To explain the success of the extreme right most existing cross-national quantitative studies on Europe (e.g. Rydgren 2004, Wodak and Pelinka 2002; Gingrich and Banks2006; Norris 2005) have designated the state as the unit of analysis, overlooking the significant intra-country and intra-regional variation in the far right vote and potentially relevant regional differences in relevant predictors such as immigration urbanization and the electoral success of the moderate right. In addition, a mere focus on the state as unit of analysis forces scholars to base their conclusions on the questionable assumption that relationships at the national and sub-national level are identical. The only way to eliminate the risk of such ecological fallacies is through the use of more “fine grained” data (Rydgren 2007, 250) at the regional level of each state. By presenting and analyzing a new dataset on all regions of the EU 15 plus Switzerland and Norway for all post 1990 general elections, this analysis ventures to become the first study to investigate the impact of seven social, economic, and political factors on the regional level commonly associated with extreme right-wing support: urbanization, social isolation, immigration, unemployment voter turnout, vote for the moderate right and crime. Using hierarchical modeling I find that center-right support is negatively related to the vote for the extreme right, while rural areas and regions with few foreigners show higher electoral support.
