Economic Decline, Inequality, and Communal Identities in Britain and France

Over the past decade, growing economic inequality has helped to fuel the rise of far-Right populist movements that have brought the European order under sustained challenge. The literature on right-wing populist voters has established that those most likely to be swayed by such parties are the “losers of globalization.” At the same time, many scholars note that economic issues frequently cut across the far Right’s electorates, dividing demographics with protectionist and neo-liberal preferences. Others have found that attitudes on social issues hold more importance for voters than economic issues, and class-based social identities are less important than traditionalist-communitarian ones. This contradiction implies significant ambiguity about the relationship between economic decline and growing inequality and the identarian social cleavages that provide much of the far-Right’s electoral support.

Using historical analysis of the evolution of party strategies and the views and priorities of the electorates of far-Right parties in France and Britain, this paper argues that the success of the far Right stems from the interaction of deteriorating economic conditions, reinforced by neoliberal economic policies since the 1980s, and nationally distinctive patterns of social-identity formation. We show that, as rural and blue-collar working communities faced falling incomes and rising unemployment, a shift from individualistic to communalistic forms of identity has heightened the tension between liberal-idealist/ traditionalist-communitarian values in ways that have increased support for the far Right. In this vein, the paper advances scholarly understanding of the fraught relationship between economic outcomes and identities in contemporary Europe.