Sub-national economic inequalities and electoral change in Europe

Economic grievances accounts of the rise of the populist radical right concentrate on poorer places that suffer from lack of opportunity. These geographic divides have explained the rise of Trump in the US or Brexit in the UK. However, the focus on ‘left-behind’ places conceals a paradox. Populist radical right voting across Europe is also concentrated in many objectively wealthier places, where theoretically conditions for this phenomenon are not favourable.To address this paradox, INEQCHANGE innovates through a re-conceptualisation and measurement of the sub-national economic inequality context that considers long-term structural change and shorter to medium-term fluctuations in living standards at the constituency level; and by opening the ‘black box’ of the micro-foundations of the relationship between sub-national inequalities and populist radical right support. INEQCHANGE proposes a major data collection endeavour that rigorously tests the theoretical framework against empirical observation and experimental data in five European countries, including France, Germany, Poland, Sweden, and Greece. The project will (1) systematically measure and map the different dimensions of sub-national inequality at a fine-grained level of analysis; and analyse their effects on election outcomes at the constituency level; (2) explore how citizens make sense of economic inequalities related to their constituency; (3) examine the micro-foundations of the relationship between sub-national inequalities and individual-level populist radical right voting; and (4) scrutinize which of the micro-level mechanisms is causally related to populist radical right voting and among which citizen groups.The project’s innovative mixed-method research design combines the systematic use of data on sub-national economic inequalities with national electoral results measured at the constituency level, focus group data, bespoke cross-sectional public opinion surveys, and survey experiments.