Contingent Extremism: How Popularity Cues Shape Extreme Political Identity

• In Event: Far-Right Political Parties

Abstract

For decades, European far right parties existed at the political fringe, garnering the support of a small group of staunch extremists. In recent years, support for these parties increased substantially. I argue that far right parties broadened their base by mobilizing contingent extremists—supporters who long held extreme beliefs, but who viewed these parties as illegitimate in more hostile opinion climates. As parties' perceived popularity increased, it activated supporters—especially in places where the actual popularity was low. To test this theory, I field survey experiments in Germany (n=1,991), France (n=1,770), and Hungary (n=1,015) to measure respondents’ willingness to identify as far right supporters when assigned to more or less ‘favorable’ information about party popularity through randomly varied polls. Respondents’ differential willingness to identify as supporters in these experimental treatments indicates contingent extremism. I find that most contingent extremists reside in voting districts where the far right is electorally weak. A second wave of experiments in these countries (n=3,527 total) leverages the temporal evolution of these parties over an election cycle to better identify the parameters of contingent extremism.

Author

• Laura Jakli, Harvard University