The rising power of extreme right parties in Europe: the role of political culture

Official URL: http://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b1606735 (Table of Contents)

This research elaborates the role of political culture on the rising power of extreme right parties from 20 European countries between the time period of 2002 and 2012. Previous studies in the literature focuses on the effects of economic and political conditions to explain increasing vote share of extreme right parties. This thesis aims to introduce cultural explanations to provide an additional focus on value orientations of people and social cleavages behind their voting behavior. With the above mentioned aim, this thesis tests the effects of political culture with the cross-national survey data from European countries to analyze the rise on extreme right voting. First, the effect of previously studied contextual characteristics and socio-political attitudes are introduced. Further, to measure political culture, different values such as; religiosity, political and social trust, tolerance, civic engagement, obedience and national pride are tested. As findings show; intolerance to immigrants and ethnic minorities is an important indicator for extreme right voting and religiosity, civic engagement or activism and political distrust have a positive impact on increasing votes of ERPs in Europe.