Populism, Nativism, and Economic Uncertainty

“Daigle’s, Neulen’s, and Hofeman’s comparative analysis of the 2017 elections in Germany, Britain, and France puts populism in a broader perspective. The breadth of their public opinion data and the leverage of their comparative design allows them to scrutinize systematically some popular explanations for the rise of right-wing populism. This could hardly be more timely.”       

—Christopher Cochrane, Associate Professor, University of Toronto, Canada

“This gem of a book is a high-quality investigation into a pressing phenomenon in economically-advanced democracies: the success of the extreme right in France, Great Britain and Germany.”

—Delia Dumitrescu, Lecturer in Media and Cultural Politics, University of East Anglia, UK

This project offers an in-depth look at the three 2017 elections held in Western Europe: France, Germany, and the UK. With events like Brexit and a general rise in right-wing populism across highly industrialized nations, understanding the underlying causes of increasingly extreme electoral behavior is both valuable and prescient. A highly theoretically-focused and current project, it provides a consistent methodological and analytic approach that uses election study data and primary sources to offer a complete and cogent picture of this complex phenomenon as can only found by examining the attitudes and behaviors of the most powerful of democratic participants: the voters.