Sub-National Context and Radical Right Support in Europe

Electoral support for the radical right, including parties such as the French FN, the German AfD, the Dutch PVV and UKIP in Britain, has long presented a challenge to mainstream politics in many European nations. Previous research has shown that the principal motivation for supporting such parties has historically been anti-immigrant sentiments, and more recently anti-Muslim attitudes. Such factors become important in people's voting decision through local and national context. Comparative research into radical right parties has focused mainly on national-level indicators and individual motivations when explaining variation in support for these parties. Some research uses local data to look at how support varies in different parts of a country, but to date there is an absence of comparative research which formalises the effect of subnational conditions and context on radical right support. This project brings together an interdisciplinary political science, sociology and geography team to build such an analysis for four key countries (France, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK) which provide different institutional, infrastructural, socio-economic and ideological contexts in which to study the phenomenon. The three-year project will have three main objectives. First, it will collate all available secondary political and socio-economic data from official sources to establish an across-time database at different regional and local levels. Second, it will supplement these data with a standardised public opinion survey across the four countries, to collect an up-to-date set of individual demographic, attitude and behavioural information. Lastly, it will bring these together in a full model of radical right support, to identify the respective role of territorial context and individual factors. The results will provide an unparalleled level of detailed understanding of the determinants of radical right support, which will be of importance both to our academic understanding and to stakeholders' policy planning and implementation in addressing the issues associated with support for these parties.

This project looks to engage with a range of non-academic stakeholders across the three years, to consult on the collation and usage of secondary data, the design of primary data collection, and then to provide access to the resulting datasets and analyses to inform their own work on radical right support at the local level. Three principal groups can be identified. First, local government and associated community stakeholders, with whom the project team can engage on collated secondary data to understand how these reflect reality 'on the ground', and thereby subsequently provide these partners with an important data resource. Variation in the four countries' local governance structures means such groups' input to data collation will be invaluable. Second, regional and national policy-makers (regional governance, national governmental departments, e.g. DCLG, Ministère de l'Intérieur), associated units / thinktanks researching extremism (e.g. Chatham House, Demos, Counterpoint, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, Dutch ICE) and third-sector organisations monitoring radical right support (e.g. Hope Not Hate, SOS-Racisme) will benefit from project briefing papers and data in understanding socio-economic context to radical right support, as well as more local evidence of contextual drivers. Third, national statistical offices will provide input on data availability and linkage for data collation, and benefit from methodological innovations developed in the project team, as well as an evidence base of the value of publicly funded data in linking across spatial scales.

Each stage of engagement with the above groups will form the basis for knowledge exchange, leading to impact. Linked secondary data across different territorial levels will provide a unique dataset, contributing directly, through stakeholders' own analyses, and indirectly, through the project team's briefing papers, and informing a wide range of policy-makers and local actors. One innovative aspect of impact collaboration will be in coordination with local and national government departments concerned with social geographical drivers to community and economy, as well as city and service planners implementing policy in urban development and regeneration, to consider the effect of community integration and group location. The primary survey design will also involve targeted contributors to consult on item content and possible uses of data in addition to the core academic outputs. The November 2017 symposium will then bring these stakeholders together with the project team and other academic experts to examine the extent to which national and local statistics are fit for purpose in examining local political phenomena, as well as presenting preliminary analyses of the full data resource. Follow-up engagement with local groups will endeavour to produce more in-depth case study work on locations with radical right support to complement data modelling.

The project will actively target organisations for collaboration, but promotion of data availability through the project website will be extensive, in order to access as wide a range of interested stakeholders as possible. The team will specifically promote the use of the data resources, through the data playground or by downloadable datasets, as a tool for public benefit. Given the technical nature of much of the data linkage, the team will offer support and advice on best usage, and methodological issues in adapting the data to external projects.