Economic growth and political extremism

Markus Brückner and Hans Peter Grüner ()
Additional contact information
Hans Peter Grüner: University of Mannheim

Public Choice, 2020, vol. 185, issue 1, No 7, 159 pages

Abstract: Abstract We argue that the growth rate, but not the level of aggregate income, affects the support for extreme political parties. In our model, extreme parties offer short-run benefits to part of the population at the expense of a minority. Growth effects on the support for such parties arise when uncertainty exists over whether the same subset of individuals will receive the same benefits in the future. More people are willing to take political risks if economic growth is slow. Based on a panel of 16 European countries, our empirical analysis shows that slower growth rates are associated with a significant increase in right-wing extremism. We find no significant effect of economic growth on the support for extreme left-wing parties.

Keywords: Economic growth; Political extremism; Inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O40 O52 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11127-019-00745-w Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:185:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1007_s11127-019-00745-w

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/11127/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11127-019-00745-w

Access Statistics for this article

Public Choice is currently edited by WIlliam F. Shughart II

More articles in Public Choice from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().