Trade shocks and relative consumption: why the European middle class is turning far right

Benedicta Marzinotto

Review of International Political Economy, 2025, vol. 32, issue 4, 1145-1163

Abstract: This paper relates radical right political preferences to changes in relative consumption stemming from European countries’ trade exposure to low-quality producers (e.g. China). The availability of more affordable varieties benefits the poor, while middle-income groups stand to lose from such import shocks. Their consumption deprivation awakens the perception of losing out relative to other once marginalised groups in the same society, increasing support for far-right parties and their substantive electoral platforms. I empirically explore this hypothesis by relating measures of the consumption deprivation of the middle class relative to the lower bottom of the income distribution to survey-based data from the European Social Survey (ESS) on a sample of 18 European countries over 2002- 2014. The link to far-right support is present and especially strong in higher-income Western European economies, which are generally more exposed to the unequal gains from trade.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2025.2454911

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