Physical Memories of the Past and Support for the Far-Right: Evidence from Inter-War Denmark

Lasse Aaskoven and Christian Vedel
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Lasse Aaskoven: University of Southern Denmark
Christian Vedel: University of Southern Denmark

No 295, Working Papers from European Historical Economics Society (EHES)

Abstract: A growing literature concerns the role of symbolic politics, including how political parties benefit electorally from politicizing the past, a strategy which should be more effective in localities with physical memories of the past. We test this argument by studying the effect of the local concentration of pre-Christian monuments on electoral support for the Danish Nazi Party -- a far-right party who relied heavily on the symbols of Denmark's pre-Christian past in its propaganda -- in Danish parliamentary elections 1935-1943. In contrast to the proposed theoretical argument, we find no evidence that Danish localities with a greater concentration of pre-Christian monuments saw greater electoral support for the Danish Nazi Party. These findings hint at the limits of symbolic politics for electoral support for the far-right and suggest that investigating the scope conditions for the political effects of physical memories of the past may be a fruitful avenue for future research.

Keywords: Symbolic politics; Collective memory; Far-right voting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 N44 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2026-01
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hes:wpaper:0295

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