Research: Radical right party success can be linked to depopulation

The success of radical right parties in many European countries is often linked to increased immigration. However, another significant demographic change has occurred parallel to the increased immigration, namely the depopulation of rural areas and former industrial towns. This phenomenon is pronounced in many European countries, not least in Sweden, and leads to many places losing a large part of their working-age population. What are the political consequences of these changes?

In "Emigration and Radical Right Populism," recently published in the American Journal of Political Science, Sirus Håfström Dehdari and Kåre Vernby, among others, study this issue using Swedish electoral data for the elections from 2002 to 2018 and data on depopulation from Swedish municipalities.

The results are manifold, but Sirus Håfström Dehdari and Kåre Vernby particularly highlight that a higher degree of depopulation leads to increased support for the Sweden Democrats.

Sirus Håfström Dehdari. Foto: Viktoria Garvare.

The increased support is partly due to the fact that those who move tend to vote for the Sweden Democrats to a lesser extent, meaning that their share of the voters increases when non-Sweden Democrats move out, and partly because those who remain become more inclined to vote for the Sweden Democrats as a result of their neighbors moving out of the municipality.

Sirus Håfström Dehdari

But there are also other important aspects.

Kåre Vernby. Foto: Rickard Kihlström / Stockholms universitet

We proceed to analyze survey data on citizens' views of local services, study the local press's reporting on out-migration and depopulation, and interview local politicians. Our results suggest that there are both material and psychological effects of depopulation: the material effects consist of voters perceiving a deterioration in the quality of private and public operations in the wake of depopulation, and the psychological that the remaining voters feel disappointed and abandoned.

Kåre Vernby

As a result, this increases the strategic scope for far-right parties.

The Sweden Democrats have managed to capture this discontent by blaming the deteriorating economic and social situation in depopulation municipalities on the established parties.

Sirus Håfström Dehdari

The study was conducted in collaboration with Rafaela Dancygier at Princeton University, David Laitin at Stanford University, and Moritz Marbach at University College London.