Support for populist right-wing parties and candidates has increased considerably across the globe in recent years. How can we make sense of deep geographic divides in where support for populism appears around the world?
Support for populist right-wing parties and candidates has increased considerably across the globe in recent years. In addition to this overall rise in support, receptiveness towards the exclusionary, reactionary rhetoric and policies of Bolsonaro, Trump, Modi or their European counterparts all have their own distinct electoral geographies.
On Tuesday, February 23rd, Ash Center Democracy Postdoctoral Fellow Pauliina Patana and a global panel of experts discussed how to make sense of these deep geographic divides, similarities, and differences in spatial patterns across countries, strategies parties are using to mobilize voters across space and place, and other pertinent questions.
Panelists included:
The transcript for this episode is online here.
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Terri Givens: So we have to really start dig in to what is causing these people to be attracted to these parties. And a lot of it is this kind of interaction between post materialism and cultural threat in the sense that, Oh my gosh, my country, the vote in my country is becoming more and more people who don't look like me.
Quinton Mayne: Well, hi everyone. Thank you for joining us this afternoon. My name is Quinton Mayne. I am an Associate Professor here at The Kennedy School and I'm delighted to introduce today's event given the overlap between today's topic and my own research on public opinion and sub national politics in Europe. I just wanted to start with a few announcements on the Ash Center's behalf. First, the Ash Center would like to acknowledge the land in which Harvard sits as the traditional territory of the Massachusetts people and a place which has long served as a site of meeting and exchange among nations. If you're interested in joining us for other events on issues of democracy, you can see our current schedule on the Ash Center website. Finally, I'd like to introduce you to our moderator for today's discussion, Pauliina Patana. Pauliina is currently a Democracy Postdoctoral fellow at the Ash Center for democratic governance and innovation. Pauliina received her PhD in government from Cornell University in 2020. Her research focuses on political behavior, political economy and party politics primarily in Western democracies. Her book project tentatively titled "Residential constraints on the political geography of the populist radical right", examines the puzzling geographic patterns in the rise and popularity of populist radical right parties, with that let me now hand the mic so to speak over to Pauliina.
Pauliina Patana: Great. Thank you so much Quinton and thank you everyone in the audience for joining us today and also a special thanks to James, Melissa and Julianne for helping to make this event happen. So as Quintan mentioned, I have indeed spend a lot of time researching and thinking about today's topic myself and I'm therefore really excited to have this conversation with a wonderful group of leading experts that we have with us today. So before we get started let me just give a brief introduction of our panelists. So first of all, I'm really thrilled to be joined by Dr. Terri Givens. Who's the CEO and Founder of Brighter Higher ed. So Terri is also a Political Scientist and she has written extensively on the radical right on the impact of immigration and race on political systems in the U.S. and Europe. And in addition two influential books on these topics like voting radical right in Europe and immigration in the 21st century, she also has a new, very timely book called "Radical empathy finding a path to bridging racial divides." That's coming out this Thursday from policy press and I'm really looking forward to reading it. And I hope that we can touch on some of the themes of the book throughout the conversation as well. Now I'm also very glad to have professor Tariq Thachil with us. Tariq is The Director of The Center for Advanced Study of India, and he's also the Madan Lal Sobti chair for the study of Contemporary India of the university of Pennsylvania, and he's written and published extensively on party politics, political behavior on India's for ride BJP, and his first book, "Elite Parties, Poor Voters, How Social Services Win Votes in India" won numerous awards. And he's currently writing a new book on how political networks for a minute recognizing India. That sounds really fascinating as well. And I'm also thrilled to have professor Cristobal Rovira from the university of Diego Portales and San Diego Chile with us. Cristobal is one of the leading scholars on populism and right-wing parties. And he has done extensive research on the relationship between populism and democracy and on the contemporary populist forces and right-wing parties in Europe, Latin America and the U.S. and Cristobal has also coauthored and edited several key books on these topics including the recent, also very timely populism, a very short introduction coauthored with Carlos Modi, which has already been translated into multiple languages. So again, welcome to you all on. And I'm really excited for the conversation and have it especially from a comparative perspective. And I think for obvious reasons, a lot of the recent focus has been on the United States and we've all surely seen countless electoral maps from the U.S. over the past few months. I think even my 70 year old uncle in rural Finland now knows how many votes were needed in specific counties and across Pennsylvania. And well, I think that the U.S. is in many ways of course, a special case when it comes to its electoral institutions. I think this all just really speaks to how important it is to pay attention to the geographic dynamics of political behavior and how populist radical right parties and politicians are affecting and shaping those dynamics. So let me first give the floor to Terri. So like in the United States, there are quite stark rural- urban divides and populist radical right support in many European countries as well. So could you tell us a little bit more about recent political developments in populous right-wing mobilization and support in Europe and particularly what role do place in geography play in it in the European context, and is this story similar to the U.S.?
Terri Givens: Well, you know, it's an interesting story because for example, when I looked at Germany I see that where has the IFD, the alternative for Deutschland lender alternative for Germany, been successful? So, I have to go back historically because I started studying this stuff in the 1990s. And back then the geography wasn't so obvious. It was, you know, there was some movement in terms of the radical right, getting support in East Germany but it didn't really push out until later. And so one of the things I looked at back in the '90s was Bavaria and it's kind of similarities to the American South and, you know, frankly, I lived in Texas for 12 years when I was at university of Texas at Austin. And when I look at the state of Texas, I see similarities there but to be some Vale Bavaria and the independence, you know they had their own separate version of the Christian Democrats, the CSU versus the CDU. That's where a lot of this kind of populist rhetoric has been pulled in in terms of the Christian Democrats. So over time we've seen the rhetoric of the far right being coming more mainstream and taken on by the parties like the CSU and the CDU to a certain extent. But, you know, the other dynamic is of course, in Germany that East German vote and how you I remember being in Dresden when you had the marches going on, then I'm going to forget the name of the movement, but, you know so there's a lot of connection kind of to places where things you know, we talk a lot about the economic connections to the radical right. And of course, that's what I studied in my book voting radical right in Western Europe. But really, even back then, the stronger relationship was between kind of attitudes around immigration. But these were also what we call men, Papa you know, parties of men, you know, there's a 60, 40 split. So there's the geography component of where people are you know, feeling like in East Germany and fell on that people are feeling economically threatened but there's also the cultural threat. And so I think in perhaps in Bavaria that cultural threat may have played more of a role. And, you know, we bring in the word race which is a very complicated issue when you're talking about Europe because there's a lot of issues around what is race? How are people racialized? Is this a factor in the vote? And I think it's much more clear if you're in the U.S. you know, research done by American political scientists, I think is more clear about the connection between race and, you know I did see a connection between immigration and attitudes towards immigration but there's a broader story to be told. And some of the geography there, has to do with kind of the history and the connections, you know, a lot of the vote for the national front back in the '80s and '90s was coming from the South of France where people who had been forced to leave Algeria and you know, gave up their land and so on. And so they had this resentment towards Algerians which was not necessarily racial, but just the fact that their families had been negatively impacted. And so, you know, it's as always when you're studying these things, it's a complicated story but you can see some patterns in terms of, you know, the vote for the form rationale and even mayors being elected in the South of France, you know, the what's had been going on in terms around issues around immigration in the South of Germany and so on. But there's a lot of differences across countries in terms of how the radical right and populism has played out. And, you know I don't wanna simplify it too much, but, I do think geography plays a role in different ways.
Pauliina Patana: Thank you so much, Terri. And I think you touch on many important issues that we'll come back to in a little bit and talk more in detail about that. So now I wanna give the floor to Tariq who will be speaking to us about the Indian context. So we've seen the BJP and its leader Modi moving an increasingly solidifying its position of power in Indian politics and in the past few years. So how has the BJP which is a Hindu nationalist party with historically elite upper caste base managed to do this? And how do you see political geography mattering in the Indian context?
Tariq Thachil: Yeah, thanks very much. So let me say that, I'll talk a little bit more about the political geography of it maybe the next round of questions. 'Cause I know you have a more specific question on that but I think at the outset given that it's a comparative discussion, just a couple of clarifying notes. So in order, in terms of, as you mentioned when we're talking about the part of the agenda party the BJP in India, this is a party that's won two consecutive significant comprehensive national victories in 2014 and 2019. I know that there are a lot of combative audience members who may not know this history. And so that's significant in the Indian context in 2014 that's the first time in three decades that a single party has won a parliamentary majority on its own. And then the BJP repeated this feed in 2019. So this is a significant electoral victory. And let me say that given the kind of overall prompt, I'm gonna focus my remarks on what are the drivers electoral support for what we're calling in this panel right-wing populism. So let me begin by saying that, as we all may know the term populism is a nebulous one. And in calling the BJP a populous party, we're essentially already hinting at an explanation. And we're saying that we're calling it a populous party because we're attributing a large degree of its success to the popularity of the leader during their Modi. For example, the BJP actually headed a governing national coalition in 1999 and no one called that government, a populous government. So in labeling this government populists were already making an inference that it's populist because a lot of its success is driven by Modi. So I left what I want to just focus my remarks on what is driving this Modi effect because in the context of India, that's a parliamentary system. It's not always been the case that a single leader at the top drives election results. So when we're talking about it being populist and even the term right-wing is a little bit at odds with the way in which Indian politics is organized, Western categories of left and right don't fully map on to how Indian politics is organized. I'll talk a little bit later about the economic roots of the BJP appeal but I just wanna say right now that it's a little bit awkward to use that category for the BJP but to the degree that it has this incredibly, popular leader, it is an accurate representation. So what is driving the Indra Modi's specific popularity and the kind of striking effect it's had on expanding the BJP appeal beyond some of the confines of upper caste, urban demographics where it's enjoyed its strongest support. So a couple of factors one, Modi support personal popularity has been remarkably durable over the last several years. And he's had a consistent lead over all other major national political leaders in India. Second, recent survey data shows that a recent morning consult poll that even in comparison to other world leaders, Macron, Merkel, Tubol, Bolsonaro, Trump, Modi's ratings are consistently much higher. So his net favorability ratings really are strikingly large even with respect to other so-called populous leaders like Bolsonaro and Trump. And the importance of this appeal became even shaper after the 2019 victory in large part, because in fact they seem to be many structural headwinds going against the BJP in that victory. A lot of commentators were talking about the fact that there had been kind of lackluster economic growth if particularly on the jobs front in the Indian context during more these first to do a dome in office from 2014 to 2019. And yet despite those economic headwinds, the BJP emerged even stronger in the 2019 results and many concluded this was a direct function of Modi personal appeal, unmediated personal appeal to voters that was stronger than the appeal of the BJP as a party that Trump the kind of economic perhaps lackluster stagnation that the Indian economy had been suffering. And so a lot of the debates India has been. So what explains this kind of Teflon appeal Modi has that directly and transcends that of partisan politics and connects directly to voters. And I, there's not enough time for me to go through all of these theories. I'm just gonna highlight five very quick factors that are underlying Modi's direct appeal, some rooted in his repeated references to his humble outsider origins, the kind of classic popular stroke he's presented himself as someone who sold tea at a train station as a child, who is not part of the dynastic networks that characterize elite politics in India, including of his major rivals in the Indian National Congress. The second dimension is that a recent analysts have found that there is a sizeable chunk of Indians who favor less economic intervention by the state and a reduced role for the state in regulating business and providing subsidies. And Modi's appeal is disproportionately concentrated amongst those voters. So there's an economic component to it. The third is he's been remarkably politically effective in delivering and claiming credit for an increasing range of benefits to voters that are provided directly from the center and talk through India's federal multi-tiered system. And that is a tremendous part of his direct appeal with voters. The fourth is that there's some survey evidence suggesting a rising proportion of Indians hold the view of the need of a strong leader to govern a corrupt and chaotic country. And Modi is especially effective in tapping that rising demand. And the fifth is that four portions of the BJP is most militant debates. So not with every portion of its base but its most militant base, Modi's appeal is thought to lie in his longstanding ideological commitment to Hindu nationalism, which predates his involvement in electoral politics. And the majority in rhetoric that's used by him and his closest ally associates in campaigns is silence on violence against Muslims and government policies that are seen as disproportionately punitive towards Muslims. And I'm happy to talk about what those are but those are five major drivers of what is seen as his populist appeal. I'll stop there.
Pauliina Patana: Great. Thank you so much Tariq. Can let's next move on to Latin America which is a region traditionally better known for its left-wing populism historically and now in in recent years we have however seen and I think Brazil's president Bolsonaro obviously is the predominant manifestation of this an increasing receptiveness towards radical or right-wing populist politics and rhetoric including in Chile. So Cristobal what do you think explains the shift and how do you see geographic dynamics operating in that context?
Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser: Thanks Pauliina, for the question and also for the interest in Latin America and as you mentioned at the beginning in your question, Latin America is a huge continent. And because of that, it's quite difficult also to make like a brother general argument for the whole region. We are talking from Mexico, till Chile and also there are big economic differences within the region. But that being said, I would say that the populist radical right is the exception rather than the rule in the region. And in fact, there are two clear examples. I would say that really fit the definition of the populist radical right in the Latin American context the first one is the one that you probably now already mentioned and this is Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, who is the president of the country, who got elected a couple of years ago. And this would be an example of a populist radical right leader in government. The second very clear example is in my own country in Chile. And this is a brand new populist radical right party which is mainly driven by one leader. His name is Jose Antonio Kast and he gets in the polls roughly 10% of the vote. But this would be an example of the populist radical right in the opposition. And I would say these are the only two cases within Latin America that at least from my knowledge, I would say these are clear examples of the populist radical right. When I'm talking about the populist radical right, one brief comment on that I'm using here the usual conceptualization that comes from the European context and mainly the notion developed by Cuss Modi, who says that populist radical right parties offer a combination of three ideological tenets and these tenets are nativism, populism, and also retaliations Again, in the case of Latin America, I see all these two cases, Jose Antonio Kast in Chile, Bolsonaro, these are the only two cases in which we see leaders started combining these three ideological tenets. They're speaking the language of populism, they're playing with native his ideas. And at the same time they are very authoritarian. It is interesting to note here that in this definition that I'm using that comes from frack from the European context, there is no relationship with the economy. It's not populist radical right forces might develop very different types of populist economic programs. And in fact every knows that quite well in the European context many of these populist radical right parties are in favor of the welfare state, although with a very peculiar notion of who should deserve welfare. And this is why we talk about the welfare chauvinism because for example, in France the foreign national will say call of course we want to have a very strong welfare state but only for the real French people. But if you go to Latin America, for example, Bolsonaro and Jose Antonio Kast, develop a very neoliberal agenda. In fact, they want to privatize most of the economic system which is at all, it's a bit with the radical right in Europe, but this is again something important to mention that Terri mentioned briefly in her presentation also in ECC vide about the cultural that mentioned the economic segmentation and the way in which I understand the populist radical right, I would say that it's driven mainly by cultural issues. And this also explains in part why the radical right in Latin America is so irrelevant. And the explanation for that is that Europe at least it's very clear that the emergence and consolidation of the populist radical right it has a deeply related to the post material revolution. This is the classical modernization argument of Ronald Ingle Hart who says economic growth, sustain economic growth over decades has led to the rise of a post material society, which means that large chunks of the populations are getting very liberal, very cosmopolitan. And then you have the backlash against those values, and this is the populist radical right. Latin America because it's much more underdeveloped in economic terms, it hasn't reached that level of force materialism so to say, that you have the backlash, but nevertheless I think there is no coincidence that in Brazil and Chile we are seeing that type of backlash and partly is related because Chile and Brazil are in relatively speaking are very well developed economies within the Latin American context. Of course they are very unequal, but you still have. If you look for example survey data from world value survey data, you will see that you have also this post materialism coming in. So to say for a certain section of the population, but again, to reinforce the main argument that I want to develop here I think that the populist radical right in Latin America is the exception rather than the rule. And the main argument for that is an economic argument because material values are still predominant in the Latin American context. There is no mass as much space for daily politicization of that cultural agenda driven by the populist radical right. And I think that the COVID pandemic will reinforce that sort of development because it's generating a huge economic crisis across all Latin America. And this is why I think material values will continue to be very relevant at least in the couple of next years. That's my first point.
Pauliina Patana: Great. Thank you so much Cristobal. And I think this provides a really nice segue to my second set of questions where I want to dig in a little more deeper into these geographic dynamics that you've all mentioned already and touched on some of this. And I think that this is me talking about especially the European context, is that what seems true across the different contexts that we're talking about here today, two is that it's truly the social cultural issues that are at the heart of these parties and on politician's agenda yet we do also see that they're successful. So tracks, regions, and localities that have distinct economic characteristics. So should we consider these geographic divides as primarily cultural or economic and are they driven by protest or programmatic concerns or are there underlying programmatic concerns and how is the populist radical right or the populist right or the far right reshaping the longstanding connections between other parties and their a traditional geographic basis? So I'll go back to Terri and I'll let her answer this. Thank you.
Terri Givens: Right. And you know, it's really interesting to really look at, yeah I like the case of Germany because you know it's important to watch the growth of these parties and also the change in these parties. So the off date, the alternative for Germany was not a particularly radical right party when they started out, they were anti the Euro, which was a popular position to take in Germany 'cause a lot of people didn't like the Euro especially after the fiscal crisis. So to a certain extent, you know that's linked to the fiscal crisis and what happened there were Germans felt they were bailing out, the Southern part of Europe and so on, but, you know they took a shift. So we have to come back to this issue of immigration, right? And that's, and I really do believe that immigration and race are basically intertwined in Europe, as well as here in the U.S. and this idea of cultural threat doesn't necessarily link to geography because some of the places where the radical right is doing best don't have immigrants or you know, people of color. So there is no direct link there, but there is a sense of cultural threat in the idea behind, you know, we need to, you know in Austria, Austria for the Austrians, France for the French, all of this. And so what I think what the radical right parties and the populous are tapping into is, and I am so glad that Cristobal brought back this idea of 'cause I haven't heard people talking about close materialism for years, but this is important because it's not that people are deprived. You know, the people in East Germany who are voting for the day and the same thing with Trump voters, right? The Trump voters, you know the people who attack the Capitol generally say are not people who are deprived. So we have to really start dig in to what is causing these people to be attracted to these parties. And a lot of it is this kind of interaction between post materialism and cultural threat in the sense that, Oh my gosh, my country, the vote in my country is becoming more and more people who don't look like me. So when I'm sitting in, you know, I'm trying to think of a good city in East Germany, but you know it's not that I'm seeing a lot of people around me who are immigrants or from different backgrounds, is that when I'm watching television, when I'm watching who's being elected to different positions, you know all of that, it that's where they're seeing that threat. And they also know that even though they're comfortable, they're worried that, you know, they are going to have. So I think the geography is politicians really trying to tap into that fear of the future, that, you know we are going to lose our privilege and so on. And that there you know, it's so hard to make the direct comparisons because here in the U.S. there certainly are people who feel like the rise of women even as well as people of color into positions of power is directly threatening to them. And that, but you know, here in the U.S. the geography very clearly ties to this, you know, to a certain extent. I don't wanna over emphasize this but to the South, and, the history in the South and this idea of independence but I think we need to do more work around. 'Cause I'm really fascinated by how the CSU has tried to take over a lot of the rhetoric of the radical right. And the rhetoric and France, you know, the... 'cause what I've been seeing is over since the mid '90s when I really started focusing on this stuff is the rhetoric is shifting even with the mainstream parties. So it's about political competition when you get right down to it. How, and the other thing we have to bring back into play is where are the working class voters? So that's the white working class voters are the ones who are feeling the most under threat and who are attracted to a certain extent 'cause we know here in the U.S. it's not just the white working class, it's the people who feel threat because they business owners. So SMEs small medium entities. So we have to look beyond just the working class and say, it's these people who have the small businesses, it's the people who even are working in and make a lot of money, you know, working in Miguel. I really focus back in the '90s on, you know, the changes in industry and manufacturing and how men were being more negatively impacted by the changes there than women. So, anyway, I think the geography has a lot to do with kind of the, you know, the changes in manufacturing and the shift of service jobs and the post materialism. And we need to do a better job of tying that into the how that's playing out in terms of the electoral competition. 'Cause the one thing we haven't mentioned is the steep decline of far left parties in the context of the rise of far right parties in Europe. So I'll leave it there.
Pauliina Patana: Thank you Terri. There's a lot to talk about later. And now I wanna go to Tariq again.
Tariq Thachil: Yeah it's really fascinating to have this comparative discussion because in some ways, building up what Cristobal said, India is far more underdeveloped even in Latin America, on economic indicators. And yet we have a party that has historically been seen as supportive by most of its three constituents rise to national prominence. And so I think the puzzle is perhaps the most acute of the ones that we're talking about India in the case. In terms of geography the most relevant geographic device informing the BJP success is not a region not urban-rural, in 2014 75% of the BJPS tally in the national elections came from just East States in the North and the West of the country. And it's had much less success outside this Northern Indian Hindi belt especially in the South and East of the country. There are many reasons for that, but one of the main ones is that Hindu nationalism as a movement has really emerged out of Northern and the Hindi belt contexts, and the South and Eastern parts of the country have had strong linguistic and sub national regional newest movements and political parties, that have historically resisted any kind of homogenizing nationalism, both of that of the Indian National Congress, which was not a Hindu nationalist division, but now even the BJPS kind of Northern inspired homogenizing nationalism rooted in specifically Northern cultural traditions hasn't found as much purchase. Although in recent years there's been some erosion in the East. The South has been relatively resistant but the second key divide, and that actually speaks to some of the questions we've got in the Chat box from Joshua and Samira, is that even insight into regional strongholds, the second division the party had to overcome was that of past. So again, the political geography was not a special one. It was a caste based internal one which was even as it wanted to be a party of all Hindus, the BJP again, historically was pigeonholed as a party of upper caste elites. And so the internal divisions within Hinduism were really the big bulwark that were checking the rise of this formation and its initial rise to prominence actually was more closely like a cultural backlash party where it got some support among upper caste who were fearing the rising lower caste assertion within Indian democratic politics, including expanding sets of affirmative action quotas for lower caste. And so the BJP kind of siphoned off a lot of upper caste support who were worried about this what was called a rising silent revolution of lower caste politics but it's now recent growth has not been about that. It's how has it expanded beyond that? And there I think this cultural backlash has more limited purchase. So it's a kind of inversion of some of the dynamics that others are talking about. The steady growth of lower caste supporting the party in recent years has really been a puzzle because the party continues to heavily over-represent upper caste legislators. So the vast majority of its legislators remain upper caste and yet its support base is becoming more of a rainbow coalition of past. In my work I documented how the private provision of welfare a very material strategy by many of its movement affiliates in the Hindu nationalist movement started this trend of rising lower caste support. And now more, I think it's been joined by this Modi effect which has gone beyond those of an elite background in part because Modi himself is not from an upper class background. So he has a powerful resonance beyond this kind of elite upper caste kind of profile that the BJP has. So as we've seen this expansion on task grounds, we've seen a continued kind of Northern bias on geographic grounds. And the rural-urban divide has not been electorally significant and in some ways that's surprising given that India has had strong agrarian mobilization. Many of us will be familiar with the farmer protests going on in India today. And so you might look at that and say, aha I see signs of rural discontent. That's true. And many people were picking up on some of that discontent before the 2019 elections and saying that they were protests even in the run-up to the 2019 elections by farmers. And people were saying, maybe this is evidence of a kind of reactivation of a rural-urban divide. But in fact, the BJP, which has historically again been an urban upper class, upper caste party did even better in the countryside than it had in previous elections. So it's actually consolidating its foothold in rural constituencies. So it's really resisting easy narratives around how right-wing populism emerges. It's not simply native as cultural backlash. It's not simply among people who are in urban areas. It's not simply kind of, even in accordance with the party's own previous success stories among upper caste. It's really been this kind of counter-intuitive mobilization that's been expanding over time including into the countryside increasing including among lower caste, including among lower classes that has changed the face of what this party looks like. It can no longer be called a party of elites. At the time I started writing my book that's what it was called. You can no longer call it that and that has been the transformation.
Pauliina Patana: Great. Thank you so much. I think this is just really fascinating thinking about how these parties are able to extend their bases and really mobilize voters that would we would consider probably, you know that should be against voting for the issues that they stand for. So Cristobal, what are your thoughts on this?
Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser: Yes. I mean, first of all, I think that the clearest example in this regard is probably Bolsonaro, because he was elected president of the country. And this means that he got a majority at least for the executive, not for the legislative. So which means we have data showing who are those who voted more than 50% of the Brazilian population, who supported a populist radical right leader. And if we look at the research that that was done around Bolsonaro, there are some interesting features that to a certain extent challenge some of the assumptions that we have about how does the populist radical right work. So one of the issues that we normally reading the literature is exactly what Terri was saying before that those who vote for the populist radical rights are the so-called modernization losers. And these are losers, not in objective sense, but rather in a subjective sense, these are not really deprived. These are not people that are dying on the streets. These are people that are subjective level they feel threatened. But if you go to the case of Bolsonaro we know that in fact his stronghold is Rio de Janeiro, which is a bit awkward because Rio de Janeiro is a quite a cosmopolitan city. And in fact, rich people in Rio de Janeiro supported Bolsonaro, which again shows that this argument that the modernization losers are the ones that vote for the populist radical right, at least for the case of Brazil, it's not really happening. I would say it's rather the opposite. Those who are really depriving Brazil, voted for the left for Lula da Silva. He was not able to compete in the elections but for the person that put the da Silva put forward then but in this sense, you still see like the sort of class voting in Brazil, still operating the sense that poorer people tend to vote for the left. Whereas in the case of Brazil, for Bolsonaro, it's rather rich people that vote for the populist radical rights and for Bolsonaro there. But again, I think the case of Brazil it's very peculiar and we cannot generalize on that example. And the reason for that is that we have to understand that the election in Brazil when Bolsonaro came to power that's a very peculiar one, because the country was shaking but a huge corruption scandal that affected not only the left wing party but the whole political establishment. And this is why voting for Bolsonaro to a certain extent was programmatic. It has to do with this issue of the cultural backlash but at the same time, there is a lot of evidence showing that the vote for Bolsonaro was a protest vote. There were a lot of people angry with the political establishment and they wanted to give a sign to the political establishment that they are fed up. And to give that sign was voting for Bolsonaro but this doesn't mean that all Brazilians, all these 50% that voted for Bolsonaro are radical right-wing voters, because part of them were just fed up with the political system. And I think we have to disentangle these two different forces because one reason for voting for that leader was that programmatically you are there to chase ideas. And another one is you're fed up with the system. And for example, if you go to Chile to my own country in which a populist radical right is not the government is in opposition. Then we see that this is much more a programmatic vote but this is a limited amount of voters who are willing to vote for that sort of political force. And it's much more like the European context. This is around five, 10, 15% of the vote who are willing to vote for a populist radical right force in the case of Chile. And in this case, again, I think it's programmatic but another interesting fact in the Chilean case that reassembles the Brazilian one. If we look at the data about who are supporting the populist radical right in Chile who supports for San Antonio Kast tend to be richer people again, it's not the really deprive, it's quite the opposite. These are really upper class that feels threatened. Not mainly because of immigration but much more because of this cultural dimension. It has a lot to do with feminism for example, people that have strong conservative values and they feel threatened because like this new development that is taking force all over Latin America, we have to take into account that Argentina a couple of months ago passed a law in favor of abortion, for example, and for many conservatives these is are real shock about what is going on in the region so to say, and in this sense again, I think that this whole debate about these urban-rural, the modernization losers or winners, I mean, it's different in the Latin American context. And I don't think that the theories that we have developed for Europe we can translate that and try to use them in the Latin American context, but we need to be careful because they don't work in the same way as they work for example, for explaining what is happening in France, Germany, and Italy. And again, it has to do with another sort of economic context in the Latin American situation. And last but not least, I also one important factual factor that Terri mentioned. And with that I will close my presentation is the evangelical vote. This is something that the case of Bolsonaro was very important. And also we know in the case of Chile evangelicals tend to vote for the populist radical right. But again, generalization is difficult because evangelicals are very plural. It's not that all evangelicals are very conservative but the section of them tend to be very conservative. And these evangelicals are cross class. You have very poor evangelicals, you have middle-class and you have upper class. And what the populist radical right in the case of Chile and Brazil it's trying to do it's to mobilize that type of voters with the sort of cultural framing. That, again, it's not much related with immigration but much more with issues around feminism and other issues that are against like the sort of conservative values are very relevant for certain sections of the evangelical church.
Pauliina Patana: Thank you Cristobal. Well, I think this all just speaks to how we really need to rethink and reevaluate the sort of economic connections to the radical right. And how we think about the wide working classes as drivers for the support for these priorities. So I'd like to pose one more set of questions before we move to the Q&A and because I see that we're a little short on time. Let's do a quick lightning round on ways forward and what you see the future holds and feel free to answer any combination of these questions. So I wanna ask you all whether you see these geographic divides or are these patterns that you've described, do you see them as fixed or malleable? And if so, how? And will they continue to deepen in the future and what potential and strategies exist for other parties and political actors to mobilize voters who are turning to these parties across space and place. Thank you. We'll go to Terri.
Terri Givens: Yeah, of course. This has been a huge issue for the left in Europe. And, you know, I think one of the factors at play is that we have to kind of see look historically at how this has transformed over time. You know, the parties changed to a certain extent that a lot of the rhetoric has been overtaken by the mainstream right. You know, the issues around policies have played in different ways in different countries. So it's kind of hard to come up with one overarching idea around this but I do think that what's gonna have, you know I've written an article about what's left for you for the left basically is we're seeing that as we've seen the decline in left parties and we need to, I think one of the things we have to do is take a broader look at the the party spectrum and where support is going and who and why. Some of this is personality driven. And some of it is driven by particular issues. So, you know, the abortion issue, obviously here in the U.S. has been a particular factor that has played into support for GOP candidates. I think in France, they know the connection. And in certain other countries the connection to Islam has been in terror. I mean, we can't forget that there've been these issues around terrorism in every one of these countries we're talking about. So you can't disconnect the political from what's happened in terms of terrorism and the cultural threat component. And for those I know somebody was asking about the definition of cultural threatened. There's tons of research on this. I'm not gonna jump into it now, but just feel, you know if you wanna reach out to me and ask some research around this, I'm happy to help. But the general idea is that you have these groups that have been in political power and they are seeing that they're being threatened by other people who new faces that are coming in and women. So I'll leave it there.
Pauliina Patana: Thank you, Tariq.
Tariq Thachil: Yeah, just very quickly. I would say that off the coalition that the BJP has put together, there are some parts that are entrenched and that are unlikely to be flipped. Those include upper caste who have been supporting the party for many decades. Voters were opposed to kudos and special privileges for minorities and it reviews role of the state and the economy. As I said those programmatically oriented voters are not gonna switch from the party anytime soon. And then people who hold anti-Muslim prejudices, if we haven't referred to in the party but those are core vote banks for the party they're not gonna flip, who might flip who are the recent entrance into the coalition younger voters, lower voters, voters with higher exposure to media and voters especially attached to Modi. That's a more tenuous hold and reliant on this popular Modi factor, which while very powerful now is also very recent. And so it's hard to say that those are, you know very entrenched support basis for the party. The problem and opposition forces capturing those voters is that the Modi effect is underlined by structural advantages. The BJP, unlike a lot of populist parties, the BJP is India's best organized party, relies on extensive network of grassroots affiliates under the Hindu Nationalist Movement and has developed a massive financial advantage in base based in part by electoral reforms. It passed in the name of transparency but really which allow anonymous corporate donations, recent available data shows that the BJP received 95% of all election financing through this method. All of India's other parties got 5%. I mean, that's an unthinkable advantage in a multi-party system. So when we're talking about, can you soak up that support? I've identified the demand side which voters might be available, but the supply side which parties are able to actually compete in an increasingly unleveraged landscape is another kind of obstacle to actually processing that conversion.
Pauliina Patana: Thank you, Cristobal.
Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser: Yes. Regarding the Latin American context on your question is whether these divides are malleable or not. I would say definitely yes. And this is based also on what we see in other countries. For example, if you think about the populist radical right in Europe, as Terri you we're saying there is a lot of variant about which are the main issues. So if you look for example, that the party programs of the national and parties like that in the '80s, there were not anti Muslims. There were anti refugees. There were mainly anti-immigrants and anti refugees. And after 911, there was a switch in the discourse. And they started to say, the main issue is not really immigration, but Israeli Muslim immigration. And it may be that in five years, they're going to be reinvented in another way. And I think the same applies for the Latin American context. As I was saying before, here in Latin America immigration is not the main issue, in part because we don't have that high numbers of immigrants as in the U.S., or in the case of Europe. We don't have, for example, at the moment, many immigrants for Venezuela because of the crisis of the country. But this is people that have the same culture, the same language, the same religion. So there is no much cultural trap so to say, because of Venezuelans coming to the Chile to Brazil, okay. In Brazil, it's Portuguese, but still very close to Spanish. So in this sense that's not the main issue that the Populist radical right is politicizing. As I mentioned before, when the radical right is politicizing at the moment it has much to do with this cosmopolitan values related to issues like gender abortion, divorce, for example gay rights, issues like that. But it could be the case that in five-year times the populist radical right can reinvent itself in Latin America and try to politicize other issues. And one of the issues that they really politicized and this is very clear in the case of Bolsonaro and very clear in the case of Jose Antonio Kast, has to do with criminality. One of the main issues for the Latin American public is security because we do have very high levels of criminality and what populist radical right part actors do in the Latin American context is to combine this cultural thread with this issue of having very high criminality and saying what we need is very strong law and order, a law and order against criminals, but at the same time against all those who are developing these values these cosmopolitan values, and that of combination I seem is the sort of winning formula that Bolsonaro was able to explore it in the Brazilian context and that to a certain Jose Antonio Kast, it's also developing here and last but not least the other issue that I think it's important to consider that we don't have almost no research into that in the Latin American context. But we have research about that in the U.S. and in Europe, it's the question about negative parties and cheap tours to populist radical right. And I think this is crucial because we have been talking here the whole time about who supports the populist radical right? Where do they come from? It's cultural, it's economic, it's middle-class et cetera. But another interesting question is who are those who reject the populist radical right? I have been involved in a project in Europe, for example in which we try to develop negative parties and cheap towards populist radical right parties in Western Europe. And it's huge, more than 50% of Europeans will never vote in their lives for those parties, which is a very good news for, in terms of democracy because it shows that people in Western Europe don't really like those parties. And my impression is that in many Latin American countries something similar could happen. And again, Bolsonaro I think is the exception but I have just run a survey in Chile in which I included items to measure negative parties and ship tours, Jose Antonio Kast. And it's very high. Most people dislike this guy on that party. So, but we talk a lot about them, although they get like a limited amount of votes, because they're very good about making knowledge, being in the media. But I think the results are this reaction against those forces that I think we can see European and the U.S. but I think it's also present in Latin America. And we need more research about that.
Pauliina Patana: Thank you, Cristobal. I think that's really interesting. I could ask a million follow up questions to all of you, but I now wanna give a chance to our audience to ask questions. And let me just get started with some of the questions here that I see in the chat. So there's a question from Veronica Shawn who's asking what role do you think different local and regional histories play in shaping the geographies of support for the populist or the far right? And why do you think we see more persistent support for these parties across decades or even generations in some regions compared to others? Who would like to take up that question?
Terri Givens: Okay. I guess I'll start. Yeah. That's a hard question because, you know, we're still learning a lot about this. And when you think about the fact that a lot of these parties are relatively new, I think I would rather put that question than the broader context of party systems. 'Cause if you had asked me that question in the early 1990s, even late 1980s, you know back then we talked about the persistence of party systems and there really hadn't been a lot of change in, you know you have the left-wing, you have the right-wing both, but we're seeing those shifts now. And, you know, we're still trying to understand, I think what are some of the factors playing into the shifting party system? And especially look at France. I mean, I just can't keep pace or Italy. You know, you tried to keep pace with the party shifts and all of this has been really difficult as you know. So I think we're still to a certain extent in and I kind of look at the 2008, 2009 fiscal crisis as being a real important turning point for Europe in terms of the party systems. And I would say that the far right has, you know, tried to take advantage of certain issue like the terrorism and immigration and so on but still have a mainstream right parties in particular. And that the mainstream left, I feel has just been off you know, haven't been able to find their the ground they can't, the ground is shifting too much for them. And as you know like I said before, what's happening with working class voters is an important component of this is that they are going to different parties not necessarily just the far right. So I think what we need to do is we're really going to have to recast a lot of the ways we look at these issues. And I'm in the process of doing that to a certain extent. I've been trying to learn more about what's going on with left parties in Europe, in particular.
Tariq Tachil: I mean, I can just quickly say that. I think it's a great question, but some of it depends on what we define as the scale of geography. I mean, we know this from the U.S. that, we've often said red state and blue state where we know that really we go down to the urban level. And even if we go down to the urban pockets of certain cities we have micro-level geographies of voting. And the same is true in most contexts, including in India. So at a macro scale, I talked about how some States have regionalism movements that have articulated opposing ethnic dimensions of politics to a Hindu Muslim divide. And those approved to be a, quite an effective bulwark against efforts to polarize a Hindu Muslim political divide. Other States have not had that. And we see that very clearly in the electoral data the BJP wins 90% of the time when it goes up against the Indian National Congress. That's not a regional party that hasn't ethnicized region and it wins more like 50% of the time when it goes against a regionalism party. So obviously there's a scale there, but then you can go with this micro level scale and the issues of caste and class that I talked about crop up. So some of this it's not a full answer is that the scale of the geography that we're looking at matters a lot. And I think we have to be more attentive to those different scales when we study this and not paint too broad a brush. When we say this is where the support comes for the poor right-wing formation or any formation for that matter.
Pauliina Patana: Thank you, Cristobal do you wanna weigh in on this?
Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser: Yes, I have two very short comments. First, I fully agree with Tariq that again I think making this product generalization it's quite difficult because Germany is different than France, and is different in Brazil and different in the Chile of course, and this is why I do think that this geographical dimension is quite interesting but probably operates differently in different regions even at the sub national level. That being said one commonality, I think it's interesting to note is the way in which populist radical right party is useful, get successful. It's about building electoral strong hold. I mean, this is true for all political parties not only for populist radical right parties, but for example if you look at Belgium, it's very clear that they starting in radical approach city and this is where they started to grow up. And from there, they're able to continue to grow to other places of the country. If you think about Bolsonaro, it's Rio de Janeiro, this is the electoral strong hold. And from there, he tries to build something up. And I think this is probably one common pattern but the interesting issue here is, again, that in some places it might be a very European rare area. Like for example, in the case of Rio de Janeiro, that is very cosmopolitan. Or if you go to the case of in Belgium it's a relatively meet for the countries it's okay. Maybe a big city, not as big as Rio De Janeiro but in which you have this team neutralization process that leads to this field of a cultural trend probably supports that sort of party. But again, I do think that the geographical dimension is interesting but we did to be very careful when trying to develop like these generalizations.
Pauliina Patana: Thank you. And there's a question from Nasra Conia as well. And I think she's referring to what Terri was talking about in terms of the Capitol attacks. So with the panelists comments on various strategies used by populist parties and leaders in power to mobilize and surgeon masses in the streets. And perhaps you can also talk about the sort of counter populous right movements that we see happening as well. And what kind of role does play in this equation? Thank you.
Terri Givens: Right. I mean, one of the things people have focused in on here in the U.S. is you Antifa, which is a very amorphous, it's not an organization but really there've been a lot of organizations around that focus on misuse of race and social justice that have, you know, counter protest as we saw this, especially in Charlottesville. And so there's a lot of organizations here in the U.S. and actually across Europe that are do counter protest. So it's one of the interesting things to me is especially a couple of years ago when there was a lot of protest by far-right groups not particularly parties per se, but you know, and so on is that there've been very effective counter protests that kind of swamp, these other groups. And that one of the things is, you know, and we should probably do a whole nother talk just about the media, the role of the media, right? Because the media has tended to focus even if it's a small event by the far right. They tend to focus on that. And I remember there was this huge counter protest in Germany that didn't get any media coverage especially here in the U.S. and yet there was this very small kind of neo-Nazis protest that got all the press. So I think, you know sometimes the lack of counter protest is under publicized, but the, you know far-right populous tend to get a lot more of the publicity. So we could talk a lot about that, but I'd wanna make sure I saved my co-panelists some time to respond.
Tariq Tachil: Yeah, I would just say it's a good question but I would almost put it the other way that in fact protests has been the one space more for anti BJP political activism actually far more effectively than regular party politics. I would say opposition party politicians have been pretty defunct and pretty unsuccessful in their electoral strategies where the Modi regime has faced its most significant challenges has been popular protests. And we can see that much of the regime's efforts have been in growing illiberalism and attacks on democratic dissent. So the widespread use of preventative detention against activists, charging of peaceful protestors who were first protesting the citizenship amendment act that include that for the first time introduced explicitly religious criteria in the eligibility for certain categories of citizens, the use of colonial era sedition laws, and attacks on critical journalists, newspapers and students who express disagreement. This actually hearkens back many analysts, this is not my point, many analysts that said, the handling of protest and dissent. We are now beginning to approximate, not fully there yet but beginning to approximate, the months leading up to India is one period of democratic suspension which was its emergency from 1975 to 1977 under Indira Gandhi when formal democracy was suspended and many of these moves were happening in the buildup to that as well. We're not to where we were at the emergency yet but we have had many of those democratic backsliding in particular, in the handling of protest against the Modi regimes policies and actions. So I would say that is the protest has actually been the one area of dissent but also revealed some of the most heavy handed and draconian strategies of the regime.
Pauliina Patana: Thank you.
Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser: Yes. I mean, to shorten that. I think what is interesting about the question is to reflect that in a comparative perspective, I mean, the whole issue about the Capitol attacks. I think what we tend to forget from a comparative perspective is typically polarity of Trump and the Republican party. What happened in the U.S. is imaginable that would happen in a mainstream right party in Western Europe, imagine Angela Merkel, Angela Merkeln will never call via Twitter. That some people should go to the Bundestag and react against like that she lost the election and the U.S. started to be normal and started to be normal because the Republican parties anything by the mainstream right party, I think the Republican party and that started before Trump. And I think because of Trump started to get reinforced. So to say, or re-force this whole approach but the Republican party they think it's a populist radical right party nowadays. And we see the whole debate. What happens afterward now with the impeachment at the end of the day, some Republican leaders voted against Trump but still the majority is with him. And this shows that the main danger for me is not necessarily populist radical right parties. And we see that in Europe because hopefully these radical parties normally tend to receive a limited amount of votes. The main problem is with mainstream right parties start to adapt to that sort of ideas and even transform into populist radical right party. And this is probably what is happening in the U.S. with the Republican party. In this sense, I think what is crucial to understand is how mainstream parties react to the rights and consolidations of populist radical right parties, Brazil the same story. I think a huge mistake is that this was his huge corruption scandal that affected the whole political establishment. And because of that, as I mentioned before many people voted for Bolsonaro because they were fed up with the system and even many politicians within Brazil there were quite silent about Bolsonaro and they were not reacting very harshly against him. And because of that, then you can see figures like Trump like Bolsonaro coming into power. But again, we have to understand that this is not only related to themselves but also to how mainstream part is we act on from ford themselves over time.
Pauliina Patana: I think that's a really key issue. And I'm so glad that you brought that up and I'm happy. I wish we had more time, but I think unfortunately there are many questions that are wonderful left in the queue, but what we need to close up right now so thank you again to all of our wonderful panelists for joining us and everyone in the audience. And let's keep this conversation going. Thank you.
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Presenter: You've been listening to AshCast, the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation's podcast. If you'd like to learn more, please visit ash.harvard.edu or follow the Ash Center on social media @harvardash.
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