Immigration-related political culture and support for radical right parties

Abstract

Radical right parties are not equally successful across or within all countries. Most studies have up to now relied on socio-economic, socio-structural and political factors to explain these differences. We examine whether the immigration-related political culture – consisting of integration policies and shared conservative values – in which voters are embedded influences radical right voting. We argue that more exclusive immigration-culture is related to more support for radical right parties. Furthermore, the relationship between immigration attitudes and radical right support is expected to be moderated by immigration-culture. With multilevel regression models using data from the 2011 Swiss Electoral Studies (SELECTS) we compare the effect of immigration-culture in 26 Swiss cantons. We find that cantonal immigration-culture (assessed with integration regimes and shared conservative beliefs) increases radical right support and the effect of individuals' immigration attitude on radical right support is stronger when immigration-culture is exclusive.