We explore how support for radical parties of both the left and right may be shaped by what we call “positional deprivation,” where growth in income of individuals at a given point in the income distribution is outpaced by income growth elsewhere in that distribution. We argue that positional deprivation captures the combination of over-time and relative misfortune that can be expected to distinctly spur support for radical left and right parties. We explore this possibility by matching new measures of positional deprivation to individual-level survey data on party preferences in 20 European countries from 2002 to 2014. We find that positional deprivation is robustly correlated with supporting radical populist parties. First, positional deprivation generally, measured as average income growth across deciles of a country’s income distribution minus a respondent’s own decile’s growth, is associated with respondents’ retreat from mainstream parties and with support for both radical right and, particularly, radic...

University of Amsterdam

Political science

Engineering

Politics

Structural engineering

Left and right

New Left

Radical right

Economic Policy

Positional deprivation and support for radical right and radical left parties*