In a brand new research, Tim Vlandas and Daphne Halikiopoulou current new empirical proof concerning the impact of jihadist terrorist assaults on far-right celebration preferences in Europe. Their findings counsel that terrorist assaults are unlikely to decisively change celebration preferences, regardless of attracting important public consideration and affecting political attitudes.
Terrorism has turn out to be an more and more salient difficulty throughout Europe in recent times. This presents far-right events with the chance to hyperlink this difficulty to the primary difficulty they “personal”, specifically immigration, to broaden their electoral attraction. Many far-right events utilise this chance by framing terrorism as an immigration difficulty: they usually place terrorist incidents inside a broader context of a worth battle and argue that terrorism is enabled by mass immigration. How profitable is that this technique?
In a brand new article, we theorise and take a look at three distinct hypotheses concerning the impression of jihadist terrorist assaults on far-right preferences, considering completely different mixtures of potential attitudinal adjustments together with out-group prejudice and belief in establishments, which have been linked with celebration help. Desk 1 under summarises the methods wherein distinct mixtures of those two varieties of attitudes could result in 4 potential situations.
Desk 1: Conceptualising the connection between jihadist terrorism, attitudes and far-right celebration preferences
Supply: Vlandas T. and Halikiopoulou D. (2024)
First, we count on a simultaneous improve in out-group prejudice and institutional mistrust ensuing from a jihadist terrorist assault to learn the far proper (State of affairs 1). Second, if jihadist terrorist assaults both (a) concurrently improve out-group prejudice and institutional belief or (b) concurrently cut back out-group prejudice and institutional belief, then we must always count on a null (i.e. non-significant) impact on far-right celebration preferences (Eventualities 2 and three). Beneath each these latter circumstances, the 2 attitudinal dimensions cancel one another out.
Third, if jihadist terrorist assaults improve institutional belief however not out-group prejudice, then they’re more likely to deter folks from far-right events when these will not be in authorities, favouring as a substitute mainstream events and/or the incumbent because of a “rally across the flag” impact (State of affairs 4).
In sum, a rise in far-right celebration choice is probably going solely when out-group prejudice will increase and belief in establishments decreases. Beneath the remaining three situations, far-right celebration choice will both keep the identical or lower, both as a result of out-group attitudes stay unchanged or as a result of institutional belief will increase.
An “surprising occasion throughout survey design” in 4 European international locations
To check the potential impact of jihadist terrorist assaults on far-right preferences we use the “surprising occasion throughout survey” analysis design, which exploits the prevalence of a salient and unexpected occasion in the course of the fieldwork of a public opinion survey. Particularly, we merge knowledge from the International terrorism dataset and the European Social Survey (ESS) to establish these terrorist assaults that occurred in the course of the ESS fieldwork interval.
4 jihadist terrorist assaults match this mixed criterion: assaults within the Netherlands (2004), Sweden (2010), France (2015) and Germany (2016) (see Determine 1 under).
Determine 1: Jihadist terrorist assaults as a random shock to survey respondents
Supply: Vlandas T. and Halikiopoulou D. (2024)
Whereas these 4 assaults various in depth, variety of casualties and goal vary, they shared sure necessary similarities which suggests they’re comparable. First, all assaults have been cultural-ideological in nature, perpetrated within the title of Islam and particularly concentrating on the western democratic lifestyle and its beliefs. Second, in all circumstances the perpetrator(s) had hyperlinks to broader Islamist networks. Third, whereas two of the assaults have been indiscriminate (Germany and Sweden) and the remaining two have been focused in direction of particular people (Netherlands) or organisations (France), all of them aimed toward harming civilians for his or her beliefs, in addition to damaging non-public property. Lastly, all assaults obtained important media and public consideration.
These commonalities by way of the motives and background of the perpetrators counsel all these assaults would doubtless strengthen far-right celebration help by the bias mechanism, which expects a rise in anti-immigration attitudes. All assaults had the potential of getting an supposed intimidating impact on the general public, doubtlessly eliciting blame attributions to foreigners and Muslim people perceived as foreigners no matter their citizenship standing, and triggering a spread of unfavorable feelings together with anxiousness, worry and anger.
The non-effect of terrorist assaults on far-right celebration preferences
Whereas jihadist terrorism is commonly seen as a possibility for far-right events to capitalise on anti-immigrant and Islamophobic narratives, we discover no statistically important impact of jihadist terrorist assaults on self-declared proximity to the far proper. In line with this null impact, we do discover some proof supporting each the bias and belief mechanisms.
This means the 2 dimensions could also be cancelling one another out, since better prejudice will increase help for the far proper whereas the other is true for greater belief. By way of prejudice, the impact of jihadist terrorist assaults on total unfavorable attitudes in direction of immigrants and refugees is optimistic and statistically important; by way of belief, jihadist terrorist assaults are related to better confidence in parliament and satisfaction with authorities.
Our findings contribute to our understanding of how terrorism may impression on home politics. First, we offer sturdy empirical proof that within the western European context, jihadist terrorist assaults are unlikely to decisively change celebration help, regardless of potential adjustments in political attitudes.
The absence of a direct causal hyperlink between terrorist assaults and far-right celebration preferences in our pattern challenges the concept jihadist terrorism fuels right-wing extremism within the European context. This additionally highlights important variation between European international locations, the place terrorist assaults are perceived as being instigated by international teams even when the perpetrators are homegrown militants, and non-European international locations similar to Turkey or Israel, the place terrorist incidents are largely attributable to home armed conflicts.
Second, heterogeneity evaluation reveals attention-grabbing variation amongst respondents. People usually related to far-right celebration help, such because the unemployed, are deterred from far-right events after jihadist terrorist assaults. Conversely, jihadist terrorist assaults have a optimistic impact on people not usually related to the far proper, for instance respondents with tertiary schooling.
Sure socio-demographic and attitudinal traits similar to gender and subjective earnings insecurity don’t appear to reasonable the impact of jihadist terrorist assaults, though they’ve been linked to far-right celebration help. This means that whereas there is probably not a median population-wide impact, there could also be a composition impact leading to adjustments within the make-up of the pool of people that really feel near the far proper. It’s believable that some people are galvanised by terrorist assaults, whereas others are concurrently deterred. Within the longer run, this may result in adjustments in celebration positions.
Third, our findings reply to suggestions for extra seen reporting of nonsignificant outcomes and illustrates how these could advance debates within the social sciences. We contribute to the understanding of the methods wherein residents behave politically within the aftermath of jihadist terrorist assaults in western Europe by displaying that regardless of triggering some adjustments in attitudes, jihadist terrorist assaults are unlikely to reinforce far-right celebration help.
That is necessary, notably within the context of a far-right populist hype, because the dissemination of analysis impacts not solely academia but in addition the coverage world. Far-right events try to capitalise on terrorist assaults utilizing perceived shifts in political preferences as justification for his or her exclusionist platforms. In flip, centre-right events usually undertake co-optation methods based mostly on comparable perceptions about public preferences and the following have to “re-capture” this voters from the far proper. If we’re proper, a minimum of in Europe, their bids are exaggerated and doubtlessly self-defeating. Responses to jihadist terrorist assaults could also be restricted in dimension and period providing much less fertile floor for far-right mobilisation than is commonly assumed.
For extra data, see the authors’ accompanying paper in Views on Politics
Word: This text provides the views of the authors, not the place of EUROPP – European Politics and Coverage or the London Faculty of Economics. Featured picture credit score: Hadrian / Shutterstock.com
