The revival of a centre-periphery cleavage? The geographical anchor of populist parties’ success

Recent national elections in various Western countries have shown an increasing territorial differentiation of populist right (and also radical left) party success. The People’s Parties in Denmark and Switzerland have become the strongest political forces in rural and socio-economically peripheral areas, while mainstream centre-right and social democratic parties have maintained their dominant in the metropolitan areas and the economic strong cities. Similar developments have begun to emerge in the UK with UKIP winning sizeable vote shares in the countryside or Germany, where the Alternative for Germany (AfD) has gained strong results in economically peripheral Eastern states. I argue that this geographic differentiation of radical party support has a social structural anchor that reflects a comeback of a centre-periphery cleavage in some Western countries in a Rokkanian sense. Populist right-wing parties mobilize voters in peripheral areas who harbour anti-elite sentiments caused by the perceived preferential treatment of the economic, cultural, and political centres in their countries. The strong showing of populist right parties in the countryside has thus a structural anchor in a Rokkanian sense (‘utkantnasjonalister’) as it reflects a new variant of the centre-periphery cleavage after the turn of the millennium. Using national election studies from Austria, Denmark, Germany, the UK and Switzerland, I combine a comparative case study with statistical analysis of voting behaviour for populist right, mainstream centre-right and social democratic, and radical left parties and show that the populist right has increasingly mobilised a centre-periphery cleavage by successfully translating anti-elite sentiments in the periphery into electoral support. In contrast, political distrust and anti-elite sentiments in the economic, cultural, and political centres benefits radical left parties. The populist right has thus increasingly gained a further social anchor beyond class and attitudes towards immigration.