The Threat of Social Decline: Income Inequality and Radical Right Support

Radical right parties have been on the rise in Western democracies, while at the same time income inequality has increased in many countries. Existing studies have linked radical right support with voters feeling ‘left behind’ in the process of globalization, yet few have tested whether income inequality explains the extent of radical right support. We argue that rising income inequality not only indicates how some groups fall behind compared to others (relative deprivation), but also indicates a potential threat of social decline, as gaps in the social hierarchy between different groups widen. We hypothesize that individuals higher up in the income distribution and with higher perceptions of subjective social status may turn to the radical right as income inequality increases the threat of social decline and radical right parties claim to defend existing social hierarchies. Using an encompassing individual-level dataset from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) and comparing 14 OECD countries between 1987 and 2017, we find that rising income inequality increases the likelihood of radical right support and that this effect is most pronounced among individuals with high subjective social status and lower-middle incomes. This study adds to the growing literature emphasizing that perceived threat of decline rather than actual deprivation moves voters towards the radical right. Our findings show how these mechanisms depend on the dynamics of income inequality.