Intergenerational social mobility and vote for Radical Left Parties: evidence from Southern Europe

The electoral rise of Radical Left Parties (RLPs) in Southern European countries has motivated a series of studies aimed at explaining the electoral support for this party family. The impact of social mobility has however not been explored thus far. This is rather surprising, considering how – particularly since the onset of the Eurozone crisis – South European countries have been increasingly marked by growing levels of social immobility and downward mobility, while simultaneously witnessing the most significant electoral growth of the radical left out of any European region. Since democratisation and since joining the European Economic Community/ European Union, South European countries have followed a trend of rising levels of education and well-being, where great swathes of the population experienced high intergenerational upward mobility. The development and establishment of South European democracies was thus umbilically tied to a dynamic of upward social mobility from generation to generation. More recently, however, younger generations find it increasingly hard to enter the job market and to achieve jobs which match their qualifications. A number of crises, from the Eurozone crisis to the economic impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, or the booming housing prices, have had detrimental effects in expected living conditions, with many experiencing downward social mobility. It is no longer a general rule that children are likely to live better than their parents, with a high number of young highly skilled individuals facing a precarious and unstable job market, many of them opting to moving abroad, others staying but lacking future prospects. Previous research has shown that support for the radical left in Southern Europe is usually higher among individuals within the lower-half of the occupational structure (mainly clerks, production and service workers) who espouse left-wing views and are highly dissatisfied with the current state of democracy and the economy in their respective countries (a left-wing protest vote). At the same time, research on the impacts of social mobility has shown that experiences of downward mobility and social immobility tend to increase social isolation and produce feelings of discontent, ultimately fuelling anti-establishment political attitudes. Against this background, can one expect that experiences of intergenerational immobility and downward mobility increase the likelihood of voting for the radical left? Can the lack of intergenerational social mobility explain why RLPs have been particularly electorally successful in Southern Europe? Do increasing levels of downward mobility, in the context of Southern Europe’s multiple crisis, explain electoral support for the radical left?