Workplace Regimes and Voting for the Radical Right

This paper explores the role of workplace regimes, and a series of other aspects of labour market position, in shaping intentions to vote for Far Right parties (in competition with Far Left, Centre Left and Centre Right parties). In particular we use the European Social Survey 2002-2022 to assess the role of workplace regimes in electoral competitions between and within various social classes in Europe. Workplace regimes refer to the immediate organisational contexts of workers' work – including their autonomy at work, their opportunities for learning and training, the modes of control they experience and the degree to which their working time and other conditions are standardised. The ESS Surveys of Rounds 1-9 (2002-2020) are used to identify relatively coherent ‘regimes’, using Latent Gold. Our focus is on explaining why workers in a range of workplace regimes and employment situations (as well as within a variety of social demographic sub-groups) vote for the Far Right within their particular contexts of electoral competition. Building on Oesch and Rennwald (2018) we examine the degree to which workplace regimes explain party choice across all employees. Initial analysis has been carried out investigating who are more likely to vote for Radical Right parties. Socio-demographically, Radical Right voters are generally more likely to be male, citizens, young to middle aged and have difficulty coping on their income. Attitudinally Radical Right voters are more likely to place a value on being rich, place less value on equality and on helping people and to support ‘strong government’. In terms of work regimes, those working in Simple/Taylor work regimes (with low autonomy and learning at work) are significantly more likely to vote for the Radical Right. However, those working in the ‘Learn Extreme’ regimes (with autonomy and learning but also demanding hours) but who are not in a permanent contract are also more likely to vote for the Radical Right. More detailed analyses will: 1. Compare these patterns to predictors of voting for other party families ( From Left to Right, based on party supporter self definition: Radical Left, Green, Socialist,No Family, Regionalist, Agrarian, Christian Democratic, Confessional, Liberal, Conservative, Radical Right). 2. Compare the factors predicting voting within each work regime, using multinomial logistic regression. 3. We may also compare party competition within other demographic groups (eg by gender, class etc)