Immigration and Right-Wing Populism: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

Arbeitspapier

Between the 2014 and 2018 Swedish parliamentary elections, the vote share of the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats increased significantly. To evaluate the possibility of a causal link between immigration and the right-wing populist vote, this paper uses data from a nationwide policy experiment, under which refugees are allocated randomly to every municipality in the country, creating exogenous variation in the number of refugees between municipalities. Overall, I find a positive and significant impact of immigration on the anti-immigration vote. In areas with strong anti-immigration sentiments during the 1990s refugee wave, the effect is magnified significantly. However, when considering immigration of a particular refugee group dominated by young men, the relationship is considerably weaker. I show that this is because immigration of young men has a balancing effect on the right-wing populist vote among immigration-friendly voter groups.

Angaben zum Objekt

• Sprache: Englisch

Verweise und Beziehungen

• Erschienen in: Series: Working Paper ; No. 2019:5

Klassifikation und Themen

• Klassifikation: Wirtschaft ; Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior ; Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination ; Capitalist Systems: Political Economy
• Thema: immigration ; right-wing populism ; natural experiment

Beteiligte, Orts- und Zeitangaben

• Ereignis: Geistige Schöpfung
• (wer): Mehic, Adrian
• Ereignis: Veröffentlichung
• (wer): Lund University, School of Economics and Management, Department of Economics
• (wo): Lund
• (wann): 2019

Weitere Informationen

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/260275
• Letzte Aktualisierung: 10.03.2025, 11:42 MEZ