The emergence of a new dimension of political conflict has recently dominated the academic debate on cleavages. Political debate is evolving, and new issues are entering the political sphere and dominating the public agenda. Researchers have attempted to outline new approaches to political competition and focus on the reconfiguration of conflict around a new dimension, one orthogonal to the conventional left-right cleavage. Cultural issues, such as European integration, immigration, gender equality, minority rights, and environmental concerns, are enhancing the emergence of a new cleavage. This political realignment has been associated with the emergence of populist radical right parties (PRRPs) in most industrialised countries. Against this backdrop, this project unveils whether and how the emergence and consolidation of PRRPs in Portugal and Spain relates to voters’ political realignment in terms of their preferences and perceptions. The two Iberian countries have been, for a long time, depicted as immune to the generalised emergence of populist radical right actors in Europe. Nonetheless, this exceptionalism came to an end when Vox and Chega entered mainstream politics in Spain and Portugal, respectively, in the late 2010s. Through an approach based on the demand side of politics, this project proposes a bottom-up investigation of the political preferences of Spanish and Portuguese citizens to assess the emergence of a cultural cleavage and its relationship with the emergence/consolidation of RPPRs. To attain this objective, this project employs a comparative research strategy based on the development of a large N online survey in the two countries. This survey includes a battery of questions on attitudes towards economic and cultural issues, as well as items on party identification and issue ownership. This questionnaire also includes a conjoint survey experiment. In this project, this methodological approach is crucial to unveil the main dimensions of political conflict that drive public support for PRRPs in the Iberian countries. This research project brings relevant contributions to the current research on PRRPs in the Iberian countries. So far, most existing works on the emergence of new cleavages explore the supply side of political competition (e.g., Alonso & Kaltwasser, 2015; Hooghe & Marks, 2018; Charalambous et al., 2023). Recent research, however, is starting to provide some evidence of the need to account for the role of voters when exploring the emergence of PRRPs in Spain and Portugal (Alonso & Kaltwasser, 2015; Mendes & Dennison, 2020; Carrieri & Morini, 2023). Thereby, the main objective of this project consists of assessing the observation of a potential political realignment and the emergence of a new cultural/transnational cleavage across Spanish and Portuguese citizens. Recent research using observational data from the 2019 Portuguese legislative elections suggests that the left-right ideology and personal evaluations of the political leaders are important drivers of voting behaviour. However, this study suggests that academic research on public opinion and public preferences should be redirected to the development of experimental projects and, importantly, the influence of new cleavages like globalisation (Lago, 2023). Thus, this project proposes an experimental design to isolate the effects of new political topics on electoral choice and public support for PRRPs. The research team combines consolidated and junior academics who have a deep track record of publications in top world-ranking journals. The main areas of research of the PI are the far-right party family and international migration, whilst the co-PI has just finished her PhD on the topic of the politicisation of the European Union and public opinion formation. Lastly, our team members also have a lot of experience in the development of large N surveys in national contexts. The research team combines scholars with extensive experience in the development of qualitative and quantitative research strategies. In short, this project seeks to produce knowledge on public attitudes and behaviour in the Iberian context and to develop an in-depth comparison of the preferences and perceptions of the Portuguese and Spanish electorates. To do so, this project explores the relationship between the emergence of RPPRs and the emergence of a cultural cleavage in the Iberian Peninsula. It investigates how public attitudes towards diverse cultural values, such as immigration and European integration, explain support for PRRPs in Portugal and Spain.

Team:

João Carvalho (Principal Researcher, CIES-Iscte)

José Santana Pereira (Associate Professor, CIES-Iscte)

Mariana Carmo Duarte (Researcher, ICS-UL)

Diedier Ruedin (Senior Lecturer, Université de Neuchâtel)

Laura Morales (Professor of Research, Instituto de Políticas Y Bienes Públicos)

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