ICTlogy

Abstract:

Electoral support for far-right parties is often linked to specific geographies of discontent. We argue that public service deprivation, defined as poor access to public services at the local level, helps explain these patterns in far-right support. Public service deprivation increases the appeal of far-right parties by making people more worried about immigration and increased competition for reduced public services. We examine our argument using three studies from Italy, a country home to some of the most electorally successful far-right parties in the past decades. We examine cross-sectional data from municipalities (study 1), exploit a national reform forcing municipalities below a certain population threshold to jointly share local public services (study 2), and explore geo-coded individual-level election survey data (study 3). Our findings suggest that public service deprivation helps us better understand geographical differences in far-right support and the mechanisms underlying it.