For every action a reaction? The polarizing effects of women's rights and refugee immigration: A survey experiment in 27 EU member states

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Building on research on cultural threat-induced polarization, we investigate the effect of the individual-level salience of cultural threats on polarization between social liberals and conservatives. In a unique survey experiment conducted with 129,000 respondents nested in 208 regions in 27 European Union (EU) member states, we manipulate the presence of two cultural threats, women's rights, and refugee immigration, to test their polarizing effects on social liberals’ and social conservatives’ support for traditional values. We find that priming the threat of refugee immigration polarizes conservatives and liberals equally. Yet, introducing the salience of women's rights leads to lower preferences for traditional values, particularly among more liberal respondents. Our findings demonstrate: 1) the study of backlash should distinguish individuals by their predisposition to backlash, rather than studying the population as a whole; and 2) social conservatives’ backlash should be studied conjointly with social liberals’ counter-reactions to backlash. Future research may investigate why different cultural threats provoke different reactions.

Original languageEnglish
JournalEuropean Journal of Political Research
Volume63
Issue number4
Pages (from-to)1557-1577
Number of pages21
ISSN0304-4130
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 11.2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Authors. European Journal of Political Research published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Consortium for Political Research.

    Research areas

  • cultural threats, polarization, refugee immigration, survey experiment, women's rights
  • Politics

DOI

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