Timo Baldewein

Space and political fragmentation.
On the influence of context and network effects on political decisions

In recent years, there has been a rapid rise of right-wing populism in Europe. There are clear spatial differences in the popularity of right-wing populist parties. While they tend to be unpopular in the economic centers, there is strong support in some rural peripheries. However, this cannot be generalized to all rural regions. In this respect, this dissertation examines possible causes of this observation in Germany in order to better understand the rise of right-wing populism.

The focus of the work is to investigate whether factors that favor right-wing populism are not only individual characteristics of people, but also go beyond the individual. This can be investigated by means of context effects, which indicate the impact of people's social and spatial environment on their behavior. They are independent of people's individual characteristics or interact with them. The dissertation analyzes the extent to which such context effects of regional historical, economic and cultural circumstances influence the right-wing populism affinity of the people living there. Previous research has shown that people in regions with poor economic development and a long right-wing tradition tend to vote for right-wing populist parties.

The next step is to look at how opinions in and the composition of people-centered networks influence people's political opinions and attitudes. The question arises as to whether the rise of right-wing populism is due to the emergence of a new line of conflict in society as a whole (cosmopolitanism vs. nationalism) or the reemergence of an old one between the political interests of the center (usually the capital) and regional particular interests, or whether it is rather a reaction to the social situation in smaller ingroups (e.g. families or networks of friends). The aim is therefore to investigate the extent to which (voting) behavior is influenced by macrosociological developments or by microsociological contexts.

This question is topical because the modernization loser hypothesis, which describes a connection between economic deprivation in neoliberalism and turning to right-wing populism, cannot be empirically confirmed at the individual level in many cases. Rather, it appears to be diffuse cultural and regional factors that drive people towards right-wing populism. The dissertation therefore examines the effects of deprivation and cultural orientation at the individual level, in networks and at higher spatial levels in order to be able to explain the spatial differences in right-wing populism.