Social-political Context and Authoritarian Attitudes: Evidence from Seven European Countries

Using World Values Survey data on seven European democracies, we explore how authoritarian attitudes often associated with Radical Right party support are related to both individual-level and macro-level influences. We find that socio-demographic variables, such as age, education and social class, have similar effects across countries. Nonetheless, even after controlling for these socio-demographic variables, country differences remain, suggesting that demographic composition does not account for the majority of the country differences in attitudes. On the other hand, social-political context—as measured by income inequality, ethnic heterogeneity and radical Right-wing party presence—accounts for much of the country-level differences. This finding suggests that individual authoritarian attitudes are strongly influenced not only by personal circumstances, but also by nationwide social-political factors.