Recent studies have found that most far right parties (FRP) in Western Europe have increased their welfare profile during the economic crisis, but shaped by nativism in the form of welfare chauvinism. In this article, I explore to what extent this shift towards pro-welfare chauvinist positions has enabled FRP to increasingly attract voters holding a combination of anti-immigration and pro-welfare policy attitudes. Relying on the European Social Survey (ESS), the empirical results show that pro-welfare nativist citizens have increased their probability of voting for FRP over time, joining pro-market nativists as the core groups of the far right electorates. Moreover, globalization losers tend to be over-represented among those citizens holding pro-welfare nativist attitudes, so that the likelihood of these losers’ groups (especially service workers and unemployed) to support the far right has also been progressively stronger. The resulting scenario is the conformation of broad nativist far right electorates. 

This article explores the relationship between populist attitudes and political participation. While academics have put attention to the theoretical relationship between populism and democracy, little research has studied this relationship empirically. Based on the assumption that political participation is core for liberal democratic systems, we explore the effects of changes of populism on different forms of participation. We expect that higher populist attitudes would increase levels of participation. Different forms of participation: turnout, online political expression, petition signing, donating money, contacting a politician, demonstrating, striking and boycotting. Using panel data coming from a representative sample of Spanish respondents, results show that the causal relationship between populist attitudes and participation is not as straightforward as often assumed in previous literature. 

Individuals who experience an unemployment spell are more likely to experience unemployment in the future along with certain wage penalties, according to a well-established body of literature. However, few studies have examined how an unemployment spell can impact non-monetary job outcomes found in the job quality literature. This paper provides new insight, finding that an unemployment spell can adversely impact future job quality and security. Utilizing principal component analysis, a job quality index is composed using non-monetary dimensions such as autonomy, authority, job security (objective and subjective), work intensity, and life-work balance. Fitting multiple fixed effects regression models, the findings suggest that an unemployment scarring effect on future job quality exists and that the effect persists up to two years after the re-employment. Furthermore, the results reveal key differences when women and men are modeled separately, with women experiencing a greater penalty on their future job security and men experiencing a greater penalty on their work content. 

For electoral accountability to be effective, what is better: a fragmented opposition that gives plenty of alternatives or an opposition with fewer stronger parties? While oppositions are a key actor in democracies, their specific role in holding governments accountable a remains unclear. On the one hand, the more the opposition parties the easier for voters to find ideologically close alternatives. On the other hand, high levels of fragmentation can also make accountability more difficult because in these contexts voters may struggle to find and coordinate over viable alternatives. Thus, fragmentation of oppositions generates two opposite effects that have arguably led to inconclusive empirical results so far. To solve this puzzle, I first analyze whether the effect of oppositions' fragmentation on accountability may follow a non-linear pattern. Moreover, I distinguish between ideologues and pragmatic voters and differentiate ideological and valence issues to assess the specific conditions under which fragmentation may enhance accountability. I test these hypotheses using a survey experiment. In the experiments, voters were presented with a case of a government accused of corruption and were asked to express their willingness to support or punish it. I randomly manipulated the framing of the scandal and the degree of opposition fragmentation. The results show that fragmentation enhances accountability and that this effect is significantly larger for ideological voters.