,
15 tweets,
12 min read
Read on Twitter
If you want to stop the rise of right-wing populism, then all you need to do is to restrict immigration. Obvious as this claim may sound, it is misleading. #Thread 1/15
To start with: Politicians from across the political spectrum have embraced this claim, not only conservatives 2/15 theguardian.com/world/2018/nov…
Indeed as @tabouchadi and Werner Krause show, mainstream parties tend to shift toward more anti-immigrant positions when confronted with a successful right-wing populist parties 3/15
@tabouchadi The implicit assumption is that the ‘refugee crisis’ caused the rise of populism in Europe. However, as I argued here, West Europeans did not become more anti-immigrant after 2015 4/15
@tabouchadi This shouldn’t be surprising. Personal attitudes towards immigration do not change easily. They are robust to political shocks such as the ‘refugee crisis’ @akoustov 5/15
@tabouchadi @akoustov Moreover, if increased immigration leads to more right-wing populism, how come in countries with significant immigration like Ireland or Portugal there is to date no right-wing populist party with seats in national parliament? 6/15
@tabouchadi @akoustov @simone_moriconi Giovanni Peri, and Riccardo Turati even argue in this paper that „larger inflows of highly educated immigrants is likely to be associated with a vote away from nationalism“ 7/15 nber.org/papers/w25077 
@tabouchadi @akoustov @simone_moriconi Clearly, picturing right-wing populism as an inevitable consequence of rising refugee numbers is simplistic and does not do justice to other factors like media coverage and political entrepreneurship 8/15
@tabouchadi @akoustov @simone_moriconi Let us revisit the steps that led to the rise of right-wing populism during the ‘refugee crisis’ (in Germany) 9/15
@tabouchadi @akoustov @simone_moriconi Rising refugee numbers in 2015 provoked extensive media attention and sparked heated political controversies. There is a clear correlation between media coverage and refugee numbers 10/15
@tabouchadi @akoustov @simone_moriconi Political entrepreneurs of right-wing populist parties benefited from increased media attention and did play a crucial role in politicizing immigration 11/15
@tabouchadi @akoustov @simone_moriconi What extended media coverage did in effect is turning immigration into a policy concern for many Europeans. Indeed, there seems to be a correlation between the salience of immigration and media coverage 12/15
@tabouchadi @akoustov @simone_moriconi The activation of latent anti-immigration attitudes was ultimately reflected in votes for right-wing populist parties (not only in Germany) 13/15
@tabouchadi @akoustov @simone_moriconi What do we learn from this? First: the rise of right-wing populism may be rooted in social forces and problem besides immigration. This is actually the main claim in our MIDEM Report 2018 forum-midem.de/en/ 14/15
@tabouchadi @akoustov @simone_moriconi Second, rising right-wing populism is also a consequence of a media landscape that sensationalizes and overplays problems of immigration and provides coverage for populist politicians as @CasMudde argues 15/15 #End
