Seminario del IPP: “Interrupted Continuities:Local History and Support for the Radical Right”
Evento online Zoom (ID de reunión: 952 0655 9189 - Código de acceso: 454668)
Por Elías Dinas (Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies).
Organiza: Francisco Herreros (IPP-CSIC)
Abstract : A fast-growing literature on historical legacies exalts how persistently the past can map on present-day political attitudes and behaviour. A common assumption in this literature is that legacies follow a monotone pattern, with their impact either remaining constant or decaying over time. We propose an alternative, non-linear trajectory, whereby exogenous shocks may re-activate the signalling capacity of the past. We apply this theory of ‘interrupted continuities’ to explain the post-crisis rise of the radical right in Greece. We argue that in contributing to the collapse of the existing party system, the crisis re-activated a specific legacy of the civil war, namely anti-Communist attitudes. Employing a within-prefecture, cross-community research design, we find a strong correlation between civil war-driven anti-communism and radical right support. Consistent with our proposed mechanism, we find that anti-communism a) stems from the civil war experience and does not precede it; and b) does not predict the radical right vote before the crisis. Narratives born out of traumatic experiences endure via local memory, becoming politically relevant if and when the opportunity structure arises.
