The Controversial Populist Radical Right Through the Eyes of the Public: Disliked, yet Tolerated?

This thesis is about the populist radical right and why we need to study this group of parties. I ask the following research question: Why is there exceptional political controversy around the populist radical right? To answer this question, I employ a public opinion perspective, examining how voters relate to the populist radical right compared to other political parties. While much of the previous literature has focused on explaining populist radical right success and voting patterns, I argue for a different approach. In this thesis, the populist radical right is examined using two concepts rarely seen in studies on this group of parties: public political tolerance and negative partisanship. Combining these two concepts, the thesis reveals new insight into the political controversy surrounding the populist radical right. The thesis finds that there are substantial variations in public political tolerance of populist radical right parties in Western European democracies, ranging from fully tolerated to tolerated by only half of the electorate. Despite these variations, the thesis finds that even the most tolerated populist radical right party (the Norwegian Progress Party, FrP) is particularly disliked by voters and has a larger share of negative partisans compared to all other parties in the system. Negative partisanship thus provides a deeper understanding of voters' attachment to these parties in the electoral system. This thesis contributes with four research articles, each with its own independent contribution. The first article, "Public Political Tolerance of the Far Right in Contemporary Western Europe," shows how the public, to various extents, tolerates parties of the populist radical right in five Western European democracies. It contributes a new theoretical framework to better understand public political tolerance of the far right, including both established political parties and extra-parliamentary actors. The theoretical framework builds on two dimensions: (1) public rejection of the Nazi past and (2) party institutionalization. The article finds that, for large shares of citizens in fi ve key Western European democracies, rejecting the Nazi-past only means rejecting initiatives explicitly identi ed as neo-Nazi. For other far right initiatives, public political tolerance is much more common and increases in accordance with these initiatives' institutionalization as political parties. The second article, "Political (In)tolerance of the Far Right: The Importance of Agency," builds on and further develops the theoretical framework presented in article 1 and demonstrates which factors that contribute to increase or decrease political tolerance. The paper uses a conjoint experimental design, varying a range of factors explaining the ideology, legacy, institutionalization, and agency of the far right. It finds that the agency of populist radical right parties is crucial for political tolerance. Nevertheless, ideological features, and particularly signs of right-wing extremism, are the most important factors negatively affecting public political tolerance of the far right. The third article, "Negative Partisanship and the Populist Radical Right: The Case of Norway," builds on recent research demonstrating that the populist radical right party family has a larger share of negative partisans compared to other parties. The article sets out to explain why many people would never vote for the populist radical right combining closed and open-ended survey responses. It finds that negative partisanship is not a mirror image of support. The results reveal that negativepartisans react against both the party's policies, particularly migration, economic and environmental policies, and also the party's rhetorical style. The final article, "Effects of the Refugee Crisis on Perceptions of Asylum Seekers in Recipient Populations," published in the Journal of Refugee Studies in 2019, examines more closely some of the issues that article 3 found to be important for never considering voting for the populist radical right. The article addresses how people perceive asylum seekers using open-ended survey items asked before and after the 2015 refugee crisis. The article finds that people perceive asylum seekers in fundamentally different ways, which can shed light on why many people react to the migration policies promoted by the populist radical right. In sum, this thesis contributes to the literature on the populist radical right by highlighting a new approach employing a public opinion perspective without using voting as dependent variable. The findings in this thesis are based on carefully designed survey experiments and open-ended survey questions and provides empirical evidence from a systematic and detailed comparative study, all emphasizing the voters' point of view. All articles consistently show that what sets the populist radical right apart is its ideology. Although the ideology does not necessarily prevent the populist radical right from being tolerated by the public, the ideology and rhetorical style contributes to negative partisanship.Doktorgradsavhandlin

Political (In)tolerance of the Far-Right: The Importance of Agency

This paper examines the impact of far-right agency on public political tolerance—what the parties on the far right do to disconnect themselves from accusations of extremism and thus increase their political tolerance by the public. Examining such patterns is challenging because of the multiple varieties of party attributes and strategies that are used by the far right. This paper uses a conjoint survey experiment conducted in the Norwegian Citizen Panel. Each respondent was presented with one vignette describing important attributes of a hypothetical far-right initiative and was then asked to evaluate whether this initiative should be allowed to hold an event. The conjoint design makes it possible to test the impact of the ideological and organizational varieties of the far right. The results demonstrate that what the parties on the far right do is crucial for public political tolerance. Denying extremism and excluding extreme members increase tolerance. However, the features that the far right is not in control of, such as its ideological legacy and the fact that some of its members have been convicted of racist speech negatively affect public political tolerance. The paper concludes that the agency of the far right is a necessary but not sufficient condition for public political tolerance of the far right.publishedVersio

Effects of the Refugee Crisis on Perceptions of Asylum Seekers in Recipient Populations

This article examines the effects of the refugee crisis on perceptions of asylum seekers. Previous research has demonstrated that asylum seekers are perceived in terms of deservingness—either as deserving refugees in need of help or as undeserving and unwelcome exploiters. The article uses unique panel data from a representative sample drawn directly from the Norwegian population registry. Through Structural Topic Modelling (STM) of open-ended survey responses fielded before and after the refugee crisis, this article analyses, first, how ordinary citizens perceive asylum seekers and, second, the article documents that these perceptions of asylum seekers changed. They did, however, not change from perceiving asylum seekers as deserving to perceiving them as undeserving. The change was more subtle. Responses that characterize asylum seekers as deserving prior to the crisis tended to reflect a sense of responsibility to help—of involvement. Responses after the crisis were more distanced, even as they characterized the asylum seekers as deserving. All in all, these findings improve our knowledge about how the refugee crisis affected public opinion in recipient populations.publishedVersio

Prevalence of eating disorder symptomatology among outpatients referred to health promotion from somatic hospital departments.

Background and aims: All eating disorders (EDs) lead to a significant decrease of health status, psychosocial functioning and quality of life (QoL). Individuals with untreated binge eating disorder (BED) tend to gain weight over time, which may contribute to serious health issues. In somatic hospital departments, some outpatients have reduced compliance with lifestyle changes. This may, to some extent, be due to patients with an undiagnosed ED receiving the incorrect treatment. In this cross-sectional study, we aimed to investigate the prevalence of EDs among patients referred to lifestyle courses.Results: A total of 136 patients referred from somatic hospital departments to lifestyle changes in a specialized hospital unit were included in the study. The response rate was 69.4%. Self-reported ED or sub-clinical symptoms of ED according to the Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire (EDE-Q) were found in 17.65%. Of these, 11.03% fulfilled the self-reported criteria for an ED (BED, 7.35%; bulimia nervosa, 3.68%). Patients with an ED or subclinical ED symptoms had elevated grazing behaviour compared to those without ED symptomatology. A statistically significant difference in QoL was also found.Discussion and conclusions: The prevalence of self-reported ED or subclinical ED symptoms in patients referred to a lifestyle course is substantial. This ED group had reduced QoL and larger grazing behaviour compared to patients without ED symptomatology. Thus, the prevalence of undiagnosed EDs among patients within somatic hospital departments may be substantial, underlining the importance of screening and further research within this topic.Level of evidence: Level III, well-designed cohort study.Significance: What is already known on this subject? In a review including populations from Scandinavia, the USA and South America, the estimated BED prevalence in individuals with higher body weight seeking help to lose weight is 13-27% [22]. Dawes et al. (2016) conducted a meta-analysis investigating the prevalence of mental health conditions among bariatric surgery candidates and recipients. They included 25 studies with a total of 13,769 patients and found that the prevalence of BED was 17% (13-21%) [10]. What this study adds? We have identified a group of patients who may be receiving inappropriate treatment with weight loss intervention instead of specialized ED intervention. It appears that this issue is valid in various somatic hospital departments. Thus, this is a field that requires further attention and investigation

Uranium and lanthanum in Norwegian drinking water – Is there cause for concern?

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