International trade and the populist backlash: Evidence from France
Files
Carpentier_de_Changy_36801700_2022.pdf
UCLouvain restricted access - Adobe PDF
- 437.04 KB
Carpentier_de_Changy_36801700_2022_Annexe.pdf
UCLouvain restricted access - Adobe PDF
- 431.81 KB
Details
- Supervisors
- Faculty
- Degree label
- Abstract
- Over the last two decades, far-right parties have gained ground in many European countries. In the context of the rising support for populist parties, many studies have investigated the role played by economic insecurity generated by trade liberalization. The purpose of our paper is to analyze the impact of rising import competition and export opportunities on electoral support for the Rassemblement National. Our study uses data of the French presidential elections from 2002 to 2017 and contains two parts. We first looked at the impact of total French trade, then we focused the analysis on trade with low-wage countries which soared during the period covered. The results of our regression analysis suggest that total French imports have a radicalizing effect on voters while export expansion has a moderating effect. The radicalizing effect of trade can be explained by imports from low-wage countries. However, we find no impact of French export expansion to low-wage countries on RN’s vote share. Additionally, we observed that increasing import competition from low-wage countries is associated with a drop in turnout while French export expansion increases election turnout.