Seminar:
‘Undeserved winners’ or ‘more deserving losers’ ? Two types of societal discontent and their relation to radical right and left voting - Delia Zollinger (University of Zurich)
14:00-15:00 (GMT) Wednesday, November 26.
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Abstract: Normative evaluations of shifts in social hierarchies have emerged as a central factor in understanding recent electoral transformations. In particular, supporters of radical right and left parties express pronounced dissatisfaction with which social groups are perceived to be rising or declining in status. This paper argues that the nature of this discontent diverges between the two camps: while radical right supporters tend to resent the ascent of ‘un-deserved winners,’ radical left voters focus more on the suffering of ‘more deserving losers.’ Drawing on open-ended survey responses from an original survey conducted in Germany, we explore how individuals normatively assess changes in the social order. Through a combination of word embedding techniques and qualitative analysis, we investigate the gap between respondents’ ideals and their perceptions of evolving status hierarchies. Our findings reveal that concerns about ‘undeserved winners’ are prevalent among both radical right and left voters. However, clear ideas about ’more deserving losers’ or underprivileged groups are more characteristic of radical left – but not right – voters.
About the speaker(s): Delia Zollinger is a postdoctoral researcher at the Chair for Swiss Politics and Comparative Political Economy. Her research interests lie at the intersection of political sociology, political economy, and comparative politics. She received her PhD from the University of Zurich in 2023. Her doctoral research, which was supported by a Doc.CH grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation, focused on the emergence of new political identities and conflict lines in postindustrial knowledge societies. Delia was a visiting scholar at Harvard University in 2022 and at the European University Institute in 2021. She previously studied political Science at the London School of Economics and Political Science (Msc) and the University of Zurich (BA).