Project description
Exploring the personal factors driving populism
Populism has always been a feature across Europe’s political spectrum. The big question is about the factors serving as the driving force behind populism. The EU-funded EXTREME project will explore whether people’s political decisions are shaped by their personal experiences, information environment and their interaction with aggregate economic shocks. Specifically, it will focus on the factors leading to the voting for populist UKIP and Brexit. It will also study the resistance to the Nazi regime during the Second World War. For this, the research team will measure resistance by checking a self-collected data set on treason cases and data on bombing and exposure to foreign propaganda. The project will also explore the personal factors that influenced the election of Donald Trump in the 2016 United States election.