| Abstract [eng] |
In Lithuania far-right populism does not yet have any significant political victories, but within the framework of this study I want to better understand what factors could potentially enable it. For this, I aim to reveal how this phenomenon is socially constructed using the perspective of poststructuralist discourse theory, which explains that far-right populism arises due to neoliberalism and its consequences. Individual support for structural elements of this political discourse allows measuring the potential susceptibility of individuals to far-right populism, which serves as a basis for geometric analysis of value configurations and individuals' positions in the social environment using the ESS 10 wave data. The results show that living outside of major urban centers, frequent religious worship, being older, left-wing political attitudes and female gender are associated with greater potential susceptibility to far-right populist discourse in Lithuania. However, the effect of material conditions, which according to the scientific literature and the case of Hungary is very important in explaining the support for far-right, is not prominent in Lithuanian data. The population most susceptible to far-right populism that also actively votes for parties using this political discourse is best explained as middle class regional residents. While lower class population tends to have lower political participation and not vote while at the same time having relatively similar attitudes and position in the social space to those most susceptible to far-right populism. This exposes a very dangerous potential to mobilize this population group to vote for the populist far-right, which would allow such parties to gain more political support and enable the consolidation and expansion of that discourse. Therefore, the threat of far-right in Lithuania is still very real. |
