Abstract
We examine the impact of the Great Depression on the share of votes for right-wing extremists in elections in the 1920s and 1930s. We confirm the existence of a link between political extremism and economic hard times as captured by growth or contraction of the economy. What mattered was not simply growth at the time of the election, but cumulative growth performance. The impact was greatest in countries with relatively short histories of democracy, with electoral systems that created low hurdles to parliamentary representation, and which had been on the losing side in World War I.
Highlights
We examine the impact of the Great Depression on the share of votes for rightwing extremists in elections in the 1920s and 1930s
Hard economic times have increased political polarization and bred support for nationalist and right-wing political parties. All this gives rise to fears that economic hard times will feed political extremism, as it did in the 1930s
Consistent with German experience, we find a link between right-wing political extremism and economic conditions, as captured by the change in GDP
Summary
We examine the impact of the Great Depression on the share of votes for rightwing extremists in elections in the 1920s and 1930s. The impact of the global credit crisis and Great Recession has been more than just economic In both parliamentary and presidential democracies, governments have been ousted. Hard economic times have increased political polarization and bred support for nationalist and right-wing political parties. 372 De Bromhead, Eichengreen, and O’Rourke the Depression and political extremism are informed by the case of Germany. There, both communists and fascists saw their vote shares increase sharply as the economic crisis deepened after 1929. The view that this link was causal is widely shared. The horrific consequences of what followed have led observers, whether consciously or not, to generalize from the German experience
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