Far Right Partisanship and Confidence in the United Nations and European Union Across the Nordic Countries

Abstract

Research finds a link between far-right political partisanship and attitudes towards transnational institutions among European citizens—mainly in relation to the European Union (EU). Citizens that support far-right parties tend to view the European Union as unjustly subverting national sovereignty, which leads to a higher level of Euroskepticism when compared to supporters of most mainstream parties. In this study, our contribution is that we explore whether the negative attitudes far-right party supporters have towards the European Union extend towards the United Nations (UN). We utilize the joint Wave 5 European Values Study (EVS)/World Values Survey (WVS) Wave 7 to estimate multiple regression models predicting confidence in the EU and UN across the Nordic countries. The results confirm previous studies showing that confidence in the EU is lower among far-right partisans. In addition, the results demonstrate that although smaller in size, there are many instances where far-right partisans also have less confidence in the UN. The analysis shows that far-right partisans' lack of confidence in supranational organizations also extends to transnational institutions, which is an important area of inquiry given the UN's role in mitigating current global crises.