My current book project, Many Ways to be Right: The Unbundling of European Mass Attitudes and Asymmetric Party Competition, asks why the European right – but not moderate center-right parties – was well-positioned to take advantage of changes in mass attitudes following the shift to the knowledge economy. Contra existing accounts, which consider the inability of the European right to speak in a single voice as its main source of weakness, I show that the ability of the right to speak in multiple voices serves in expanding its support within the context of a highly fragmented electorate. The empirical evidence combines quantitative analyses with more than 30 interviews I conducted with right-wing politicians during six months of fieldwork in Europe. 

In three thematic sections, (1) I argue that the shift to the knowledge economy led to the unbundling of traditional belief systems, as it drove a wedge between economic and cultural attitudes in public opinion. (2) I then demonstrate that the European right has an advantage in attracting cross-pressured voters: while the left attracts those with progressive attitudes on all issues, it is enough to be conservative on one issue to nudge voters to support the right. (3) Building on these findings, I conceptualize the strategic dilemmas of center-right parties not as a choice between extremism and moderation, but rather as a choice between two right-wing constituencies with mutually-exclusive beleif systems: market cosmopolitans (economically conservative, culturally progressive) and welfare chauvinists (economically progressive, culturally conservative). I examine the trade-offs this dilemma entails and how they vary cross-nationally.

These findings open up new analytical terrain to explore asymmetries in electoral coalitions across the left-right divide and the relationship between political-economic contexts and mass belief systems. They also provide one of the first comprehensive and comparative accounts of the electoral dilemmas of center-right parties.