Reactionary politics: explaining the psychological roots of anti preferences in European integration and immigration debates

The concurrent strong waves of anti-EU integration and anti-immigration preferences sweeping across Europe, capitalized on by populist discourses, reflect citizens’ economic anxieties brought about by the financial crisis, dormant cultural fears, widespread suspicion towards international institutions, and frustration with ‘politics as usual’. Extant electoral and public opinion research provide fragmented and conflicted accounts about the psychological origins of these ‘anti’ preferences. In this article, a) we articulate a novel overarching theoretical framework that focuses on reaction as a political orientation and b) we provide an empirical test of the propose theory using data from the 2004 and 2014 European Social Survey. Explication of political reaction as driver of political preferences can move research on challenges to democratic representation forward, particularly political disengagement, violent protests, and populist and anti-establishment party vote in the context of the financial crisis.