Longing for a better country in the past and future: how hope and nostalgia affect support for the populist radical-right

Recent social psychological literature has started to examine the affective appeal of rising populist radical-right parties (PRRP). This paper builds on this line of work by investigating whether the relationship between group-based emotions of national nostalgia and national hope, on the one hand, and PRRP support, on the other hand, depends on whether national identity is understood in an exclusionary (i.e. ethnic nationhood) or inclusionary fashion (i.e. civic nationhood). Hypotheses were tested using LISS survey data with a representative sample of the Dutch population obtained in 2020 (N = 1489). Results showed that national nostalgia was more strongly related to PRRP support among voters who endorsed ethnic nationhood, but unexpectedly, also for voters endorsing civic nationhood. For national hope, results indicated that this emotion was related to lower support for PRRP, across levels of ethnic and civic nationhood. Implications of these findings for research on the affective appeal of PRRP are discussed.