Conspiracy beliefs and populist radical right attitudes: A comparative European analysis

In this article, we examine the extent to which attitudes linked with the populist radical right are associated across Europe with belief in three different types of conspiracy theories: general conspiracy ideation, science conspiracy ideation and Covid-19. To do this, we analysed 2020–2022 European Social Survey data from 28 countries. We found that four sets of populist radical right attitudes were consistently associated with the three levels of conspiracy theory here analysed: Believing that citizens should have the final say in referendums, that decisions should be made nationally rather than at the EU level, that it is not important for minority rights to be protected and that it is acceptable to have a strong leader above the law. In addition, we found that some of these associations were stronger in Western Europe, and others were stronger in Central and Eastern Europe.