The populist radical right and vacinations

Abstract This intervention reviews global and comparative evidence on the relationship between parties of the populist radical right (PRR)and vaccination policies. There seems to be an elective affinity between PRR politicians and vaccine skepticism if not outright anti-vaccinationism. Such an affinity is almost definitional, if we start with a definition of a PRR politician or movement as one that is anti-pluralist and anti-elitist, ideologically empty but oppositional towards ‘elites' and positive about ‘common sense.’ These parties found themselves wrong-footed early in the pandemic, when a topic (health) for which they have little issue ownership was suddenly extremely salient. Their initial efforts were to downplay the pandemic and change the topic (e.g. away from pandemic management at home and towards blaming China). As the pandemic continued, they refocused in many countries on opposition to public health measures such as business closures, a stance that resonated with core beliefs and much of a social base concentrated among people like small business owners. The result was that parties which often express hostility to government and science were, by the time vaccines arrived, often deep into a politically effective rhetoric of pandemic denialism, alternative therapies, and hostility to public health and medical authorities that were calling for vaccination in addition to earlier polarizing measures such as masking.