AUTOMATION AND NATIONALISM: THE MICROFOUNDATIONS OF THE MIDDLE-CLASS POLITICAL REALIGNMENT?

This dissertation provides a microfoundational analysis of automation’s political consequences, particularly focusing on mid-skill routine workers exposed to technological replaceability. Extant literature shows that this group of workers has become a core constituency of the radical right parties, raising two key puzzles. First, a mismatch emerges between the limited job losses associated with automation and the radical political reactions of the expected “losers”. Second, current explanations fail to adequately address why automation "losers" embrace postmaterialist political demands, crucial drivers of radical right support. In response to the first puzzle, Paper 1 empirically links automation risk to worsening employment conditions across Western European labor markets, particularly after the Great Recession (2007-2009). In response to the second puzzle, the following two papers provide a sound empirical test of the “misattribution” hypotheses, although undermining the expectation of an authoritarian shift of routine workers’ postmaterialist values. Paper 2 shows that automation "losers" misattribute their economic concerns to migration rather than technology, driven by sociocultural concerns rather than material hardship. Against the expectations, Paper 3 shows that the distributional impacts of automation are not associated with relevant attitudinal shifts, suggesting that the former might have contributed to a change in individuals’ priority over public issues.