Keywords: Political behavior, participation and culture

The recent and precipitous rise in support for far right ethno-nationalist candidates, policies and parties in Europe and the U.S. has triggered a great deal of scholarly attention across the social sciences. Much ink has been spilled to date on some version of the idea that many middle class citizens in these countries are anxious about their economic prospects as a result of the income stagnation in the middle class. Economic anxiety, according to this story, is then used by charismatic leaders who blame stigmatized groups (for example, Mexican immigrants in the US, middle eastern and African immigrants and asylum seekers in Europe) for their plight. Groups especially sensitive to threats, such as those high in authoritarian personality, will be most anxious and thus turn to these extreme and often inexperienced leaders. Mass anxiety is therefore the predominant emotional catalyst in the move to the far right across highly disparate countries and publics: for example, Trump in the U.S., Brexit in Britain, the Front National in France, the anti-immigrant AfD in Germany. The current paper challenges this explanation in several ways. First, existing political theories of emotion would predict that anxiety might reduce rather than enhance support for highly risky, less well known alternatives to mainstream parties and candidates. Second, anxiety on its own rarely mobilizes large segments of the population that had previously remained on the sidelines. These types of political choices, that would punish stigmatized outgroups even if there is little evidence they are to blame, require great public anger. We therefore propose a new theory, Affective Agency, building on Affective Intelligence, to explain what is happening in the current political moment. We present data from recent elections in both France and Germany that show anxiety does not increase support for the far right Front National and AfD parties. Instead, anger powerfully mobilizes support for these two parties, especially among those already on the ideological right.