Andrej Cvetic: 4th year PhD student

Can you give us a brief overview of your research and what inspired you to choose this topic?

My research focuses on the impact radical right parties have on immigrants and minorities in Western Europe. I am mostly interested to learn how immigrants and minorities react to widespread and increasing electoral support for radical right parties such as for AfD in Germany or PVV in the Netherlands. I am researching how different aspects of electoral support, such as overall vote share, entrance to national and regional parliament and increase or decrease in electoral support impact trust or national identification among immigrants and minorities.

My motivation mostly came from failing to find any reliable academic piece about the impact of electoral support for radical right, while I was reading pieces in news outlets. In the end I decided to start researching the topic. I also have a long-lasting interest in discrimination that comes from my undergrad interest in gender studies.

What has been the most surprising or interesting finding in your research so far?

The most interesting finding is that increase in electoral support for radical right actually decreases levels of political and social trust among immigrants in Western Europe. Because trust is dependent on numerous other factors, such as social capital of the minority community, experiences with street-level bureaucracy and even personality traits, I did not have high expectations of finding the effect at all. Apparently, observing that other voters support a political option directed against one’s basic identities (i.e. ethnic or religious) also matters for trust. Though, I need to admit that effects are not substantively big.

How do you think your research could impact the field of political science or society as a whole?

I mostly see it through further development and contribution to evidence-based policies. In case numerous voters become fond of anti-immigrant policies, other stakeholders such as the state, civil society and local governments need to have some idea how this will impact immigrant and minority communities.

Knowing that immigrants and minorities tend to be less trustworthy when they experience surge in support for radical right nation-wise could direct stakeholders in creation of new civil engagement programmes to foster social trust among different ethnic and religious communities. This research might also help immigrant and minority communities to understand and respond adequately to radical right discrimination of their members and help them in rebuilding confidence in institutions and society.

What advice would you give to other students who are considering pursuing a PhD in political science?

To prepare for daily flux of excitement and disappointment in doing research. It might happen they have a great idea and know how to design a research, but then bump into an appropriate, but incomplete dataset, or even worse, dataset that has all the good variables, but then key variables don’t have enough variations to gauge reliable estimates with them.

Such situations over and over again can be extremely discouraging and difficult to cope with – because one can have the feeling they are doing everything right, but the solid result is never there. On the other hand, nothing can replace the feeling of excitement when one sees their first set of robust results. My take is that as long this excitement prevails over disappointment its worth sticking to your Ph.D.

Learn more about the Political Science PhD Programme