In the APSA Public Scholarship Program, graduate students in political science produce summaries of new research in the American Political Science Review. This piece, written by Dirck de Kleer, covers the new article by Stuart J. Turnbull-Dugarte, University of Southampton, and Alberto López Ortega, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, “Instrumentally Inclusive: The Political Psychology of Homonationalism.”
On June 12, 2016, 49 people were killed in a terrorist attack at an LGBT+ nightclub in Orlando, Florida. In a campaign rally later that day, Trump said that incoming Muslim migrants posed a threat to the welfare of LGBT+ Americans. Why would a conservative person like Trump suddenly stand up for the LGBT+ community? In a recent APSR article, Stuart Turnbull-Dugarte and Alberto López Ortega show that this kind of support is motivated by a dislike of immigrants rather than by genuine concerns about the LGBT+ community.
Support for LGBT+ rights is growing across Western societies. In the Netherlands, Germany, or Austria, tolerance of homosexuality is even a part of citizenship exams. And growing support is not limited to progressive persons. A fast-growing group of people who support LGBT+ rights are conservative nationalists. While they are conservative about immigrants, they are more liberal toward LGBT+ persons.
But, argue the authors, if we look more closely, their liberal attitudes toward LGBT+ persons are more fragile than we think. The authors expect that a dislike of immigrants motivates these people to increase their support for LGBT+ rights. The argument can be likened to the saying that “the enemy of your enemy is your friend.”
Conservative nationalists attach a lot of importance to national norms and values. When immigrants express negative views about LGBT+ rights, these conservatives will perceive this as a threat to “their” national norms and values. This results in increased support for LGBT+ rights among conservative nationalists because they want to appear more Spanish, British, or German, for example, than immigrants do, even if they personally don’t like LGBT+ persons that much.
The authors test this argument in two online experiments, one in the UK and one in Spain. Those who participated in the experiment read a fictional news article describing protests against LGBT+ themed schoolbooks. One group of participants read a version of the article where protesters had common “white” names, while the other group read a version where the protesters had common Muslim names. To give an idea: In the British experiment, the “white” name for the protest leader in the fictional article was “Daniel Smith” and the Muslim name “Shakeel Afsar.” After reading the article, both groups were then asked some questions about their support for LGBT+ rights.
“This study shows that support for progressive values, for some people, might have intolerant roots.” The experiment allowed the authors to test whether a dislike of immigrants motivates an increase in support for LGBT+ rights. If this were not true, it would not matter if the protesters had white names or Muslim names. In that case, the two groups would show no differences in support for LGBT+ rights. However, the authors show that there is a difference between the groups.
Among anti-immigrant respondents, those who saw the article with Muslim names were roughly 20% more positive about LGBT+ rights than those who saw the article with white names. In addition, the anti-immigrant respondents who saw the article with Muslim names reported higher feelings of national pride than those who saw the article with white names.
This study shows that support for progressive values, for some people, might have intolerant roots. The authors point out that this also holds lessons for women’s or environmental rights. Similarly, some support for those rights might be more fragile than we think.
- Dirck de Kleer is a PhD student in Social and Political Science at Bocconi University (Italy), where he studies political behavior and public opinion. His research focuses on understanding how citizens and politicians navigate the boundaries between moderate and extreme political attitudes and behaviors. In other work, he explores the implications of far-right parties in government. He holds an MA from Duke University, where he was a Fulbright Graduate Student (2018-2020).
- Article details: TURNBULL-DUGARTE, STUART J., and ALBERTO LÓPEZ ORTEGA. 2023. “Instrumentally Inclusive: The Political Psychology of Homonationalism.”, American Political Science Review
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