Predicting the Rise of EU Right-Wing Populism in Response to Unbalanced Immigration

Figure 4

Nonlinearity, a tipping point, and the rise of right-wing populism. Using a network of agents, each with an average of 15 connections, we examine the effect of a constant inflow of outsiders at rate at each time step. In this setup, the total number of outsiders at any moment in time is . As the fraction of outsiders, , approaches the tolerance parameter, , the presence of a tipping point causes the fraction of RW populist supporters to start increasing nonlinearly and eventually undergo a sudden jump (i.e., a discontinuous change) at about 37 years (450 months) into the simulation (black curve). The sudden jump happens much earlier if the inflow of outsiders experiences shocks at times and at which outsiders enter the network. In particular, as the network approaches the tipping point, the effect of exactly the same shock becomes disproportionately higher (red curve). In this case, however, the tolerance parameter is still kept constant. Finally, we also examine the case in which shocks at times and affect the tolerance parameter, where responsiveness is controlled by parameter . Here, the second shock at is sufficient to instantly tip the network into RW populism (green curve). Other parameters are , , , , and .