Insecurity Politics – How Unstable Lives Lead to Populist Support

Insecurity Politics explores the everyday experiences that shape political dissatisfaction. Rather than relying on simplified views of populist voters as “left behind,” Antonucci looks at how ordinary but increasingly unstable working and financial conditions help explain the rise of populist movements across the political spectrum.

Drawing on strong comparative research, including quantitative and qualitative data from nine European countries, the book highlights the material and cultural factors that feed anti‑establishment attitudes. It shows that frustration with work and growing financial insecurity are key drivers of populist support.

Antonucci charts how insecurity has changed across Europe, linking it to long-term shifts in welfare states and deep cultural transformations. The book puts forward a new framework that brings together economic and cultural explanations, showing how social and political conditions shape people’s openness to anti-establishment messages.

Moving beyond common arguments that focus only on cultural backlash or the effects of globalisation, Insecurity Politics identifies an important gap in current debates. It also offers more than a diagnosis: Antonucci argues that a clearer understanding of what fuels populist attitudes could help shape a more responsive political agenda - one that reflects the complex realities of people’s lives.

Biography

Lorenza Antonucci is an Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Cambridge. Their research is concerned with understanding how societies are changing and reacting to growing work and financial precarity in Europe and globally.

Before joining Cambridge, Antonucci was Associate Professor/Deputy Director of Research (Methodology) at the College of Social Sciences at University of Birmingham (UK) and member of CHASM, German Kennedy Memorial Fellow & Visiting Scholar at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies (Harvard University) and Visiting Associate Professor at the Centre d'études européennes et de politique comparée and the AxPo Observatory of Market Society Polarization (2025) at Sciences Po, Paris.

Antonucci has a keen interest in investigating insecurity both empirically (using quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods) and theoretically alongside other key sociological concepts across cultural and economic sociology, such as social status, recognition and sociology of risk.