School of Social and Political Science

Research interests

Christos Vrakopoulos's research primarily focuses on the electoral support for extreme-right parties in Europe. He examines the conditions under which these parties succeed, the role of mainstream party positioning, institutional quality, and voter attitudes in shaping far-right support.

Christos has published several articles on this topic. His single-authored article in the European Political Science Review(2022) demonstrates that electoral support for extreme-right parties is associated with low quality of government and highly conservative mainstream-right parties. He is currently expanding this research agenda through ongoing work with Kris Dunn on several papers examining how values shape political behaviour, including attitudes towards immigration and voting for far-right parties.

Christos also examines environmental and climate policy attitudes, particularly the spatial dimension of support and opposition. His article in Environmental Politics (2023), co-authored with Christoph Arndt and Daphne Halikiopoulou, demonstrates how climate policies that concentrate costs spatially generate resistance from individuals in rural and suburban areas, revealing a centre-periphery cleavage in attitudes towards environmental protection.

His recent work brings these research areas together. His most recent article in the European Political Science Review, co-authored with Daphne Halikiopoulou and Christoph Arndt, shows how opposition to environmental protection contributes to the emergence of a territorial cleavage between green voters in metropolitan areas and far-right voters in rural and peripheral areas, highlighting the intersection between far-right politics and environmental attitudes.