Political radicalism among Dutch farmers

Although income parity has been achieved in Dutch agriculture, dissatisfaction with income is prevalent among farmers for reasons which are quite understandable. Low income is the most important factor that brings about the decrease in the number of farmers. A real opposition against government agricultural policies is pursued by two minor political parties, namely the Communist Party and the Farmers Party. The Farmers Party is a radical right wing political party which has enjoyed a fast growing electoral success between 1958 and 1966. Farmers who sympathise with the Farmers Party are over-represented among those farmers who look for security to be given by the government. The central hypothesis of the empirical study was that those farmers who score high on the authoritarianism scale, and who at the same time are disoriented in some way, will show sympathies with the Farmers Party. Two kinds of disorientation are further elaborated: anomy and relative deprivation. This central hypothesis is invalidated by empirical data. Anomy, independent from authoritarianism, appears to be a factor explaining sympathies with the Farmers Party; second, only among the less authoritarian farmers and, connected with this, among the higher income categories can a relationship be observed between relative deprivation and sympathy with the Farmers Party. Disorientation is presumably the central factor that brings about a sympathy with the Farmers Party. Among the higher income categories, anomy seems to originate from income dissatisfaction; among the lower income categories, those farmers who look for security to be given by the government and who at the same time do not believe that the government will be ready to procure this security, show sympathies with the Farmers Party