Demand-side accounts focus upon developments in the mass electorate which are believed to have fueled the popularity of radical right appeals, whether structural changes in the socioeconomic basis of postindustrial society, the rise of political disenchantment, or shifts in public opinion toward immigrants and ethnic minorities. Ever since early work on the origins of fascism and authoritarianism, a series of studies in political sociology have explored these issues. Three distinct strands emerged in the literature. Classic accounts published during the 1950s and 1960s sought to explain the phenomenon of the rise of fascism in Weimar Germany, as well as Poujadism in France, and McCarthyism in the United States, as a revolt against modernity led primarily by the petite bourgeoisie – small entrepreneurs, shopkeepers, merchants, self-employed artisans, and independent farmers – squeezed between the growing power of big business and the collective clout of organized labor. Echoing and updating these concerns, contemporary theorists argue that a new social cleavage has emerged in affluent societies. In this view, some residual elements of the appeal of the radical right among the petite bourgeoisie can still be detected, but during the last decade their populist rhetoric has fallen upon its most fertile ground among a low-skilled blue-collar underclass, with minimal job security, and among those populations most vulnerable to new social risks who have tumbled through the cracks within affluent societies.