scholarly journals Where do radical right parties stand? Position blurring in multidimensional competition

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Rovny
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Competition ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Dimensional Structure ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Academic Literature ◽  
Voter Preferences ◽  
Radical Right Parties ◽  
Quantitative Analyses

This article questions the utility of assessing radical right party placement on economic issues, which has been extensively analyzed in academic literature. Starting from the premise that political parties have varying strategic stakes in different political issues, the article considers political competition in multiple issue dimensions. It suggests that political competition is not simply a matter of taking positions on political issues, but rather centers on manipulating the dimensional structure of politics. The core argument is that certain political parties, such as those of the radical right, seek to compete on neglected, secondary issues while simultaneously blurring their positions on established issues in order to attract broader support. Deliberate position blurring – considered costly by the literature – may thus be an effective strategy in multidimensional competition. The article combines quantitative analyses of electoral manifestos, expert placement of political parties, and voter preferences, by studying seventeen radical right parties in nine Western European party systems.

Party Systems and Radical Right-Wing Parties

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Herbert Kitschelt
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Strategic Interaction ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Issue Ownership ◽  
Initial Rise ◽  
Radical Right Parties

This chapter presents an introduction to different theories of party competition, as exemplified by the substantive puzzle of radical right-wing partisan rise. The first task, however, is to conceptualize radical right party fortunes within the context of competitive party systems. The next three sections discuss the initial rise of radical right parties through three lenses: spatial theories of party competition, institutional and historical mediators of current competitive opportunities for radical right entry, and non-spatial theories of party competition based on valence and issue ownership. This is followed by a report on research about the ongoing strategic interaction between radical right parties and their competitors after the former’s initial rise to electoral prowess. The chapter concludes with several general synthesizing hypotheses about the life cycle of political parties, with the radical right’s rise and possible future demise being a particular application.

New wine in old bottles: Explaining the dimensional structure of European party systems

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Rovny ◽  
Jonathan Polk
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Politics ◽  
Political Competition ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Cultural Dimensions ◽  
Religious Conflict ◽  
Dimensional Structure ◽  
Cultural Issues ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Impact

In Europe, noneconomic political issues are seen as secondary but significant aspects of political competition. There is uncertainty, however, about the sources of the varying relationships between economic and cultural politics. This article explains the variance in the correlation of the economic and cultural dimensions in different party systems through the impact of historical religious conflict. Despite the rise of new cultural issues, historical religious divides strikingly predict the relative distinctiveness of the sociocultural dimension in today’s Europe. By demonstrating that economic conflicts did not always supersede religious divides, but were at times brought into standing religious cleavages, we deepen the understanding of cleavage formation and longevity, and dimensional structure of politics in Europe.

Tribunes and Patricians: Fringe Parties in the 21st Century

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harry Nedelcu
Keyword(s):  
Financial Crisis ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Full Text ◽  
Debt Crisis ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Spectrum ◽  
Structural Shifts

The mid and late 2000s witnessed a proliferation of political parties in European party systems. Marxist, Libertarian, Pirate, and Animal parties, as well as radical-right and populist parties, have become part of an increasingly heterogeneous political spectrum generally dominated by the mainstream centre-left and centre-right. The question this article explores is what led to the surge of these parties during the first decade of the 21st century. While it is tempting to look at structural arguments or the recent late-2000s financial crisis to explain this proliferation, the emergence of these parties predates the debt-crisis and can not be described by structural shifts alone . This paper argues that the proliferation of new radical parties came about not only as a result of changes in the political space, but rather due to the very perceived presence and even strengthening of what Katz and Mair (1995) famously dubbed the "cartelization" of mainstream political parties.   Full text available at: https://doi.org/10.22215/rera.v7i1.210

Ideological voting for radical right parties in Europe

Acta Politica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo Ortiz Barquero ◽  
Antonia María Ruiz Jiménez ◽  
Manuel Tomás González-Fernández
Keyword(s):  
Party Systems ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Election Study ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
Political Dissatisfaction ◽  
Radical Right Parties ◽  
European Election ◽  
Ideological Voting

AbstractThe aim of this research is to examine to what extent the electoral support for radical right parties (RRPs) is driven by ‘policy voting’ and to compare this support with that of centre-right parties. Using the European Election Study 2019, we focus on six party systems: Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Austria, and the United Kingdom. Our analyses reveal that party preferences for RRPs are better explained by policy considerations than by other alternative explanations (e.g. by ‘globalization losers’ or ‘protest voting’). Additionally, the results show that although preferences for both party families are mainly rooted in ‘policy voting’, notable differences emerge when looking at the role of specific policy dimensions. Overall, these findings suggest that the support for RRPs cannot be understood fundamentally as a mere reaction against economic pauperization or political dissatisfaction but instead as an ideological decision based on rational choice models.

scholarly journals Causes and consequences of the rise of populist radical right parties and movements in Europe

2017 ◽  
Vol 65 (6) ◽  
pp. 909-930 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jasper Muis ◽  
Tim Immerzeel
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Supply Side ◽  
Political Opportunity ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Populist Radical Right ◽  
Case Selection ◽  
Radical Right Parties ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Supply Side Factors

This article reviews three strands in the scholarship on the populist radical right (PRR). It covers both political parties and extra-parliamentary mobilization in contemporary European democracies. After definitional issues and case selection, the authors first discuss demand-side approaches to the fortunes of the PRR. Subsequently, supply-side approaches are assessed, namely political opportunity explanations and internal supply-side factors, referring to leadership, organization and ideological positioning. Third, research on the consequences of the emergence and rise of these parties and movements is examined: do they constitute a corrective or a threat to democracy? The authors discuss the growing literature on the impact on established parties’ policies, the policies themselves, and citizens’ behaviour. The review concludes with future directions for theorizing and research.

Predicting Partisan Responsiveness: A Probabilistic Text Mining Time-Series Approach

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lenka Bustikova ◽  
David S. Siroky ◽  
Saud Alashri ◽  
Sultan Alzahrani
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Gradient Descent ◽  
Latent Dirichlet Allocation ◽  
Predictive Accuracy ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Subject Matter Experts ◽  
Computational Framework ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Time Series Approach ◽  
Political Spectrum

When do parties respond to their political rivals and when do they ignore them? This article presents a new computational framework to detect, analyze and predict partisan responsiveness by showing when parties on opposite poles of the political spectrum react to each other’s agendas and thereby contribute to polarization. Once spikes in responsiveness are detected and categorized using latent Dirichlet allocation, we utilize the terms that comprise the topics, together with a gradient descent solver, to assess the classifier’s predictive accuracy. Using 10,597 documents from the official websites of radical right and ethnic political parties in Slovakia (2004–2014), the analysis predicts which political issues will elicit partisan reactions, and which will be ignored, with an accuracy of 83% (F-measure) and outperforms both Random Forest and Naive Bayes classifiers. Subject matter experts validate the approach and interpret the results.

scholarly journals The Radical Right as Niche Parties? The Ideological Landscape of Party Systems in Western Europe, 1980–2014

2016 ◽  
Vol 65 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 84-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Wagner ◽  
Thomas M Meyer
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Economic Issues ◽  
Niche Parties ◽  
Radical Right Parties ◽  
Left And Right ◽  
The Right

The emergence of the radical right as a strong competitor to mainstream parties has fundamentally reshaped patterns of competition in many European party systems. In this article, we systematically explore changes to the ideological landscape in Western Europe by examining whether there has been programmatic mainstreaming of radical right parties due to (a) accommodation to and (b) moderation by radical right parties. We examine positions and salience on liberal-authoritarianism and the salience of economic issues using manifesto data from 68 parties in 17 countries. Our findings provide empirical support for a rightward shift in European party systems: on liberal-authoritarianism, mainstream left and right parties have increased their emphasis and moved to the right. Yet radical right parties have generally remained niche competitors; they are increasingly extreme and more focused on liberal-authoritarianism. Our analysis has important implications for understanding party systems, party competition and citizen representation in Europe.

How Does May’s Law Work in Multi-dimensional Competition? Intra-party Opinion Structure in Catalonia

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Montserrat Baras ◽  
Oscar Barberà ◽  
Astrid Barrio ◽  
Juan Rodríguez-Teruel
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Party System ◽  
Political Competition ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Party Competition

AbstractThis article explores how multi-dimensional competition party systems shape the intraparty opinion structure in political parties. The aim is to extend and test May’s law of ideological curvilinear disparity to multi-dimensional settings. The data are based on the case of Catalonia, a party system characterized by the relevant presence of non-state wide parties, where political competition is based on two main dimensions: the left right axis and the subjective national identity one. The paper shows that while the Catalan parties do fit with May’s law in the left-right axis, this is not the case in the national identity one. In addition, it further illustrates how the interaction between both axes affects party competition and internal opinion differences between leaders, activists and voters. The results attest the complexity of the intraparty opinion structures in multidimensional competition systems.

scholarly journals Populist, Radical and Extremist Political Parties in Visegrad countries vis à vis the migration crisis. In the name of the people and the nation in Central Europe

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Věra Stojarová
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The People ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Radical Right Parties ◽  
Migration Crisis ◽  
Visegrád Countries ◽  
The Eu

AbstractThe paper looks at the political party scene in Visegrad countries before and after the influx of refugees and compares how much the negative reactions were instrumentalised not only by the extremist and radical right parties but by the newly emerged populist formations as well as the well-established mainstream parties across the whole political spectra. Until the “migration crisis”, the far right parties focused mainly on Roma issue, anti-Semitism, anti-communism, anti-establishment and used anti-NATO, anti-EU, anti-German, anti-Czech, anti-Slovak or anti-Hungarian card. Since 2015, the parties re-oriented against immigrants, more precisely against the Muslims presenting them as a threat and also increased their criticism on the EU. However, the mainstream parties also accepted far right topics and actively promoted them. The result is then mainstreaming of xenophobia, nationalism and marginalization of far right parties as their flexible voters move to the populist subjects.

Ideological dilemmas of female populist radical right politicians

2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katarina Pettersson
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
The Other ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Societal Implications ◽  
Populist Radical Right ◽  
Patriarchal Ideology ◽  
Radical Right Parties ◽  
The One ◽  
Discursive Patterns

Radical right political parties are usually heavily male-dominated; accordingly, previous research has concentrated on the perspective of men. The present study aims to enhance the understanding of the worldview of women within radical right parties. Taking a critical discursive psychological approach, the study looks at how female populist radical right politicians in Sweden and Finland discursively negotiate the tension between the Nordic societal norm of gender equality, on the one hand, and the patriarchal ideology of populist radical right parties, on the other. The analysis suggests that the female populist radical right politicians’ discourse is indeed highly ambivalent. The discursive tension between gender equality and a patriarchal politics is heavily intertwined with two further tensions: first, that of a societal norm against prejudice versus a politics based on xenophobia; and second, that of a culture that cherishes individualism versus a political pressure to homogenize the political or cultural ‘Other’. The study compares the discourse of female populist radical right politicians in the two country contexts. Moreover, it discusses the differences and similarities between this discourse, on the one hand, and that of male populist radical right politicians, on the other. Finally, it analyses the gendered and racialized categorizations accomplished by the discursive patterns, and elaborates on their societal implications.

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