Roads to the Radical Right

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Koen Damhuis
Keyword(s):  
Radical Right ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
Unique Material ◽  
Marine Le Pen ◽  
To Come ◽  
National Perspective ◽  
Western Democracies ◽  
Do So ◽  
Cross National

Trump, Wilders, Salvini, Le Pen—during the last decades, radical right-wing leaders and their parties have become important political forces in most Western democracies. Their growing appeal raises an increasingly relevant question: who are the voters that support them and why do they do so? Numerous and variegated answers have been given to this question, inside as well as outside academia. Yet, curiously, despite their quantity and diversity, these existing explanations are often based on a similar assumption: that of homogeneous electorates. Consequently, the idea that different subgroups with different profiles and preferences might coexist within the constituencies of radical right-wing parties has thus far remained underdeveloped, both theoretically and empirically. This ground-breaking book is the first one that systematically investigates the heterogeneity of radical right-wing voters. Theoretically, it introduces the concept of electoral equifinality to come to grips with this diversity. Empirically, it relies on innovative statistical analyses and no less than 125 life-history interviews with voters in France and the Netherlands. Based on this unique material, the study identifies different roads to the radical right and compares them within a cross-national perspective. In addition, through an analysis of almost 1,400 tweets posted by Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pen, the book shows how the latter are able to appeal to different groups of voters. Taken together, the book thus provides a host of ground-breaking insights into the heterogeneous phenomenon of radical right support.

Inside the political supply of the radical right

2020 ◽  
pp. 84-100
Author(s):  
Koen Damhuis
Keyword(s):  
Radical Right ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Reference Groups ◽  
Political Messages ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Marine Le Pen ◽  
Dual Closure ◽  
Do So

This chapter empirically investigates the political supply of radical right-wing parties. Not only to make sure that the FN and the PVV are actually comparable, which is a necessary condition to justify a comparison of their voters. But also to find out whether there are differences in their political messages, which, in turn, might account for different demands within their respective constituencies. Based on a fine-grained analysis of 1,378 hand-coded tweets of Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders, the chapter shows which reference groups they denounce and which groups they claim to support, which issues they prioritize and how they articulate these issues. The findings indicate that the political supply of the two politicians is highly comparable. Rather than offering standardized ‘products’ to a general electorate, both radical right politicians use relatively similar forms of ‘product differentiation’ (Eatwell, 2000), by articulating the demands and identities of multiple societal groups in a nativist fashion. Importantly, both leaders do so through ‘dual closure’ (Parkin, 1979), denouncing both elites (above) and non-native out-groups (below).

scholarly journals Who Is Open to Authoritarian Governance within Western Democracies?

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Ariel Malka ◽  
Yphtach Lelkes ◽  
Bert N. Bakker ◽  
Eliyahu Spivack
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
World Values Survey ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Political Preferences ◽  
Economic Attitudes ◽  
Cultural Conservatism ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Western Democracies

Recent events have raised concern about potential threats to democracy within Western countries. If Western citizens who are open to authoritarian governance share a common set of political preferences, then authoritarian elites can attract mass coalitions that are willing to subvert democracy to achieve shared ideological goals. With this in mind, we explored which ideological groups are most open to authoritarian governance within Western general publics using World Values Survey data from fourteen Western democracies and three recent Latin American Public Opinion Project samples from Canada and the United States. Two key findings emerged. First, cultural conservatism was consistently associated with openness to authoritarian governance. Second, within half of the democracies studied, including all of the English-speaking ones, Western citizens holding a protection-based attitude package⸺combining cultural conservatism with left economic attitudes⸺were the most open to authoritarian governance. Within other countries, protection-based and consistently right-wing attitude packages were associated with similarly high levels of openness to authoritarian governance. We discuss implications for radical right populism and the possibility of splitting potentially undemocratic mass coalitions along economic lines.

scholarly journals Radical Right-Wing Politics and Migrants and Refugees in Hungary

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 100
Author(s):  
Onvara Vadhanavisala
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
The Past ◽  
European Institutions ◽  
Marine Le Pen ◽  
Political Spectrum ◽  
The Eu

Radical right-wing politics and ultra-nationalism have always been important issue across Europe's political spectrum. However, the recent flourishing of right-wing and populist parties in Europe in the past couple years were provoked by the European migrants and refugee crisis. The European institutions fail to solve the crisis. We witnessed various terrorist attacks occurred in major cities in Europe such as Paris, Berlin, and Italy etc. This had led not only the European people but all over the world to grow more suspicious of the EU institutions and their capabilities to manage the incident. As a consequence, the radical right-wing nationalist and right-wing political parties in Europe have taken this opportunity to claim and run their campaigns on a strong anti-refugees and immigrants. As a result, right-wing politicians and parties tend to gain more popularity among voters and achieved electoral success in many European countries such as Marine Le Pen in France, Andrej Babiš in Czech Republic, the Freedom Party (FPÖ) in Austria, Viktor Orbán's Fidesz party in Hungary and elsewhere in Europe. These right-wing nationalists and political parties represent themselves as a defender of European Christian values, the protector of Europe, the savior of Christianity. They are working in every way to prevent the land of Europe from Muslims. This kind of rhetoric is spreading across Europe and developed as an anti-refugee/immigrant campaign which can be seen in both online and offline media especially in the case of Hungary. It has signified as a backlash against the political establishment and a wave of discontent. Furthermore, the rise of right-wing politics has created concerns over human rights, national identity, refugee and migrant issues.

scholarly journals Liberal Illiberalism? The Reshaping of the Contemporary Populist Radical Right in Northern Europe

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 112-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Moffitt
Keyword(s):  
Free Speech ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Populist Radical Right ◽  
The People ◽  
Radical Right Parties ◽  
Do So

Populism, particularly in its radical right-wing variants, is often posited as antithetical to the principles of liberalism. Yet a number of contemporary cases of populist radical right parties from Northern Europe complicate this characterisation of populism: rather than being directly opposed to liberalism, these parties selectively reconfigure traditionally liberal defences of discriminated-against groups—such as homosexuals or women—in their own image, positing these groups as part of ‘the people’ who must be protected, and presenting themselves as defenders of liberty, free speech and ‘Enlightenment values’. This article examines this situation, and argues that that while populist radical right parties in Northern Europe may only invoke such liberal values to opportunistically attack their enemies—in many of these cases, Muslims and ‘the elite’ who allegedly are abetting the ‘Islamisation’ of Europe’—this discursive shift represents a move towards a ‘liberal illiberalism’. Drawing on party manifestoes and press materials, it outlines the ways in which these actors articulate liberal illiberalism, the reasons they do so, and the ramifications of this shift.

The design of the study

2020 ◽  
pp. 57-83
Author(s):  
Koen Damhuis
Keyword(s):  
Research Design ◽  
Multiple Correspondence Analysis ◽  
Structural Heterogeneity ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Previous Theory ◽  
Multiple Data ◽  
Sequential Mixed Methods ◽  
Related Part ◽  
Marine Le Pen

The third chapter discusses the case selection of the study and more broadly, its research design. As the subtitle of the book already indicates, two cases are selected here: France (FN) and the Netherlands (PVV). These different cases are highly interesting as they allow pin-pointing the key differences between and similarities among types of radical right-wing voters across various national contexts, as well as improving the specificity and validity of the causal claims. In terms of the research design, the remainder of the chapter follows the same structure as the previous theory chapter, Chapter 2. Accordingly, it first discusses the data and methods used in the supply-side-oriented part of the book, which relies on a content analysis of the tweets of Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders. The demand-side-related part, by contrast, relies on multiple data sources and methods. This chapter explains why a sequential mixed-methods approach is followed, using multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) to investigate the structural heterogeneity among radical right voters and life-history interviews to assess ideal-typical forms of radical right support within this structural heterogeneity.

scholarly journals Who is Open to Authoritarian Governance within Western Democracies?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ariel Malka ◽  
Yphtach Lelkes ◽  
Bert N. Bakker ◽  
Eliyahu Spivack
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
World Values Survey ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Political Preferences ◽  
Economic Attitudes ◽  
Cultural Conservatism ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Western Democracies

Recent events have raised concern about potential threats to democracy within Western countries. If Western citizens who are open to authoritarian governance share a common set of political preferences, then authoritarian elites can attract mass coalitions that are willing to subvert democracy to achieve shared ideological goals. With this in mind we explored which ideological groups are most open to authoritarian governance within Western general publics using World Values Survey data from fourteen Western democracies and three recent Latin American Public Opinion Project samples from Canada and the United States. Two key findings emerged. First, cultural conservatism was consistently associated with openness to authoritarian governance. Second, within half of the democracies studied, including all of the English-speaking ones, Western citizens holding a protection-based attitude package — combining cultural conservatism with left economic attitudes — were the most open to authoritarian governance. Within other countries, protection-based and consistently right-wing attitude packages were associated with similarly high levels of openness to authoritarian governance. We discuss implications for radical right populism and the possibility of splitting potentially undemocratic mass coalitions along economic lines.

scholarly journals Undocumented Migration and Electoral Support: Evidence From Spain

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 196-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ismael Gálvez-Iniesta ◽  
José L. Groizard
Keyword(s):  
Right Wing ◽  
Undocumented Migration ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Ample Evidence ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right ◽  
Western Democracies

Unwrapping the political discourse against immigration is key to understanding the rise of populism in Western democracies. A growing body of literature has found ample evidence that immigration pays a premium to conservative political forces that propose tighter policies. Using data on presidential elections in Spain from 2008 to 2019, we shed light on this debate by highlighting the role played by irregular migration. Some studies show that undocumented immigrants consume less and earn lower wages than documented immigrants with similar observable characteristics. In addition, since they are relegated to working in the informal sector, they cannot contribute to the welfare state with direct taxes. This suggests that undocumented migration might intensify support for right-wing politics and that the effect is independent from the one caused by the presence of documented migrants. We apply an instrumental variable strategy to deal with the non-random distribution of migrants across political districts. Our findings indicate that increasing undocumented migration increases support for the right, while increasing documented migration rises support for the left. When we consider the irruption of the far-right into electoral competitions, we find that undocumented migration redistributes votes from the left to the right, as has been observed in other countries.

scholarly journals Who Uses Right-Wing Alternative Online Media? An Exploration of Audience Characteristics

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 6-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heidi Schulze
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Media Use ◽  
National Level ◽  
Alternative Media ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Online Media ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
National Analysis ◽  
Cross National

Accompanying the success of the radical right and right-wing populist movements, right-wing alternative online media have recently gained prominence and, to some extent, influence on public discourse and elections. The existing scholarship so far focuses primarily on the role of content and social media distribution and pays little attention to the audiences of right-wing alternative media, especially at a cross-national level and in the European context. The present paper addresses this gap by exploring the characteristics of the audiences of right-wing alternative online media. Based on a secondary data analysis of the 2019 Reuters Digital News Survey, this article presents a cross-national analysis of right-wing alternative media use in Northern and Central Europe. The results indicate a comparatively high prevalence of right-wing alternative online media in Sweden, whereas in Germany, Austria, and Finland, these news websites seem to be far less popular. With regard to audience characteristics, the strongest predictors of right-wing alternative online media use are political interest and a critical stance towards immigration, accompanied by a skeptical assessment of news quality, in general, and distrust, especially in public service broadcasting media. Additionally, the use of social media as a primary news source increases the likelihood of right-wing alternative news consumption. This corroborates the high relevance of social media platforms as distributors and multipliers of right-wing alternative news content. The findings suggest that right-wing alternative online media should not be underestimated as a peripheral phenomenon, but rather have to be considered influential factors for center-right to radical right-leaning politics and audiences in public discourse, with a high mobilizing and polarizing potential.

The Language of Right-Wing Populist Leaders: Not So Simple

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Duncan McDonnell ◽  
Stefano Ondelli
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Marine Le Pen ◽  
Simple Language ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Do So

Political scientists have long asserted that populists use simpler language than their mainstream rivals to appeal to ordinary people and distance themselves from elites. However, there is little comparative evidence in support of that claim. In this study, we investigate the linguistic simplicity of four right-wing populists compared to their principal opponents in the United States, France, United Kingdom, and Italy. We do so by analysing a corpus of approximately one million words from leaders’ speeches, using a series of linguistics measures for evaluating simplicity. Contrary to expectations, we find that Donald Trump was only slightly simpler than Hillary Clinton, while Nigel Farage in the UK and Marine Le Pen in France were more complex than their main rivals, and Italy’s Matteo Salvini was simpler on some measures but not others. We conclude that the simple language claim is not borne out and that other aspects of the received wisdom about populism should be re-examined.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document