scholarly journals Is the (Mass) Party Really Over? The Case of the Dutch Forum for Democracy

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 286-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
Léonie De Jonge
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Structures ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
The Past ◽  
Full Control ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Mass Organization ◽  
Radical Right Parties ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
Internal Procedures ◽  
Organizational Features

Over the past decades, the Netherlands has witnessed the rise of several influential populist radical right parties, including the Pim Fortuyn List (Lijst Pim Fortuyn), Geert Wilders’s Party for Freedom (Partij voor de Vrijheid) and, more recently, the Forum for Democracy (Forum voor Democratie [FvD]). By analyzing the party’s organizational structures, this article seeks to determine whether the FvD may be considered a new “mass party” and to what extent ordinary members can exert influence over the party’s internal procedures. The party’s efforts to establish a large membership base suggest that the FvD set out to build a relatively complex mass organization. Through targeted advertising campaigns, the party made strategic use of social media platforms to rally support. Thus, while the means may have changed with the advent of the internet, the FvD invested in creating some organizational features that are commonly associated with the “mass party” model. At the same time, however, the party did not really seek to foster a community of loyal partisan activists among its membership base but instead treated its members as donors. The party is clearly characterized by centralized leadership in the sense that the party’s spearhead, Thierry Baudet, maintains full control over key decision-making areas such as ideological direction, campaigning, and internal procedures. At first sight, the party appears to have departed from Wilders’s leader-centered party model. However, a closer look at the party apparatus demonstrates that the FvD is, in fact, very hierarchical, suggesting that the party’s internal democracy is much weaker than the party’s name might suggest.

Interwar fascism and the post-1989 radical right: Ideology, opportunism and historical legacy in Bulgaria and Romania

2009 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 551-571 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Frusetta ◽  
Anca Glont
Keyword(s):  
Historical Consciousness ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Historical Legacy ◽  
The Past ◽  
Radical Right Parties ◽  
Populist Movements

Do contemporary Bulgarian and Romanian radical right movements represent a legacy of interwar fascism? We argue that the key element is not that interwar movements provided legacies (of structures, ideologies, or organizations) but rather a symbolic “heritage” that contemporary movements can draw upon. The crucial legacy is, rather, the Socialist era, which in asserting its own definitions of interwar fascism created a “useable past” for populist movements. The Peoples’ Republics created a flawed historical consciousness whereby demonized interwar rightist movements could be mobilized after 1989 as historical expressions of “anti-Communist” — and, ergo, positive symbols among those of anti-Communist sentiment. Although radical right parties in both countries may cast themselves as “heirs” to interwar fascism, they share little in common in terms of ideology. Their claims to a fascist legacy is, rather, a factor of how their respective Socialist states characterized the past.

scholarly journals Fear of the Known or the Unknown? Neighbourhood Dynamics and Individual-Level Sympathy for the Dutch Populist Radical Right

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sjoerdje Van Heerden ◽  
Didier Ruedin
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Data ◽  
Multilevel Models ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Contact Theory ◽  
Mixed Composition ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Past ◽  
Populist Radical Right ◽  
Radical Right Parties

Over the past two decades populist radical right parties have become established political actors in many European countries. We examine to what extent the share of immigrants in a neighbourhood is associated with popular support for the Dutch Freedom Party (PVV). We examine individual-level changes in sympathy for the PVV using panel data, complemented with geo-spatial data to capture the share of immigrants at the level of the neighbourhoods. We use fixed-effect multilevel models for the period 2007–2014. In line with contact theory, an increased share in the proportion immigrants is associated with a decrease in sympathy for the PVV. This is particularly the case for an increase in the proportion of non-Western immigrants in the neighbourhood. At the same time, respondents who have moved to a neighbourhood with more immigrants within the period under analysis, have significantly more sympathy for the PVV. In addition, we find a statistical interaction effect for Western immigrants: Residents of traditionally ‘native’ neighbourhoods express more sympathy for the PVV when Western immigrants move in, than do residents of neighbourhoods that have been of mixed composition for a longer time.

How and Why the Populist Radical Right Persuades Citizens

2019 ◽  
pp. 813-837
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Ivarsflaten ◽  
Scott Blinder ◽  
Lise Bjånesøy
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Large Share ◽  
The Past ◽  
Populist Radical Right ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
Party Family ◽  
Established Democracies

The “populist radical right” is a contested concept in scholarly work for good reason. This chapter begins by explaining that the political parties usually grouped together under this label are not a party family in a conventional sense and do not self-identify with this category. It goes on to show how political science scholarship has established that in Europe during the past thirty or so years we have seen the rise of a set of parties that share a common ideological feature—nativism. The nativist political parties experiencing most electoral support have combined their nativist agenda with some other legitimate ideological companion, which provides deniability—a shield against charges that the nativist agenda makes the parties and their supporters right-wing extremist and undemocratic. The chapter goes on to explain that in order to make progress on our understanding of how and why the populist radical right persuades citizens, we need to recognize: first, that nativism is the only necessary ingredient without which the populist radical right loses its force; and second, that nativism in contemporary established democracies has tended not to persuade a large share of voters without an ideological companion.

scholarly journals Quantified Nostalgia: Social Media, Metrics, and Memory

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 205630512110088
Author(s):  
Benjamin N. Jacobsen ◽  
David Beer
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Focus Group ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
The Past ◽  
Group Data ◽  
Focus Group Data ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Memory Practices ◽  
The Relationship

As social media platforms have developed over the past decade, they are no longer simply sites for interactions and networked sociality; they also now facilitate backwards glances to previous times, moments, and events. Users’ past content is turned into definable objects that can be scored, rated, and resurfaced as “memories.” There is, then, a need to understand how metrics have come to shape digital and social media memory practices, and how the relationship between memory, data, and metrics can be further understood. This article seeks to outline some of the relations between social media, metrics, and memory. It examines how metrics shape remembrance of the past within social media. Drawing on qualitative interviews as well as focus group data, the article examines the ways in which metrics are implicated in memory making and memory practices. This article explores the effect of social media “likes” on people’s memory attachments and emotional associations with the past. The article then examines how memory features incentivize users to keep remembering through accumulation. It also examines how numerating engagements leads to a sense of competition in how the digital past is approached and experienced. Finally, the article explores the tensions that arise in quantifying people’s engagements with their memories. This article proposes the notion of quantified nostalgia in order to examine how metrics are variously performative in memory making, and how regimes of ordinary measures can figure in the engagement and reconstruction of the digital past in multiple ways.

Playing Politics: How Sabarimala Played Out on TikTok

2021 ◽  
pp. 000276422198976
Author(s):  
Darsana Vijay ◽  
Alex Gekker
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Political Actor ◽  
The Past ◽  
Indian Context ◽  
Political Contention ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Potential Strategy

TikTok is commonly known as a playful, silly platform where teenagers share 15-second videos of crazy stunts or act out funny snippets from popular culture. In the past few years, it has experienced exponential growth and popularity, unseating Facebook as the most downloaded app. Interestingly, recent news coverage notes the emergence of TikTok as a political actor in the Indian context. They raise concerns over the abundance of divisive content, hate speech, and the lack of platform accountability in countering these issues. In this article, we analyze how politics is performed on TikTok and how the platform’s design shapes such expressions and their circulation. What does the playful architecture of TikTok mean to the nature of its political discourse and participation? To answer this, we review existing academic work on play, media, and political participation and then examine the case of Sabarimala through the double lens of ludic engagement and platform-specific features. The efficacy of play as a productive heuristic to study political contention on social media platforms is demonstrated. Finally, we turn to ludo-literacy as a potential strategy that can reveal the structures that order playful political participation and can initiate alternative modes of playing politics.

Competing for Loyalists? How Party Positioning Affects Populist Radical Right Voting

2021 ◽  
pp. 001041402199716
Author(s):  
Winston Chou ◽  
Rafaela Dancygier ◽  
Naoki Egami ◽  
Amaney A. Jamal
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Immigration Policies ◽  
Populist Radical Right ◽  
Alternative Für Deutschland ◽  
Party Loyalty ◽  
The Status ◽  
Radical Right Parties ◽  
Voter Groups

As populist radical right parties muster increasing support in many democracies, an important question is how mainstream parties can recapture their voters. Focusing on Germany, we present original panel evidence that voters supporting the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD)—the country’s largest populist radical right party—resemble partisan loyalists with entrenched anti-establishment views, seemingly beyond recapture by mainstream parties. Yet this loyalty does not only reflect anti-establishment voting, but also gridlocked party-issue positioning. Despite descriptive evidence of strong party loyalty, experimental evidence reveals that many AfD voters change allegiances when mainstream parties accommodate their preferences. However, for most parties this repositioning is extremely costly. While mainstream parties can attract populist radical right voters via restrictive immigration policies, they alienate their own voters in doing so. Examining position shifts across issue dimensions, parties, and voter groups, our research demonstrates that, absent significant changes in issue preferences or salience, the status quo is an equilibrium.

scholarly journals Economic Distress and Support for Radical Right Parties—Evidence From Sweden

2021 ◽  
pp. 001041402110243
Author(s):  
Sirus H. Dehdari
Keyword(s):  
Market Competition ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Aggregate Level ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Skilled Immigrants ◽  
Economic Distress ◽  
Radical Right Parties ◽  
Unemployment Risk ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
High Share

This paper studies the effects of economic distress on support for radical right parties. Using Swedish election data, I show that one layoff notice among low-skilled native-born workers increases, on average, support for the Swedish radical right party the Sweden Democrats by 0.17–0.45 votes. The relationship between layoff notices and support for the Sweden Democrats is stronger in areas with a high share of low-skilled immigrants and in areas with a low share of high-skilled immigrants. These findings are in line with theories suggesting that economically distressed voters oppose immigration as they fear increased labor market competition. In addition, I use individual-level survey data to show that self-reported unemployment risk is positively associated with voting for the Sweden Democrats among low-skilled respondents while the opposite is true for high-skilled respondents, echoing the aggregate-level findings.

scholarly journals With a Little Help from Their Friends: The Consequences of Populists in National Government for Policymaking in Local Government

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Fred Paxton
Keyword(s):  
Local Government ◽  
National Government ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Local Policy ◽  
Institutional Settings ◽  
Strategic Value ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
Multilevel Perspective ◽  
Radical Right Parties ◽  
Newspaper Data

Abstract Despite increasing research into populist parties in power, their impact on subnational institutions has been neglected. Taking a novel multilevel perspective, this article inquires into the policy consequences of populist radical right parties (specifically, the FPÖ and Lega) in local government, and the effect of their simultaneous participation in national government. The article shows the expansion of exclusionary policy that follows their concurrent presence in national and local government. The process that leads from national government entry to local policy influence is traced using interview and newspaper data. The article argues that the influence of central parties over these ‘showcase’ localities is rooted in different multilevel governance configurations. These vary cross-nationally according to two factors: the strength of mayors’ linkages with higher government levels in the different institutional settings and, due to the different extent of party nationalization, the strategic value of the municipality to the central party.

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