Appearing moderate or radical? Radical left party success and the two-dimensional political space

Werner Krause

doi:10.1080/01402382.2019.1672019

Abstract

Challenger parties’ electoral successes have attracted increasing scholarly attention. Based on the example of West European radical left parties, this article investigates whether and how centripetal and centrifugal positional movements on different conflict dimensions influence the election results of these parties. Depending on parties’ issue-linkages, these strategies will have a different effect for the economic and the non-economic issue dimension. Due to radical left parties’ long-term commitment and a strong party-issue linkage on economic issues, more moderate positions will play to their electoral advantage. In contrast, far-left parties compete with social democratic and green-libertarian parties for party-issue linkages on the non-economic issue dimension. Here, they benefit from promoting centrifugal strategies. Based on time-series cross-section analyses for 25 West European far-left parties between 1990 and 2017, the empirical results show that the success of radical left parties’ positional strategies varies with the conflict dimension in question and that this effect is only partly moderated by the positions of competing mainstream left parties.

Highlights

Challenger parties’ electoral successes have attracted increasing scholarly attention
The electoral support for the West European radical left has increased from 7% in the early 1990s to 12% in most recent elections
This study investigates how the supply side of electoral politics has influenced the electoral performance of radical left parties

Summary

Introduction

Challenger parties’ electoral successes have attracted increasing scholarly attention. Relying on the Downsian framework of political competition, as well as on literature on niche and challenger parties, I argue that radical left parties profit electorally from centrifugal movements, i.e. more extreme positions, when it comes to non-economic issues, while they benefit from centripetal shifts, i.e. more moderate positions, on the economic conflict dimension.

Results

Conclusion