Competing with the radical right

Abstract

The popularity of European Radical Right Populist parties (RRPs) has led to investigations into the distances between RRPs’ and other parties’ stances regarding immigration. This article adds to this literature by investigating the distance between RRPs and the other parties on a wider variety of typical RRP policy and style issues. Based on an Expert Survey organized in 2010, we consider ideological (immigration, nationalism, law and order) and style (anti-establishment, populism) dimensions. Furthermore, we examine to what extent characteristics of other parties and RRPs (ideological position, electoral success, being in office) are associated with these distances. Our results show that right-wing (neo-)conservative and Christian-democratic parties are closest, while green and socialist parties are furthest to RRPs regarding ideological dimensions. The opposite is found for the style dimensions. Additionally, we show that the other parties’ characteristics, rather than those of RRPs, are associated with ideological and style distances between RRPs and other parties.