Abstract
The paper explores the role of radical right parties in the politicization of immigration. In scholarly literature, radical right parties are viewed as the owners of the immigration issue and as drivers of its politicization. Against this prevalent view, we argue that the significance of radical right parties in politicizing immigration is overrated: (1) Radical right parties only play a subordinate role in the politicization of immigration, whereas the contribution of mainstream parties to raising issue salience has been underestimated; (2) the politicization of immigration is not related to radical right strength in the party system. The findings are based on media data from a comparative project on public claims-making on immigration in Western European countries (SOM, Support and Opposition to Migration). We discuss our findings in comparison to the relevant literature and suggest avenues for further research.
Highlights
Populist, radical, and extreme right-wing parties have established themselves as serious political competitors in Western European politics in the last few decades
We will first look at claims-making on immigration by individual actors—in particular the radical right party family—before turning to patterns in the overall salience of immigration in a given country
As indicated in scholarly work on radical right parties in Europe, this paper was based on the assumption that this party family would play a key role in the politicization of immigration in the media
Summary
Radical, and extreme right-wing parties have established themselves as serious political competitors in Western European politics in the last few decades. Some of them experienced electoral triumphs, such as the Lijst Pim Fortuyn (LPF) in the 2002 elections in the Netherlands, the Swiss People’s Party (SVP), which became the strongest party in 1999, or the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) winning 27 per cent in the 1999 elections and becoming part of a coalition government as a result, which was widely interpreted as the crossing of a border-line (cf., Minkenberg, 2001). Various parties from the populist or radical right camp, like the LPF (2002) and Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom (PVV) (2010) in the Netherlands, succeeded in of-.
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