«The inert homeland succumbs to continental centripetalism»: the Portuguese radical right and Portugal›s accession to the European Economic Community (1974-1986)*

Whose democracy is it anyway? (Maryniak 2002: 107) Introduction Although the populist radical right is not antidemocratic in a procedural sense, as argued in chapter 1, core tenets of its ideology stand in fundamental tension with liberal democracy. Various authors have discussed this tension, although mostly at an abstract level without much reference to concrete positions of the parties in question (e.g. Betz 2004; Decker 2004; see also Lipset 1955). To understand the nature and scope of this tension, we must examine the societal and systemic consequences of the three key features of the populist radical right: nativism, authoritarianism and populism. The following sections will discuss the populist radical right parties' views on nativist democracy, authoritarian democracy, and populist democracy, respectively. In the conclusion the populist radical right view of democracy will be constructed and compared to the key features of liberal democracy in general, and the way they are implemented in contemporary European countries in particular. This exercise should also help provide a clearer insight into the key question on the mind of many authors and, indeed, readers: how dangerous are populist radical right parties for liberal democracy? Nativist democracy: it's our country! The key concept of the populist radical right is nativism, the ideology that a state should comprise “natives” and that “nonnatives” are to be treated with hostility. Like all ideologues, nativists are torn between the ideal and the practice, the dream and the reality.

Introduction: Class Politics and the Radical Right Jens Rydgren 1. The Populist Right, the Working Class, and the Changing Face of Class Politics Simon Bornschier and Hanspeter Kriesi 2. The Class Basis of the Cleavage between the New Left and the Radical Right: an analysis for Austria, Denmark, Norway and Switzerland Daniel Oesch 3. Radical right parties: Their voters and their electoral competitors Wouter van der Brug, Meindert Fennema, Sarah de Lange and Inger Baller 4. Working Class Parties 2.0? Competition between Centre Left and Extreme Right Parties Kai Arzheimer 5. In or out of proportion? Labour and social democratic parties responses to the radical right Tim Bale, Dan Hough, and Stijn van Kessel 6. Right-wing Populist Parties and the Working Class Vote: What Have You Done for Us Lately? Hans-Georg Betz and Susi Meret 7. Voting for the populist radical right in Western Europe: The role of education Elisabeth Ivarsflaten and Rune Stubager 8. Gender, class and radical right voting Hilde Coffe 9. The Class Basis of Extreme-Right Voting in France: Generational Replacement and the Rise of New Cultural Issues (1984-2007) Florent Gougou and Nonna Mayer 10. Another kind of class voting: The working class sympathy for Sweden Democrats Maria Oskarson and Marie Demker 11. Mobilizing the Workers? Extreme Right Party Support and Campaign Effects at the 2010 British General Election Matthew J. Goodwin and David Cutts 12. The Radical Right in Central and Eastern Europe: Class Politics in Classless Societies? Michael Minkenberg and Bartek Pytlas 13. Social Class and Radical Right: Conceptualizing Political Preference Formation and Partisan Choice Herbert Kitschelt

The resurgence of populist radical right parties in European democracies has been one of the most scrutinized and thoroughly documented political phenomena in the past four decades. So far, the bulk of the existing comparative research on populist radical right parties has been mainly concerned with first-order elections in Western Europe, less so with European elections. European integration and Euroscepticism are crucial features of the populist radical right however. Most parties of the populist radical right take a negative stance towards the European Union, and the European Parliament is also an arena that allows if not encourages cross-national co-operation. This chapter examines populist radical parties in European elections across all Western and Eastern member states, factors of variation in their electoral support and how European elections are linked to the national election cycle. Based upon Mudde's (2007) definition of the populist radical right, this chapter suggests a brief account of the presence of this party family in European parliament since 1979, together with a political mapping of its location in the collaborative space within the European arena. The second section looks more specifically at the status and role of EP elections within the national election cycle, and addresses the issue of regularity and change in the existing inter-relations between European and national first-order elections across EU-member states.

In order to understand German right extremism in a country that has been unified only since 1990, it is necessary to look back at its antecedents. This chapter will deal primarily with the rightist political parties and neo-Nazi and skinhead groups that made up the right-wing extremist side of the West German political landscape from 1945 to 1990. We must ask why some of the groups arose so soon after the Nazi regime collapsed in 1945 and why former Nazis in leadership positions found a political home in some of the newly established democratic parties. What led to the right-wing extremist parties’ and groups’ rapid cyclical rise and fall? Did they constitute a danger to the fledgling new democratic order? Did the democratic parties take a stand on the issues raised by the rightist parties and groups? This chapter will also deal with rightist groups in the German Democratic Republic prior to its demise in 1990. Why did the groups play a lesser role than similar ones in West Germany? Did they ever constitute a threat to the GDR regime?

The identity of the radical right in the second post-war period is characterized by the milestone April 25th 1974. Before the Carnation Revolution, the radical right identified itself, although with a critical posture, with the nationalistic political culture of the authoritarian regime and, especially, with the multi-continental and multiracial dimensions of the myth of the Portuguese Empire. The end of the Empire caused by the overthrow of the authoritarian regime and the establishment of the democracy made the Portuguese radical right an antisystem actor, with a discourse that distances itself from the myth of Portugal “from Minho to East Timor” and gets closer to the identitarian and racialist discourse of the European and North-American far rights. This gradual transformation in the political culture of the radical right also coincides with a generational change in militancy in the last quarter of the 20th century and the dawn of the twentyfirst century. The paper analyzes the generational, organizational and ideological dynamics that characterised the radical right highlighting the political discourse of the nationalist groups founded during the Colonial War and the discourse of the most notorious radical group at the end of the Century: the National Action Movement (MAN).

Four main elements characterized Portuguese democracy during the financial bailout by the Troika: first, a government that governed well beyond its 2011 electoral mandate; second, an enormous imbalance in the sacrifices required of citizens (wage earners and retired) and capital; third, powerful delegitimization as a consequence of poor economic and public finance results; fourth, the last of the problems behind Portuguese dissatisfaction with how democracy functioned was, until the 2015 elections, the opposition’s inability to propose alternatives, primarily because the Partido Socialista (PS – Socialist Party) was a weak opposition to the government and until recently the left-wing parties seemed unable to cooperate to create a governmental alternative. What we show here with updated data (2012 and 2014) and specific measures to tap the phenomena is that there are specific elements to the erosion of democratic support and institutional trust as a result of the Troika years and the way austerity policies were imposed by the right-wing government (2011–15), as well as due to the pattern of opposition until the elections of 4 October 2015. The 2015 general election brought about major changes. The resulting minority Socialist Party PS government, supported in parliament by the parties of the radical left – Bloco de Esquerda (BE – Left Bloc), Partido Comunista Português (PCP – Portuguese Communist Party) and Partido Ecologista ‘Os Verdes’ (PEV – Ecology Party ‘The Greens’) – marks a major change with left-wing parties cooperating for the first time in the government of Portugal.

Portrait of a model ally: The Portuguese Communist Party and the International Communist Movement, 1968–1983

Societies around the globe have been witnessing the emergence of the radical right, often seen as the result of neoliberal globalization. Democratic governance, liberalism, human rights, and values are being questioned while populist, authoritarian, and ethnonationalist forms of governance are being offered. In the European Union, the tumultuous developments have been testing the viability of the identity marker of Europeanness and its perseverance in EU member states. What we are witnessing are significant shifts in the discourse about sameness and otherness, the convergence of left and right ideologies and the emergence of hybrid forms of authoritarianism and democracy that have been dubbed as illiberal democracy or authoritarian liberalism. The rise of the radical right and its mobilization across the EU member states is reflective of these processes, and it is the goal of this author to understand the mechanisms behind the empowerment, mobilization, and normalization of radical right through the case study of Slovakia. In particular, the effort of this paper is to understand how the far-right party Kotlebovci – Ľudová Strana Naše Slovensko (ĽSNS) in Slovakia re-conceptualized the notion of nation and normalized far-right ideology as a pretext of a broader mobilization.

In contemporary political science, the extreme right phenomenon continues to attract considerable academic attention. Among major political developments in established Western-style democracies, few have provoked as much interest as the revival of different forms of right-wing radicalism and extremism in recent years (Betz 2003, 74). The number of studies focused on the subject, the number of scholars active in the field and the range of theoretical approaches have all expanded enormously (Mudde 2000, 6). In short, there has been an ‘explosive growth of the literature’ (Ignazi 2002, 22).1. Despite renewed interest in the ‘dark side of Europe’ (Harris 1994), it should not be overlooked that there exists a rich tradition of research focused upon various aspects of extreme right-wing politics. As pointed out by Norris (2005), social psychology, political psychology, political sociology and political science have all devoted significant efforts to investigating the social bases of support for a variety of manifestations commonly labelled ‘extreme right’, whether fascism and Nazism (e.g. Adorno et al. 1950), Poujadisme in France (Hoffman 1956), American phenomena such as McCarthyism and the John Birch Society (Bell 1963; Lipset and Raab 1970), or more recent developments in Western Europe (e.g. Betz 1994; Cheles et al. 1995; Kitschelt and McGann 1995; Merkl and Weinberg 1997; Ignazi 2003; Carter 2005). What differentiates previous instances of extreme right success from more recent examples is that the former, for example the Poujadists in 1956 or the German Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD) in the 1960s, experienced only ‘flash’ success, while contemporary extreme right parties (ERPs) have exerted an appreciable impact upon a number of party systems over the course of a number of electoral cycles. As observed by Schain et al. (2002, 16), ‘there seems to be little question that the radical right has become an important political force in Western Europe’. The principal aim of this review article is to examine the scholarly response to the extreme right phenomenon and, to this end, is composed in the following manner: first, it outlines how a preoccupation with ‘demand-side’ or ‘externalist’ explanations led researchers away from examining extreme right parties (ERPs) and towards assessing the impact of socio-economic developments on levels of ERP electoral support. Second, although contributors have in recent years attempted to redress this imbalance by focusing increasingly upon party-centric factors, to date ‘internalist’ perspectives have suffered from a glaring lack of empirical analysis. The review concludes by suggesting that researchers might gain a richer insight into internalist dimensions and the nature of contemporary ERPs through examining the political actors at the heart of this phenomenon.

This chapter addresses the changes produced in the Portuguese political system in the wake of the sovereign debt crisis. While in many European countries traditional political parties have lost a large share of the votes to anti-systemic parties, Portugal has bucked the trend. However, the crisis has produced a major political change, otherwise impossible, given past antagonisms. A Socialist minority government is now supported in Parliament by the other two left-wing political parties (the Portuguese Communist Party and the Left Bloc). The alliance, in its second year at the time of writing, has been gradually reversing austerity measures, offering an interesting example of anti-austerity politics in (governmental) practice.

According to the academic debate, the populist radical right is particularly successful in regions that have been left behind economically or culturally. Although civic engagement in networks of civil society, a specific form of social capital, seems important, its influence remains ambiguous. In contrast, regional out-migration as a social dimension of being left behind receives limited attention despite the relevance of internal migration to political geography. This study investigates two theoretically possible models to clarify the relationships between regional out-migration, civic engagement, and their impacts on voting for the populist radical right. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and official regional statistics, logistic multilevel analyses are conducted for Germany and the election of the AfD (Alternative for Germany) in the 2017 federal election. The key finding of the cross-sectional analysis is that regional out-migration is a condition that moderates the relationship between civic participation and the election of the AfD. In general, civically involved individuals support established democratic parties, but in regions with high out-migration, they tend to vote for the populist radical right. However, there is no empirical evidence that regional out-migration contributes to the election of the AfD by reducing civic engagement and being mediated by it.

This chapter starts by clarifying the comparative framework and the primary sources of survey data employed in this study. The book is based upon the ‘most different’ research design, including thirty-nine countries with contrasting democratic histories, patterns of industrial development, and political institutions, as well as divergent electoral fortunes for the radical right. Countries are compared if included in either of the primary survey data sources: the European Social Survey 2002 and the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems 1996–2001. The national variations are important since they provide insights into the underlying conditions facilitating electoral support for these parties. The chapter then discusses the best way to conceptualize and define parties such as the French Front National, the Austrian FPO, and the Belgian Vlaams Blok, and explains the party typology used in this study. For a consistent classification, this book uses both ‘expert’ and ‘voter’ judgments to identify the location of parties across the ideological spectrum. This chapter draws upon the most recent expert survey, conducted in 2000 by Marcel Lubbers, supplemented by those contained in the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and by similar sources. Careful classification is an important preliminary step before examining whether parties within the radical right family share certain similar social and ideological characteristics, as so often assumed. On this basis, Chapter 3 then goes on to briefly summarize the electoral fortunes of the most significant contemporary radical right parties studied in depth throughout the rest of the book.

Until very recently the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) appeared to be a bastion of communist orthodoxy modelled along Soviet lines. Indeed, as the only Western European communist party that had been a protagonist in a revolutionary struggle for power (1974–75) since the post-war recuperation of liberal democracy, the ideology and behaviour of the PCP still manifested characteristics that could fairly be labelled ‘Stalinist’. In the early 1980’s the PCP perceived itself as a revolutionary party and it conserved its unity through the effective operation of democratic centralism as it had been learned in the struggle against dictatorship. However, with the advent of glasnost and perestroika in the USSR, cracks became visible in the windows of the ‘party with glass walls’.1 Individual communist dissidents began to challenge the PCP’s enduring orthodoxy. With the overthrow of the East European ‘socialist’ regimes these fissures deepened and organised groups began to advocate the renovation of the party. The Portuguese Communist Party nevertheless disassociated itself from the crisis of communism and reaffirmed its Marxist-Leninist principles.

This review proposes a comparative research agenda on center-right parties in advanced democracies, bringing together research in American and comparative politics. Political scientists have recently closely examined the decline of the center-left and the rise of the radical right but have paid less attention to the weakening of center-right parties. Yet cohesive center-right parties have facilitated political stability and compromises, while their disintegration has empowered radical challengers. After presenting an overview of right-wing politics in Western democracies and weighing different definitions of the electoral right, we discuss two factors that shape variations in center-right cohesion: organizational robustness of center-right partisan institutions and the (un)bundling of conservative mass attitudes on different policy dimensions. Last, we argue that a full account of the rise of the radical right cannot focus solely on the strategies of the center-left but must incorporate also the choices, opportunities, and constraints of center-right parties.

Common concepts for the classification of parties into families (origins, transnational links, ideology, name) suggest that the radical right should be less homogeneous than most other party families in Western Europe: their comparatively diverse origins, disputed ideological core features, as well as the lack of stable transnational cooperation and the absence of an agreed-upon label support this reasoning. The article uses expert survey data on six policy dimensions to assess the homogeneity of the radical right in comparison with the green, social democratic, liberal and conservative/Christian democratic party families. Analysing a set of 94 parties from 17 West European countries it is found (1) that party families on the left are more homogeneous than those on the right, and (2) that the party family of the radical right exhibits a degree of policy homogeneity similar to the conservatives and Christian democrats, while being considerably more homogeneous than the liberal party family.