Populist Radical Right Parties Research Articles

Fiscal implications of the populist radical right in power

ABSTRACT Fiscal preferences of populist radical right parties (PRRPs) typically entail a combination of lower tax rates and the maintenance of costly social spending categories, such as pension spending. Theoretically, this combination is doomed to inflate future public liabilities. In our mixed method study, we assess whether PRRPs in government indeed systematically cause higher deficits and to what extent the combination of tax and social policy explains their public finance. We theoretically discuss the evolution of tax policy and welfare preferences of PRRPs and contend that radical right fiscal preferences are driven by PRRPs’ ideological core claim of ‘native producerist deservingness’. Based on mixed effects models with entropy balanced weights, we show that PRRPs in government have significantly and substantially higher public deficits than governments without PRRPs and similar socio-economic starting conditions. This effect, however, is different in Eastern Europe, where PRRPs in government produce comparatively lower deficits, albeit signalling and implementing the same policy-mix as Western PRRPs. We trace the causes of the differences in outcome with an in-depth case study of the Fidesz government in Hungary from 2010 to 2014.

The Colors of the Populist Radical Right: The Strategic Use of Hue and Saturation in Party Logos

Populist radical right (PRR) parties tend to stress their differences from other parties. Yet at the same time, PRR parties have increasingly sought to integrate into party systems across the globe. In seeking to understand the way that PRR parties negotiate this paradoxical situation, the literature tends to focus on their policy offerings or discourse. We, on the contrary, investigate an underestimated aspect of their political communication: their visuals. Namely, we focus on the question of if and how PRR parties communicate their similarities or differences from other parties via the color profiles of their logos, given that color is a key way that political parties can signal (a) their ideological commitments (via hue) and (b) their approach to “valence” considerations (via saturation). We expect PRR parties’ attempts to signal their integration into party systems to be mainly sought via saturation, as a proxy for valence perceptions related to parties’ seriousness and competence, while we expect them to signal their difference from other parties via hue, given the incentive for PRR parties to communicate their ideological distance from non-populist parties as a marker of distinctiveness in the political market. We test our research questions by analyzing parties’ logos across 35 democracies in recent elections. Results largely confirm our expectations, demonstrating the utility of focusing on the visual aspects of PRR parties’ political communication. Interestingly, the results do not replicate if we focus on populist parties beyond the PRR party family.

They shall not pass? The role of supply-side factors in the electoral breakthrough of VOX and Chega

ABSTRACT No country is immune to the electoral success of populist radical right (PRR) parties: Spain and Portugal seemed to be the exception to this rule because, for decades, PRR parties remained relegated to the margins of the Iberian political systems. However, in 2019 VOX and Chega gained parliamentary representation: how did they manage to obtain their historic electoral breakthrough? From a supply-side perspective, we use the Party Manifesto dataset to show that VOX and Chega chose to position themselves within the existing political space and cleavages in ways that set them apart from the competition. VOX exploited the Spanish centre-periphery cleavage insisting on strong nationalist elements while advocating for increased centralization, while Chega insisted on personal freedom and welfare limitation to break the ties with the political system born out of the Carnation Revolution.

Using MI-LASSO to study populist radical right voting in times of pandemic

As immigration issues waned in salience during the COVID-19 pandemic, populist radical right (PRR) parties repositioned themselves by politicizing various pandemic policies. In light of this changing political landscape, scholars have analyzed what factors are associated with PRR voting. Yet, most studies focus on small sets of covariates that could easily ignore other key determinants. To address this limitation, we use MI-LASSO logistic regression, which is a more inductive data-driven approach that can incorporate a huge number of covariates. Our research analyzes the key determinants of voting for the People’s Party of Canada—a PRR party that rose rapidly during the pandemic. Using the 2021 Canadian Election Study dataset ( N = 14,841), we confirm that PRR voters in the pandemic were both protest and policy-oriented voters. They were protest voters since anti-establishment attitudes consistently correlate with their vote choice. On the other hand, PRR voters’ policy concern was about pandemic policies rather than immigration, as nativist attitudes never emerge as key determinants. Additionally, we uncover that the ideological placement of the mainstream right party and the defense of hate speech are strong correlates, while conventional variables like sociodemographics are not. These findings enrich our understanding of PRR voting during the pandemic.

Understanding and explaining populist radical right parties’ commitment to animal welfare in Western Europe

ABSTRACT Populist radical right parties (PRRP) are considered to be supportive of domestic environmental protection. In this context, scholars stress the importance of animal welfare, arguing that nativist and authoritarian ideologies provide discursive links to the issue in multicultural Western societies. Others argue that the fascist origins of some European PRRP still manifest themselves in supportive positions on animal welfare. This study attempts to map PRRPs’ engagement and positions on animal welfare and to explain the differences within the party group. Using partly computer-assisted content analysis of PRRP election manifestos and Twitter campaigns in eight Western European countries, we find that PRRP are more committed to animal welfare than several other party families but vary considerably in their engagement and position on the issue. It is argued that the involvement depends on whether animal welfare is a prominent issue in the party system and whether PRRP have fascist roots.

The Reverse Backlash: How the Success of Populist Radical Right Parties Relates to More Positive Immigration Attitudes.

What is the relationship between the electoral success of populist radical right parties (PRRPs) and public attitudes toward immigration? Previous research suggests that PRRP success can lead to more negative attitudes due to the breaking down of antiprejudice norms and more prominent anti-immigration party cues. However, we argue that greater PRRP success could have a positive relationship with immigration attitudes, reflecting negative partisanship, polarization, and a desire to reemphasize antiprejudice norms, which we call a "reverse backlash effect." Using the best available electoral and public opinion data across the last thirty years in twenty-four European countries, our TSCS analyses show the predominance of such "reverse backlash effects" across several operationalizations of PRRP success. Our argument has important consequences for the understanding of possible PRRP effects on public opinion, as well as attitudinal formation via party cueing and social norms more generally.

Shifting notions of the rural: Protests over traffic infrastructure and far-right normalization

Current far-right attitudes to the climate crisis are highly ambivalent, oscillating between the glorification of nature and ideological fragments of “fossil fascism”. Invocations of “the rural” serve as semantic mediations, enabling populist radical right parties (PRRPs) to apply seemingly frictionless and multi-scalar narratives of far-right ecology to rural protests. Applying relational and scale-sensitive approaches can help to disentangle how far-right discursive and political effort ties into and transforms spatial imaginaries. This paper discusses the role of rurality for populist scalar re-articulations and the impact of the latter on local communities. Drawing on findings from a qualitative longitudinal study in small towns in Brandenburg, Germany, the paper shows how local PRRP chapters create a specific notion of ‘rural rationality’ that helps to normalize far-right politics and politicians at the local scale, contrasting a proclaimed albeit abstract cordon sanitaire.

Building legitimacy: why the populist radical right engages in grassroots activism at the local level

ABSTRACT While the literature has widely explored the organisational strategies of populist radical right parties (PRRPs) on the fringes, little is known about the grassroots activism of mainstream PRRPs. We focus on the Italian League and the Swiss People’s Party (SVP), two mainstream PRRPs that have a long pedigree of government experience, to investigate if, how and why they invest in extensive activities at the local level to reach the public, despite their pivotal position in the national political scene. Methodologically, we rely on 120 interviews with members and representatives of these two PRRPs to identify the key grassroots activities they carry out at the local level and their perceived goals. The analysis reveals that despite their mainstream status, both the League and SVP still perceive to suffer from stigmatisation and demonisation, as they are not fully accepted as legitimate actors by the public. For this reason, they engage in grassroots activities and activism at the local level, the one closest to the everyday life and concerns of ordinary citizens. Grassroots activism aims to improve the legitimacy of PRRPs, by delivering the idea that their members and activists are normal people committed to help the local communities and not extremists.

Perceptions of populist radical right mainstreaming as a threat to democracy: evidence from Italian voters

ABSTRACT This paper explores a little-studied side of populist radical right (PRR) mainstreaming: if and to what extent these parties are considered to be legitimate democratic players by voters. Using survey data from Italy, we find that both Brothers of Italy (FdI) and the League are perceived as threats to democracy by specific groups of voters, although the former raises more widespread concern than the latter. Additionally, this perception is not uniform at the mass level. Surprisingly, an uneven pattern also characterises the reciprocal views of the two PRR parties: FdI is considered to be a threat to democracy by the League’s sympathisers, but the opposite does not occur. This suggests that even in contexts where PRR politics has been normalised for decades, as in Italy, different PRR parties can be perceived very differently by voters.

Voting against parties: populist attitudes, party supply, and support for non-partisan actors

ABSTRACT A growing corpus of literature analyzes the effect of populist attitudes on voting behavior with a special focus on support for populist radical-right parties. In this paper, we argue that high levels of populist attitudes also affect the probability to support non-partisan actors that present themselves as an alternative to party-centered representation. We provide empirical evidence for this claim based on observational and experimental data in the context of German local elections. We first show that populist attitudes positively affect the probability to vote for non-partisan actors. We then use a choice experiment to demonstrate that populist voters are more likely than non-populist voters to support a non-partisan over a party representative in elections. Our findings have important implications for understanding the success of non-partisan actors in elections as well as the political preferences of populist citizens.

Mainstreaming the populist radical right? Online news exposure and voting behavior in the 2019 European Parliament election

AbstractHow does media exposure relate to support for radical right populist parties (RRPPs)? We contribute to this classic debate by analyzing the web browsing histories and survey responses of six thousand study participants in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK during the 2019 European Parliament election. Linking direct measures of online news exposure to voting behavior allows us to assess the effects of the salience of issues politicized by RRPPs on their electoral support. The likelihood to vote for RRPPs was higher when the EU was more salient in individual media diets, while exposure to the less salient issue of immigration did not increase the propensity to vote for RRPPs. Alongside consistent results for other party families and interactions with pre-existing voting intentions, the findings indicate that the electoral effects of online media are contingent on the overall salience of a specific issue and voters’ predispositions.

Why do party elites incentivise activism? The case of the populist radical right

Partisan dealignment in Western Europe has gone hand in hand with the decline of electoral participation and active membership in political parties. Yet political participation and activism are not necessarily a thing of the past, and scholars have for instance observed these characteristics in several contemporary populist radical right parties (PRRPs). Drawing on the analysis of 124 interviews with party representatives from four European PRRPs (the League, the Finns Party, Flemish Interest and the Swiss People’s Party), we ask what motivates PRRP elites to foster the creation of tight communities of activists. Three reasons appear to stand out: campaigning prowess (to gain public support); legitimising the party; and organisational survival. The final section offers reflections on the wider implications of our study and suggests avenues for future research, questioning the assumption that parties are necessarily and uniformly shifting away from activism and societal rootedness.

Economic Self-Interest or Cultural Threat? Migrant Unemployment and Class-based Support for Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe

Labor market competition theory has traditionally analyzed the threat perceived by lower and middle class’ natives on competition over jobs with immigrants. However, in this article we focus on the fiscal burden and competition for social benefits generated by unemployed immigrants and its impact on the vote for Populist Radical Right Parties (PRRPs). Combining individual-level data and aggregate unemployment indicators for over 60 regions from 10 EU countries, we show that, on the one hand, upper class natives seem to support PRRPs when migrant unemployment rates are higher, irrespective of migrants’ origin, which is consistent with the fiscal burden model. On the other hand, lower and middle class natives are more likely to support PRRPs only in contexts of higher unemployment rates among non-EU migrants (but not among migrants from other EU member states), pointing towards an interaction between cultural and economic explanations. These findings underscore the need to account for migrant populations’ characteristics and to consider not only labor competition, but also the fiscal burden to better understand how unemployment may impact PRRP voting.

Sticking to the core or going beyond? The Austrian freedom party’s educational approach in a longitudinal perspective

ABSTRACT Although populist radical right parties (PRRPs) are actively studied in recent years, few research has addressed their approach to education policy. Previously not considered one of their signature issues, this paper argues that education has become important for PRRPs too. In a case study of the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), one of the most longstanding and successful PRRPs in Western Europe, we explore key pillars of the FPÖ's educational positions and their development over time. Drawing on qualitative content analysis of party programs, election manifestos and plenary debates from 1990 to 2020, our analysis shows that the policy area of education has indeed become an ideological battleground for the FPÖ. Its educational positions are largely grounded in the ideological core of PRRPs and comprise a fundamental critique of mainstream parties’ dominance in educational institutions (anti-mainstream); a nativist division on all levels of education (nativism); the advocacy of merit-based educational institutions coupled with authoritarian instruments of schooling (merit); and a plea for more liberalisation and competition in schools (liberalisation). Over time, positions become more nuanced, albeit only within the already established traits. These findings corroborate theoretical arguments for the influence of growing party age and government experience on PRRPs’ positions.

Prominence over proximity? Terror attacks’ impact on party preferences

AbstractHow does a terrorist attack affect party preferences? Based on existing theories, we would either expect incumbent parties to benefit because of a rally-effect, or populist radical right parties (PRRPs) to gain due to a radicalization of voters’ preferences. These competing theories are tested with a unique dataset of a large sample of voters’ responses on a Voting Advice Application. We do so using a novel way to leverage exogenous events using big public opinion data. We show that a terrorist attack has a positive effect for the main incumbent party, even when voters’ positions on the issues owned by the PRRPs become more radicalized. This means that during crises, voters rally around the flag and prefer prominence over policy proximity.

‘It's the quality of government stupid’ explaining patterns in support for far right in the 2022 French presidential election

One of the most important transformations of European politics in recent decades is the rapid expansion of the share of population that vote for parties characterized as populist radical right (PRR) parties. This research note suggests that declining quality of government increases support for populist radical right parties. Using the latest rounds of the European Quality of Government Index (EQI) survey data that sampled at the NUTS 2 regional level in France, and exploiting the fact that the French, presidential elections contained the same candidates (Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen) in 2017 and 2022, we show that regions increase their vote share for Le Pen where the quality of government decreases. We also show that this relationship holds at the individual level. Thus, supplying quality, impartial and fair public services seem to stifle demand for nativism, ethnic favoritism and authoritarianism and suppress support for the PRR party agenda.

‘We Will Protect Our Countryside without a Green Deal’ : The Populist Radical Right and the Environment in Czechia and Slovakia

The electoral success of the populist radical right parties (PRRPs) is currently increasing across Europe. These parties are also increasingly commenting on environmental issues. On the one hand, the PRRPs highlight the beauty of nature and strive to preserve the landscape’s traditional rural character. On the other hand, PRRRs deny global climate changes and criticise solutions to reverse these, such as the Green Deal. The study aims to explain Czech and Slovak PRRPs attitude towards environmentalism using the concepts of nationalism, globalism, and populism. The empirical analysis is based on analysing official political texts and statements by selected PRRPs in both countries. The results show that Czech and Slovak PRRPs use nature’s aesthetic, symbolic and material aspects to create an image of a traditional, rural country that the nation can be proud of, and which is crucial to protect. In contrast, the PRRPs are ambivalent on global environmental change, the efforts to mitigate it and environmentalists. Finally, the PRRPs use the environmental issue for populist strategic considerations, demonstrating authenticity and creating part of a chain of equivalence.

Populist radical right beyond Europe

Abstract Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) is one of the longest ruling among contemporary populist radical right parties (PRR). For nearly two decades, the AKP has shown tremendous success in achieving electoral dominance and political control. This article argues that AKP’s success lies in its ability to reconfigure the issue salience in Turkish politics by bringing the secular-conservative cleavage into the center of political competition. However, as this article shows, while the government’s framing of conservative/religious values was initially populist, as the Party consolidated its power, populism became secondary to nativism. This nativist turn is characterized by an emphasis on the foreignness of “the elites” and is shaped by secularization of the public sphere and antiwesternism. Overall, AKP has not presented a fundamental opposition to the “establishment” but brought together many components of Turkey’s institutional and cultural structure and radicalized patterns already present in earlier eras.

The road to European parliament mandate for populist radical-right parties: Selecting the ‘perfect’ AfD candidate

With growing public distrust toward European institutions, Eurosceptic populist radical-right parties make up almost a third of MEPs in the current European Parliament. As part of the larger scholarly debate on populist parties’ success, this article examines intra-party selection logic for the ‘perfect’ populist radical-right MEP candidate. Using original data from participant observation and interviews with Alternative for Germany delegates during the 2018/2019 European Election Assembly, this study suggests that party members were more likely to be selected as candidates if they (1) possessed extensive network with right-wing social movements to strengthen their electoral mobilization; (2) and showed strong commitment to party cohesion and good reputation to fend off accusations of racism and Nazism.

Toxic friend? The impact of the Russian invasion on democratic backsliding and PRR cooperation in Europe

Following the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the ‘democratic backslider’ parties in Hungary (Fidesz) and Poland (Law and Justice) took differing stances on Russia, bringing their positions on the Rule of Law (RoL) conflict and within the broader alliance of Populist Radical Right (PRR) parties into question. Building on and advancing the theoretical framework of democratic backsliding and PRR party cooperation, this article assesses the impact of exogenous shocks triggered by external authoritarian actors on these types of collaborations. A detailed examination of the voting patterns of Fidesz, Law and Justice and other PRR parties in the European Parliament (EP) is undertaken, and their stances towards Russia and the RoL conflict before and after the invasion are weighed. The findings show that the invasion did not influence the dynamics of democratic backsliding. Despite the rhetoric, it actually brought Fidesz and Law and Justice closer together. While the attack led to a convergence of assertiveness towards Russia among the PRR parties, the Putin regime remains a divisive issue within the PRR family. The different positions towards Russia did not affect the support of PRRs for the backsliders.