Right-wing Parties Research Articles

Common sense justice? Comparing populist and mainstream right positions on law and order in 24 countries

While the subject of populism receives increasing scholarly attention from both political scientists and criminologists, so far these two bodies of literature have existed mostly in isolation of each other. This paper aims to connect them by investigating whether parties that political scientists describe as populist are likely to evince positions on criminal justice that criminologists describe as populist. Relying on a secondary data analysis comparing mainstream right-wing and populist right-wing parties for 131 elections in 24 countries since 1973, this paper concludes that the populist right on average expresses slightly more support for penal populism than the mainstream right, but that its positioning is crucially shaped by considerations relating to issues of immigration and multiculturalism. These findings suggest that most contemporary populist parties on the right primarily pursue a nativist agenda and will only invoke penal populism when it fits this overall strategy.

The 2015 refugee inflow and concerns over immigration

How did the large asylum-seeker inflow to Germany in 2015 affect concerns about immigration? Using individual-level panel data for the years 2012–2018 and a policy that allocates asylum-seekers to districts, I identify the effect of exposure to asylum-seekers. In line with the contact hypothesis, living in a high refugee migration district reduced concerns about immigration by 3 pp. Alternatively, a 1 pp. increase in the share of asylum-seekers in the population reduced these concerns by 3.4 pp. The effect appears larger for right-leaning respondents and is driven by districts that do not host a large reception centre. However, the overall trend indicates that after 2015 concerns about immigration increased by about 21 pp. and support for extreme right-wing parties by about 1.7 pp. These trends show considerable heterogeneity for different demographic groups.

Public libraries in a changing political landscape: results from a survey on political influence and pressure on public libraries in Southern Sweden

When the definition of democracy and the meaning of a democratic society is renegotiated and reinterpreted, the mission of the public library is placed in a new context. This paper reports findings from an ongoing research project focused on library managers’ and librarians’ lived experiences of recent political developments in Sweden. Methodologically, the research project applies the perspective of institutional ethnography and combines a longitudinal survey study with interviews, focus-group interviews, and document studies. This paper reports findings from the first stage of a library manager survey. Results indicate that the interplay between libraries and the local political level is experienced as mostly well-functioning, although notable exceptions exist, and that the correspondence between national cultural- and library policies and politics of the participating municipalities is perceived as high. However, the Library Act paragraph, stipulating that particular attention should be devoted to national minorities and persons with a native language other than Swedish, causes notable opposition between local and national political levels. Illegitimate political pressure is uncommon, but when it occurs, it is often connected to issues pursued by radical right-wing parties. The study indicates a need to further investigate the intersection of (national) policies and (local) politics.

The macroeconomic impact of radical right populist parties in government

The success of radical right populist parties in the last decades seems to rely on a combination of economically left-wing and culturally conservative attitudes. Moreover, many of these parties have established themselves as relevant actors in European democracies, entering government coalitions with more traditional conservative right-wing parties. Therefore, an interesting question emerges: what is the macroeconomic impact of this left-wing tendency on economic issues when these parties are in government? In this article we develop a Stackelberg game in a rational partisan theory model to study the macroeconomic effects of such coalitions on the expected values and the variability of inflation, output and government spending.

Ideology and the Red Button: How Ideology Shapes Nuclear Weapons’ Use Preferences in Europe

Abstract Does partisan ideology influence whether Europeans are willing to use nuclear weapons, and if so, how? The US nuclear weapons stationed in Europe have been at the core of European security since the Cold War, but we have still yet to learn what would make Europeans be willing to support their use. In this paper, we present the results of a survey, in which we asked citizens in Germany and the Netherlands about their views on the use of the US nuclear weapons stationed on their territory in four distinct scenarios. Our results indicate that voters of right-wing parties are more likely to approve of the use of nuclear weapons in both countries. There are, however, important differences between the two countries in terms of the degree to which the participants oppose the use of nuclear weapons. These results have implications for NATO's nuclear deterrence posture.

What distinguishes radical right welfare chauvinism? Excluding different migrant groups from the welfare state

Literature posits that mainstream right-wing parties have adopted restrictive positions on immigrants’ entitlements to social rights to avoid losing votes to populist radical right-wing parties (PRRPs). Although studies recognize that this co-option is only partial, we know little about the remaining differences between PRRPs’ and mainstream right-wing parties’ welfare chauvinism strategies. This article fills this knowledge gap by comparing how mainstream and populist right-wing governments approach different migrant groups’ entitlements to social rights. The article combines an event history analysis of the Determinants of International Migration Policy database with a qualitative examination of the indexation of family benefits in selected European Countries to compare PRRPs’ and mainstream parties’ impact on the social rights of different migrant groups. The results reveal that the main difference between PRRPs and mainstream right-wing parties in Western Europe is the formers’ support for restrictions on intra-EU migrants’ entitlements to social benefits. This finding has important implications for the study of the European social policy agenda, as PRRPs’ increasing politicization of intra-EU migrants’ access to social rights may compromise the future of intra-European solidarity.

Local socio-structural predictors of COVID-19 incidence in Germany.

Socio-economic conditions and social attitudes are known to represent epidemiological determinants. Credible knowledge on socio-economic driving factors of the COVID-19 epidemic is still incomplete. Based on linear random effects regression, an ecological model is derived to estimate COVID-19 incidence in German rural/urban districts from local socio-economic factors and popularity of political parties in terms of their share of vote. Thereby, records provided by Germany's public health institute (Robert Koch Institute) of weekly notified 7-day incidences per 100,000 inhabitants per district from the outset of the epidemic in 2020 up to December 1, 2021, are used to construct the dependent variable. Local socio-economic conditions including share of votes, retrieved from the Federal Statistical Office of Germany, have been used as potential risk factors. Socio-economic parameters like per capita income, proportions of protection seekers and social benefit claimants, and educational level have negligible impact on incidence. To the contrary, incidence significantly increases with population density and we observe a strong association with vote shares. Popularity of the right-wing party Alternative for Germany (AfD) bears a considerable risk of increasing COVID-19 incidence both in terms of predicting the maximum incidences during three epidemic periods (alternatively, cumulative incidences over the periods are used to quantify the dependent variable) and in a time-continuous sense. Thus, districts with high AfD popularity rank on top in the time-average regarding COVID-19 incidence. The impact of the popularity of the Free Democrats (FDP) is markedly intermittent in the course of time showing two pronounced peaks in incidence but also occasional drops. A moderate risk emanates from popularities of the Green Party (GRÜNE) and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU/CSU) compared to the other parties with lowest risk level. In order to effectively combat the COVID-19 epidemic, public health policymakers are well-advised to account for social attitudes and behavioral patterns reflected in local popularities of political parties, which are conceived as proper surrogates for these attitudes. Whilst causal relations between social attitudes and the presence of parties remain obscure, the political landscape in terms of share of votes constitutes at least viable predictive “markers” relevant for public health policy making.

From defying to (re-)defining Europe in Viktor Orbán’s discourse about the past

One of the salient features of the recent populist turn in Europe has been a redefinition of the European. Traditionally, (far) right-wing parties defined themselves as Eurosceptic and focused on national identity. Increasingly, however, they have referred to pan-European heritage, although against the mainstream conceptualization of it. The article looks at the case of Hungary and the image of Europe constructed by the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, whose rhetoric has become a key reference point for other European populist movements. The past decade his government has witnessed, on the one hand, a tendency to redefine what is European against the dominant and institutionalized interpretations, and, on the other, an attempt to single-out the concept of Central Europe as the locus for maintaining and nurturing European values in contrast to perceived Western decline. This paper examines this discourse through a close reading of major speeches delivered by Orbán on the anniversaries of historical events. Analysis of these speeches reveals the ideological foundations of his political project and presents historical and philosophical interpretations of the European political situation. It seeks to identify how Orbán’s discourse evolved across time, by putting the speeches about the past into the present political context.

Rising electoral fragmentation and abstention: the French elections of 2022

For the second time in the history of the Fifth Republic, the candidates of France’s former mainstream left- and right-wing parties were disqualified during the first round of the presidential elections. The repetition of the duel between Emmanuel Macron (centrist candidate) and Marine Le Pen (radical-right candidate) in the second round of the presidential election marks the durable transformation of the political space in French politics, an evolution that was already taking shape in 2017. The 2022 parliamentary elections confirmed the transformation and reconfiguration of the political landscape. Overall, the results of the elections in 2022 underscore major shifts in the party system as well as deep political fragmentations not only on the left but also, and in particular, on the right. Above all, the poor level of turnout in both elections reconfirms the considerable and enduring crisis of representative democracy in France.

“With courage against the system.” The ideology of the people’s party our Slovakia

ABSTRACT The Kotleba – People’s Party Our Slovakia (LSNS) was founded in 2010 and has been the centre of attention from Slovak media, academia and politicians since 2013. In spite of this interest, there appears to be no consensus in the way that it should be referred to – is it a neo-fascist, a neo-Nazi or a radical right-wing party? The aim of this study is an attempt to analyse the ideology of the LSNS based on both official and unofficial statements and the rhetoric of its representatives, the party’s agenda and propaganda. It argues that the party´s past, its constant attacks on democracy and the democratic system, the glorification of undemocratic regimes, declared efforts to achieve an “alternative to the contemporary decadent era,” and a “new epoch,” its international cooperation with similar movements, racists, anti-Semitic statements and the use of neo-Nazi symbolism indicate the neo-Nazi character of the party’s ideology.

(Climate) Migrants welcome? Evidence from a survey experiment in Austria

We study how economic, conflict, and environmental drivers of migration influence immigration acceptance in a receiving country. We carried out an online survey experiment in autumn 2015 with 686 student participants from the University of Innsbruck in Austria. In the survey experiment, respondents state their acceptance for a fictitious migrant from Chad where we vary the following causes of the migration decision: (1) violent conflicts, (2) environmental degradation due to global climate change, (3) environmental degradation due to local overuse, and (4) better economic prospects. We find that respondents support migrants who move because of climate change as much as conflict migrants. Acceptance is lowest for migrants who decide to leave for economic reasons, while it is slightly higher in the case of environmental degradation due to local overuse. Strikingly, a sizable share of respondents (25%) would even reject conflict migrants. Respondents who perceive a negative correlation between welfare, crime rates and job opportunities, and the presence of immigrants display lower immigration acceptance for all motives underlying the migration decision. In addition, we find heterogeneous effects depending on the respondents’ gender and political affiliation. Respondents with right-wing party preferences disclose lower acceptance levels for all causes except conflict. Female respondents are more accepting of climate migrants and less of economic migrants than men. This paper informs the debate around the ongoing political and societal polarization in Europe and elsewhere on the acceptance of different types of migrants.

Closing the gap: how descriptive and substantive representation affect women’s vote for populist radical right parties

Although populist radical right-wing parties (PRRPs) are regarded as male-dominated, many have in recent years expanded their female electorate and reduced their electoral gender gap. Studies explain this trend as the result of a conscious strategy to target female voters through representation. This strategy is applied in both the descriptive and substantial realms, as PRRPs appoint female leaders and adopt relatively more progressive stances on gender, while still holding conservative, family-centred positions. However, the central question of whether and which of these strategies explain the closing gender gap in the populist vote has not yet been thoroughly comparatively examined. To answer this question, this study uses conditional logit models to explore the relationship between descriptive and substantial representation and women’s vote for a PRRP. The results show that a higher convergence between voter and PRRP positions on gender equality increases female votes for the PRRP. However, female descriptive representation does not prove relevant to explaining women’s vote for PRRPs. This has important implications for the literature on female representation in general, and women’s vote for PRRPs in particular.

The representation of migrants in Spanish judicial decisions: using corpus data to refute hate speech

The phenomenon of immigration and its depiction in media texts have been examined profusely within the field of corpus-based discourse analysis ( Gabrielatos and Baker, 2008 ; Baker et al., 2013 ; and Blinder and Allen, 2016 ). This research seeks to present it as reflected in a corpus of 600 judicial decisions issued by Spanish courts in the years 2016 and 2017. This analysis was motivated by the rise of extreme right-wing parties in Europe in recent years. Such parties dehumanise immigrants and portray them as a threat to the welfare state. On first examination, the results appear to dissociate immigration and crime since a considerable percentage of the keywords obtained (about 20 percent) revolves around three major topoi (namely, ‘family’, ‘territory/access’ and ‘legal punishment’) and there is no evidence of any major offences or crimes amongst the top-ranking lexicon. The study of the collocate networks of the keywords within the category ‘legal punishment’ confirms our initial perception; in fact, out of twenty-one collocates, only the word delito (‘crime’) itself collocates with terms referring to typified crimes such as violencia (‘violence’). In parallel, the data were triangulated using the text-classification software UMUTextStats ( García-Díaz et al., 2018 ). The results of this second analysis also confirm our initial observations.

A LOOK FROM THE INSIDE: THE IMAGE OF LGBTQI+ COMMUNITIES FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF ITS MEMBERS IN ROMANIA

The present study proposes an affirmative, constructivist and inclusive approach to how people who identify themselves as sexual and gender minorities (SGM) in Romania perceive their community and how they occupy and feel its space. I also try to focus on how SGM perceive their physical/online/imagined spaces, in a subjective geography, how they constructed it, and the manner they relate to the concept of community. The research is quantitative, exploratory, transversal, and uses the questionnaire as a research tool. Regarding the participants in this study, I tried to represent all the letters under the LGBTQI+ umbrella, with diverse gender identities and sexual orientations, ages from 18 to 56 years old, and from all over Romania. After the Corona Virus Pandemic and with the ascension of far right-wing parties, those who took part in this study had a harsh perspective on the LGBTQI+ communities, but also a greater need for connection and understanding from their peers. I find it important to speak nearby, instead of speaking for, so the communities are presenting their realities, qualities, and flaws.

From Political Consensus to Political Conflict and Back Again: Language Public Policy in Galicia (1989–2020)

Language public policy is a key issue in Galician politics. Its symbolic uses have proven to be a powerful political resource in partisan competition. This article analyzes the strategies of the three main Galician political parties to test three related hypotheses about how political competition and language public policy are linked: (i) adversary language public policy works as a valid strategy for opposition and electoral campaigning, but (ii) it becomes a major policy problem once in office, both for nationalist and non-nationalist parties, and (iii) advocating for careful balance between languages is the best political strategy for language public policy once in office. The Spanish and Galician right-wing party, Popular Party—PP/PPdeG—which was in office between 1989 and 2005, has strategically promoted language public policies based on an alleged equilibrium between the Spanish language—Castellano—and the Galician language—Galego—to gain nationalist conservative voters and to divide the nationalist political space. During this period, the nationalist—Bloque Nacionalista Galego (BNG)—and socialist—Partido dos Socialistas de Galicia (PSdeG/PSOE)—opposition have supported positive discrimination for the Galego language. Political change in 2005 switched their positions; PP stood for increasing protection for Castellano, while the new nationalist and left-wing government promoted a stronger status for Galego. PP’s return to office in 2009 has switched the positions again.

Memories of a Wehrmacht Soldier: A psychoanalytic case study

Margarete and Alexander Mitscherlich characterised the German population in the postwar era as being unable to mourn. Rather than directly confronting the facts of the war, “Germans” tended to keep themselves busy with work, improving their personal and economic situation. After providing a cursory overview of the current German political landscape, in which right-wing parties such as the Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD) have gained in popularity, I corroborate the hypothesis of the Mitscherlichs on the basis of the clinical material I assembled pertaining to a 94-year-old patient of mine, Mr K., who was a soldier in the Wehrmacht. The coping strategies that Mr K. and others like him have used throughout their lives will be brought to light and, in so doing, a deeper understanding will be gained concerning how the Nazis managed to seize power. Bringing together a psychoanalytic critique of Islamophobia and a psychoanalytic interpretation of a Wehrmacht soldier’s memories should underscore the dangerousness of right-wing tendencies in any country at any point in time and should, furthermore, accentuate the importance of critical psychoanalysis.

Policymaking on immigrant welfare rights: the populist and the mainstream right

ABSTRACT In this paper, we investigate how different types of right parties affect immigrant welfare rights across 14 countries (1980–2018) in a comprehensive mixed-method study. We argue that populist radical right parties (PRRPs) support retrenchment, liberals and conservatives oppose expansions, and Christian democrats rather protect or expand rights. Accordingly, we expect conservatives and liberals to be more receptive to both direct and indirect influence of PRRPs than Christian democrats. We apply balanced panel regressions, and also include interactions with immigration indicators. Changes in immigrant welfare rights are measured using a new and encompassing dataset (MigSP), that maps immigrant welfare rights in 14 countries over 38 years. Furthermore, we qualitatively assess model-based selected cabinets in Denmark. Our evidence confirms pronounced differences between different right-wing parties. PRRPs are systematic propellers of cutting rights and affect all mainstream right parties when governing together. Christian democrats are the least likely to conduct retrenchments. We find no quantitative evidence for the indirect effects of PRRPs (contagion) and immigration dynamics. The case study evidence, however, points to the importance of both factors and discusses why indirect partisan effects (contagion) and the politicisation of immigration are very difficult to address in the standard regression framework.

The Decline of the Labor Party in Israel

ABSTRACT The decline of the Labor Party is one of the great mysteries of Israeli politics. From achieving forty-seven seats in the 1981 election, it attained a mere seven seats in the March 2021 election. From being the leading party in the electoral firmament, it is now subservient to the whims of the center and right-wing parties. While outside factors such as globalization and deregulation led to the demise of the command economy and the embrace of capitalism, the blurring of ideology has left Labor in search of an identity. Yet the decline of the Left in general can be traced back to the very beginning of the state—to an infatuation by Mapam with all things Soviet and David Ben-Gurion’s obsession about the Lavon affair. While the Left squabbled internally and fragmented, the Right built bridges and coalesced to eventually become the permanent party of power.

Newspeak revisited: an analysis of selected aspects of PiS speeches concerning the 2019 Polish parliamentary election

The study aims to examine the parliamentary campaign discourse of politicians of PiS(Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, lit. Law and Justice), the main right-wing Polish party, witha view to determining whether their language displays some similarities with PolishNewspeak used in the era of Communism. The research corpus consists of public statementsof the most important PiS politicians delivered in the election campaign from Juneto October 2019. The research material comes from a plethora of online media sources,especially records of PiS conventions and from online newspapers. The selected textsunderwent close scrutiny and stylistic analysis. This allowed for determining the patternsof Newspeak employed in this right-wing party parliamentary campaign.

Un ethos politique féminin ? Le discours de l’extrême droite en Espagne ou la porosité des frontières discursives

"After being considered a kind of weakness for a long time, femininity seems to have reversed. its stigma and has become a positive value in the political discourse due to the stereotypes usually related to it, which allow to define the female political ethos in terms of empathy, affectivity and non-aggressive behaviour. However, the women of the emerging right-wing party in Spain, VOX, contradict this trend by assuming an extremely polarized anti-feminist discourse. Based on a fourhour corpus of public speeches, this paper aims to analyse the topics and the rhetorical strategies used in those speeches, which will show how porous the dichotomy “male-female” can be when it comes to political discourse."