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.

Keywords

Europe expert survey political parties populism radical right parties

Introduction

Over the last decades, various European countries have witnessed increasing electoral popularity of Radical Right Populist parties (RRPs). Some RRPs were part of governments, e.g. the Austrian Freedom Party (2000–2005), or supported minority governments, e.g. the Danish People’s Party (2001–2011). Whereas this increased success has led to a substantial number of studies explaining RRPs’ electoral growth (Mudde, 2007; Rydgren, 2007), scholars have only recently investigated the effect of RRPs’ electoral success on policy outcomes (e.g. Akkerman, 2012), social outcomes such as nativist violence (e.g. Braun, 2011) and policy positions of other parties (e.g. Van Spanje, 2010).

Since the immigration issue is generally considered to be RRPs’ major selling point (Mudde, 2007), most of this research on the effect of RRPs’ success on policy outcomes and policy positions of other parties has focused on RRPs’ influence on immigration-related issues. For example, Akkerman (2012) studied the effect of having a RRP in office or supporting a minority government on the implementation of new immigration policies in nine Western countries. A cross-national European study by Van Spanje (2010) examined the effect of RRP success on all other parties’ policy stances regarding immigration.

The almost exclusive focus on the issue of immigration in previous studies is understandable in the light of the often heard assertion that ethnic exclusionism is the sole raison d’être of RRPs (e.g. Fennema, 2005), but it omits the growing consensus that RRPs are not solely single-issue parties. They are also characterized by other ideological issues such as nationalism and law and order, and more style-related elements like populism and an anti-establishment image (Mudde, 2007). Recently this brought researchers to study the extent to which mainstream parties have reacted with populist rhetoric as a response to RRP success (Rooduijn et al., 2012). With this study, we aim to add to the scant literature on the relation between RRPs’ successes and other parties’ policy positions considered as characteristic of RRPs. In particular, we look at the distance on different measures between RRPs and other parties. The measures we consider are three policy issues (immigration, nationalism and law and order) and two style-related characteristics (anti-establishment image and populism). The nationalist ideology of RRPs refers to the protection of the homogeneous nation and the neutralization of any possible threats thereto. RRPs’ stance related to law and order is exemplified by a demand for harder punishments and zero tolerance. Furthermore, RRPs are characterized by their populist anti-establishment strategy: RRP party leaders claim to represent the vox populi, and to be the real representatives of ordinary citizens. They also construct an image of themselves as being ‘in opposition to the political class’ and established parties, which are criticized for having lost touch with ordinary people and for focusing on obsolete issues (Rydgren, 2007: 245). Jagers (2006) formulates that populism can be defined both as political style or discourse and as political ideology. We do question to what extent the directly policy-related, ideological issues of nationalism, migration and law and order can be distinguished from the style dimension, and how the other party families in Europe differ from the RRPs.

In addition to looking at a variety of policy and style dimensions, our study contributes to the existing research in two more ways. First, whereas the Eastern European perspective is often lacking in research on RRPs (Mudde, 2007), our study has a pan-European perspective. Such an approach is needed as it enables us to explore potential differences in the association of RRP characteristics and other parties’ policy stances in older Western European and newer Eastern European democracies (e.g. Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, 2012). Second, we look at both characteristics of RRPs and of other parties and how they relate to the distance between RRPs and other parties on the different dimensions. RRPs’ characteristics comprise their electoral success and whether they are part of (or supporting) a (minority) government. Similar characteristics are introduced for the other parties, next to the ideology of the other parties. Taking insights from spatial competition theories (e.g. Dahlström and Sundell, 2012; Meguid, 2005), we argue that these different characteristics of RRPs and those of other parties are likely to be associated with the distance between the RRPs and the other parties.

In sum, the two main research questions motivating our study are: (1) How close do RRPs and other parties stand on different policy and style dimensions typical of the radical right?, and (2) To what extent are RRPs’ characteristics and those of other parties associated with the distance on various ideological policy issues and style dimensions between RRPs and other parties? To answer our research questions, we use an online expert survey collected in late 2010 and early 2011 that enables us to study 25 Western and Eastern European countries with at least one RRP (Immerzeel et al., 2011). The survey asked experts to rate different national political parties on various ‘typical’ RRP issues, offering us a unique opportunity to answer our research questions. Since the expert survey introduced various questions which were not included in earlier expert surveys, and was the first to include all political parties in such a high number of European countries, we cannot merge it with earlier administered surveys. This is unfortunate as it would have allowed us to take a longitudinal approach and draw conclusions about causal effects, whereas relying on only one survey limits us to drawing conclusions about associations (rather than causal effects). Yet, the survey used in this study has the major advantage of allowing us to look at a wide variety of policy issues and style components and among a high number of Western and Eastern European countries.

Theoretical background

The ongoing electoral popularity of RRPs has led to a substantial number of studies explaining its success. More recently, some scholars observed that RRPs influence policy making and other parties’ policy positions. Some argued that with the RRPs’ growth, other parties can no longer ignore the issues RRPs have put on the political agenda and must incorporate them into their own programme. Indeed, parties that take extreme positions on issues, like RRPs, are particularly known to be successful in putting them on the political agenda (Wagner, 2012) and as such in challenging other (mainstream) parties to also address these issues (Green-Pedersen and van Kersbergen, 2002).

Standard spatial competition theories (e.g. Dahlström and Sundell, 2012; Downs, 1957; Meguid, 2005) emphasize the strategic importance of competing parties’ policy positions. Meguid (2005: 348) describes two possible strategies for parties competing for votes: ‘movement towards and movement away from a specific competitor in a given policy space.’ Policy divergence refers to increasing policy distance with political competitors and encourages voter flight to the competing party. By contrast, policy convergence entails occupying a position close(r) to that of the competitor. The rationale behind policy convergence is that a party draws voters away from a threatening competing party by occupying a position close to that party. With a RRP as a competing party, the convergence strategy would incite other parties to search a position close to the RRP, for example by taking a tougher stance on immigration. Even though some have suggested that this strategy is not always successful in gaining voters back from RRPs (Dahlström and Sundell, 2012), previous research had indicated that RRPs do influence other parties’ policy positions (e.g. Van Spanje, 2010). We propose that the extent to which other parties will incorporate policies from RRPs, and thus decrease the distance from the RRPs’ positions, depends on different characteristics of both RRPs and other parties.

Characteristics of other parties

Starting with other parties’ characteristics, the spatial competition theory logically predicts that right-wing and conservative parties are more strongly threatened by RRPs’ success than left-wing parties (Van Spanje, 2010). Right-wing and conservative parties’ original ideological position is closer to that of RRPs and they are thus more likely to lose voters to the RRPs. As a result, they will be more inclined to move towards the RRPs, hoping to draw voters away from RRPs (Van Kersbergen and Krouwel, 2008). Moreover, given the tradition of defending the nation and its culture among right-wing parties (Bale, 2008: 463) and their ‘ownership’ of issues such as cultural identity and national pride (Van Spanje, 2010: 567), it is easier for right-wing (conservative and Christian democratic) parties to adopt a hard line on immigration compared with mainstream left-wing (social democratic) parties (Van Kersbergen and Krouwel, 2008). This is consistent with Akkerman’s (2012) finding that centre-right parties in particular implement tougher immigration policies when a country’s RRP is successful. Hence, our first hypothesis is straightforward:

The distance between RRPs and right-wing (conservative and Christian-democratic) parties on RRPs’ central policy issues (immigration, nationalism, law and order) is smaller than the distance between RRPs and left-wing parties (i.e. social democratic parties, socialist and green parties) (Hypothesis 1)

However, research has consistently found that working class voters, who typically vote for mainstream left-wing (i.e. social democratic and socialist) parties, are over-represented among the RRP-electorate (Coffé, 2008; Rydgren, 2012). Consequently, social democratic and socialist parties seem to compete with RRPs for the same voters, suggesting that the left-wing parties also have incentives to move towards RRPs in order to attract voters (back) to their own parties. Research by Bale et al. (2010) confirms that left-wing parties in different Western European countries have responded to the electoral challenge of the RRPs by taking a tougher stance on issues related to immigration and integration. Hence, the expectation that right-wing parties are more likely to move towards RRPs, compared with mainstream left-wing parties, may not be so straightforward as expected based on the spatial competition theory. This is in line with Meguid’s modified spatial theory (2005), which contends the relevance of both proximal and non-proximal competitors’ positions in shaping parties’ success. The research from Halikiopoulou et al. (2012) also shows that nationalism is a common denominator of both the RRPs and the radical left. Hence, we formulate an alternative hypothesis:

The distances between RRPs and right-wing (conservative and Christian democratic) parties are comparable to the distances between RRPs and left-wing (social democratic and socialist) parties on RRPs central policy issues (immigration, nationalism, law and order) (Hypothesis 1A).

The style dimension

RRPs’ anti-establishment, populist style is often similar to the contemporary green and socialist parties’ political style. Emerging from the new social movements of the 1960s, green parties organized themselves into more ‘traditional’ political parties during the 1990s (Burchell, 2001) and have gained electoral success in the last decades. Despite their tendency to downplay their radical style in many of the green movements (Burchell, 2001; March and Mudde, 2005), green parties are not considered as mainstream parties but often seen as niche parties that favour more elite-challenging (Poguntke, 1993) and popular forms of democracy (Burchell, 2001; Donovan and Karp, 2006). The emphasis of green parties on more direct forms of democracy where citizens are expected to contribute more actively to decision-making processes via the use of e.g. referenda and citizen initiatives, relates to RRPs’ stance that the voice of the ordinary people should be heard (e.g. Canovan, 1999). This had led some scholars to suggest that the green parties’ level of anti-institutionalism shows similarities with the contemporary populist, anti-establishment style of RRPs (Thijssen, 2012).

Similarly, socialist parties take a niche position, in particular in Western Europe, and present themselves as a true alternative to established parties (March, 2011). Over the last decades, traditional socialist parties have developed into social-populist parties, standing up for ‘the people’ instead of only, as traditionally, for the proletariat (March and Mudde, 2005). For example, the Dutch Socialist Party (SP) has developed from an originally Maoist party into a proponent of the people (Lucardie and Voerman, 2012). They use fierce anti-elite slogans like ‘Stem Tegen!’ [‘Vote Against!’] (March and Mudde, 2005), which implicitly distinguish ‘the moral people’ from ‘the corrupt elite’ (Mudde, 2004). Hence, whereas both green and socialist parties are expected to take a different position than RRPs on policy issues, we anticipate that they stand closer to RRPs on the populist, anti-establishment dimensions compared with the mainstream parties. Following modified spatial theory (Meguid, 2005), we may thus expect the green and socialist parties to more prominently utilize their populist and anti-establishment rhetoric and style to compete with RRPs for voters. Our second hypothesis is thus:

The distance between RRPs and greens and socialist parties on the populist, anti-establishment style dimensions is smaller than the distance between RRPs and mainstream parties (Hypothesis 2).

Size of other parties

Next to the ideological background of other parties, we expect their popularity to be associated with their distance with RRPs on both the policy and style dimensions. In particular, to the extent that smaller parties are niche parties which do not focus preliminary on gaining votes but on their unique policy stances, we expect party popularity to be negatively related to their distance with the RRPs. Smaller parties are more likely to emphasize their unique stance and are thus less likely to adapt their positions in order to gain votes from a competitor. Hence, translating this idea to the RRP as competitor, our third hypothesis reads:

The ideological and style distance between RRPs and other parties is larger, the smaller the electoral support for the other party (Hypothesis 3).

A final characteristic which we anticipate to be relevant when comparing the distance between other parties and RRPs is whether or not the other party is in government. As Van Spanje (2010) pointed out, being in office is associated with different constraints which make it more difficult for government parties to change their policy positions while in government. Moreover, it is riskier for parties to make bold statements on policy issues closer to RRP policy positions, which are generally considered controversial. Furthermore, a governmental party is a central part of the political establishment, and thus very unlikely to hold an anti-establishment or outspoken populist discourse. Thus, our fourth hypothesis is:

The ideological and style distance between RRPs and other parties is smaller when the other party is not in office (Hypothesis 4).

RRP-ideology and style characteristics

We do not only expect characteristics of other parties to be associated with their distance with RRPs, we also anticipate RRPs’ characteristics to be relevant. Specifically, we expect a smaller distance between RRPs and other parties when RRPs are electorally successful. Facing stronger electoral competition from RRPs, other parties have an incentive to move towards the RRPs’ position and to adopt closer policy and style positions, and encourage voters to substitute the RRP to their own party (Van Spanje, 2010). Hence, our fifth hypothesis reads:

The more successful the RRP, the smaller the distance between RRPs and other parties on all ideological and style dimensions (Hypothesis 5).

Finally, once a RRP is in (or supporting a minority) government we expect the distance between RRPs and other parties to be smaller. Being in office contains some constraints and makes it harder for RRPs, as for other parties, to take tough and controversial stances. Furthermore, it is more difficult for RRPs in government to hold an outspoken anti-establishment discourse and to comment constantly on coalition parties or parties which they support. Moreover, being part of government legitimizes to a certain extent the ideas of RRPs, motivating other parties to feel less restraint in copying RRP positions. Thus, our sixth and final hypothesis is:

The distance between RRPs and other parties on all ideological and style dimensions is smaller when the RRP is in office or supports the government (Hypothesis 6).

Data

To answer our research questions, we rely on an online Expert Judgement Survey for European Political Parties from 2010 (Immerzeel et al., 2011). Although expert surveys have been criticized to produce data which are biased by (theoretical) expectations regarding parties’ positions, Benoit and Laver (2006) have extensively compared the reliability of expert surveys compared with other sources, and confirmed their comparability and usefulness (see Dalton, 2009). Moreover, the inter-coder reliability measures for this specific expert survey show very high Cronbach’s alphas (generally above 0.90) for all dimensions (Immerzeel et al., 2011). This indicates that the experts in every country generally agreed on the positions of the different parties regarding the ideological and style dimensions. The expert survey focused specifically on the political opportunity structures for RRPs and policy stances related to core RRP issues.

The survey was conducted successfully in 33 countries: in all 28 countries of the European Union except Luxembourg, plus Iceland, Israel, Norway, Serbia, Switzerland and Turkey.¹ In total 2310 political scientists and political sociologists were emailed and invited to participate in the survey. Scholars’ names were selected from the homepage of political science departments of universities across countries included in the survey. With 870 experts completing the questionnaire in all the countries, the overall response rate was 37.7%, which is comparable to Huber and Inglehart’s (1995) expert survey (41%).² As this study addresses the distances between RRPs and other parties in countries with a RRP, we only included those 25 countries where one (or more) RRPs received at least 0.2% of the votes in the last national election before the survey. For Belgium, we investigated Flanders and Wallonia separately as these regions have different party systems.³

Dependent variables

The survey included questions related to parties’ positions on the core ideological topics and style dimension of the radical right: immigration, nationalism, law and order. The style dimension includes populism and anti-establishment image. Each expert was asked to position all the parties running in the last elections within their country that won at least 0.2 percent of the votes on each of the dimensions on a scale ranging from 0 to 10, with 10 referring to the RRP position (e.g. very restrictive concerning immigration). The exact wording of the questions is presented in the Appendix (Table A1).

A factor analysis revealed that the policy stances on immigration, nationalism and law and order relate to one dimension, and that anti-establishment forms a second one, with populism loading on both (see Table A2). This latter finding underlines Jagers’ (2006) notion that populism can be seen as a political style and an ideology.

To measure our dependent variables we calculated the differences between the positions of the RRP on a dimension and the position of the other parties on that same dimension in the respective country.⁴ Hence, the dependent variable refers to the distance between the RRPs and another party on a particular dimension. A higher score refers to a larger distance between a party and the RRP in the respective country. We used the RRP classification of Mudde (2007), which is ‘the most well-founded attempt’ to classify RRPs lately, widely used by other scholars (Ennser, 2012: 156). As Mudde’s study does not cover the most recent RRPs in all countries under study, we used various other studies that explicitly refer to Mudde’s definition when defining a party as RRP (Arter, 2010; Ennser, 2012; Ford and Goodwin, 2014; Hirsch-Hoefler et al., 2010; Mudde, 2012; Werts et al., 2013).⁵ Table A3 provides an overview of the RRPs included in our analyses.

Independent variables

We look at two broad groups of explanations for the distance between RRPs and other parties’ positions: (1) characteristics of other parties and (2) RRPs’ characteristics.

Other parties’ characteristics

The other parties have been grouped into eight different party families: neo-conservatives, conservatives, Christian democrats, liberals, social democrats, greens, socialists/communists and others. We used Ennser’s (2012) classification of Western European party families, but decided to separate the Christian democrats and the conservative parties and add a different category of socialist/communist parties (cf. March and Mudde, 2005). Moreover, we distinguished a group of neo-conservative parties. There are six parties in this neo-conservative group that are often mentioned as ethno-regionalist/nationalist or neo-liberal populist parties (e.g. Hooghe et al., 2011; Mudde, 2007). To categorize the political parties in non-EU member countries, we consulted the websites of the respective political parties and followed Klingemann et al. (2006). In the analyses, the social democrats are the reference category. Table A4 in the Appendix provides the classification of the party families.

Next to party family, we included a dummy measuring whether the party was a governmental party in 2010 (year of data collection). Moreover, we added the party’s popularity, measured by the percentage of received votes in the last national elections before the survey, and additionally controlled for the percentage point change in the party’s popularity in those elections compared with the previous elections.

RRP characteristics

The RRP popularity in a country is measured by the percentage of votes the RRP scored in the national elections held in the country closest before 2010. If more than one RRP competed in the elections, we summed the results. We also included the percentage point change in the RRP’s popularity between these elections and the previous elections. Furthermore, we introduced a measure that indicates whether the RRP is in office or supporting a minority government. Table 1 offers descriptive statistics of all variables included in our study.

Table 1.

Descriptive statistics of the 181 parties included in the analyses.

	Min	Max	Mean	S.D.
Distance immigration	–0.56	8.94	4.06	2.07
Distance nationalism	0.10	8.62	4.22	2.08
Distance law and order	–2.95	7.62	2.83	2.08
Distance populism	–1.25	7.43	3.03	1.84
Distance anti-establishment	–6.90	7.57	2.72	2.93

Eastern EU	0	1	36.5%
Party family
Neo-conservative	0	1	6.1%
Conservative	0	1	10.5%
Christian democrat	0	1	21.0%
Liberal	0	1	17.7%
Social democrat	0	1	17.1%
Green	0	1	8.8%
Socialist/communist	0	1	11.6%
Other	0	1	7.2%
Party’s popularity (centered)	0.20	52.73	0.00	12.42
Party’s increase popularity	–23.90	39.70	0.16	6.63
Party in government	0	1	32.6%
RRP characteristics (country)
RRP in government	0	1	11.5%
RRP’s popular vote	0.20	30.00	10.20	9.14
RRP’s change in popularity	–9.80	14.50	0.83	5.90
RRP’s position: immigration	6.33	9.96	8.85	0.88
RRP’s position: nationalism	8.16	9.89	9.36	0.43
RRP’s position: law and order	4.20	9.64	8.20	1.29
RRP’s position: populism	6.33	9.52	8.50	0.73
RRP’s position: anti-establishment	1.20	8.98	6.35	1.82

Source: Expert Judgement Survey for European Political Parties (Immerzeel et al., 2011).

Results

Descriptive analyses

To answer our first research question, Table 2 and Figure 1 present the average policy positions of the different party families.

Table 2.

Average party family position on core RRP-issues, left-right and economic left-right (standard deviations between brackets).

Party family	Immigration	Nationalism	Law and Order	Populism	Anti-establishment	Left-right	Economic left-right
Radical right	8.97	9.38	8.34	8.61	6.64	8.43	5.96
(N= 34)	(0.85)	(0.44)	(1.22)	(0.78)	(1.76)	(0.96)	(1.46)
Neo-conservative	7.31	8.33	6.81	8.11	6.24	7.13	6.05
(N = 11)	(1.56)	(1.05)	(1.69)	(0.94)	(1.36)	(1.76)	(1.78)
Conservative	5.91	6.42	6.52	6.31	3.10	6.54	6.25
(N = 19)	(1.53)	(1.51)	(1.24)	(1.63)	(1.87)	(1.27)	(1.43)
Christian democrat	5.86	6.10	6.25	5.53	2.89	6.51	5.83
(N = 38)	(1.38)	(1.44)	(1.06)	(1.88)	(1.36)	(0.92)	(1.35)
Liberal	4.47	4.08	5.56	4.94	2.91	5.73	6.52
(N = 32)	(1.64)	(1.46)	(1.25)	(1.23)	(1.53)	(1.38)	(1.35)
Social democrat	4.19	4.43	5.16	5.27	2.55	3.90	4.00
(N = 31)	(1.30)	(1.33)	(0.87)	(1.28)	(0.99)	(0.94)	(1.07)
Green	3.09	3.04	3.67	3.98	4.49	3.58	3.77
(N = 16)	(1.23)	(1.61)	(1.09)	(1.05)	(0.93)	(0.90)	(1.06)
Socialist/communist	2.83	4.16	3.52	5.58	6.28	2.13	1.84
(N = 21)	(1.56)	(2.06)	(1.47)	(1.47)	(1.94)	(1.54)	(1.23)
Other	5.04	6.22	5.49	6.09	4.84	5.70	5.25
(N = 13)	(1.99)	(1.66)	(1.96)	(1.02)	(2.02)	(2.22)	(1.77)
Total	5.43	5.81	5.87	6.02	4.20	5.66	5.16
(N = 215)	(2.37)	(2.43)	(1.90)	(1.92)	(2.23)	(2.25)	(1.95)

Source: Expert Judgement Survey for European Political Parties (Immerzeel et al., 2011).

Note: All variables range between 0 and 10 (see Appendix Table A1 for exact wording of the items).

Figure 1.

Average policy position by party family in Europe. Source: Expert Judgement Survey for European Political Parties (Immerzeel et al., 2011).

Our results indicate that the RRPs score highest on the five domains considered in our study, as one would expect given that these are the central characteristics of the RRPs. The RRP family scores high on anti-immigration (8.97) and nationalism (9.38). It also has an outspoken strict position related to law and order (8.34) and is characterized by a populist (8.61) and anti-establishment discourse (6.64).

Comparing the average positions of RRPs with the other party families’ positions, the gaps on the immigration and nationalism policy domains are generally the largest. The descriptive data also show that the scores of the neo-conservative group are closest to the RRPs on the ideological RRP issues and populism. Their score on the anti-establishment dimension (6.24) is relatively close to the score of the RRPs, although the score of the socialist/communist party family is slightly higher on that dimension (6.28 vs 6.24). It lends credence to calling these neoconservative parties ‘borderline cases’ as they are closest to RRPs on almost every dimension but slightly less radical (cf. Mudde, 2007).

After the neo-conservative parties, the conservatives have the smallest gap with the RRPs. This party family has an average score of 5.91 on the immigration policy, 6.42 on the nationalism policy and 6.31 on populism. The Christian democrats follow on the immigration and nationalism policies, trailed by the ‘other’ parties, the liberal parties and the social democrats. The socialists have the lowest scores on immigration, whereas the greens have the lowest score on nationalism. The greens and socialists also have the lowest score on law and order. Christian democrats and conservatives have a smaller distance to the RRPs than social democrats with respect to law and order. In addition, the liberals are on average somewhat stricter concerning immigration and law and order than the mainstream left-wing parties.

Regarding populism, the party families do not differ much, which could be a sign of a ‘populist Zeitgeist’ (Mudde, 2004). Apart from the green and liberal parties, all other party families score 5.27 (the social democrats) or higher. Concerning the anti-establishment style dimension, the RRPs score 6.64 and are closely followed by the socialists (6.28) and the neo-conservatives (6.24). The conservatives, Christian democrats, liberals and social democrats all score below 3.11; the greens 4.49 and other parties 4.84.

Multivariate analyses

To answer our second research question and explore to what extent RRPs’ characteristics and those of other parties are associated with the distance between RRPs and other parties, we performed a multilevel analysis for each dimension considered in our study. Multilevel analyses are used because our data have a two-level data structure (Snijders and Bosker, 1999), namely the characteristics of other parties (party-level) being nested in countries with varying RRP-characteristics (country-level). Table 3 presents the results of our analyses.

Table 3.

Multilevel analyses of distances between RRPs and other parties’ positions (all countries).

	Immigration		Nationalism^a		Law and order		Populism		Anti-establishment
	b	S.E.	b	S.E.	b	S.E.	b	S.E.	b	S.E.
Party characteristics
Party family
Neo-conservative	–3.55***	0.52	–3.81***	0.67	–2.29***	0.47	–3.70***	0.46	–3.11***	0.56
Conservative	–2.00***	0.40	–2.10***	0.37	–1.57***	0.36	–1.39***	0.35	–0.61	0.43
Christian democrat	–1.84***	0.33	–1.69***	0.38	–1.35***	0.30	–0.70*	0.30	–0.24	0.36
Liberal	–0.58	0.36	0.20	0.43	–0.89*	0.33	–0.42	0.32	–0.35	0.39
Social democrat (ref.)	Ref.		Ref.		Ref.		Ref.		Ref.
Greens	1.02*	0.45	1.40**	0.44	0.89*	0.41	0.03	0.40	–1.50**	0.49
Socialist/communist	1.07*	0.42	0.23	0.48	1.11**	0.38	–1.34***	0.38	–3.41***	0.46
Other	–1.25***	0.49	–2.00**	0.55	–0.94*	0.44	–1.40**	0.44	–1.59**	0.53
Party’s popularity (centered)	–0.02*	0.01	–0.01	0.01	–0.04**	0.01	–0.05***	0.01	0.02	0.01
Party’s change in popularity	0.02	0.02	0.00	0.01	0.01	0.01	–0.00	0.01	–0.04*	0.02
Party in government	–0.12	0.27	0.07	0.31	–0.23	0.24	0.12	0.24	0.82**	0.29
RRP characteristics (country)
RRP’s popularity	–0.03	0.02	–	–	0.00	0.03	0.02	0.02	–0.03	0.05
RRP’s change in popularity	–0.03	0.04	–	–	0.02	0.04	–0.06	0.04	–0.05	0.07
RRP in government	0.24	0.59	–	–	0.13	0.68	0.64	0.62	0.91	1.18
Eastern Europe	–0.63~	0.38	–0.14	0.28	–1.44**	0.43	–1.16**	0.39	–1.78*	.73
Intercept	5.55***	0.41	5.01***	0.33	4.09***	0.43	4.03***	0.40	4.53***	.67
Party level–variance	1.70***	0.19	–	–	1.37***	0.16	1.33***	0.15	1.94***	.22
Country level–variance	0.48***	0.22	–	–	0.76***	0.28	0.60***	0.23	2.60***	.81
R²–party level	0.53		–		0.50		0.40		0.52
R²–country level	0.24		–		0.54		0.48		0.35
R²–total	0.49		0.44		0.52		0.43		0.43
N_i (Parties)	181		181		181		181		181
N_j (Countries)	26		26		26		26		26

Source: Expert Judgement Survey for European Political Parties (Immerzeel et al., 2011).

Notes: Sign. ~p < 0.10, *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001 (two–tailed, maximum likelihood estimation).

N_i = 181; N_j = 26 (24 countries and the two Belgian regions Wallonia and Flanders).

^aAs an empty model showed that there was no significant evidence for country–level variance in nationalism, we show the results of a multivariate OLS regression excluding the country–level variables and using cluster–corrected standard errors.

Starting with the association between the other parties’ characteristics and the distance between RRPs and the other parties, Table 3 indicates that the other parties’ ideological backgrounds are associated with the distance with the RRPs, and thus mirrors the descriptive findings presented above. For all RRP issues, except for anti-establishment, the neo-conservative group is closest to the RRP position. In line with Hypothesis 1, conservative and Christian democratic parties are substantially more likely to have a position close to RRPs’ position on immigration, nationalism and law and order compared with the social democrats. This refutes the alternative Hypothesis 1A. Liberal parties stand appreciably closer to RRPs on law and order compared with social democrats, but not on immigration and nationalism. Both the greens and socialists show a significantly larger distance with RRPs than the social democrats on both immigration and law and order. Only the greens show a significantly larger distance with RRPs on nationalism than the social democrats and RRPs.

The picture is different when we look at the style dimensions: populism and anti-establishment. In particular, and as anticipated in Hypothesis 2, green and socialist parties are generally positioned closer to RRPs on the anti-establishment dimension than the social democrats and the other mainstream parties (conservatives, Christian democrat and liberal parties),⁶ ceteris paribus. All party families except the greens and liberals stand closer to RRPs compared with the social democratic parties when considering the populist style of discourse, which is not in line with Hypothesis 2. However, we do find in line with Hypothesis 2 that the socialist parties are closer to RRPs on the populist dimension than the social democrats, Christian democrats and liberals. Hence, we only find partial evidence for Hypothesis 2.

Parties’ popularity is generally negatively associated with the distance with RRPs, supporting Hypothesis 3: the larger the party, the smaller the distance with RRPs’ positions. This is the case for all issues, except for the positions on nationalism and anti-establishment. For the latter, the findings suggest that a party’s increasing electoral success is associated with a smaller distance with the anti-establishment position of the RRPs. In Hypothesis 4, we suggested that parties in office have a larger distance with RRPs. Our results indicate that this is only the case for the anti-establishment dimension. Hence, Hypothesis 4 can only be confirmed for that style dimension and not for populism.

Turning to the association between RRPs’ characteristics and the distance between RRPs and other parties, the analyses are easy to summarize.⁷ Hypotheses 5 and 6 suggested that the distance between the other parties and the RRPs would be smaller when RRPs are more successful or when they are in government. The parameters do not reach conventional levels of significance for any of the dimensions and our Hypotheses 5 and 6 can thus not be corroborated.

East-West differences

The analyses in Table 3 indicate that the effect of Eastern Europe is significant and negative for all style dimensions and policy issues, except for nationalism. This indicates that the parties in Eastern Europe generally stand closer to RRPs than in Western Europe (see Appendix Table A5). Therefore, we also explored possible interactions between the other parties’ and RRPs’ characteristics, and Eastern versus Western Europe in Table 4. The aim of this analysis was to explore whether some characteristics of the other parties or of the RRPs were related differently to the distance between RRPs and other parties in Eastern and Western Europe.

Table 4.

Multilevel analyses of distances on immigration, law and order and populism between RRPs and other parties’ positions and interaction effects for Eastern and Western European countries.

	Immigration		Law and order		Populism
	b	S.E.	b	S.E.	b	S.E.
Party family
Neo-conservative	–3.97***	0.72	–3.26***	0.61	–3.99***	0.60
Conservative	–2.44***	0.67	–2.09***	0.48	–1.18**	0.48
Christian democrat	–2.12***	0.53	–1.34***	0.38	–0.56*	0.38
Liberal	–1.29**	0.42	–1.02*	0.40	–0.65*	0.40
Social democrat (ref.)	Ref.		Ref.		Ref.
Greens	0.78	0.49	0.93*	0.45	–0.03	0.44
Socialist/communist	1.10*	0.49	1.39**	0.44	–1.41***	0.44
Other	–1.55*	0.71	–1.23∼	0.64	–1.83**	0.63
Party’s popularity	–0.03*	0.01	–0.03∼	0.01	–0.03*	0.01
Party’s change in popularity	0.03	0.03	0.02	0.02	–0.01	0.02
Party in government	–0.05	0.33	–0.19	0.30	–0.41	0.30
RRP’s popularity	–0.03	0.03	0.01	0.03	0.03	0.03
RRP’s change in popularity	–0.08∼	0.04	–0.10*	0.05	–0.10∼	0.05
RRP in government	0.43	0.56	0.47	0.62	0.70	0.68
Eastern Europe	–1.52*	0.72	–1.71*	0.72	–1.40∼	0.77
Interaction–effects
Eastern Europe*…
Neo–conservative	1.27	0.98	2.19*	0.89	0.67	0.88
Conservative	1.09	0.77	0.96	0.70	–0.38	0.69
Christian democrat	0.43	0.67	0.21	0.60	–0.34	0.60
Liberal	1.80*	0.69	0.47	0.63	0.76	0.62
Social democrat (ref.)	Ref.		Ref.		Ref.
Greens	–0.06	1.49	–0.50	1.36	–0.32	1.35
Socialist/communist^a	–2.07*	1.00	–1.92*	0.90	0.41	0.89
Other	0.75	0.96	0.51	0.87	0.87	0.86
Party’s popularity	0.03	0.02	–0.01	0.02	–0.04∼	0.02
Party’s change in popularity	–0.04	0.03	–0.02	0.03	0.01	0.03
Party in government	0.56	0.54	0.19	0.49	1.20*	0.49
RRP’s popularity	0.00	0.04	–0.01	0.05	–0.03	0.05
RRP’s change in popularity	0.12∼	0.06	0.22**	0.07	0.10	0.08
Intercept	5.79***	0.45	4.14***	0.45	4.16***	0.48
Party level variance	1.49***		1.22***		1.18***
Country level variance	0.34***		0.52***		0.68***
N_i (Parties)	181		181		181
N_j (Countries)	26		26		26

Source: Expert Judgement Survey for European Political Parties (Immerzeel et al., 2011).

Notes: Sign. ~p < 0.10, *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001 (two–tailed, maximum likelihood estimation).

N_i = 181; N_j = 26 (24 countries and the two Belgian regions Wallonia and Flanders).

^aOnly three (Serbian) socialist/communist parties are included for the Eastern European region. Due to this relatively small sample size, one should be cautious in interpreting the significant interaction effects.

With regard to other party characteristics, we found a limited number of significant interaction effects. Western European liberals are somewhat more restrictive regarding immigration than their social democratic counterparts, whereas in Eastern Europe the liberals and social democrats are similarly restrictive regarding immigration. Furthermore, Eastern European socialists do not significantly differ from the social democrats in their position on law and order, whereas they are somewhat more restrictive towards immigration when compared with their social democratic counterparts. Moreover, Western European neo-conservatives are somewhat tougher on law and order than their social democratic counterparts, whereas in Eastern Europe the neo-conservatives and social democrats are more similar regarding their position on law and order. Additionally, we find some evidence that being in office as an Eastern European party is significantly associated with a higher distance with RRPs on populism.

Lastly, regarding RRP characteristics, we find that an increase in RRP’s popularity is associated with a slightly closer position of all other parties to the RRPs on immigration, law and order and populism in Western Europe. This corroborates H5 and is consistent with Van Spanje’s (2010) Western European study showing that growing RRP popularity is associated with other parties becoming stricter regarding immigration. For Eastern Europe, the significant interaction effects show that such effects have not been found, and we thus find only partial evidence for Hypothesis 5.

Conclusions and discussion

The aim of our contribution was to add to the literature on the possible consequences of RRPs’ success in Europe. Even though RRPs may not have a direct influence on policy making because they have been seldom part of a ruling government, they may indirectly influence policy making by influencing other (including governmental) parties’ stances (Williams, 2006). Whereas earlier research generally investigated the consequences of RRPs’ success on the immigration stances of other parties (e.g. Van Spanje, 2010), we suggested that a more comprehensive overview of the relationship between RRPs and other parties’ stances required a more detailed investigation into a wider variety of issue and style dimensions, typically associated with RRPs. In particular, we looked at (I) ideological dimensions: immigration, nationalism and law and order; and (II) style dimensions: populism and anti-establishment image. Based on an Expert Survey from 2010 in Eastern and Western European countries, our study investigated how closely RRPs and other parties are positioned on these ideological and style dimensions, and examined to what extent other parties’ characteristics (ideological background, popularity and being in office) and RRP characteristics (popularity and being in office) are associated with these distances.

Regarding the other party characteristics, we found evidence that on the core ideological issues of the radical right (immigration, nationalism and law and order) socialist parties show the largest distance, followed by the greens and social democrats. This is in line with Meguid’s spatial competition model (2005), stating that those parties whose original ideology is closer to the RRP will take similar stances, as they are competing for the same voters. Although it is often suggested that ideologically the parties can be represented by a horseshoe shape (see Halikiopoulou et al., 2012), such that the socialists are closer to RRPs than the centre and right-wing parties, we found no evidence of that regarding the issues of immigration, nationalism and law and order. With regard to nationalism this is surprising as Halikiopoulou et al. (2012) showed that radical left and radical right parties have comparable anti-EU stances. This may be due to our measure of nationalism, which is rather broad and might not refer to the Eurosceptic stances that these parties are also known for.

Yet, we did find a horseshoe shape related to the anti-establishment position of both party families. Our analyses revealed that the positions of the socialist (and green) parties on the anti-establishment dimension are much closer to the RRPs’ position than the positions of the centre parties. This speaks to the importance of non-proximal competitors in the modified spatial theory (Meguid, 2005), which suggests that parties on the other end of the political spectrum will incorporate comparable political styles to compete for voters. Radical ‘niche’ parties on both ends of the continuum may learn from each other’s strategies to obtain as many votes as possible.

Our results also demonstrated that successful parties have on average a closer position to RRPs (except for the nationalism and anti-establishment dimension). This may indicate that the year 2010 was prototypical for the European, populist Zeitgeist (Mudde, 2004) where parties that adopt more right-wing populist policies are more popular. However, this contradicts the findings from Rooduijn et al. (2012) who performed content analyses of the parties’ programs in fewer countries and concluded that there is no relation between RRP popularity and populist rhetoric in mainstream parties’ programmes. Future research should incorporate more time points and countries, and rely on different assessments of populist rhetoric from parties, to advance either conclusion more convincingly.

Regarding RRPs’ characteristics, we did not find evidence that when RRPs are in office the other parties are likely to be closer to RRP positions. Given the few countries in our study with RRPs in office, this obviously needs more attention in future studies in order to draw firm conclusions. However, we did find that an increase in RRPs’ electoral share is associated with a position closer to the RRP in the Western European countries on immigration and law and order. This is consistent with Van Spanje’s (2010) study on Western European countries and the position change between 2000 and 2004. Yet, for the Eastern European countries and the other dimensions (nationalism, populism and anti-establishment) such effects have not been found. Moreover, even though our analyses revealed that neo-conservative parties differ significantly on various radical right characteristics, some RRPs and neo-conservative right-wing parties are relatively similar in various ways. For example, both Flemish Interest and the increasingly popular New-Flemish Alliance identify with Flemish nationalism. Neo-conservative parties may also influence RRPs in the policy stances they take, in the same way that RRPs may influence neo-conservative parties. Due to lack of longitudinal Expert Survey data on the dimensions under study, we could not disentangle the dynamic relationship, but it might be useful for future research to further investigate the competition between neo-conservative parties and RRPs and how they influence one another in the policy stances they take. More generally, future research based on longitudinal data could successfully use such a dynamic approach. This would help to solve part of the unavoidable endogeneity problem inherent to our analysis: is it because of electoral success that other parties become closer to RRPs, or is the opposite true that other parties become more successful once they take a position that more closely resembles the RRPs’ stance?

To conclude, we have shown that the presence of RRPs is generally only relatively weakly related to the ideological and style dimensions of other parties. Instead, the other parties’ own ideology and popularity seem to play a major role in the position they take on typical RRP issues. Moreover, our pan-European approach has provided new empirical insights in the differences in party systems across Western and Eastern European countries. Our evidence demonstrated that Eastern European party families generally take positions closer to RRPs than their Western European counterparts on almost all dimensions studied in this contribution. We argue that future research should theorize and further investigate why Western European RRPs seem to be comparatively more radical and unique in their typical stances than their Eastern European counterparts.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions. We would also like to thank Johanne Sondergaard and Take Sipma for their help during the data collection of the Expert Survey.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The research presented in this study is funded by the NWO Graduate Training Program Grant (2008/2009) awarded to the research school Interuniversity Center for Social Science Theory and Methodology (ICS).

Supplemental material

The online appendices are available at .

Notes

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