Radical right parties and European economic integration: Evidence from the seventh European Parliament

Abstract

This article explores the differences in radical right parties' voting behaviour on economic matters at the European Parliament. As the literature highlights the heterogeneity of these parties in relation to their economic programmes, we test whether divergences survive the elections and translate into dissimilar voting patterns. Using voting records from the seventh term of the European Parliament, we show that radical right parties do not act as a consolidated party family. We then analyse the differences between radical right parties by the means of different statistical methods (NOMINATE, Ward's clustering criterion, and additive trees) and find that these are described along two dimensions: the degree of opposition to the European Union and the classical left–right economic cleavage. We provide a classification of these parties compromising four groups: pro-welfare conditional, pro-market conditional, and rejecting. Our results indicate that radical right parties do not act as a party family at the European Parliament. This remains true regardless of the salience of the policy issues in their agendas. The article also derives streams for future research on the heterogeneity of radical right parties.

Keywords

Economic policy European Parliament Euroscepticism NOMINATE radical right

Introduction

Do Radical Right Parties (RRPs) have a shared view of economic policy and, in particular, in the framework of European economic integration? This question gains relevance as RRPs appear to be increasingly important in the political landscape, with the potential to have a real impact on economic choices. In the 2014 European elections in the UK, France, and Denmark, RRPs received more votes than any other party. The real extent to which these elections represented a triumph for RRPs is subject to debate (Mudde, 2014). Despite becoming the leading political forces in three countries, RRPs experienced an important backlash in Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria and Italy. However, the popularity of RRPs would seem to be confirmed by subsequent elections, including the Presidential Elections in Austria (2016) and France (2017), where RR candidates qualified for the second round.

The relationship between RRPs and economic policy is the subject of a major debate in political science and, to date, there is no consensus on where RRPs stand (Rovny, 2013). In most cases, the economy is considered as a secondary issue to RRPs (Mudde, 2007) and, thus, the definition of RRPs in most of the literature ignores the economy and emphasises nativism, populism and authoritarianism as their core ideological features (Mudde, 2007). Nevertheless, since the support received by these parties during the economic crisis (Hernández and Kriesi, 2016), the question whether they share similar views about how the crisis can be overcome has become topical among theorists.

So far, the study of RRPs has been based mostly on analyses of their manifestos or surveys of expert judgements (de Lange, 2007; Rovny, 2013). In this article, we redirect the focus away from pledges, to study the real political decisions made by RR party representatives. Since they are rarely able to secure executive offices, we focus on the decisions made in elected assemblies. In order to treat a European phenomenon and avoid problems related to comparability among decisions made in national parliaments, we consider the votes cast in the European Parliament (EP). This is in line with the perspective adopted in Hix et al. (2007) to study and compare the behaviour of parties from different European countries; however, we focus on RRPs and, more particularly, their economic positioning. This work relies on voting records for the seventh term of the EP (years 2009 to 2014) because it is the most recent term for which complete data are available. Moreover, changes to parliamentary procedures and the resulting comparability issues, argue against using data for multiple terms.

Overall, our results show that RRPs do not adopt a common strategy on economic matters in the EP and we propose a classification of RRPs in four clusters, according to their voting behaviour.

Where do RRPs stand on economics matters? A literature review

RRPs and the EU: Different patterns of opposition

How can we define RRPs? This is not an easy task since RRPs do not consider themselves as on the ‘radical right’ (Mudde, 2007) and tend to reject both the etiquette and idea of belonging to a single family. Mudde (2007) identifies and defines three distinctive features: nativism, authoritarianism and populism. Nativism is ‘an ideology, which holds that states should be inhabited exclusively by members of the native group (‘the nation’) and that non-native elements (persons and ideas) are fundamentally threatening to the homogenous nation-state’ (Mudde, 2007: 19). Authoritarianism is the ‘belief in a strictly ordered society, in which infringements of authority are to be punished severely’ (Mudde, 2007: 23). Finally, populism is described as ‘a thin-centred ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’: (Mudde, 2007: 23).

The lack of self-recognition of RRPs, that is, their rejection of the idea of belonging to a single party family, is particularly evident in the EP: the history of RR party membership of the EP is a story of division. While radical left parties achieved a sort of unity through the European United Left (GUE), RRPs have rarely formed a single European party or cohesive group in the EP.

Consequently, RR MEPs mostly identify with the non-attached (NI). Unlike other national parliaments where non-attached members form a group of their own (often described as a mixed group), non-attached MEPs are not recognised as such and, thus, have fewer rights than established parliamentary groups (Poptcheva, 2014: 1).

In 2009, the RRPs managed to increase their representation in the EP, but still were unable to form a single group for the seventh term. MEPs from RRPs either sit with the NI or are split across the Freedom and Democracy Group (EFD) and the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR). Both the EFD and the ECR are seen as ‘Eurosceptic’ groups, though to different degrees (Bressanelli, 2012). The EFD was established in 2009, following an alliance between the parties in two Eurosceptic groups from the previous term, the Union for Europe of the Nations (UEN) and the Independence/Democracy (IND/DEM) group. Most EFD members are considered to be hard Eurosceptic (Hobolt and De Vries, 2016). The ECR's genesis is rather different, as it was formed in 2009 of three parties that split from the European People's Party (EPP): the British Conservatives, the Czech Civic Democratic Party, and the Polish Law and Justice Party (PiS). During the seventh term, most of the parties in the ECR were classified as soft Eurosceptic (Hobolt and De Vries, 2016).

Their lack of a common grouping in the EP has had a direct impact on the involvement of RRPs in EU decision making. According to Mamadouh and Raunio (2003), RRPs’ activity in the EP has been limited. They analysed data for the period 1989 to 1999 and found that RRPs, despite representing 3.3% of the MEPs, were allocated 0.7% of the reports, a result that is confirmed by other studies (Almeida, 2012; Morris, 2013). For Almeida (2012), the non-allocation of reports can be understood also as representing a cordon-sanitaire, preventing RRPs from playing a role in the EP. However, Almeida (2012) highlights that their lack of activity also as co-legislators (i.e. the small number of amendments in which they participated) points to a self-exclusion tactic of the RRPs and concludes that ‘the RR pursues a paradoxical course of an extra-parliamentary opposition’ (Almeida, 2012: 150). This extra-parliamentary opposition recalls the concept of ‘opposition of principle’ proposed by Mair (2007): Since the EU, as a polity, lacks the capacity to organise an opposition due to its depoliticisation, opposing parties ‘are then almost forced to organise opposition to the EU. To be critical of the policies promulgated by Brussels is therefore to be critical of the polity’ (Mair, 2007: 7). Thus, Eurosceptic parties such as the RRPs express their opposition withdrawing from any EU activity, as a form of protest. However, this may not be true of all RRPs. Hobolt and De Vries (2016) distinguish between ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ Eurosceptic parties, according to their degree of opposition to the European integration process. While most RRPs fall into the hard-Eurosceptic category, others such as the Greek Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS) or the Latvian National Alliance (TB) are considered soft Eurosceptic. Similarly, Vasilopoulou (2011) distinguishes between three patterns of opposition: rejecting, conditional and compromising. The rejecting category identifies

parties (e.g. the British National Party – BNP) that criticise the very existence of EU institutions and oppose EU legislation even on topics on which they might agree. The conditional category instead includes parties (e.g. the Freedom Party of Austria – FPÖ) that support the development of an intergovernmental European confederation and that do not oppose the EU on all matters. Finally, the compromising category includes those parties (e.g. the Latvian For Fatherland and Freedom Party) that, albeit opposing further integration, maintain that ‘a degree of integration is necessary for the general prosperity of the state, particularly in the economic domain. (Vasilopoulou, 2011: 233)

The above discussion indicates the likely low level of unity of the RRPs in the EP due to their split among different groups and their presence in some cases among the non-attached members. Given the lack of a common group and the lack of organisation of non-attached members, we expect RRPs to display a low level of voting cohesion:

H1: RRPs do not adhere to a common voting strategy in the EP.

However, the cohesiveness of the RRPs may vary according to the topic being discussed. RRPs might achieve greater agreement on topics closer to their ideology (e.g. Migration and Minority Rights Policies) and disagree on non-core issues. In particular, the literature underlines economic policy as a secondary and instrumental issue, on which the RR party family appears to be divided.

RRPs' economic ideas appear to be secondary issues

There is a consensus that ‘the economic program is a secondary feature in the ideologies of populist radical right parties’ (Mudde, 2007: 119). Rovny (2013) provides quantitative evidence supporting this thesis and concludes that RRPs do not compete with other political parties on the economic dimension and, in order to attract a larger audience, adopt a strategic position in which economic issues are blurred. Also, RRPs have adopted different economic positions over the years. In the mid-1990s, Kitschelt (1995) referred to a neo-liberal ‘winning formula’, as RRPs attracted blue-collar voters using nativism, coupled with a neoliberal stance directed to the middle classes. Kitschelt (2004) revises his position as he noticed that RRPs in the 2000s were toning down the liberal elements in their programmes so as not to lose the support of working-class voters. In a comparison of three different RRPs, the French National Front (FN), the Belgian Flemish Interest (VB) and the Dutch List Pim Fortuyn, de Lange (2007: 429) found evidence consistent with Kitschelt's (2004) results that some RRPs had progressed to a ‘new winning formula’ taking ‘a fairly centrist position on economic questions in the new millennium’. It is possible that this shift has continued with RRPs moving away from the ‘centre’ of the economic policy space. Ivaldi (2015: 362) found that the FN, recently, had moved towards a ‘new leftist-agenda’, ‘marked by the acceptance of state regulation and public services, and emphasizing income redistribution’. This would place the FN close to Kitschelt's (1995) ideal type of welfare chauvinism, which is a mix of a left-wing policy proposal and an authoritarian/nativist appeal.

To summarise, the literature on RRPs' economic programmes indicates that (so far) economic policy is considered by RRPs to be a secondary issue. As such, we expect RRPs to differ to a greater extent on economic matters than on non-economic matters and, in particular, over issues related to RRPs' core ideology.

H2: RRPs are more united on non-economic than economic issues.

Since the literature on RRPs lacks a comparative taxonomy of RR economic positions, this article analyses RRPs' heterogeneity on economic matters in the context of the EP. However, it should be noted that the EP is different from national parliaments: (1) It is the elective body of a supranational institution and (2) some of the parties represented in the assembly strongly oppose the existence of this institution. Therefore, the political space of the EP might be influenced by party positions on the European integration process overall. It follows, then, that MEPs' voting behaviour in the EP can be interpreted as representing either their real position on a given topic or as opposition to/support for the European integration process. In this context, the literature on the EP indicates that the pro-/anti-integration cleavage and the left/right cleavage are the dimensions structuring the activity of the EP (Hix et al., 2006). Some studies identify the left/right cleavage as more important than the pro-/anti-integration cleavage (Hix and Noury, 2009; Kreppel and Tsebelis, 1999); however, it is possible that the economic crisis has modified the structure of EP politics. Indeed, Otjes and van der Veer (2016) show that the importance of the pro-/anti-integration cleavage grew during the seventh term of the EP.

Given RRPs' different patterns of opposition to the EU and since economic matters are secondary for RRPs, we expect to find a significant difference between RRPs opposed in principle to the EU and RRPs more open to the EU construction.

H3: The opposition among RRPs on economic matters is related mainly to the degree of their opposition to the EU.

However, as presented above, economic matters are secondary issues, leading to different positions with this respect. Consequently, we would expect diverging strategies on economic matters regardless of the extent of their opposition to of the EU:

H4: RRPs take significantly different positions on economic issues beyond their degree of opposition to the EU.

Methodology: Analysis of roll-call votes

The use of roll-call votes at the EP as a means to compare national parties' positions

MEPs express their views in debates, draft reports and opinions, then propose amendments and vote, but, in contrast to studies of rapporteurship and amendments related to other groups (Almeida, 2012), the available material does not allow us to study RRPs' activity. Most of the MEPs of interest have never presented an amendment or worked on an economic report. However, while voting is not compulsory, most MEPs do vote, which provides us with more information.

Nevertheless, since individual EP voting records do not cover all documents, this information is far from complete. MEP voting is based mostly on a show of hands or is electronic and does not register individual votes, only the overall result. However, in the case of roll-call votes (RCVs), each MEP's preference is recorded. Since RCVs are the only source of information on individual MEPs' voting behaviour in the EP, we focus on roll-call voting data.

Because of the democratic transparency they provide, the EP is relying increasingly on RCVs, which have increased from 886 in the first term of the EP (EP1) to almost 7000 out of 23,553 votes registered at the end of the seventh term (EP7) (European Parliament, 2014), following a Rules of Procedure reform adopted by the EP in 2009, making RCVs mandatory for final votes on legislative documents. RCV analyses rely on the assumption that voting behaviour does not differ significantly between recorded and non-recorded votes. Given the large numbers of non-recorded votes, Carrubba et al. (2006) argue that RCVs in the EP are hardly ‘random’ since they follow a specific choice made by the legislators for recorded voting. According to Carrubba (2006: 701), RCVs samples are ‘biased over-estimating inter-party group cohesion’, mostly because party groups request RCVs for certain specific types of policies and are less concerned about others.

Hix et al. (2013) challenge Carrubba (2006) findings: they compare voting behaviour in relation to mandatory and requested RCVs and find no significant difference. More important for our analysis, they find that this holds for all party groups, which allows us to focus on RRPs and consider RCVs as relatively unbiased information in relation to cohesion issues.

Two ways to measure voting behaviour: Cohesion and support

RRPs' voting behaviour can be derived from individual votes according to various criteria. Here, we focus on two: cohesion (do RRPs vote in a similar way?) and support (which topics do RRPs mostly support/oppose?). Party or group cohesion can be formalised using the agreement index (AI) (Hix et al., 2005)

A I_{ij} = \frac{max {Y_{ij,}, N_{ij,}, A_{ij,}} - \frac{1}{2} [(Y_{ij,} + N_{ij,} + A_{ij,}) - max {Y_{ij,}, N_{ij,}, A_{ij,}}]}{(Y_{ij,} + N_{ij,} + A_{ij,})}

where Y_ij and N_ij , respectively, are the number of votes in favour and against, from party i on document j. A_ij is the number of abstentions registered by party i on document j. This different formalisation goes from zero if MEPs are divided equally among the three options to one if all members of the party vote in the same way.

In order to assess the position of each party on a given vote, we propose an original party support index (PSI), which provides information on the average party position (pro/anti) on a document and the valence of this opposition/support. We define the PSI as the difference between positive and negative votes, divided by the total number of MEPs in the national party formalised as

PS I_{ij} = \frac{Y_{ij,} - N_{ij,}}{(Y_{ij,} + N_{ij,} + A_{ij,} + M_{ij,})}

where M_ij is the number of MEPs who refrained from voting. The index ranges from −1 (all MEPs are present and vote against the proposal) to 1 (all MEPs are present and vote in favour of the proposal). However, in the case that an absolute majority is required, abstention, de-facto equates with a ‘nay’ vote. Following Hix (2001), in the context of our PSI, and for the purposes of the succeeding analysis, we code an abstention in the case of a vote requiring an absolute majority as a ‘nay’.

We rely on the PSI to derive the voting behaviour (support) of each RRP on different areas. However, the same support (PSI) for an economic area can derive from different voting patterns – parties voting in the same way, or parties voting differently. In order to analyse the relative positions of each party in the voting patterns (i.e. accounting for the similarities and differences among RRPs related to each vote), we rely on an analysis of all RCVs using the inductive methods described before.

Inductive data analysis methods

To analyse political dimensions, we adopt an inductive approach and rely on three methods developed in the literature, which provide complementary insights on our case and confer robustness on our results: (a) Nominal Three-step Estimation (NOMINATE); (b) Ward's (1963) hierarchical and non-supervised clustering criterion; and (c) additive trees. NOMINATE provides a robust and meaningful description of the dimensionality (i.e. the political space) of RRPs' parliamentary activity, while the clustering and additive tree methods identify and analyse the different groups of RRPs.

NOMINATE

Nominal Three-step Estimation, and the version used in this study, W-NOMINATE, are popular scaling methods developed by Poole and Rosenthal (1985) to address the positions of politicians based on their votes, and the positions of their votes in the political space. NOMINATE is a parametric method that reconstructs the dimensionality of voting in a legislative assembly from the individual votes of MEPs.¹ We apply the method to the subset of data on RR MEPs' RCVs on economic issues. This allows us to position the MEPs based on their choices about economic issues as opposed to all the issues addressed by the EP and enables us to focus on the differences between RRPs rather than all the parties in the EP.

However, this method has some limitations. In particular, the meaning of the NOMINATE dimensions is not straightforward and requires comparison with other measures (Hix, 2001). Therefore, we use the correlation between the average RRPs' PSI by theme and RRPs' position on NOMINATE axes to interpret these dimensions.

Hierarchical and non-supervised clustering

In order to regroup RRPs based on similar voting patterns, we rely on Ward's (1963) hierarchical and non-supervised clustering criterion, which minimises the variance in each cluster. We interpret these groups using the cluster average PSI for each theme and projecting the group's average position in the NOMINATE bi-dimensional space. Finally, we demonstrate the voting patterns of these groups using documents selected as representative of RRPs' divisions in the EP on economic issues.

Additive trees

Additive trees are a data representation tool which allows us to: (a) check the robustness of our cluster analysis and (b) complete the analysis of the dimensionalities resulting from NOMINATE and the hierarchical clustering.

This method further provides for the representation of distances (similarity) between two individuals (here RRPs) as the sum of the branch segments separating them (Buneman, 1971). In order to compute the tree distance between RRPs, we rely on the neighbour joining (NJ) algorithm, implemented by Huson and Bryant (2005).

Data selection and description

‘Economic matters’ in the EP

The data were provided by Simon Hix.² To classify RRPs according to their voting behaviour in the EP on economic issues, we identify economic matters within the dataset. We apply Hix's (2013) classification of 21 policy areas³ and identify documents in six areas: Budget, Budgetary Control, Economic and Monetary Affairs, Employment and Social Affairs, Internal Market and Consumer Protection, and International Trade (see the Online appendix).

Areas related to production, such as agriculture, fisheries and manufacturing are excluded because of their technical (rather than economic) nature.⁴ The choice to exclude these areas was based on a survey of relevant votes, which confirmed that most were related to technical issues.

Our final dataset includes 2652 votes related to economic matters during EP7 (2009–2014). Budget votes account for 25% of our sample and, if Budgetary Control documents are included, more than 40% of the votes are budget-related, in either their formation/implementation or ex-post control. Among the remaining votes, Economic and Monetary Affairs is the most important policy area, since the 2009–2014 parliament was required to deal with the Eurozone crisis.

To ascertain the importance of RRPs' divisions on economic matters, we compare our results in terms of cohesion with all other documents. Since, according to Mudde (2007), nativism is a key element of RR ideology, we expect RRPs to converge on nativism-related matters, despite belonging to different parliamentary groups. We identified 133 documents dealing with Migration and Minority Rights Policies and used them as benchmark to test RRPs' cohesiveness on economic policy.

Parties and MEPs: RR deputies serving during the seventh term

RRPs are parties whose core ideological features are nativism, populism and authoritarianism, (Mudde, 2007). Based on this definition and in order to identify which parties to include in our study, we start from Mudde's (2007) classification and propose some additional parties.⁵ In some cases, these arise from an updating of the 2007 list, for example, the Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV), the Hungarian Jobbik and the Latvian TB, which, in more recent work, Mudde (2014) identifies as RRPs.

The classification is less evident for some parties: the British UKIP, the Finns Party (P) and the Polish PiS. Concerning the Finnish P, Arter (2012: 815) notes that ‘the ethno-nationalist ideological dimension has become more pronounced in the P's policy output’, a view shared by Raunio (2012: 20), who finds that P's discourse is ‘overall broadly similar with other European populist or radical right parties’. UKIP is a more complicated and disputed case. Initially, a single-issue movement, focused on its anti-European campaign (Mudde, 2007), after Nigel Farage became party leader in 2006, UKIP began focusing more and more on immigration policy: foreigners appeared as a ‘threat […] to a reified national identity’ (Mondon, 2015: 26), which makes it a good candidate for our study. Finally, the PiS might be better classified as a conservative-turned populist party (Minkenberg and Perrineau, 2007). However, the absence of a Polish RRP and the authoritarian turn of the party once in power (Mudde, 2016), convinced us that it should be included in the analysis as the now ruling party in Poland.

The choice of MEPs is also important because some particular cases emerged during the analysis of MEPs who resigned from their original parties without quitting the EP.⁶ This selection matters because our methodology (NOMINATE) relies explicitly on MEPs' behaviour. If political groups' rather than MEPs' positioning is analysed, this assumes that MEPs do not change political group/national party during their mandate. As a rule of thumb, we consider that MEPs belong to a national party if they spent more than half of their term under its banner.

Overall, RRPs account for 7% of total MEPs during the seventh term. UKIP, with 12 seats (11 after Andreasen joined the Conservatives in 2013) accounts for the highest share among RRPs, while the EFD group accounts for six out of the 16 RRPs represented at the EP and 25 RRP seats (out of a total 32 for all RRPs combined). As such, despite not being composed exclusively of RRPs, between 2009 and 2014, this Eurosceptic group was the main ‘home’ for right-wing radicalism (with the exception of the NI).

Results

Cohesion within parties, but lack of cohesion among RRPs regardless of the topic

Cohesion in voting

In terms of voting cohesion, the data tend to support hypothesis H1 about the lack of cohesion among RRPs. Table 1 presents a summary of the AIs for all the policy areas previously defined.

Table 1.

Agreement index (AI) for RRPs, European party groups, and non-attached members during the seventh term of the EP (all policy areas).

Party	AI	Group	AI
Ataka	0.90	EPP	0.95
BNP	0.94	S&D	0.93
DF^a	1.00	ALDE/ADLE	0.90
FN	0.98	Greens/EFA	0.94
FPO	0.97	EFD	0.48
JOBBIK	0.83	ECR	0.87
LAOS	0.97	NI	0.40
LN	0.91	GUE-NGL	0.80
P^a	1.00	RRPs	0.46
PiS	0.95
PRM	0.98
PVV	1.00
SNS^a	1.00
TB/LNNK^a	1.00
UKIP	0.86
VB	0.88

Note: Calculations by the authors.

The party has just one MEP which explains the perfect cohesion.

The Student t-test indicates that the difference between the average cohesion of RRPs and other groups (with the exception of the non-attached members – mostly RR MEPs), is significant at the 0.01 level. This confirms hypothesis H1. We checked the robustness of our results by alternately removing and then adding the three RRPs whose affiliation to RRPs was discussed before. The AI for all RRPs shows a slight increase, up to 0.5 if we exclude from our calculations all three parties or just UKIP, but remains unchanged or decreases if we remove the Finnish P or the Polish PiS. Our finding about RRPs' lack of cohesion appears to be robust and is especially evident in relation to the EFD group, which includes most RRPs. EFD group cohesion is similar to that of the non-attached members, the most ideologically heterogeneous group in the EP. Conversely, cohesion within parties is relatively high. RRPs show high levels of internal cohesion, with only three parties (Jobbik, UKIP and VB) below (but still close to) the 0.9 threshold.

We assess whether this lack of cohesion derives from a lack of coordination or convergence of views, by comparing the AI of economic and non-economic matters. Table 2 shows that the AI of RRPs is stable at a low level regardless of the topic, and if we focus on Migration and Minority Rights Policies, this does not change. Thus, RRPs appear to be divided on all topics, not just economic issues. This rejects hypothesis H2 since RRPs' lack of cohesion in the EP goes beyond economic policy. A possible explanation for this finding is that Eastern and Western RRPs could adopt very different strategies also on non-economic policies as suggested by the literature (Rovny and Edwards, 2012). As such, we should treat the two subgroups separately.⁷

Table 2.

Disaggregated Agreement Indexes for RRPs on economic and non-economic issues during the seventh term of the EP. Calculations by the authors.

Subgroups	Economic policy	Non-economic policy	Migration and minorities' rights policies
All RRPs	0.46	0.46	0.43
RRPs in ECR group	0.88	0.87	0.85
RRPs in EFD group	0.51	0.52	0.50
RRPs in NI	0.49	0.65	0.55
Eastern European RRPs	0.63	0.65	0.71
Western European RRPs	0.49	0.47	0.53

Note: Calculations by the authors. RRP: Radical Right Parties; ECR: European Conservatives and Reformists; EFD: European Freedom and Democracy Group; NI: non-attached.

Regardless of the topic, the disaggregated AI for Western and Eastern European RRPs does not support this interpretation. Eastern European RRPs are more cohesive than Western European RRPs, but much of this cohesiveness depends on the fact that 41% of the Eastern European RR representatives come from a single party (PiS). In addition, differences in cohesion between economic and non-economic topics are rather limited in both subgroups. However, if we focus on Migration and Minority Rights Policies, we see that both Eastern and Western European RRPs are more cohesive on these topics than on other issues. Nevertheless, the AI of Western European RRPs is low compared to other parliamentary groups. Thus, RRPs' heterogeneity on these topics is explained only partially by differences between Eastern and Western European countries. Our data and the underlying quantitative approach do not allow us to develop this analysis further: a qualitative study of Migration and Minority Rights Policies, based on an analysis of the substance of key documents, would shed light on this counter-intuitive result. However, this is beyond the scope of the present study.

To summarise, we can conclude that RRPs’ voting patterns appear to differ regardless of the topic, which suggests different strategies for the EP, rather than in relation to an individual topic. This confirms hypothesis H1, but rejects hypothesis H2. In contrast to what existing work on RRPs would suggest, economic policy does not emerge as less cohesive than other matters. However, we still consider economic topics as an interesting case for three reasons. First, the literature on the dimensionality of voting at the EP highlights that coalitions among mainstream parties differ depending on the topic, with economic issues following a left/right cleavage (Kreppel and Tsebelis, 1999). Second, economic integration is the cornerstone of the European integration process: as Rosamond (2000: 52) argues ‘political integration is a more or less inevitable side-effect of economic integration’. Third, during the EP seventh term (2009–2014), economic matters assumed major importance following the 2008 economic crisis. The EP discussed and approved various measures to increase control by European bodies over national economies (Otjes and van der Veer, 2016). Given the importance of economic issues in the European integration process, they can be considered the starting point to analyse the heterogeneity of the RR party family.

Behaviour in terms of support on economic matters

RRPs' lack of a common strategy also results in diverging voting preferences (see Table 3).

Table 3.

PSI values by party group and by RRPs, by theme during the seventh term of the EP.

Party	Budget	Budgetary control	Economic and monetary affairs	Employment and social affairs	Internal market and consumer protection	International trade	All economic documents
Ataka	0.13	0.11	0.23	0.13	0.38	0.20	0.17
BNP	−0.31	−0.08	−0.39	−0.33	−0.25	0.03	−0.24
DF	−0.19	−0.12	−0.07	−0.32	0.60	0.02	−0.10
FN	−0.10	−0.12	−0.13	−0.12	0.16	0.08	−0.07
FPO	−0.05	−0.12	−0.14	−0.12	0.23	0.19	−0.04
JOBBIK	0.09	0.11	0.12	0.20	0.17	0.06	0.12
LAOS	0.22	0.38	0.33	0.38	0.40	0.13	0.29
LN	0.13	0.28	0.23	0.04	0.46	0.19	0.19
P	−0.17	0.11	−0.13	−0.07	0.43	0.19	−0.01
PiS	−0.06	−0.11	−0.17	−0.22	0.29	−0.04	−0.09
PRM	0.27	0.37	0.39	0.49	0.30	0.31	0.36
PVV	−0.38	−0.27	−0.54	−0.66	−0.42	−0.37	−0.44
SNS	0.00	0.13	0.12	0.14	0.65	0.22	0.14
TB/LNNK	−0.04	0.08	0.00	0.02	0.14	−0.12	0.00
UKIP	−0.27	−0.16	−0.42	−0.38	−0.40	−0.24	−0.31
VB	−0.01	−0.04	−0.04	−0.08	0.35	0.07	0.00
EPP	0.11	0.31	0.30	0.33	0.35	−0.04	0.21
S&D	0.19	0.44	0.43	0.52	0.57	0.31	0.37
ALDE/ADLE	0.15	0.38	0.33	0.33	0.31	0.14	0.26
Greens/EFA	0.21	0.46	0.46	0.53	0.44	0.43	0.40
EFD	−0.02	0.05	−0.04	−0.05	0.17	0.03	0.00
ECR	−0.13	−0.11	−0.17	−0.26	0.20	−0.12	−0.14
NI	−0.05	0.01	−0.04	−0.01	0.11	0.06	−0.01
GUE-NGL	0.15	0.21	0.06	0.14	0.31	0.37	0.18
RRPs	−0.05	0.03	−0.04	−0.06	0.22	0.06	0.00

Note: Calculations by the authors. ECR: European Conservatives and Reformists; RRP: Radical Right Parties.

In general, RRPs have been the strongest opponents of economic proposals. In particular, UKIP and PVV, with PSIs of −0.31 and −0.44 respectively, are the fiercest opponents of EU economic policy. However, some RRPs (LAOS and the Greater Romania Party – PRM) are more sympathetic to the European economic integration process and show a PSI close to that of Europhile groups such as the Socialists and Democrats (S&D). In line with hypothesis H3, we observe that, on economic policy as on other topics, differences between RRPs in terms of voting behaviour reflect their general strategy towards the EU. Overall, the differences among RRPs are so great that the average PSI score is 0, since soft and hard Eurosceptic parties balance each other out on economic issues. The Student t-test indicates that, except for the NI, EFD and ECR (to which most RRPs belong), the difference in the means between RRPs and other groups is significant at the 0.01 level.

Division between pro- and anti-EU parties and opposition between leftist and rightist RRP positions on economic issues

The cohesion and support indexes provide insights related to hypothesis H3. We discussed the important differences among RRPs vis-à-vis their stance on the EU, exemplified by the juxtaposition between the Eurosceptic PVV and the (almost) Europhile LAOS. However, to support or reject hypotheses H3 and H4, we need to compare RRPs' behaviours on each vote, rather than looking at average cohesion or support indexes by theme.

To analyse the differences within the RR family, we run NOMINATE and interpret the resulting bi-dimensional space by correlating the axes with PSI scores for each RRP on the different economic policy areas presented before (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

The radical right economic space: parties and clusters. Analysis of RRPs' MEPs votes on economic matters using NOMINATE.

The Pearson's r correlation coefficient is significant at the 0.01 level for the first dimension in NOMINATE and total PSI on economic matters (−0.93). We can conclude that parties which tend to vote ‘nay’ most of the time are at the high-end of the vertical axis, while parties that tend to vote ‘yes’ are at the low-end. Therefore, it appears that the intra-family space is divided in terms of degree of Euroscepticism (in relation to economic matters), which supports hypothesis H3. If we consider all economic votes, the second axis is not significantly correlated to the PSI scores for any area. Therefore, we focus on final votes, which we consider are more salient. We find that the axis is significantly correlated to the PSI scores for International Trade (0.78) and Internal Market (0.61), thus opposing free-market RRPs to protectionist RRPs, at least for final votes. This provides partial confirmation of hypothesis H4: RRPs take different positions on economic issues, beyond their degree of opposition to the EU. In particular, this dimension echoes the left/right economic cleavage since it would appear to be structured more by positions for or against a free (international) market.

To extend our analysis of RRPs' relative positions on economic issues, we build a classification based on Ward's (1963) method. We classify RRPs into four clusters as we consider this to be more informative.⁸ The four clusters can be described using the available variables and the average PSI of final votes (see the Online appendix) and can be projected onto the intra-family space obtained in NOMINATE (see Figure 1). These clusters resemble the three patterns of opposition (rejecting, conditional, compromising) proposed by Vasilopoulou (2011), but applied to economic matters.

Thus, we identify Cluster 1 as the ‘compromising’ radical right: Jobbik, PRM and LAOS, parties characterised by less Eurosceptic voting behaviour. They may be divided on some matters, but all show positive support for most EU legislation on economic issues and, in particular, Budget and the Internal Market. In some cases (e.g. LAOS), the level of the global PSI is the same as for Europhile groups such as the Greens.

Clusters 2 and 3 differ mainly in relation to final votes. Cluster 2 is the ‘pro-market conditional’ radical right: DF, P, PiS, TB and SNS. These parties show lower levels of support for European economic integration compared to the parties in Cluster 1, and support specific issues. RRPs in Cluster 2 are pro-market and oppose budgetary documents, while supporting documents favouring free trade, as shown by the extremely high PSI values for Internal Market and International Trade. Their positive general PSI is based on their support for these policies and decreases substantially for Economic and Monetary Affairs, falling to around zero for other themes.

Cluster 3 includes the ‘pro-welfare conditional’ radical right: LN, VB, Ataka, FN and FPÖ. While their priorities do not emerge if we consider all documents, the final votes show a clearer pattern. On Budget and Internal Market items, these parties support EC actions. However, their backing on the Internal Market is less strong than among Cluster 2 (and Cluster 1).

Finally, Cluster 4 identifies ‘rejecting’ RRPs: UKIP, BNP and PVV. These parties oppose every document regardless of its theme. On some topics, such as International Trade, their opposition is less pronounced. However, no theme shows a positive PSI value.

With the exception of RRPs from the ECR group (PiS and TB), which belong to the same cluster (‘pro-market conditional’), there is no correspondence between clusters and party groups. In particular, members of the EFD group are scattered among all clusters including the ‘compromising’ RRPs. RRPs sitting among the non-attached members also are spread across different clusters.

Figure 2 shows the distance between parties on all dimensions using an additive tree. This representation confirms our choice to use four clusters and helps to identify their borders. In particular, the additive tree makes the cleavage between Eastern and Western European RRPs apparent; this does not emerge clearly in either NOMINATE or our clusters. Different Eastern European parties, such as Jobbik, Ataka and SNS are at the borders of their respective clusters. Considering the small distances between Eastern European RRPs, our results suggest the existence of common features among these parties, which require further research.

Figure 2.

Additive tree of RRPs' PSI on economic matters, seventh term of the EP.

We illustrate the voting patterns of these categories by looking at their PSI and cohesion on four documents (Table 4). We identify these documents relying on a survey of final votes, which we consider to be more salient than votes on amendments. The first document concerns the EP's ratification of the Regional Convention on pan-Euro-Mediterranean preferential rules of origin, whose ultimate objective is the establishment of a free trade area between the EU and various Mediterranean non-member countries. Consistent with the previous discussion, parties from the pro-market conditional class supported the document during the final vote. Parties from the compromising class also expressed support, although at a lower level since most of these MEPs were absent or did not vote. Finally, parties from the rejecting and pro-welfare conditional classes voted against the document.

Table 4.

PSI and AI values of RRPs clusters on selected documents (final votes only – seventh term of the EP).

	CLASS	Doc. 1	Doc. 2	Doc. 3	Doc. 4
PSI	Compromising	0.57	0.57	0.14	0.57
	Rejecting	−0.94	−0.83	−0.44	−0.78
	Pro-welfare conditional	0.94	0.89	−0.56	−0.83
	Pro-market conditional	−0.73	0.82	0.73	−0.09
Cohesion	Compromising	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00
	Rejecting	1.00	0.91	0.83	0.90
	Pro-welfare conditional	1.00	1.00	0.88	0.83
	Pro-market conditional	1.00	1.00	0.83	0.81

We identified two votes that depict the behaviour of RRPs on budgetary documents. The first concerns the mobilisation of funds for five enterprises operating in the Arnsberg and Düsseldorf area to provide additional support for workers suffering from the consequences of major structural changes. RRPs from the compromising and pro-welfare conditional clusters supported the document, despite some compromising RR party members being absent. Rejecting and pro-market conditional RRPs, voted against the resolution; the former because of their opposition in principle to EU policies, the latter based on their ‘free market’ stances. The second vote concerns mobilisation of the EU Solidarity Fund in favour of Spain and Italy, following the earthquake in Lorca and the floods in Veneto. In this case, parties in the rejecting cluster voted against, while all other clusters supported the document.

Finally, despite the importance of the Eurozone crisis, RRPs did not adopt a common strategy towards most of the legislation in this area. ‘The proposal for a regulation of the EP and of the Council on common provisions for monitoring and assessing draft budgetary plans and ensuring the correction of excessive deficit of the Member States in the euro area’ is a good illustration of this. This proposal was part of the ‘Two-Pack’ legislation which ‘contributed to the Europeanization of economic governance by strengthening the monitoring processes of national economies at the European level’ (Roger et al., 2017: 7). As expected, RRPs in the rejecting and pro-welfare conditional clusters opposed this legislation since it imposed tighter controls on national budgets. On the other hand, and as expected from our classification, many RRPs in the compromising cluster, despite generally being classified as Eurosceptic parties, supported one of the most important pieces of European legislation passed in the 2009–2014 period. Finally, RRPs in the pro-market conditional cluster abstained.

All the ‘eras’ of RR economic ideas were represented in the seventh term of the EP: the neoliberal ‘winning formula’ of Kitschelt (1995) in the pro-market conditional cluster, the centrist economic position observed by de Lange (2007) represented by the compromising RRPs, and the ‘old-new’ welfare-chauvinism (Ivaldi, 2015; Kitschelt, 1995).

Our results are similar to those in other works conceptualising the existence of different types of parliamentary opposition (Mair, 2007; Vasilopoulou, 2011). There is a handful of RRPs that express strong ‘opposition in principle’ to the existence and role of the EP. UKIP, PVV and BNP used their votes on economic issues to stress their Euroscepticism regardless of the topic. Other RRPs show more topic-related behaviour and supported certain documents (e.g. the pro-market conditional (DF, P, PiS, TB and SNS) and pro-welfare conditional (LN, VB, Ataka, FN and FPÖ). However, the true extent of this policy-related opposition should be confirmed by a more extended analysis and not limited to votes. Finally, the compromising RRPs (Jobbik, PRM, and LAOS) are probably the most heterogeneous since their main characteristic is their stronger (compared to the other groups) support for documents discussed in the EP.

Table 5 compares our results with the classifications proposed by other authors (Hobolt and De Vries, 2016; Vasilopoulou, 2011) and the scores collected by the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES) (Bakker et al., 2015). In most cases, our results are in line with their findings, with a few notable exceptions. Both the Romanian PRM and Jobbik, which are classified by Hobolt and De Vries (2016) as hard Eurosceptic, are among the least Eurosceptic in our classification. As discussed before, the PRM has a PSI score in line with that of the S&D group, while Jobbik, although less compromising, has a positive PSI score. It seems that these RRPs adopt a parliamentary strategy that is different from their public discourse. Another interesting result relates to the left-right dimension, which appears to differ from the corresponding scores in the CHES. The differences are related specifically to those parties in our pro-market conditional group that belong either to the ECR group (namely, the Polish PiS or the Latvian TB) or joined the ECR group in 2014 (such as the Danish DF and the Finnish P). Unlike other RRPs, these parties managed to join groups that include non-RR forces and our results indicate that they voted in line with their moderate colleagues. However, in doing so, we find important differences between their positions at home and how they vote in the EP and identify interesting directions for further research.

Table 5.

Comparison between our study's results and the main literature's findings.

Party	Our study	Vasilopoulou (2011)	Hobolt and De Vries (2016)	CHES position on EU (2014)	CHES left/right econ cleavage (2014)
Ataka	Pro-welfare conditional	Conditional	Hard Eurosceptic	1.5	1.4
BNP	Rejecting	Rejecting	N/A	1.2 (2010)	5.8 (2010)
DF	Pro-market conditional	Conditional	Hard Eurosceptic	1.9	4.5
FN	Pro-Welfare Conditional	Rejecting	Hard Eurosceptic	1.2	5.9
FPÖ	Pro-Welfare Conditional	Conditional	Hard Eurosceptic	1.9	5.5
JOBBIK	Compromising	N/A	Hard Eurosceptic	1.2	4
LAOS	Compromising	Conditional	Soft Eurosceptic	3.3	5.3
LN	Pro-Welfare Conditional	Conditional	Hard Eurosceptic	1.1	7.3
P	Pro-market conditional	N/A	Hard Eurosceptic	1.6	4.1
PiS	Pro-market conditional	N/A	Soft Eurosceptic	3.8	3.1
PRM	Compromising	N/A	Hard Eurosceptic	N/A	N/A
PVV	Rejecting	N/A	Hard Eurosceptic	1.1	4.6
SNS	Pro-market conditional	N/A	Hard Eurosceptic	2.3	4.8
TB	Pro-market conditional	Compromising	Soft Eurosceptic	5.7	5.9
UKIP	Rejecting	Rejecting	Hard Eurosceptic	1.1	8.6
VB	Pro-welfare conditional	Conditional	Hard Eurosceptic	2.6	5.5

Conclusion

This article has explored and described RRPs' patterns of opposition to the European integration process on economic matters. Using RCVs in the EP on all economic issues during the seventh term of the EP (2009–2014), we analysed cohesion among and the support from different party groups for economic and non-economic issues. We exploited existing cohesion indexes and proposed an original party support index. Our results show that RRPs do not follow a common voting strategy on either economic or non-economic issues debated in the EP, and even vote individually in relation to migration and minority rights policies. This result is particularly striking: while we could expect a low level of cohesiveness on economic matters (Mudde, 2007; Rovny, 2013), we predicted a higher level of cohesiveness on migration policy (Mudde, 2007; Zaslove, 2009). It follows that, at least within the framework of the EP, RRPs do not act as a party family, regardless of the salience of the policy issues on their agendas.

As discussed, the East/West cleavage could be a possible cause for RRPs’ lack of cohesiveness. A qualitative content analysis, which would be needed to test other possible explanations, such as RRPs’ ‘national’ ties to certain non-European countries or their willingness to defend the rights of specific minorities. We can also assume that there might be more cohesiveness on the most ‘salient’ documents, while voting on technical documents might diverge according to the RRPs’ level of opposition to the EU. Testing these assumptions is also beyond the scope of this article, but offers opportunities for future research.

Our analysis was completed by an inductive analysis of RRPs' different voting patterns using both parametric (NOMINATE) and non-parametric (clustering analysis and additive tree) methods and illustrated by four representative votes. The results confirm our assumptions that division among RRPs on economic issues is related to their degree of opposition to EU policy and, to a lesser extent, the traditional economic left/right cleavage. In addition, our analysis highlights that Eastern and Western European RRPs adopt somewhat different strategies.

Our study suggests that RRPs can be grouped into four clusters related to how they vote on economic issues: (a) RRPs (Jobbik, PRM, LAOS), whose voting patterns are less Eurosceptic compared to the other three RRP clusters; (b) conditional-pro-market RRPs (DF, P, PiS, TB, SNS), whose support for the EU is conditional on the topic – for instance, they support free trade; (c) conditional pro-welfare RRPs (VB, Ataka, FN, FPÖ), which support Budget and Internal Market items, while remaining neutral or negative about other issues; (d) RRPs (UKIP, BNP, PVV), characterised by opposition to all documents regardless of their theme.

Our results are in line with Mudde's (2007) analysis, which shows that RRPs' positions on economic issues are heterogeneous and consistent with the absence of a common RR grouping within the EP. They are also coherent with the existence of different types of parliamentary oppositions, as theorised by authors such as Mair (2007) and Vasiloupolou (2011).

Our research has some limitations. First, votes are considered equal, although some documents might be more informative than others; second, a proportion of the RCVs is requested by party groups to appear more cohesive. Third, as discussed before, the EP has its own dimensionality and we cannot generalise our results to national political systems. Indeed, we show that RR voting strategies at the EP can differ from public discourse in the home country. RRP's divergent national and EP behaviour deserves further research.

Our results open up several perspectives: other data (RRPs' speeches and programmes) could be used to analyse RRPs' positions and their coherence with and divergence from real voting patterns at the EP. Within a broader perspective, future research could compare the evolution of RRPs in relation to different topics. The recent literature underlines that some RRPs combine nativism with progressive agendas on cultural issues (gay rights, gender roles, freedom of speech, etc.) suggesting a new political positioning of those parties on these topics (De Koster et al., 2014; Halikiopoulou et al., 2013).

Supplemental Material

Replication Files -Supplemental material for Radical right parties and European economic integration: Evidence from the seventh European Parliament

Supplemental material, Replication Files for Radical right parties and European economic integration: Evidence from the seventh European Parliament by Matteo Cavallaro, David Flacher and Massimo Angelo Zanetti in European Union Politics

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for Radical right parties and European economic integration: Evidence from the seventh European Parliament

Supplemental material for Radical right parties and European economic integration: Evidence from the seventh European Parliament by Matteo Cavallaro, David Flacher and Massimo Angelo Zanetti in European Union Politics

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Supplementary material

Supplementary material is available for this article online.

Notes

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