Adapt, or Die! Organizational Change in Office-Seeking Anti- Political Establishment Parties Paper for Presentation at the Annual General Meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association in Winnipeg, Manitoba, June 3-5, 2004. Amir Abedi, Ph.D. Dr. Steffen Schneider Department of Political Science Collaborative Research Center 597 – Western Washington University Transformations of the State 516 High Street, MS-9082 University of Bremen Bellingham, WA 98225-9082 P.B. 33 04 40 USA 28334 Bremen Germany Tel.: +1-360-650 4143 +49-421-218 8715 Fax: +1-360-650-2800 +49-421-218 8721
[email protected] [email protected] Draft version – not to be quoted – comments welcome I Introduction Over the last few years, the entry of radical right-wing parties into national governments in Austria, Italy and the Netherlands has made headlines around the world and sparked debates on the impact that the government participation of these formations might have on policy- making, political cultures and system stability in the affected countries (Hainsworth, 2000; Holsteyn and Irwin, 2003; Kitschelt, 1995; Luther, 2003; Minkenberg, 2001). There has been much less discussion about the effects of government participation on radical right-wing parties themselves. After all, they tend to portray themselves as challengers of the political establishment up to the moment of joining coalitions with their mainstream competitors. In this, they are comparable to new politics, left-libertarian or green parties, which began their life as challengers of the establishment as well but have joined national governments in Belgium, Finland, France, Germany and Italy over the last decade (Müller-Rommel, 1998; Taggart, 1994).