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Radical Right Parties in Europe: What, Who, Why? Cas Mudde, Depauw University

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Radical Right Parties in Europe: What, Who, Why? Cas Mudde, Depauw University University of Georgia From the SelectedWorks of Cas Mudde 2011 Radical Right Parties in Europe: What, Who, Why? Cas Mudde, DePauw University Available at: https://works.bepress.com/cas_mudde/46/ Features | Dossiers Participation Vol. 35, no 1 12 Radical Right Parties in Europe: What, Who, Why? iven the dominance of party politics in So, what are they? In my own work, I GEurope, political parties have always define these parties as populist radical been at the forefront of European compar- right, itself a combination of nativism, ative politics. And no group of political authoritarianism, and populism. Nativism parties has attracted so much academic entails a combination of nationalism and interest as the ‘radical right’. Described by xenophobia, i.e. an ideology that holds that a plethora of terms – ranging from ‘neofas- states should be inhabited exclusively by cist’, ‘extreme right’ and ‘far right’, to members of the native group (‘the nation’) Cas MUDDE ‘right-wing populist’ and ‘anti-immigrant’ and that nonnative (or ‘alien’) elements, Professor of Political Science at – these parties have been the topic of liter- whether persons or ideas, are fundamental- DePauw University (Indiana, USA) ally hundreds (if not thousands) of articles ly threatening to the homogeneous nation- and books in all major languages. state. Authoritarianism refers to the belief in a strictly ordered society, in which While this academic interest might be dis- infringements of authority are to be pun- proportionate to the political relevance of ished severely. Populism, finally, is an ide- the parties in question, it is matched by the ology that considers society to be ultimate- non-academic interest. Throughout Europe ly separated into two homogeneous and journalists, intellectuals, and politicians antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ and have been debating the ‘rise of the radical ‘the corrupt elite’, and which argues that right’ after virtually every electoral victory politics should be an expression of the of an alleged radical right party in the past volonté générale (general will) of the peo- Essentially, the populist radical right is Biography democratic, in that it accepts popular sovereignty and majority rule. Cas Mudde is a Dutch politi- cal scientist and currently the Hampton and Esther three decades. What has the combined ple. It is the combination of all three ideo- Boswell Distinguished Uni- intellectual labor of at least one hundred logical features, however, that makes a versity Professor of Political political scientists taught us about radical party populist radical right. Science at DePauw Universi- right parties in Europe? In this short piece I will address the what, who and why ques- Essentially, the populist radical right is ty (Indiana, USA). He is the tions on the basis of the state of the art of democratic, in that it accepts popular sov- author of Populist Radical the study of the radical right, with particu- ereignty and majority rule. It also tends to Right Parties in Europe lar reference to my own work, most accept the rules of parliamentary democra- (Cambridge University Press, notably Populist Radical Right Parties in cy; in most cases it prefers a stronger exec- utive, though few parties support a tooth- 2007), which won the Stein Europe (2007). less legislature. Tensions exist between the Rokkan Prize in 2008, and What are we talking about? populist radical right and liberal democra- the editor of Racist Extrem- It is not surprising that a phenomenon that cy, in particular arising from the constitu- ism in Central and Eastern goes under many different names will also tional protection of minorities (ethnic, Europe (Routledge, 2005). be defined in many different ways. And political, religious). In essence, the pop- ulist radical right is monist, seeing the peo- Next year the co-edited vol- while there are definitely widely different definitions out there, today most authors ple as ethnically and morally homoge- ume (with Cristóbal Rovira define the ‘radical right parties’ in roughly neous, and considers pluralism as under- Kaltwasser) Populism in similar ways. This is in part a consequence mining the (homogeneous) ‘will of the Europe and the Americas: of the professionalization of the study of people’ and protecting ‘special interests’ Threat or Corrective to the radical right, or perhaps better: the (i.e. minority rights). Democracy? will be pub- increasing dominance of social scientific studies over mainly historic or pseudo-sci- Who are they? lished by Cambridge Univer- entific studies. For example, today few Logically, the question “what they are” sity Press. authors still use terms like ‘neofascist’ and influences the answer to the question “who ‘extreme right’ or argue that the parties in they are”. In the study of the radical right, question are anti-democratic, racist, or vio- however, this is often not the case; authors lent. using very different definitions will come Participation Vol. 35, no 1 Features | Dossiers 13 up with very similar lists of parties. This is largely the consequence of a lack of atten- Table 1. Electoral Results of Parliamentary Populist tion to the classification of parties. While Radical Right Parties most authors will devote at least some sen- tences to explaining the choice of term and Country Party Highest Latest definition, few if any will show on the Result Result basis of secondary, let alone primary, (%) (%) sources that the listed parties indeed share the definitional features. Austria Alliance for the Future of Austria 10.7 10.7 (BZÖ) This is in part a consequence of a continu- ing lack of detailed party studies. As hap- Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) 26.9 17.5 pens in other areas, the bulk of the academ- Belgium Flemish Interest (VB) 12.0 7.8 ic writing on radical right parties focuses predominantly on the big European coun- Bulgaria National Union Attack (NSA) 9.4 9.4 tries: France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Denmark Danish People’ Party (DFP) 13.8 13.8 the United Kingdom. It is clear that the choice of these countries is not led by the Greece Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS) 5.6 5.6 national relevance of the radical right par- ties, as both Germany and the United Hungary Movement for a Better Hungary Kingdom lack strong radical right parties. (Jobbik) 16.7 16.7 At the same time, some of the most rele- Italy Northern League (LN) 10.1 8.3 vant parties that come from smaller coun- tries like Belgium, Denmark, Hungary or Latvia National Alliance (NA) 7.7 7.7 Switzerland, are barely studied outside Netherlands Party for Freedom (PVV) 15.5 15.5 their own country (and sometimes not even within it). This is undoubtedly in part a Romania Greater Romania Party (PRM) 19.5 3.2 consequence of the economics of publish- ing, which rewards studies of phenomena Slovakia Slovak National Party (SNS) 11.6 5.1 in big countries. Sweden Sweden Democrats (SD) 5.7 5.7 Table 1 lists the electorally most successful radical right parties in European Union member states since 1980. The average share some of the features of the populist that different authors come to different highest result of these 13 successful parties radical right – nativism, authoritarianism conclusions. is 12.7 percent, while their average most and populism – but not all three. In most recent result is 9.8 percent. In fact, in only cases the debate is over the question In terms of socio-demographic profile, we four countries have radical right parties whether the nativism (most often anti- know that white, blue-collar men are dis- gained more than 10 percent of the nation- immigrant sentiments) is ideological or proportionately represented within the rad- al vote. In two of these countries, Hungary and the Netherlands, the successful parties are also very new, and time will tell whether they will follow the common pat- In terms of socio-demographic profile, tern of relative quick disintegration, or the rarer path of party establishment and insti- we know that white, blue-collar men tutionalization. are disproportionately represented It is important to note that Table 1 includes within the radical right electorate. just 12 of the 27 current EU member states. In the other 15 countries radical right par- ties are either electorally unsuccessful, gaining less than 5 percent of the national opportunistic, i.e. only used strategically in ical right electorate. We also know that vote (e.g. Czech Republic, Germany, election campaigns. radical right voters tend to consider immi- United Kingdom), or they do not contest gration more important than the average national elections at all (e.g. Iceland, Why are they relevant? voter, believe there are more immigrants Ireland). In addition, there are some politi- The last question has two different, if con- than there really are, and want to limit cal parties whose radical right status is nected, meanings here. First, why are radi- immigration. At the same time, the major- debated, that is, some scholars include cal right parties successful? In a discipline ity of voters in most countries share these them, but others do not. It would go too far dominated by ‘why’ questions, even if the values, so the difference is not so much in to get into a detailed discussion of these ‘what’ question has not been answered terms of attitude toward the issue of immi- cases here, but the most notably ‘border- completely, most scholars of the radical gration (crime or corruption), but the line cases’ are the True Finns (PS), right study the reasons why radical right salience of the issue to the individual. Hungarian Civic Union (FIDESZ), Italian parties have been successful in post-1980 Forza Italia (FO) and National Alliance Western Europe. Given the many concep- Most quantitative analyses look for the (AN), the Norwegian Progress Party (FP), tual, data, and methodological constraints usual suspects, that is, the easily available and the Swiss People’s Party (SVP).
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