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Citizenship, National Identity and the Mobilisation of the Extreme Right. a Comparison of France, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland

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Citizenship, National Identity and the Mobilisation of the Extreme Right. a Comparison of France, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland Veröffentlichungsreihe der Abteilung Öffentlichkeit und soziale Bewegung des Forschungsschwerpunkts Sozialer Wandel, Institutionen und Vermittlungsprozesse des Wissenschaftszentrums Berlin für Sozialforschung FS III 97-101 Citizenship, National Identity and the Mobilisation of the Extreme Right. A Comparison of France, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland Ruud Koopmans and Hanspeter Kriesi Berlin, März 1997 Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung gGmbH (WZB) Reichpielschufer 50, D-10785 Berlin Telefon (030) 25 491-0 Zilierweise: Ruud Koopmans and Hanspeter Kriesi, 1997: Citizenship, National Identity and the Mobilisaiton of the Extreme Right. A Comparison of France, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Discussion Paper FS III 97-101. Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin. Abstract In trying to account for cross-national differences in the strength of the extreme right in four West European countries - France, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland - this paper combines theories of citizenship and national identity with recent developments in the literature on social movements. Regarding conceptions of citizenship and nationhood, we distinguish two dimensions: (1) on the formal, legal level, one can differentiate bet• ween countries with ethnic (ius sanguinis) and those with civic (ius soli) definitions of citizenship; (2) with regard to the cultural obligations tied to citizenship we distinguish between exclusive models that exert strong pressures towards assimilation of cultural difference and inclusive models that tolerate or even stimulate cultural heterogeneity. Combining opportunity and framing perspectives on social movements, these different conceptions of citizenship and national identity are seen as discursive opportunity structures that delimit the range of legitimate and "credible" discourses to which collecti• ve actors must relate in order to be succesful with their framing and mobilisation efforts. For the extreme right this implies that its mobilisation and success chances will be facili• tated or constrained depending on the specific dominant discourse on citizenship and na• tionhood it confronts. In the empirical part of the paper, these ideas are applied in an analysis of the interdependence between dominant and challenger discourses in the four countries. The results indicate that the substantive success of the extreme right in the form of restrictive immigration and citizenship policies tends to be greatest in countries with an ethnic-exclusivist tradition such as Germany, and most limited in countries such as the Netherlands which adhere to a multicultural model. However, in terms of the level of mobilisation, measured by the electoral strength of extreme right parties, the extreme right tends to be strongest in the two countries, Switzerland and France, that combine inclusive and exclusive elements. We argue that the contradictions and tensions within the dominant discourse and concomitantly also within the political elite of these countries offer particularly favourable opportunities to the extreme right, which on the one hand can draw legitimacy and credibility from the more exclusive elements of accepted dis• course, while simultaneously pre-emption - which is typical for the German case - is pre• vented by its opposition to other parts of the countries' immigration and citizenship poli• tics. We finally discuss the implications of our findings for the future of citizenship and immigration politics, both nationally and on the European level. Zusammenfassung In diesem Papier wird versucht, die unterschiedliche Stärke der extremen Rechten in vier westeuropäischen Ländern - Frankreich, Deutschland, den Niederlanden und der Schweiz - durch eine Kombination von Theorien zur Staatsbürgerschaft und nationalen Identität auf der einen und neueren theoretischen Entwicklungen in der Literatur zu so• zialen Bewegungen auf der anderen Seite zu erklären. Im Hinblick auf die Konzeption von Staatsbürgerschaft und nationaler Identität unterscheiden wir zwei Dimensionen: (1) Auf der formellen, juristischen Ebene kann man zwischen Ländern mit einer ethnischen (ius sanguinis) und solchen mit einer zivilen (ius soli) Definition der Staatsbürgerschaft differenzieren. (2) Was die kulturellen Anforderungen, die mit der Staatsbürgerschaft verknüpft sind, anbelangt, so kann man zwischen exklusiven Modellen, die einen starken Assimilationsdruck ausüben, und inklusiven Modellen, die kulturelle Vielfalt tolerieren oder sogar fördern, differenzieren. Durch die Anwendung einer Kombination von "opportunity" und "framing" Perspektiven auf soziale Bewegungen können solche unter• schiedlichen Konzeptionen von Staatsbürgerschaft und nationaler Identität als diskursive Gelegenheitsstrukturen betrachtet werden. Diese definieren die Grenzen des legitimen und "glaubwürdigen" diskursiven Raumes, zu dem kollektive Akteure sich, wollen sie bei ihren Mobilisierungs- und Deutungsversuchen erfolgreich sein, verhalten müssen. Für die extreme Rechte bedeutet dies, daß ihre Mobilisierungs- und Erfolgschancen vom jeweils aktuellen Diskurs über Staatsbürgerschaft und nationale Identität erweitert bzw. einge• schränkt werden. Im empirischen Teil des Papiers werden diese theoretischen Annahmen einer Analyse der Interdependenz zwischen dominanten und herausfordernden Diskursen in den vier Ländern zugrunde gelegt. Die Ergebnisse deuten darauf hin, daß inhaltliche Erfolge der extremen Rechten in der Form restriktiver Einwanderungs- und Staatsbür• gerschaftspolitik am stärksten in Ländern mit einer ethnisch-exklusiven Tradition wie Deutschland und am schwächsten in Ländern mit einem multikulturellen Modell wie den Niederlanden nachzuweisen sind. Demgegenüber erzielte die extreme Rechte ihre größ• ten Mobilisierungserfolge, gemessen an den Wahlergebnissen rechtsextremer Parteien, in Frankreich und der Schweiz, den beiden Ländern, die inklusive und exklusive Elemente kombinieren. Aus unserer Sicht sind es gerade die Widersprüche und Spannungen inner• halb des dominanten Diskurses und entsprechend auch innerhalb der politischen Elite die• ser Länder, die besonders günstige Mobilisierungschancen für die extreme Rechte bieten. Auf der einen Seit© kann die extreme Rechte durch ihren Anschluß an exklusive Elemen• te des gängigen Diskurses Legitimation und Glaubwürdigkeit gewinnen. Zugleich ist, wegen der institutionellen Verankerung inklusiver Elemente der Staatsbürgerschaft, die für Deutschland kennzeichnende Strategie der "preemption", in der die politische Elite einem potentiellen Mobilisierungsdruck der extremen Rechten durch eine restriktivere Einwanderungspolitik zuvorkommt, in diesen Ländern eine deutliche Grenze gesetzt. Zum Schluß werden die Implikationen der Befunde fiir zukünftige Entwicklungen der Einwanderungs- und Staatsbürgerschaftspolitik sowohl auf der nationalen als auch auf der europäischen Ebene diskutiert, Citizenship, National Identity and the Mobilisation of the Extreme Right. A Comparison of France, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland Ruud Koopmans and Hanspeter Kriesi 1. Introduction National and ethnic bonds, long thought to be withering away in the process of moder• nization, have recently regained importance as bases for collective identities and mobi• lization. In Western Europe, this development has taken the form of an increased politi- cizalion of the issue of immigration and the rise of xenophobic and extreme right actors on the political stage. The social sciences have dealt with these developments in the fast expanding literatures on nationalist and xenophobic movements on the one hand, and on conceptions of nationhood and citizenship, on the other. In this paper, we would like to try to combine these two perspectives and discuss the relations between different con• ceptions of citizenship and nationhood and the ethnocentric mobilization of right-wing extremists. Our discussion will be exploratory and tentative. Our perspective in this discussion is comparative and we shall try to compare the situation in the four Western European countries - France, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland - for which we have already analyzed political mobilization in a previous study (Kriesi et al. 1995). This study focussed on the role of so-called political opportunities for the mobilization of social movements (see also McAdam 1982, Tarrow 1994). In applying this approach to the extreme right our guiding idea is that the level of mobilization and the success chan• ces of xenophobic movements are shaped by external constraints and opportunities de• fined by nationally specific institutional structures and political cultures. In the present study, we will selectively focus on nationally specific conceptions of citizenship and na• tional identity as one aspect of political opportunity that seems particularly important for 8 the mobilization of the extreme right. In doing so, we do not claim that conceptions of citizenship are sufficient to explain cross-national differences in extreme right mobilizati• on, First, it is clear that other aspects of political opportunity structure, such as the de• gree of closure of the electoral system to challenging parties (cf. Great Britain) and the loss of legitimacy of the traditional party system (cf. Austria, Italy) are important deter• minants of the mobilization and success (or failure) of the extreme right in certain coun• tries. Second, the success of the extreme right is often based not just on the mobilization of xenophobic sentiments, but also on other themes such as regional
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