'Anti-Immigration'
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Government and Opposition, Vol. 46, No. 3, pp. 293–320, 2011 doi:10.1111/j.1477-7053.2011.01340.x Joost van Spanjegoop_1340 293..320 The Wrong and the Right: A Comparative Analysis of ‘Anti-Immigration’ and ‘Far Right’ Parties ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT CHANGES IN ESTABLISHED democracies over the last two decades has been the emergence of political parties that are right wing in terms of ideology and restrictive in terms of immigration policy.1 In the relevant literature these parties are commonly referred to either in terms of ideology – as right wing2 – or in terms of policy – most importantly, in favour of immigration restriction.3 These labels appear to pertain to very similar, if not identical, sets of parties.4 This brings us to the question: does it matter 1 e.g. Michael Gallagher, Michael Laver and Peter Mair, Representative Government in Modern Europe, 4th edn, Boston, McGraw-Hill, 2006. 2 e.g. Cas Mudde, The Ideology of the Extreme Right, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2000; Cas Mudde, Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007; Piero Ignazi, ‘The Silent Counter-Revolution: Hypotheses on the Emergence of Extreme Right-Wing Parties in Europe’, European Journal of Political Research, 22: 3 (1992), pp. 3–34; Piero Ignazi, Extreme Right Parties in Western Europe, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003; Herbert Kitschelt and Anthony McGann, The Radical Right in Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis, Ann Arbor, Uni- versity of Michigan, 1995; Klaus von Beyme, ‘Right-Wing Extremism in Post-War Europe’, West European Politics, 11: 2 (1988), pp. 1–18. 3 e.g. Tor Bjørklund and Jørgen Goul Andersen, ‘Anti-Immigration Parties in Denmark and Norway’, in M. Schain, A. Zolberg and P. Hossay (eds), Shadows Over Europe: The Development and Impact of the Extreme Right in Western Europe, Houndmills, Palgrave Macmillan, 2002; Meindert Fennema, ‘Some Conceptual Issues and Problems in the Comparison of Anti-Immigrant Parties in Western Europe’, Party Politics,3 (1997), pp. 473–92; Rachel Gibson, The Growth of Anti-Immigrant Parties in Western Europe, Lewiston, NY, Edwin Mellen Press, 2002; Wouter Van der Brug, Meindert Fennema and Jean Tillie, ‘Why Some Anti-Immigrant Parties Fail and Others Succeed: A Two-Step Model of Aggregate Electoral Support’, Comparative Political Studies,38:5 (2005), pp. 537–73. 4 These parties have also been classified on the basis of other characteristics, such as populism (Hans-Georg Betz, Radical Right-Wing Populism in Western Europe, London, © The Author 2011. Government and Opposition © 2011 Government and Opposition Ltd Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. 294 GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION whether we define these parties in terms of ideology or in terms of policy? In other words, how similar or dissimilar is the group of ‘far right’ parties to that of ‘anti-immigration’ ones? This is the main question addressed in this article. This question is important because the lack of conceptual clarity that currently plagues the research field5 largely prevents us from drawing valid inferences on this topic. Furthermore, it would be useful to have an appropriate label for the parties that, taken together, have been increasingly successful in electoral terms in recent decades.6 Good conceptualization and operationalization are also indispensible if we are to find the answer to the question of why these parties have emerged – a question that is central to much research in the field (but not to this article as such). This is not only important from a scientific perspective, but also because the rise of some of these parties, such as the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) and the German Republikaner, have sent shockwaves through society. In this article I compare far right parties, selected on the basis of their ideologies, and anti-immigration parties, selected based on their immigration policies. I argue and empirically demonstrate that these two groups of parties are not identical. This runs counter to what the extant literature suggests, as scholars tend to use these terms Macmillan, 1994; Hans-Georg Betz, ‘Conditions Favouring the Success and Failure of Radical Right-Wing Populist Parties in Contemporary Democracies’, in Y. Mény and Y. Surel (eds), Democracies and the Populist Challenge, London, Palgrave, 2002; Reinhard Heinisch, ‘Success in Opposition: Failure in Government: Explaining the Performance of Right-Wing Populist Parties in Public Office’, West European Politics, 26: 3 (2003), pp. 91–130; Elisabeth Ivarsflaten, ‘The Vulnerable Populist Right Parties: No Econ- omic Realignment Fuelling Their Electoral Success’, European Journal of Political Research, 44: 3 (2005), pp. 465–92; Elisabeth Ivarsflaten, ‘What Unites Right-Wing Populists in Western Europe? Re-Examining Grievance Mobilization Models in Seven Successful Cases’, Comparative Political Studies, 41: 1 (2008), pp. 3–23; Paul Taggart, ‘New Populist Parties in Western Europe’, West European Politics,18:1(1995), pp. 34–51), nationalism (cf. Mudde, Populist Radical Right Parties), or the ethnic basis of their mobilisation (C. Wendt, ‘Toward a Majoritarian Mobilization Model for Western Europe: Explaining Changes in Far Right Vote Support’, paper presented at APSA Annual Meeting, 2003). The question of to what extent parties can be classified on the basis of these traits falls beyond the scope of this paper, however. 5 Notable exceptions to the rule of absence of conceptual clarity include the most recent contribution from Cas Mudde (Populist Radical Right Parties). 6 e.g. Gallagher et al., Representative Government. © The Author 2011. Government and Opposition © 2011 Government and Opposition Ltd THE WRONG AND THE RIGHT 295 interchangeably, and/or refer to work on far right parties when studying anti-immigration parties, and vice versa, implying that these terms are equivalent. Based on data derived from several expert surveys, I discuss similarities and dissimilarities between these two types of party, showing why it is useful to distinguish between them. The article concludes by discussing the implications of my findings. PREVIOUS WORK: LACK OF CONCEPTUAL CLARITY All over the Western world, parties have emerged that are both right wing and opposed to the idea of the multicultural society, and a groundswell of writings has been devoted to them. Scholars from several disciplines – mainly political science, psychology and sociol- ogy – have studied them from various perspectives. By and large, these scholars have taken into account the same set of parties; there seems to be a broad consensus regarding which parties to study – with the exception of a few cases including the Swiss People’s Party (SVP) and the National Alliance (AN) in Italy. This similarity is remarkable, as there is no apparent consensus on the concept under study. The absence of conceptual clarity is reflected by the fact that there is no agreement on what to call these parties in the first place. The name given to the parties as a group varies from study to study. Mudde also observes this ‘terminological chaos’ resulting from ‘a lack of clear definitions’.7 Thus, whereas every researcher seems to know which objects to study, no one seems to know what exactly defines this set of objects. As Von Beyme notes, ‘Though formal definitions or derivations based on the history of ideas largely failed to provide a convincing concept for “right-wing extremism”, research work on political parties of the right has not had serious problems in selecting appropriate cases.’8 This lack of conceptual clarity leads to several problems of scien- tific inference. These difficulties include both theoretical and prac- tical ones. For instance, any discussion between scholars regarding the borderline cases mentioned above is nonsensical as long as they disagree on conceptualization. If it remains unclear which character- istics are sufficient and/or necessary for a party in order to call it 7 Mudde, Populist Radical Right Parties,p.12. 8 Von Beyme, ‘Right-Wing Extremism in Post-War Europe’, p. 3. © The Author 2011. Government and Opposition © 2011 Government and Opposition Ltd 296 GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION ‘anti-immigration’, for example, how can one tell whether or not a party belongs to this category? This explains the seemingly never- ending debates about whether or not specific parties such as the SVP and AN fall into this category.9 The absence of conceptual clarity also increases the chances of neglecting other parties where good reasons exist to take them into account, and of including parties that do not meet the relevant criteria. Furthermore, such conceptual problems create methodological difficulties. For example, they are conducive to the violation of the assumption of unit homogeneity, which is a key assumption for drawing valid causal inferences.10 Without clearly defined concepts underpinning the research, the unit homogeneity assertion can easily be at risk. If there is no agreement on the underlying concept, what guides case selection in the existing literature?11 Some scholars do not seem to question which parties to study – perhaps because in their eyes it is obvious. Other researchers select their cases on an ad oculum basis. Most scholars, however, avoid this tricky question by pointing to work by other researchers when they have to decide which parties to include in or exclude from their analyses.12 Although there is con- sensus among social scientists regarding the point that the method of case selection should be made explicit and accessible to everyone for replication purposes,13 this advice is generally not closely followed in the existing literature. As Mudde notes, ‘few scholars have established a clear method for categorizing political parties’.14 Some researchers even explicitly claim that there is such a party family that can be 9 For arguments pro and contra the inclusion of the AN in research on far right/anti-immigration parties, see, e.g.