'Anti-Immigration'

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 scientific 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 characteristics 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.

‘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 consensus 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. Elizabeth Carter, The Extreme Right in Western Europe, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2005; Marcel Lubbers, Exclusionistic Electorates: Extreme Right-Wing Voting in Western Europe, Nijmegen, ICS Dissertations, 2001; and Wouter Van der Brug, Meindert Fennema and Jean Tillie, ‘Anti-Immigrant Parties in Europe: Ideological or Protest Vote?’, European Journal of Political Research, 37: 1 (2000), pp. 77–102. 10 e.g. Gary King, Robert O. Keohane and Sidney Verba, Designing Social Inquiry: Scientiﬁc Inference in Qualitative Research, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1994, pp. 91–4. 11 The literature meant here are studies that revolve around the research question of why a new class of party has emerged in Western democracies. 12 e.g. Carter, The Extreme Right in Western Europe,p.9. 13 e.g. King et al., Designing Social Inquiry,p.8. 14 Mudde, Populist Radical Right Parties,p.33.

© The Author 2011. Government and Opposition © 2011 Government and Opposition Ltd THE WRONG AND THE RIGHT 297 distinguished from the other parties, without making it clear how such a distinction can be made.15 I think that this is an unfortunate state of affairs, and this article aims to select cases in such a way that my research is replicable.

CLASSIFICATIONS IN TERMS OF IDEOLOGY

Arguably the most frequently applied classifications are those based on party ideology, usually expressed in terms of ‘left’ and ‘right’. The concept of ‘the right’ has its problems, however. The right is commonly associated with socio-economic issues. For example, an emphasis on the need to combat inflation is usually considered ‘right wing’, as is a position against government influence in the economy. Yet, the right can also relate to other topics, such as immigration or family values. As Kitschelt and McGann put it, the right pole brings together positions on several issues, ‘linked in ways contingent upon time and place’.16 Apart from issues, ‘right wing’ may refer to broader orientations such as authoritarianism, traditionalism or conservatism. This implies that a party can, quite confusingly, be ‘left wing’ and ‘right wing’ at the same time. The Dutch List Pim Fortuyn (LPF), for example, combined libertarian (‘leftist’) views on moral issues such as same-sex marriage with a very restrictive (‘rightist’) stance on immigration.17 That said, the concepts of the ‘left’ and the ‘right’ are well established in the relevant literature.18 In addition, research shows that the vast majority of voters in contemporary Western Europe agree on where the major parties in their political system should be placed in terms of left and right,19 regardless of the meaning that voters attach to ‘left’ and ‘right’. Indeed, a (not exclusively socio-economic) left–right axis structures electoral competition in contemporary

15 e.g. Carter, The Extreme Right in Western Europe, pp. 8–9. 16 Kitschelt and McGann, The Radical Right in Western Europe,p.44. 17 Sarah De Lange, ‘A New Winning Formula? The Programmatic Appeal of the Radical Right’, Party Politics, 13: 4 (2007), pp. 411–35. 18 e.g. Kitschelt and McGann, The Radical Right in Western Europe; Mudde, Populist Radical Right Parties. 19 e.g. Wouter Van der Brug, ‘Where’s the Party? Voters’ Perceptions of Party Positions’, unpublished PhD thesis, Department of Political Science, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 1997.

Western Europe more than any other dimension.20 Notwithstanding potential problems with the concept of ‘the right’, I thus think it makes sense to measure the extent to which a party is ‘rightist’ – and, therefore, whether or not it is ‘far right’.

The ‘Far Right Party’: An Operationalization

How has the concept of the far/radical/extreme right party been measured thus far? Only in exceptional cases, such as in work by Lubbers and Norris, is a deﬁnition given together with an explicit operationalization of the concept.21 Lubbers deﬁnes ‘extreme

20 e.g. Cees Van der Eijk and Mark N. Franklin, Choosing Europe? The European Electorate and National Politics in the Face of Union, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1996; Van der Brug et al., ‘Anti-Immigrant Parties in Europe’. 21 Lubbers, Exclusionistic Electorates; Pippa Norris, The Radical Right: Voters and Parties in the Electoral Market, New York and Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005. The case selection employed by both Lubbers and Norris implies a dynamic (as opposed to time-invariant) classification of these parties. Parties can meet the criteria at some point in time, while failing to meet them at another point in time. Interestingly, neither of the authors explicitly mentions this. The possibility of a dynamic description has been suggested before, for example by Gunther and Diamond, who almost casually hint at it (Richard Gunther and Larry Diamond, ‘Species of Political Parties: A New Typology’, Party Politics, 9: 2 (2003), pp. 167–99). This is remarkable, as a dynamic definition constitutes a major breakaway from the traditional view of the ‘party family’ (e.g. Peter Mair and Cas Mudde, ‘The Party Family and its Study’, Annual Review of Political Science, 1 (1998), pp. 211–29). It could be argued that, when it comes to these parties, the idea of the party family has become obsolete. After all, the concept of the party family is based on the notion that parties that start off in a specific tradition, such as social democratic parties, have remained loyal to their past and have not undergone marked changes. As soon as there are parties that do change – for instance, because they reposition themselves on a particular issue in response to changes in preferences among voters – the notion of the ‘party family’ loses part of its value. In the case of the parties under study, this is especially problematic, as Van der Brug and Fennema (Wouter Van der Brug and Meindert Fennema, ‘Protest or Mainstream? How the European Anti-Immigrant Parties Developed into Two Separate Groups by 1999’, European Journal of Political Research, 42: 1 (2003), pp. 55–76) point out, because these parties are more ‘modern’ than many other parties in terms of how they attract voters. The traditional socio-structural factors do not play any dominant role in the vote for anti-immigration parties (ibid.), which renders the value of the notion of the ‘party family’ concerning these parties even more questionable than regarding other parties. This is because the idea of the party family typically presupposes that specific socio- economic groups tend to support particular parties. Scholars who developed the

© The Author 2011. Government and Opposition © 2011 Government and Opposition Ltd THE WRONG AND THE RIGHT 299 right-wing parties primarily as ethnic out-group exclusionistic parties, without marking them as single-issue parties’.22 In order to select the parties for this study, Lubbers conducts an expert survey, asking experts to indicate the position of 142 parties in 17 countries in terms of left and right23 and in terms of immigration policy,24 both on a 0–10 scale. Based on the results of this survey, Lubbers notes that those parties commonly considered ‘extreme right’ all have a mean immigration restriction score of over 8.5. The exception to this rule is the National Alliance (AN) in Italy, which he does not include in his study, although it received a very right-wing score (8.17) from the experts. Lubbers does, however, take parties into account that score over 8.5 on the immigration restriction scale but are less right wing than the AN – namely the Progress Party (FrP) in Norway (8.14) and the Northern League (LN) in Italy (7.55). He thus selects ‘extreme right-wing parties’ on the basis of attitudes towards the immigration issue. Interestingly, Norris uses Lubbers’s data in a different way, using the immigration restriction scores in combination with positioning on a left–right scale (at least, concerning the Western European cases).25 In Norris’s study, parties were classiﬁed as part of the ‘radical right’ if their mean score on the combined left–right and metaphor of the party family (Daniel-Louis Seiler, ‘De la classiﬁcation des partis politiques’, Res Publica, 27: 1 (1985), pp. 59–86; Klaus von Beyme, Political Parties in Western European Democracies, Aldershot, Gower, 1985) based their categorization on Lipset and Rokkan’s cleavage model (Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan, Party Systems and Voter Alignments, New York, Free Press, 1967), which builds, above all, on socio-economic divides (see Mair and Mudde, ‘The Party Family and its Study’). 22 Lubbers, Exclusionistic Electorates, p. 226. 23 In this regular mail survey (N = 288, response rate = 52% after one reminder), a scale was presented to the experts, above which the question read: ‘Would you please place the following parties on the left–right dimension below. The scale has a minimum value of zero (very left) and a maximum of 10 (very right), with a mean of 5. Could you please mark with a narrow line and the letter of the concerning party...itsposition on the scale below. You may place the party anywhere on the continuum’ (Lubbers, Exclusionistic Electorates,p.34). 24 Again, the experts were to indicate each party on a scale: ‘Please, consider the same parties, and place them now on the following scale. This scale concerns the programmes of the parties towards the immigration issue, which runs from not very restrictive concerning immigration (0) to very restrictive (10)’ (Lubbers, Exclusionistic Electorates,p.34). 25 Norris, The Radical Right.

© The Author 2011. Government and Opposition © 2011 Government and Opposition Ltd 300 GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION immigration 10-point scales in the Lubbers survey were greater than 8.0. In sum, Norris uses both immigration and left–right party placement in order to identify ‘radical right’ parties. Advantages of the case selection procedure applied by Norris are that her procedure is clear and replicable, and that the data used are made as comparable over time and place as possible. It is evident that the use of comparable data underlying case selection is necessary in order to be able to tell to what extent units are homogeneous. A disadvantage of her approach is that it remains unclear why the ‘immigration restriction score’ was the criterion for selecting ‘radical right’ parties, and not only left–right placement. In this article I intend to select far right parties on the basis of their ideologies, and anti-immigration parties based on their immigration policies. I use data from expert surveys for this purpose.26 Of course, there are many different ways in which to measure the relevant party characteristics other than by means of expert surveys, including judgements on the basis of party origins, secondary reading, mass surveys, elite studies and the analysis of party manifes- tos.27 However, Mair points out that the use of an expert survey has at least four advantages over the alternatives.28 First, participants’ expert status gives their judgements a certain weight and validity. A second advantage of an expert survey is that the experts’ judgements are based on the present behaviour of the party rather than on its past

26 Francis Castles and Peter Mair, ‘Left–Right Political Scales: Some “Expert” Judgments’, European Journal of Political Research, 12 (1984), pp. 73–88; Michael Laver and W. Ben Hunt, Policy and Party Competition, New York, Routledge, 1992; John Huber and Ronald Inglehart, ‘Expert Interpretations of Party Space and Party Locations in 42 Societies’, Party Politics, 1 (1995), pp. 73–111; Leonard Ray and Hanne Marthe Narud, ‘Mapping the Norwegian Political Space: Results from an Expert Survey’, Party Politics, 6: 2 (1999), pp. 225–39; Lubbers, Exclusionistic Electorates; Kenneth Benoit and Michael Laver, Party Policy in Modern Democracies, London, Routledge, 2006; Michael Laver and Peter Mair, ‘Party Policy and Cabinet Portfolios in the Netherlands, 1998: Results from an Expert Survey’, Acta Politica, 34: 1 (1999), pp. 49–66; Joost Van Spanje, Peter Mair, Cees Van der Eijk and Wouter Van der Brug, ‘Expert Survey Concerning Political Parties in Western Democracies’, unpublished manuscript, European University Insti- tute, 2006. 27 Peter Mair, ‘Searching for the Positions of Political Actors: A Review of Approaches and a Critical Evaluation of Expert Surveys’, in M. Laver (ed.), Estimating the Policy Positions of Political Actors, London and New York, Routledge, 2001. 28 Mair, ‘Searching for the Positions of Political Actors’.

© The Author 2011. Government and Opposition © 2011 Government and Opposition Ltd THE WRONG AND THE RIGHT 301 actions. Third, expert surveys usually generate highly comparable and standardized data across countries. Finally, these surveys result in precise numerical measures, thus facilitating empirical analysis. The use of expert surveys does, however, have certain limits, as Mair also argues.29 The most relevant problem in our case is that experts base their perceptions to some extent on secondary sources such as the mass media. To the extent that those sources are biased, the judgements of the experts could be biased as well.30 We have to be aware that such a bias may exist in the expert judgements. Unfortunately, there is no known way to correct adequately for this. Benoit and Laver mention three other advantages of the use of expert surveys.31 When conducting an expert survey one can increase the number of observations by asking more experts. In this way, the information can relatively easily be made more accurate. Moreover, one can estimate the uncertainty of the estimates based on the information obtained. Secondly, Benoit and Laver argue that the discipline of political science is in need of the consensus of well- established experts. By way of conducting an expert survey, the problems associated with using information provided by only one or a small number of country experts can be circumvented. According to Benoit and Laver, this allows for the best possible measurements of unobservable phenomena in political science. Finally, a more mundane argument concerns the availability of data. Other data of a similar accuracy from a large number of countries simply do not exist on contemporary Western European party politics. When is a party labelled ‘far right’? No theoretical reason has been provided thus far as for why, for example, 8.0 should be taken, as in Norris’s study. I would argue that the common qualiﬁcation of the group of parties under study as ‘new’ in the sense that these parties date back four decades at the most suggests that parties founded before that time should be ﬁltered out on the basis of the criteria. Close examination of the list used by Lubbers and Norris, a list that combines ideological and immigration policy positions for all major parties in 17 Western European countries, reveals that none of the parties founded before 1960 scores higher than 8.0 on either

29 Ibid. 30 I am indebted to Wouter van der Brug for pointing this out. 31 Benoit and Laver, Party Policy in Modern Democracies, pp. 71–7.

© The Author 2011. Government and Opposition © 2011 Government and Opposition Ltd 302 GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION dimension.32 Thus, any party scoring higher than 8.0 on a left–right scale is more right wing than any ‘old’ party, and any party receiving an immigration restriction score higher than 8.0 qualiﬁes as more ‘anti-immigration’ than the parties founded in the pre-mass immigration era. It is the lowest score that is still higher than any established party has ever scored. I proceed with this cut-off point as my criterion. That is, the party is considered far right at the time that the attributed score refers to. I explicitly take into account the fact that parties’ ideologies may change. I will get back to this important point later on.

Selecting Far Right Parties

In this article, I apply the aforementioned criterion to as many parties as possible. In order to measure party ideological positions, I use all expert surveys that have been conducted since 1980 in which parties were positioned on a left–right axis.33 All data were recoded into a 0–1 scale to facilitate assessment of how far to the right each party actually is. Thanks to these expert surveys, we have comparable data on left–right party placements in 17 Western European countries. These countries are Austria, Belgium, Britain, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Nether- lands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. See Table 1 for the selected parties in these countries that met the far right criterion (>0.8) at least once. In each of the 17 countries, one or several parties existed that are labelled ‘far right’. No fewer than 48 parties met the criterion of a

32 The exception to this rule is the FPÖ, which was founded in 1956. However, the takeover by Mr Haider 30 years later so radically changed the party’s ideological position as well as its stance on immigration issues that it is safe to say that at the time of measurement the party was completely different from the one founded in 1956 (cf. Max Riedlsperger, ‘The Freedom Party of Austria: From Protest to Radical Right Populism’, in H.-G. Betz and S. Immerfall (eds), The New Politics of the Right: Neo-Populist Parties and Movements in Established Democracies, New York, S. Martin’s Press, 1998). 33 Castles and Mair, ‘Left–Right Political Scales’; Laver and Hunt, Policy and Party Competition; Huber and Inglehart, ‘Expert Interpretations of Party Space and Party Locations’; Ray and Narud, ‘Mapping the Norwegian Political Space’; Lubbers, Exclu- sionistic Electorates; Benoit and Laver, Party Policy in Modern Democracies; Laver, ‘Party Policy and Cabinet Portfolios in the Netherlands’; Michael J. Laver, ‘Party Policy in Britain 1997: Results from an Expert Survey’, Political Studies, 46: 2 (1998), pp. 336–47; Laver and Mair, ‘Party Policy and Cabinet Portfolios in the Netherlands’.

h uhr21.Gvrmn n poiin©21 oenetadOpsto Ltd Opposition and Government 2011 © Opposition and Government 2011. Author The © Parties Scoring Higher than 0.80 on a 0–1 left–right scale in 17 Western European countries, 1982–2004 Party (country) Expert survey Castles and Laver and Huber and Laver; Ray Laver and Lubbers Benoit and Mair Hunt Inglehart and Narud Mair Laver FPÖ (A) 0.68 0.67 0.85 – – 0.85 0.86 RAD/UDRT (B) 0.92 –– – ––– VB (B) 0.98 0.84 –– –0.93 0.94 H RN N H RIGHT THE AND WRONG THE FN (B) –––––0.95 0.94 BNP (GB) –––––0.95 – C (GB) 0.78 0.80 0.75 0.69 – 0.71 0.81 DF (DK) – – – – – 0.87 0.75 FrP (DK) 0.87 0.83 0.90 ––0.87 0.91 IKL (SF) –––––0.89 – SKL (SF) – – 0.89 – – 0.68 – CNIP (F) 0.86 –– – ––– FN (F) 0.98 0.93 1.00 ––0.95 – MPF (F) –––––0.85 – PFN (F) 0.98 –– – ––– RPR (F) 0.82 0.70 0.76 – – 0.75 – DVU (D) –––––0.94 0.97 NPD (D) ––––––0.98 Rep (D) ––0.92 ––0.87 0.94 EPEN/EM(GR) –––––0.98 – NPI (IRL) –––––0.82 – PD (IRL) – – 0.81 – – 0.72 0.81 LN (I) – – 0.72 – – 0.76 0.84

MSI / AN (I) 0.91 0.84 0.93 ––0.82 0.84 303 MS-FT (I) –––––0.97 0.95 ADR (L) – – – – – 0.79 0.88 304 h uhr21.Gvrmn n poiin©21 oenetadOpsto Ltd Opposition and Government 2011 © Opposition and Government 2011. Author The © Table 1 Continued Party (country) Expert survey Castles and Laver and Huber and Laver; Ray Laver and Lubbers Benoit and Mair Hunt Inglehart and Narud Mair Laver CD (NL) – – 0.94 0.76 – 0.90 – GPV (NL) 0.90 0.84 0.87 0.80 0.77 – – LPF / LVF (NL) ––– ––0.87 OPPOSITION AND GOVERNMENT RPF (NL) 0.92 0.88 0.89 0.81 0.76 – – SGP (NL) 0.92 0.88 0.89 0.83 0.89 0.79 0.82 VVD (NL) 0.74 0.57 0.69 0.55 0.73 0.67 0.81 FrP (N) 0.94 0.73 0.91 0.88 – 0.81 0.78 CDS-PP (P) – 0.87 0.82 – – 0.78 0.84 PDC (P) – 0.93 –– ––– PSN (P) –––––0.81 – AP / PP (E) 0.84 0.78 0.72 – – 0.69 0.84 DN (E) –––––0.92 – FEJons (E) –––––0.95 – PAR (E) 0.82 –– – ––– UN-FN (E) 0.98 –– – ––– M (S) 0.77 0.72 0.81 – – 0.80 0.85 NyD (S) ––0.90 ––0.90 – SD (S) –––––0.95 – APS / FPS (CH) ––0.81 ––0.89 – EDU (CH) –––––0.88 0.87 LdT (CH) –––––0.90 – NA/SD(CH) –––––0.91 0.94 SVP (CH) – – 0.58 – – 0.84 0.89 Source: Various expert surveys (see main text); recoded into 0–1 scores; – = no data. In bold: party meets the relevant criterion at all available time points. See Appendix for full party names. THE WRONG AND THE RIGHT 305 left–right score higher than 0.8 on a 0–1 scale at one time point at least. The data suggest that there was some signiﬁcant change in parties’ ideological position over time, as 18 of the 48 parties shifted from the far right box to the non-far right one, or vice versa. The 30 remaining parties, indicated in bold in Table 1, are consistently coded ‘far right’. These are the RAD-UDRT, VB and FN in Belgium, the BNP in Britain, the Danish FrP, the IKL in Finland, the French CNIP, FN, MPF and PFN, the DVU, NPD and Rep in Germany, the Greek EPEN/EM, the Irish NPI, the MSI/AN and MS-FT in Italy, the Dutch LPF/LVF, the PDC and PSN in Portugal, the Spanish DN, FEJons, PAR and UN-FN, the Swedish NyD and SD, and the APS/FPS, EDU, LdT and NA/SD in Switzerland (see Appendix for full party names).34 In the remainder of this article I stick to this set of clear-cut examples when making my case. In doing so, we should keep in mind that there are other parties that were far right for only part of this period, and yet other parties that were difﬁcult to classify because of lack of adequate data. Let us now turn to the work of scholars who study ‘anti- immigration’ parties.

CLASSIFICATIONS IN TERMS OF POLICY

Here is the means of showing that the immigrant communities can organise to consolidate their members, to agitate and campaign against their fellow citizens, and to overawe and dominate the rest with the legal weapons which the ignorant and the ill-informed have provided. As I look ahead, I am ﬁlled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with much blood.

These are the words with which UK Conservative Party MP Enoch Powell concluded his Birmingham speech on 20 April 1968. The

34 Note that, of the 30 selected parties, the majority (18) have been judged only once. Thus, the stability of their ideological position is open to question. Only a dozen parties have consistently been judged ‘far right’ multiple times. For 10 of these 12 parties, it is clear whether or not they were anti-immigration throughout the period under study. Seven were anti-immigration, whereas three (30%) were not. The ﬁgure of 30% is close to the ﬁgure found for all 30 parties (36%). Thus, restricting the case selection to those parties that were judged multiple times does not substantially change my conclusions.

© The Author 2011. Government and Opposition © 2011 Government and Opposition Ltd 306 GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION speech was given considerable attention in the national British media in the years to follow.35 Powell was among the first politicians who warned of the potential dangers of mass immigration to Western Europe. Until the early 1960s, mass immigration had generally not been viewed as problematic in post-war Western Europe. Since then, however, many political parties across the region have attempted to mobilize support on the basis of issues linked to immigration. Unlike the UK Conservative Party – the leader of which at the time, Edward Heath, sacked Powell from his shadow cabinet after the speech – these parties are often referred to as ‘anti-immigration’ parties. Fennema defines as ‘anti-immigrant’ parties those that employ the immigration issue as their core political concern in electoral cam- paigns, or are considered by elites of other political parties to do so.36 Fennema has recently changed the concept from ‘anti-immigrant’ to ‘anti-immigration’, arguing that these parties are not against immigrants per se, but rather seek to reduce the influx of immigrants to their respective countries. In addition, these parties attract many votes from successfully integrated immigrants.37 That parties are ‘anti-immigration’ does not necessarily mean that they should be considered single-issue parties. In fact, evidence points in the direction that these parties do not focus on one issue only.38 Indeed, they are rather supported on the basis of broader ideological considerations.39 Nor does this terminology preclude considerations other than policy or ideological ones, such as anti-establishment feelings, from playing a role in the vote for these parties as well.40

35 See e.g. Colin Seymour-Ure, The Political Impact of Mass Media, London, Constable, 1974, pp. 99–136. 36 Fennema, ‘Some Conceptual Issues and Problems’. 37 Meindert Fennema and Wouter Van der Brug, ‘The Rise of Pim Fortuyn in European and Historical Perspective’, paper presented at ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops, at Nicosia, 2006. 38 e.g. S. Mitra, ‘The National Front in France: A Single-Issue Movement?’, West European Politics, 11: 2 (1988), pp. 47–64; Cas Mudde, ‘The Single-Issue Party Thesis: Extreme Right Parties and the Immigration Issue’, West European Politics,22:3(1999), pp. 182–97. 39 e.g. Kitschelt and McGann, The Radical Right in Western Europe;VanderBrugand Fennema, ‘Protest or Mainstream?’. 40 e.g. Ivarsﬂaten, ‘What Unites Right-Wing Populists in Western Europe?’; Jean Tillie and Meindert Fennema, ‘A Rational Choice for the Extreme Right’, Acta Politica, 33: 3 (1998), pp. 223–49.

Furthermore, within some ‘anti-immigration’ parties there are competing factions, not all of which focus on the immigration issue. This was the case, for example, in the former Flemish Bloc (VB) in Belgium, where Filip Dewinter headed an anti-immigration faction while a rival subgroup was represented by Gerolf Annemans. Anne- mans focused on Flemish separatism rather than on immigration issues, which can be illustrated by his statement: ‘Mustafa who slaugh- ters sheep in his bath tub is not my worst enemy. My worst enemy is the Belgian state.’41 Eventually, Dewinter won the struggle and the party became predominantly anti-immigration around 1984.42 The label ‘anti-immigration’, then, is used as a minimal definition here, identifying a lowest common denominator.43 Other ways to classify parties, such as those based on a greatest common denominator – identifying the greatest possible number of similarities – are rarely used.44 In contrast with that of the ‘far right’ party, the concept and measurement of the ‘anti-immigration’ party has never received the attention it deserves. In order to compare case selection based on the concept of the ‘far/radical/extreme right’ party with case selection on the basis of the ‘anti-immigration’ party concept, I therefore have to elaborate a conceptualization and operationalization of the ‘anti-immigration’ party. I take Fennema’s definition as a starting point.45 A solid empirical grounding requires a slightly different definition of the concept to Fennema’s, however. A definition in terms of position only (such as Lubbers’s ‘extreme right-wing’ party definition, or case selection by Norris) would not be valid. This is because immigration is a policy dimension that – unlike the ideological ‘left versus right’ dimension – is not always salient to all parties. The importance a party attaches to particular policy dimensions varies over time and place.46

41 Frank Elbers and Meindert Fennema, Racistische partijen in West-Europa. Tussen nationale traditie en Europese samenwerking, Leiden, Stichting Burgerschapskunde/ Nederlands Centrum voor Politieke Vorming, 1993, p. 80, my translation. 42 Pascal Delwit, Jean-Michel De Waele and Andrea Rea, ‘Les étapes de l’extrême droite en Belgique’, in P. Delwit, J.-M. De Waele and A. Rea (eds), L’Extrême droite en France et en Belgique, Brussels, Éditions complexe, 1998; Carter, The Extreme Right in Western Europe,p.32. 43 Mudde, Populist Radical Right Parties,p.14. 44 Mudde, Populist Radical Right Parties, pp. 13–14. 45 Fennema, ‘Some Conceptual Issues and Problems’. 46 e.g. Benoit and Laver, Party Policy in Modern Democracies.

In accordance with the relevant literature,47 a party’s position regarding a specific issue on the one hand should be distinguished from the salience it attributes to the issue on the other.48 It would be nonsensical to take into account the position of a party on this issue if that party does not stress the issue at all. Thus, compatible with Fennema’s definition, the one suggested in this article is designed in accordance with the mainstream notion in electoral studies that a distinction should be made between issue salience and issue position. In line with the existing literature, I define as an ‘anti- immigration’ party a party that meets the following two criteria. First, the measures it requires aim to restrict immigration. The second criterion is that it has to stress the urgency of taking measures regarding immigration. In sum, a party is considered ‘anti-immigration’ if its position regarding immigration is more restrictive than that of any party founded before the relevant era (the current period of mass immigration to Western Europe), and if it attributes more salience to the issue than any party founded before this.

The ‘Anti-Immigration’ Party: An Operationalization

Whether or not a given party meets the two criteria mentioned above is measured in the following way. The ﬁrst criterion, concerning a party’s immigration policy, is assessed by way of party placement on a 0–10 scale of immigration restriction, which was included in expert surveys for all main parties in 17 countries for 199049 and 2000 by Lubbers and for 2004 by Van Spanje et al.50 The ‘immigration

47 David Robertson, A Theory of Party Competition, London, Wiley, 1976. 48 That is, if it is a ‘position issue’, such as immigration restriction, and not a ‘valence issue’ (Donald Stokes, ‘Spatial Models of Party Competition’, in A. Campbell, P. E. Converse, W. E. Miller and D. Stokes (eds), Elections and the Political Order,New York, John Wiley and Sons, 1966). For valence issues, what counts is to what extent a party stresses the issue. 49 The fact that Lubbers asked experts in 2000 about the situation 10 years earlier is a reason to be very cautious in interpreting these data. I use these in view of the absence of other data. 50 Lubbers, Exclusionistic Electorates; Van Spanje et al., ‘Expert Survey Concerning Political Parties in Western Democracies’. In this email survey (N = 557, response rate = 39% after one reminder), the immigration restriction position question asked by Lubbers was replicated.

© The Author 2011. Government and Opposition © 2011 Government and Opposition Ltd THE WRONG AND THE RIGHT 309 restriction’ scale ranges from 0 (‘not very restrictive’) to 10 (‘very restrictive’). In addition, a database compiled by Benoit and Laver is used for the first criterion. Benoit and Laver use a scale of 1 (‘favors policies designed to help asylum seekers and immigrants integrate into [nationality] society’) to 20 (‘favors policies designed to help asylum seekers and immigrants return to their country of origin’) to position parties.51 These data were recoded into a 0–10 scale in order to make it possible to compare them to the Lubbers and Van Spanje et al. data. The data pertain to national-level elections held between 2001 and 2004, the time span between the survey conducted by Lubbers and the one by Van Spanje et al. They are available for all 17 countries that were covered by the Lubbers and Van Spanje et al. expert surveys. Using Lubbers’s scale from 0 to 10, I first have to select a cut-off point. There is no obvious reason why Norris’s cut-off point of 8.0 is to be preferred over 8.5 (Lubbers) or vice versa, or if a different cut-off point should be used. I use the cut-off point of 8.0, as any party receiving an immigration restriction score higher than 8.0 qualifies as more ‘anti-immigration’ than the parties founded in the pre-mass immigration era (see also above for a discussion of this cut-off point). The assessment regarding the second criterion, the extent to which the party stresses the immigration issue, is based on the results of an expert survey by Benoit and Laver only.52 This is because, to the best of my knowledge, no other data exist on this point. In the expert survey, experts were asked to rate parties in the country of their expertise on a 1–20 scale regarding the salience they attribute to the issue. They did so in each of the 17 countries under study here. I use this conceptualization and operationalization of the ‘anti- immigration’ party for the process of case selection in this article. Beginning with the first criterion, party positions on immigration, I turn to the data derived from the expert surveys conducted by Lubbers and by Van Spanje et al.

51 Benoit and Laver, Party Policy in Modern Democracies. Unlike Lubbers and Van Spanje et al., Benoit and Laver equate immigrants with asylum seekers, and ask about immigration and immigrant integration in one question. These slight differences with the question asked by Lubbers and replicated by Van Spanje et al., do not seem to make any substantial difference to the party placements (see Table 2). 52 Benoit and Laver, Party Policy in Modern Democracies.

Selecting Anti-Immigration Parties

As mentioned earlier, I include parties scoring higher than 8.0 on this 0–10 immigration scale at, at least, one point in time. Concerning the 17 countries for which data for all four time points are available, this leads to 30 parties meeting the first criterion – see Table 2’s four middle columns. In the 17 countries, 10 parties favoured very restrictive immigration policies53 in 1990, 2000 and 2001–4, as well as 2004. Hence, it can be assumed that these parties were anti-immigration throughout this entire period. In addition, 20 other parties met the criterion of an immigration restriction score of over 8.0 at least once in this time span of 15 years (see the previous section for why 8.0 was chosen as the criterion). The selection includes all the usual suspects: the National Front (FN) in France, as well as some less well-known parties such as the Fatherland Party (FLP) in Norway. In three of the 17 countries on which data are available – Ireland, Spain and Portugal – none of the parties represented in the national parliament was per- ceived as ‘anti-immigration’ at any of the measurement points. In sum, experts considered 30 parties very restrictive on immigration at least once in these parties’ existence. Five of these 30 parties met the criterion at some point, yet failed to meet it at another during the 15 years of study. Two parties, the Norwegian Progress Party (FrP) and the National Alliance (AN) in Italy, seem to have considerably toned down their anti-immigration rhetoric. Three others appear to have significantly shifted towards immigration restriction in recent years – the True Finns (PS), the Action Committee for Democracy and Pensions Justice (ADR) in Luxembourg, and the Swiss People’s Party (SVP). My definition allows for such dynamism. To the debate on whether or not to include specific parties, one can now add solid arguments based on easily accessible, numerical data. Just for the sake of the argument, I will leave these five parties aside for the moment and concentrate on

53 Other parties that have contested national-level elections, such as the National Movement (NB) in Luxembourg, and the Sjöbo Party (SjP) and Skane Party (SkaP) in Sweden, may be anti-immigration as well. However, no adequate data were available on the basis of which these parties could be classiﬁed as immigration or not. More research should be carried out on these parties in order to assess if they were (NB) or are (SjP, SkaP) anti-immigration.

Table 2 Parties Scoring Higher than 8.0 on a 0–10 Immigration Scale, 17 Western European Countries, 1990–2004 Party (country) Position regarding immigration Immigration restriction (0–10 scale) salience (1–20 scale) 1990 2000 2001–4 2004 2001–4 FPÖ (A) 8.9 9.1 9.2 9.6 18.00 VB (B) 9.9 9.8 9.9 9.9 19.78 FN (B) 9.8 9.8 9.6 9.8 19.20 BNP (GB) 9.9 9.9 – 9.7 – UKIP (GB) – – – 8.6 – FrP (DK) 9.1 9.2 9.6 – 19.09 DF (DK) – 9.7 9.7 9.4 19.72 PS (SF) 7.0 7.3 9.4 8.6 18.26 FN (F) 9.6 9.6 9.6 10.0 19.17 MNR (F) – – – 10.0 – MPF (F) 8.4 8.4 8.5 9.3 16.07 DVU (D) 9.8 9.8 9.7 9.7 19.08 NPD (D) ––9.9 9.9 19.22 Rep (D) 9.3 9.4 9.7 9.6 19.26 EPEN / EM (GR) 9.0 9.6 – 10.0 – LAOS (GR) – – – 9.5 – MSI / AN (I) 8.6 7.9 7.7 7.8 16.94 LN (I) 9.4 9.0 9.6 9.5 19.24 MS-FT (I) – 9.1 8.9 8.8 17.00 ADR (L) 6.1 6.6 8.7 8.7 16.50 CD (NL) 9.7 9.7 – – – LPF / LVF (NL) ––9.1 9.2 18.75 FrP (N) 9.1 9.2 9.5 7.8 18.52 FLP (N) – – – 9.6 – NyD (S) 9.3 9.3 – – – SD (S) 9.7 9.7 – 9.9 – SVP (CH) 8.0 9.1 9.4 9.0 18.54 APS / FPS (CH) 9.1 9.5 – 9.8 – NA / SD (CH) 9.6 9.7 9.8 9.8 19.30 EDU (CH) 9.1 9.2 8.3 8.7 14.29 Source: Various expert surveys (see main text). In bold: party meets both relevant criteria at all available time points. See Appendix for full party names.

the 25 remaining parties that ﬁercely opposed immigration at all time points for which we have data. I now turn to the second criterion. I argue that the positions of the parties should be interpreted in the light of the importance that

© The Author 2011. Government and Opposition © 2011 Government and Opposition Ltd 312 GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION parties attach to the immigration issue. In a recent expert survey, Benoit and Laver collected data on the importance of immigration for parties.54 Every expert was asked to indicate parties in the country of his or her expertise on a 1–20 scale regarding the importance they attribute to the issue of immigration. The second criterion for label- ling a party as ‘anti-immigration’ is that the party scores at least 18 on the 1–20 immigration importance scale. Just as for the ﬁrst criterion – as well as the far-right criterion – this cut-off point was chosen on the basis of the scores of parties founded before the era of mass immigration to Western Europe, the lowest score still being higher than any of the established parties’ scores. The survey covered 15 of the 25 parties that adamantly opposed immigration according to all available data sources – see the last column of Table 2. Table 2’s last column shows that most parties that have a very restrictive position towards immigration also attach considerable importance to the issue: 12 of the 15 parties with a position higher than 8.0 on the 0–10 immigration restriction scale at all time points measured also score 18 or higher on the 1–20 immigration importance scale (for the reason to choose the cut-off point of 18, see above). These 12 parties can be considered as sending out a restrictive and urgent message concerning immigration issues. The three exceptions are the Movement for France (MPF), the Italian Social Movement (MSFT), and the Federal Democratic Union (EDU) in Switzerland. These parties consistently meet the anti-immigration position criterion yet do not meet the salience criterion of at least 18 on a 1–20 scale. The fact that no fewer than three of the 15 parties under investigation (20 per cent) that have a very restrictive immigration position attach relatively low importance to the issue under- lines my call for taking into account the salience in categorizing anti-immigration parties. Thus, 12 parties from eight different countries, indicated in bold in Table 2, can safely be characterized as anti-immigration parties.

THE DYNAMICS OF BEING FAR RIGHT AND/OR ANTI-IMMIGRATION

The deﬁnitions outlined above imply a departure from the commonly used static conceptualizations and operationalizations. Instead

54 Benoit and Laver, Party Policy in Modern Democracies.

© The Author 2011. Government and Opposition © 2011 Government and Opposition Ltd THE WRONG AND THE RIGHT 313 of the starting point that all parties are to be classified according to their roots and under a specific party family, as determined at the party’s emergence,55 the ‘far right’ party and the ‘anti-immigration’ party are described in a dynamic way in this article. This means that parties can become far right or anti-immigration and can also stop being far right or anti-immigration. For example, the Swiss People’s Party adopted an anti-immigration stance in the mid-1990s, whereas the Italian National Alliance’s rhetoric had become less anti- immigration before it merged with the main right-wing party Forza Italia (FI). Evidence for these examples has not only been derived from the literature on these parties but has also resulted from expert surveys conducted by Lubbers in 2000, and by Van Spanje et al. in 2005. The status of these two parties has been disputed time and again in the relevant literature.56 Another interesting case under investigation here, that of the True Finns, is usually below the radar of scholars who study ‘anti- immigration’ parties. This means that it is usually lumped into the category of ‘mainstream’ (not anti-immigration) parties. This is problematic as there are good reasons to take the True Finns into account in studies on anti-immigration parties. Nowadays, the party comfortably meets both anti-immigration party criteria mentioned in this article, as can be seen in Table 2. Thus, whether a party is ‘far right’ and/or ‘anti-immigration’ is not considered time invariant, but should be (re)assessed at each relevant point in time. Note that Golder recognizes that the classification of parties as ‘neofascist’, ‘populist’ or ‘mainstream’ can change over time.57 The importance of taking change into account when considering a party’s anti-immigration status can be illustrated with the case of the MSI/AN. This party combined a gradually less restrictive position on immigration policy with a salience of the issue of less than 18. Could the low salience the party attached to the issue in 2001 have been considerably higher before? This is likely. This party, then called the Italian Social Movement-National Right (MSI-DN), had an anti-immigration stance, at least until late 1992, as both

55 See Mair and Mudde, ‘The Party Family and its Study’. 56 e.g. Carter, The Extreme Right in Western Europe, p. 9; Lubbers, Exclusionistic Electorates; Van der Brug and Fennema, ‘Protest or Mainstream?’. 57 Matthew Golder, ‘Explaining Variation in the Success of Extreme Right Parties in Western Europe’, Comparative Political Studies, 36: 4 (2003), pp. 432–66.

Lubbers and Ignazi note,58 and there is evidence pointing to it attaching more importance to the issue at that point in time than a decade later.59 The party underwent a major restructuring following the collapse of the Italian party system in the early 1990s. Renamed AN, its leader, Fini, had abandoned his fierce anti- immigration stance by 1995.60 In view of the fact that the party comfortably met the first anti-immigration criterion (immigration restriction score = 8.6) before, and just fails to meet either criterion after the party’s restructuring and toning down reported by Ignazi as well as Lubbers (immigration restriction score = 7.9), it is likely that before 1995 the party actually met the criteria. More generally, one should be aware of the fact that parties may make considerable shifts regarding immigration issues, which may alter their classification. The notion that some parties were far right and/or anti- immigration at some points in time but not at others is important for my comparison of party categories, as we will see. This said, I first proceed with 30 parties that have clearly been far right throughout the period of study, and 12 parties that are clear cases of anti- immigration parties during the entire period (see parties indicated in bold in Tables 1 and 2). Based on these sets of parties, I investigate how many far right parties are anti-immigration, and how many anti-immigration parties are far right.

Are Far Right Parties Also Anti-Immigration?

I now address the question of how much overlap this selection of anti-immigration parties has with a selection on the basis of the notion of the ‘far right’ party. I ﬁrst address the question of how many of the 30 far right parties are also anti-immigration. After this, I turn to the question of how many of the 12 anti-immigration parties are also far right.

58 Lubbers, Exclusionistic Electorates, p. 30; Piero Ignazi, ‘From Neo-Fascists to Post-Fascists? The Transformation of the MSI into the AN’, West European Politics, 19: 4 (1996), pp. 693–714. 59 e.g. James L. Newell, ‘Italy: The Extreme Right Comes in from the Cold’, Parliamentary Affairs, 53: 3 (2000), pp. 469–85. 60 Ignazi, ‘From Neo-Fascists to Post-Fascists?’.

Table 3 Far Right Parties in 17 Western European Countries, 1990–2004: Anti-Immigration or Not? Far right party Anti-immigration Not anti-immigration Not all (country) throughout throughout data study period study period available RAD/UDRT (B) X VB (B) X FN (B) X BNP (GB) X FrP (DK) X IKL (SF) X CNIP (F) X FN (F) X MPF (F) X PFN (F) X DVU (D) X NPD (D) X Rep (D) X EPEN/EM (GR) X NPI (IRL) X MSI/AN (I) X MS-FT (I) X LPF/LVF (NL) X PDC (P) X PSN (P) X DN (E) X FEJons (E) X PAR (E) X UN-FN (E) X NyD (S) X SD (S) X APS/FPS (CH) X EDU (CH) X LdT (CH) X NA/SD (CH) X Source: Various expert surveys (see main text). See Appendix for full party names.

Are there any indications that there are many far right parties that do not attempt to mobilize on the immigration issue? See Table 3 for a classiﬁcation of the 30 far right parties into three classes – anti-immigration, not anti-immigration and unknown.

We see in Table 3 that of the 30 parties that were consistently judged far right, the situation is unclear in 16 cases. Of the other 14 parties, nine (64 per cent) were also anti-immigration throughout the period under study, whereas ﬁve (36 per cent) were not. These ﬁve are the MSI/AN in Italy, the Portuguese PSN (both with no very restrictive immigration position), the French MPF, the MS-FT in Italy and the Swiss EDU (all three with a very restrictive immigration position but not very salient).

Are Anti-Immigration Parties Also Far Right?

How about anti-immigration parties – are there any that are not far right? For left–right positions of the 12 anti-immigration parties selected in this article, see Table 4. It turns out that 9 out of 12 (75 per cent) anti-immigration parties meet the ‘far right’ criterion of experts rating them higher than 0.8 on a 0–1 left–right scale throughout the period of study. Case selection based on ideology instead of policy, then, would make a difference for 3 out of 12 parties. Thus, here we ﬁnd yet other notable exceptions to the general rule that far

Table 4 Anti-Immigration Parties in 17 Western European Countries, 1982–2004: Far Right or Not? Anti-immigration Far right Not far right Not all party (country) throughout throughout data study period study period available FPÖ (A) X VB (B) X FN (B) X FrP (DK) X DF (DK) X FN (F) X DVU (D) X NPD (D) X Rep (D) X LN (I) X LPF / LVF (NL) X NA/SD(CH) X Source: Various expert surveys (see main text). See Appendix for full party names.

© The Author 2011. Government and Opposition © 2011 Government and Opposition Ltd THE WRONG AND THE RIGHT 317 right parties are anti-immigration, and anti-immigration parties far right. The three exceptions are the Austrian FPÖ, the DF in Denmark, and the LN in Italy. All three have been judged far right at least once in their lifetime, however: the FPÖ in the Huber and Inglehart, Lubbers, and Benoit and Laver studies, the DF in Lubbers, and the LN in Benoit and Laver.61 The FPÖ radicalized after 1986,62 the DF has mellowed its tone in recent years63 and the LN shifted back and forth between radicalization and moderation.64 This illustrates, once again, that it is important to examine each party at the relevant time(s) rather than in general. Finally, I perform an additional analysis to illustrate to what extent far right and anti-immigration parties are (dis)similar. Ignoring the salience criterion for a moment (because of the small number of observations concerning salience), taking all parties into account for which we have left–right placement and immigration position (not salience) at our disposal (N = 109) results in a chance-adjusted agreement measure of Cohen’s kappa = 0.66. This indicates that substantial agreement exists. This means that, on the one hand, we have no reason to suspect that it matters much whether the parties under study are classiﬁed in terms of policy or in terms of ideology. This ﬁnding is robust to slight changes in cut-off points, and does not depend on the inclusion of particular countries in my analyses. On the other hand, though, I should emphasize that the two sets of parties are not identical, as the agreement is far from perfect (which would be indicated by kappa = 1.00).

CONCLUSION

In the vast literature on the topic, case selection has typically been very casual. ‘Far right’ parties have sometimes been classiﬁed on the

61 Huber and Inglehart, ‘Expert Interpretations of Party Space and Party Locations’; Lubbers, Exclusionistic Electorates; and Benoit and Laver, Party Policy in Modern Democracies. 62 e.g. Kurt Richard Luther, ‘Austria: A Democracy under Threat from the Freedom Party’, Parliamentary Affairs, 53: 3 (2000), pp. 426–42. 63 e.g. Jens Rydgren, ‘Explaining the Emergence of Radical Right-Wing Populist Parties: The Case of Denmark’, West European Politics, 27: 3 (2004), pp. 474–503. 64 e.g. Newell, ‘Italy’.

© The Author 2011. Government and Opposition © 2011 Government and Opposition Ltd 318 GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION basis of their immigration policy positions, and ‘anti-immigration’ parties based on their right-wing positions. In most studies, the case selection was discussed only briefly, or not at all. Interestingly, though, the lack of conceptual clarity in most of the existing literature has generally not resulted in large differences between case selections. While the labels attached to these parties have varied, usually the same parties were selected in each study. This said, there have been long-standing debates about the classification of specific cases such as the National Alliance (AN) in Italy, which is an undesirable result of this absence of clarity regarding concepts used. I have therefore aimed to apply strict and clear criteria in this article based on empirical evidence. In contrast to a few previous studies, far right parties have been classified on the basis of clear criteria regarding their ideologies, and anti-immigration parties based on their immigration policy. Furthermore, I argue that, where the concept of the anti- immigration party is used, perhaps some attention should be paid to the salience a party attaches to the immigration issue. We find that whether or not the importance a party attaches to the issue is taken into account makes a substantial difference for case selection. I have taken the salience of the immigration issue to the party into account when selecting anti-immigration parties, as among parties that have restrictive immigration positions, this salience varies considerably. Three out of 15 (20 per cent) of the parties with a very restrictive immigration position for which I have data at my disposal turned out not to attach more importance to the issue than parties established before the era of mass immigration. I conclude that it matters whether parties are classified based on the ‘anti-immigration’ or the ‘far right’ label. Based on information on 109 parties in 17 Western European countries, I conclude that the results of case selection based on the one concept is similar to case selection on the basis of the other. This said, the agreement between the two case selection procedures is not perfect (Cohen’s kappa = 0.66), which indicates that the two party groups are not identical. Just to illustrate my point, I found that 36 per cent of far right parties were not anti-immigration throughout the period under study (1990–2004). Conversely, a quarter of anti-immigration parties were not consistently far right during the period of 1982– 2004. Scholars might therefore want to consider stating up front which group of parties they study, and why they have chosen that one;

© The Author 2011. Government and Opposition © 2011 Government and Opposition Ltd THE WRONG AND THE RIGHT 319 perhaps the reasons for studying one party type rather than the other should be made explicit.65 The fact that parties can change both their ideological and immigration policy proﬁles means that the differences between these groups are bound to change over time. The Danish People’s Party (DF), for example, has become less right wing over time, but has not become less anti-immigration. It may be that this party will combine a centrist ideological proﬁle with a very restrictive immigration position one day. As another case in point, the French Communists (PCF) have become more anti-immigration in recent years.66 As the combination of these two party characteristics becomes less obvious, it constitutes yet another reason to give explicit reasons for studying far right parties, on the one hand, or anti-immigration ones, on the other. More generally, extending the body of knowledge about any party type is unthinkable without more rigorous case selection procedures than the ones used in the relevant literature thus far. I consider this study a modest step towards improving case selection. In light of the scarcity of available data, and problems associated with the data used, this study is certainly not the last word in the academic debate concerning these notorious parties.

65 Another way to avoid contamination of findings by the categorisation of parties is to check the robustness of results to alternative classifications. Sensitivity analyses do not necessarily solve all the problems associated with a lack of precise definitions, however – unless the findings are checked for the entire universe of possible party categorisations, which is unlikely. 66 Joost H. P. Van Spanje, ‘Contagious Parties: Anti-Immigrant Parties and their Impact on Other Parties’ Immigration Stances in Contemporary Western Europe’, Party Politics, 16: 5 (2010), pp. 563–86.

APPENDIX

Country of Origin, Full Name and Abbreviation of Political Parties Mentioned Country of Party name in English Abbreviation origin

Austria Freedom Party of Austria FPÖ Belgium Democratic Union for the Respect of Labour RAD-UDRT Belgium Flemish Bloc / Flemish Interest VB Belgium National Front FN Britain British National Party BNP Britain Conservative Party C Britain United Kingdom Independence Party UKIP Denmark Danish People’s Party DF Denmark Progress Party FrP Finland Patriotic Popular Movement IKL Finland True Finns PS Finland Finnish Christian Democratic Party SKL France National Centre of Independents and Peasants CNIP France National Front FN France Republican National Movement MNR France Movement for France MPF France Party of New Forces PFN France Rally for France RPR Germany German People’s Union DVU Germany National Democratic Party of Germany NPD Germany Republicans Rep Greece Greek Front EPEN / EM Greece Populist Orthodox Rally LAOS Ireland National Party of Ireland NPI Ireland Progressive Democrats PD Italy Northern League LN Italy Italian Social Movement / National Alliance MSI / AN Italy Social Movement-Threecoloured Flame MS-FT Luxembourg Action Committee for Democracy and Pensions Justice ADR Netherlands Centre Democrats CD Netherlands Reformed Political Alliance GPV Netherlands List Pim Fortuyn / List Five Fortuyn LPF / LVF Netherlands Reformed Political Federation RPF Netherlands Political Reformed Party SGP Netherlands People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy VVD Norway Progress Party FrP Norway Fatherland Party FLP Portugal Democratic and Social Centre – People’s Party CDS-PP Portugal Party of the Christian Democracy PDC Portugal Party of National Solidarity PSN Spain Popular Alliance / People’s Party AP / PP Spain National Democracy DN Spain Sp. Traditionalist Phalanx of Assemblies of FEJons Nat’l-Syndicalist Offensive Spain Aragonese Regionalist Party PAR Spain National Union-New Force UN-FN Sweden Moderate Party M Sweden New Democracy NyD Sweden Swedish Democrats SD Switzerland Car Party / Freedom Party of Switzerland APS / FPS Switzerland Federal Democratic Union EDU Switzerland League of Ticinesi LdT Switzerland Nat’l Action Against Überfremdung of People and NA/SD Homeland / Swiss Democrats Switzerland Swiss People’s Party SVP