kai arzheimer

Radical politics is an enduring feature of democratic party competition in contemporary democracies across the globe. This panel will seek to advance our understanding of radical right politics by focusing on the relationship between ethnic minorities and radical right parties within the region of Eastern Europe. The panel will bring together a group of scholars from various sub-fields of the discipline to examine the roots and consequences of political polarisation and right wing extremism.

Radical and/or extreme right political parties continue to be the focus of much media attention and academic research. Of course, the success of (some of) these parties in recent elections in large part explains the interest they arouse and the coverage they receive. But if we scratch a little deeper and start asking questions about why parties of this kind continue to post impressive electoral results in many countries, along with the context in which they compete, we must turn to examining the parties themselves. And if we do, we can start to notice changes in ideology, in strategy, and/or in organization, as evidenced, for example, by the French FN’s apparently moderated ideology, or by Marine Le Pen’s strategy to ‘open up’ the French right, or by Geert Wilders’ efforts to build up the PVV organization. Therefore, given their importance, this panel will focus on the parties of the ‘New Right’ themselves, and invites papers that examine extreme/radical right party ideology, strategy, and/or organization. We would like to encourage both conceptual papers and empirical papers that engage in comparative analysis

This panel will consider whether – and if so, in what ways – the onset of the economic and Eurozone crises have enhanced or hindered political opportunities for the radical and extreme right-wing in Europe. This includes: reactions to the bail-outs and European political institutions; the role of Euroscepticism in radical right party campaigns, discourse and electoral outcomes; and the broader response of European electorates to the crisis, and their receptiveness or otherwise to radical right politics. The panel organisers are especially interested in papers that draw on innovative methodological approaches, are anchored in comparative analysis, and that consider both demand- and supply-side factors.

Many explanations of populist New Right appeal have focused upon the role of economic insecurity as a motivation for supporting parties with exclusionary economic and social policies that target ‘true’ nationals over immigrants and other outgroups. The classic economic argument applied to countries such as France and Belgium finds blue-collar workers, as well as routine non-manual employees, attracted by populist New Right parties’ welfare chauvinism, moving away from the traditional Socialist and Social Democratic parties and class encapsulation. A sector argument finds public-sector employees in protected positions less open to such appeals than private counterparts open to external competition. However, the blue-collar group represents a shrinking proportion of European societies’ workforce and by extension electorate, and thus a decreasingly attractive target pool for entrepreneurial populist parties. Instead, through public-sector downsizing as well as decreased competitiveness, the current economic crisis threatens as much public-sector and service workers, still from routine non-manual but potentially to a growing extent from lower cadre / managerial positions. Whilst educational attainment has previously acted as a block on potential support for ethnocentric and xenophobic parties amongst these groups, the evolution of many of these parties’ positions to campaign more on anti-Islamist rather than traditional racist tenets may mean that these parties can appeal to the now economically vulnerable ‘squeezed middle’ in a way that was untenable in the past. This panel welcomes papers, either case-study or comparative, which look at the empirical manifestations of this dynamic, in particular how support bases for populist New Right parties have changed across time, socially and attitudinally. Papers should ideally use electoral or public opinion survey data, if developing micro-explanations, or census and workforce employment data for meso- and macro-approaches. Papers should not deal exclusively with theoretical or descriptive discussions of party ideology, or political economy explanations of insecurity.

Why do people vote for populist parties? The extant literature is inconclusive on why citizens do so. Some scholars argue that people vote for populists because they agree with the ideology of these parties. Other scholars claim that populist voters are mainly driven by political dissatisfaction: they vote for populist parties because they are unhappy with the established political order. Also, it has been argued that voters primarily vote for these parties because of their charismatic leaders. We welcome papers that focus on these or other motivations to vote for populist parties. Moreover, we are also interested in factors that might impact on the populist vote choice, such as party system characteristics, the state of the economy, or socio-demographic variables such as education, income, age, gender and religiosity. We accept qualitative and quantitative papers on right-wing populism, left-wing populism or both.

Abstract:
The recent electoral performance of radical right parties in Central and Eastern Europe seems to confirm the pervasive appeal of these parties across the whole European space. To a varying extent, radical right parties in post-communist countries resemble a phenomenon sui generis, perhaps due to their historical legacies and/or the idiosyncrasies of their context. Parties such as Ataka in Bulgaria or Jobbik in Hungary list as recent examples of this, yet research says little about the commonalities and differences of these parties vis-à-vis similar parties in Western Europe. In brief, new perspectives are needed to assess this phenomenon in context.

This panel aims to bring together papers on radical right parties in Central and Eastern Europe, their voters, and/or their interaction. Papers that investigate the radical right in the region conceptually, empirically, and/or comparatively are solicited. Prominence will be given to contributions addressing the ideology of these parties; their organisation; their political opportunity structure; and those explaining their electoral performance. Papers employing new data and bridging qualitative and quantitative traditions will be especially welcome, but papers using either qualitative or quantitative methods will certainly be considered.