Centre right and radical right party competition in Europe: Strategic emphasis on immigration, anti-incumbency, and economic crisis

Abstract

We examine centre right and radical right party competition. We argue that centre right partiesparticularly non-incumbents -recognise economic crises as electoral opportunities for radical right parties and respond with the strategic emphasis of immigration in mass appeals. To test this, we merge party performance data with expert surveys across 24 European Union countries to examine parties' electoral performances during the 2008 economic crisis. We find that non-incumbent centre right parties benefited from emphasising immigration, performing better than radical right parties. Second, incumbent centre right parties that did not emphasise immigration lost out electorally, providing an opportunity for far-right parties to benefit from immigration in this economic context. Qualitative case studies further suggest that while these effects appear to be more pronounced in Western Europe, the results are consistent across the East and West. The findings suggest a reconsideration of immigration as an exclusive issue for far-right electoral success.

How Blurred Is European Public Opinion between Legal versus Illegal Immigrants?

“…Europe will continue to struggle to deliver sustainable and acceptable policy responses to the arrivals of new immigrants both at the national and EU level. Immigration has been one of the key issues for voters and for political competition between parties on the right and left in contemporary European politics (Pardos-Prado 2015;Mudde 2014;Downes and Loveless 2018). Eurobarometer polls show that European public opinion has become markedly more critical of immigration since 2013.…”

The Spread of Anti‐Islamic Sentiment: A Comparison between the United States and Western Europe

“…Research on objective characteristics has placed notable emphasis on economic and socio‐economic conditions as an explanatory factor for far‐right support (often premised upon the “losers of modernity” thesis), although researchers have also looked at other “objective characteristics” such as the actual number of immigrants in regions that support far‐right parties, and levels of postsecondary education (Doležalová et al 2017; Halikiopoulou and Vlandas 2016; Stockemer 2017). Yet, macroeconomic trends only “play a weak role in explaining increased levels of support for anti‐immigrant and anti‐Islam parties” (Downes and Loveless 2018, 149), while studies of individual‐level economic indicators and other “objective characteristics” have similarly struggled to find clear and comprehensive conclusions (see Golder 2016).…”

“…A number of important findings have arisen from this literature. Downes and Loveless (2018) argue that far‐right parties find unfavorable opportunity structures in much of Europe due to centrist parties re‐appropriating their discourses on immigration, thus concluding that the political inflation of the immigration issue is likely less of an explanatory factor for the far right's success than once believed. By contrast, Herman and Muldoon (2019, 10) find that the far right has succeeded in a number of ways in mainstreaming their views and rhetoric and influencing political decision‐making processes, both in the United States and Europe, so as to have carved out “their own independent place within the political mainstream.”…”

“…There are, of course, several reasons for such limited success. For example, not only are anti‐Islamic far‐right parties often poorly funded and lacking in organizational strength compared to many mainstream or established parties, but some of their most fundamental issue positions, such as hard stances on immigration, have been co‐opted by more mainstream centrist parties, resulting in a loss of far‐right support (Downes and Loveless 2018). This follows a broader pattern in both Europe and the United States of mainstream parties themselves developing positions on immigration that are increasingly similar to those of the far right (Herman and Muldoon 2019, 4).…”

Pražané s cizím pasem. Výsledky výzkumu cizinců a cizinek ze zemí mimo EU žijících v české metropoli.

“…Přesto, i dnes jsou otázky mezinárodní migrace a začlenění přistěhovalců v praktické rovině řešeny především na úrovni jednotlivých států. Navíc celkový diskurz ohledně migrace a integrace je v řadě zemí vysoce zpolitizován (Helbling 2014;Downes a Loveless 2018). Výjimkou není ani Česká republika.…”