Populist radical right parties and mass polarization in the Netherlands

Abstract

Radical parties have been found to succeed under conditions of mass polarization. It is argued that their message resonates better with voters at the extremes of an ideological spectrum. This paper investigates if the reverse also holds, meaning that radical parties may contribute to the polarization of the public. I test this claim in the Netherlands, a country that has experienced the rise of populist radical right parties since 2002, using a synthetic control model built with a pool of comparable countries and Eurobarometer survey data. Results show that, after the rise of Pim Fortuyn and Geert Wilders, the level of polarization among the Dutch public increased more than it otherwise would have. These findings contribute to understanding the connection between elite-and mass-level polarization, and the consequences of populist radical right parties' emergence in Western Europe.

Radical right politics in East and West: Distinctive yet equivalent

“…Due to their radical stances, self‐portrayal as political outsiders and increased salience of their core issues, RR parties can contribute to growing elite and mass‐level polarization (Castanho Silva, ). In CEE, on elite level, RR parties were shown to “light the fuse” of dormant collective identity conflicts already prior to electoral breakthrough (Pytlas & Kossack, ).…”

“…in Poland), the party system concurrently remained slightly more skewed to the right (Pytlas & Kossack, ). A recent mass‐level study in the Netherlands demonstrates that RR party rise leads to a polarizing spiral, where “higher polarization contributes to radicals' success, and stronger radical parties lead to an even more polarized electorate” (Castanho Silva, , p. 220). Politicization of xenophobia may lead to societal polarization and dichotomous entrenchment also at the local level, such as in Dresden during the activity of the PEGIDA movement (Vorländer, Herold, & Schäller, , p. 21).…”

Toward electoral (ir)relevance of moral traditionalism? Religious decline and voting in Western Europe (1981–2017)

“…The rare studies that do focus on moral traditionalism–progressiveness in particular show that this dimension became less rather than more divisive in Western democracies in recent decades (Pless et al ., 2023) and, as this study points out, became not more but less important for voting for political parties with morally conservative agendas. On the contrary, other cultural issues mentioned above are indeed likely to have grown in salience and become more polarizing for European electorates (see for instance Kriesi, 2010; Silva, 2018; Green-Pedersen and Otjes, 2019; Pless et al , 2023), not least due to the electoral successes of political parties of the new left and the new right that “own” these cultural issues. While parties of the new left have successfully brought environmental issues (i.e., nuclear energy, pollution, and climate change) to the agendas of Western democracies (Dolezal, 2010), parties of the new right have capitalized on immigration, European integration, globalization, cultural diversity, and law and order (Kriesi et al , 2006).…”

Emociones y voto a Vox en las elecciones generales españolas de abril y noviembre de 2019

“…Dejando de lado la riqueza y complejidad terminológica y conceptual que suscita esta familia de partidos, la perspectiva del estudio de este fenómeno que considera las emociones ha estado ligada al carácter populista con el que tantas veces se ha calificado a la derecha radical (Antón-Mellón y Hernández-Carr, 2016;Betz, 1993Betz, , 2002Betz y Johnson, 2004Castanho, 2018;Evans, 2005;Mudde, 2007Mudde, , 2010Mudde, , 2014Mudde, , 2017Rydgren, 2003;Spierings y Zaslove, 2015;Verbeek y Zaslove, 2015;Jaráiz et al, 2020;Oñate, 2021). Se trata de una cuestión nada sencilla, teniendo en cuenta la complejidad conceptual que el término populismo entraña: más allá de las múltiples acepciones que se puedan asimilar al mismo, creemos que lejos de ser un rasgo característico necesario o definitorio de esta familia de partidos políticos, el populismo de la derecha radical o la extrema derecha debe ser entendido -más que como una ideología soft o thin (Mudde, 2004: 543;2019: 7-8, 30)-como un «estilo político» (Inglehart y Norris, 2017;Norris e Inglehart, 2019) o un «estilo de comunicación política» (Jagers y Walgrave, 2007) que es adoptado no solo por este tipo de formaciones políticas.…”