How to stay populist? The Front National and the changing French party system

Abstract

The main aim of this contribution is to assess the relevance of the notion of ‘exclusionary populism’ for the characterisation of the Front National (FN) in France. Since its emergence in the 1970s, several categories or notions have been applied to this political party. Once considered as the resurgence of a traditional extreme right, it has since been classified as a case of a new European right-wing extremism, or as one of the neo-populist parties that obtained electoral successes in the 1990s. The recent evolution of the party has also been described as a sort of ‘normalisation’. Is therefore ‘exclusionary populism’ still a category that can grasp the evolution of the party, as well as its present position in the French party system? To answer this question, this article examines political discourses and various electoral platforms of the Front National to gather some empirical evidence. The argument is twofold: The Front National, despite its ‘dédiabolisation’ strategy, is still a classic populist party characterised by exclusionary populism and a sort of ‘catch-all populism’; its evolution is, however, dependent on the recent evolution of the French party system.     

Revitalizing and de-territorializing fascism in the 1950s: the extreme right in France and Italy,and the pan-national (‘European’) imaginary

ABSTRACT

In this article Mammone explores a still relatively neglected story in the history of post-war neo-fascism, notably the attempts by some French and Italian right-wing extremists to revitalize fascist ideology after the war by means of two interconnected strategies, namely, radicalization (rejection of the democratic system) and ‘de-territorialization’ (in the sense of converting narrow fascist nationalism into pan-European nationalism). Mammone describes these project(s), as well as the influence of thinkers such as Julius Evola and Maurice Bardèche, and their location in the wider ideological context of the extreme right in the 1950s. The immediate outcome of this ‘de-territorialized fascism’ was the creation of an extreme-right international association, the Mouvement Social Européen, in which French and Italian activists played a central role. Mammone breaks new ground regarding the non-national dimension of extreme-right thought, a topic too often studied within the boundaries of a given geographical territory and nationalist ideological landscape. By utilizing a transnational framework, he also shows the continuous connections and interactions between the Italian and the French extreme rights.     

Old right or new right? The ideological positioning of parties of the far right

Abstract.  Since the 1980s, parties of the far right have increased their share of votes in many Western European nations, and some have even participated in governing coalitions. The ascendancy of far right parties has been met with various hypotheses attempting to rationalize their role in the politics of these nations: Are far right parties a manifestation of protest politics, brought about by hard economic times (old right model), or are they representative of the continued political development of Western industrialized nations (new right model)? Most analyses have focused on the voters for these parties; this work focuses on the election manifestos of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), National Front of France (FN), Italian National Alliance (MSI-AN), Lega Nord (LN) and the Germany Republikaner (Reps) in order to reconstruct the dimensions of party competition in each nation and determine where each of these parties fall within the dimensions of party competition. Support is shown for a new right axis of party competition, suggesting that parties of the far right may in fact be part of the political development of Western European nations.     

The French secular hypocrisy: the extreme right,the Republic and the battle for hegemony

ABSTRACT

The success of the extreme right in France in the past two decades has not been limited to its electoral rise. A more long-lasting victory has taken place in the ideological field, where the discourse of the extreme right now occupies a prominent place in the mainstream liberal democratic agenda. Increasingly, its ideas are seen in the media and in the platforms of mainstream parties as ‘common sense’ or at least acceptable. The growing acceptance of this ‘common sense’ is the result of very carefully crafted strategies put in place by extreme-right thinkers since the 1980s. For over three decades now, in order to change perceptions and renew extreme right-wing ideology, New Right think tanks such as the French GRECE believed it was necessary to borrow the tactics of the left and, more specifically, the Gramscian concept of hegemony: cultural power must precede political power. With the use of contemporary examples, Mondon's article demonstrates the continuing impact these ideas have had on the Front national and French politics and society, and how this change originated in the association of populist rhetoric with the neo-racist stigmatization of the Other.     

Angry White Men: Individual and Contextual Predictors of Support for the British National Party

The British National party (BNP) is the most successful extreme right party in Britain's electoral history and is the fastest growing political party in twenty-first century Britain. This article presents the first ever individual-level analysis of BNP supporters, utilising a survey data set uniquely compiled for this purpose. We find that support for the BNP is concentrated among older, less educated working-class men living in the declining industrial towns of the North and Midlands regions. This pattern of support is quite distinct from that which underpinned the last electorally relevant extreme right party in Britain – the National Front (NF) – whose base was young working-class men in Greater London and the West Midlands. Extreme right voters in contemporary Britain express exceptionally high levels of anxiety about immigration and disaffection with the mainstream political parties. Multi-level analysis of BNP support shows that the party prospers in areas with low education levels and large Muslim minority populations of Pakistani or African origin. The BNP has succeeded in mobilising a clearly defined support base: middle-aged working-class white men anxious about immigration, threatened by local Muslim communities and hostile to the existing political establishment. We conclude by noting that all the factors underpinning the BNP's emergence – high immigration levels, rising perceptions of identity conflict and the declining strength of the cultural and institutional ties binding voters to the main parties – are likely to persist in the coming years. The BNP therefore looks likely to consolidate itself as a persistent feature of the British political landscape.     

The electoral victory of the NPD in Saxony and the prospects for future extreme-right success in German elections

ABSTRACT

Largely because of Germany's traumatic experience of National Socialism, German extreme right-wing parties have remained a marginal post-war political phenomenon. The spectacular electoral victory of the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD) in the Saxon parliamentary elections of September 2004 (9.2 per cent of the vote) nurtured the fear that a far-right party could establish itself at the national level. Backes explains the election victory by relating it to a set of Saxon and Eastern German circumstances. He demonstrates that unfavourable conditions, which have so far prevented the establishment of extreme right-wing parties at the national level, still prevail. Against this background, he shows that the NPD's capacity for taking advantage of advantageous conditions (like economic problems and xenophobia, rampant in some places) reaches its limits very quickly.     

Is extreme right-wing populism contagious? Explaining the emergence of a new party family

Abstract.  This article presents a new model for explaining the emergence of the party family of extreme right-wing populist parties in Western Europe. As the old master frame of the extreme right was rendered impotent by the outcome of the Second World War, it took the innovation of a new, potent master frame before the extreme right was able to break electoral marginalization. Such a master frame – combining ethnonationalist xenophobia, based on the doctrine of ethnopluralism, with anti-political-establishment populism – evolved in the 1970s, and was made known as a successful frame in connection with the electoral breakthrough of the French Front National in 1984. This event started a process of cross-national diffusion, where embryonic extreme right-wing groups and networks elsewhere adopted the new frame. Hence, the emergence of similar parties, clustered in time (i.e., the birth of a new party family) had less to do with structural factors influencing different political systems in similar ways as with cross-national diffusion of frames. The innovation and diffusion of the new master frame was a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for the emergence of extreme right-wing populist parties. In order to complete the model, a short list of different political opportunity structures is added.     

Extreme-right Parties in Eastern Europe

Abstract

From the moment the Berlin Wall came down scholars and politicians around the world expressed concern about an upsurge of extreme-right politics in Eastern Europe. Dramatic events like the Yugoslav conflict and even the so-called ‘velvet split’ of Czechoslovakia only strengthened this fear. Despite these many general warnings about the rise of extreme right parties (ERPs) in Eastern Europe very little empirical work has appeared on the subject. Mudde's article provides an analytical tool which will help to further understanding of the extreme right in the region. It presents and applies a fairly straightforward typology of ERPs in Eastern Europe based on the (ideological) character of the parties. The pre-Communist ERP locates the origin of its ideological identity in political parties and ideas of the pre-Communist period, generally harking back to national-conservative, monarchist, or indigenous or foreign fascist ideals. The character of the party might be expressed in the open espousal of pre-Communist ideas or by using the associated ‘folklore’, while in some cases there might even be continuity in personnel or organizations (often through the émigré community). With the notable exceptions of Croatia and Slovakia, pre-Communist ERPs have remained marginal in post-Communist political life. The Communist ERP looks for ideological inspiration in the Communist period and includes nationalist splits of the (former) Communist parties as well as new parties that combine a nationalist ideology with a nostalgia for Communist rule. They are mainly successful in countries where the Communist regime had a strong nationalist undercurrent and the party is still in the hands of hardliners (e.g. Romania and Russia). Post-Communist ERPs, finally, locate the source of their identities in the post-Communist period: these organizations are new and their focus is on current political issues. They harbour no feelings of nostalgia, either for the pre-Communist or the Communist period. Post-Communist ERPS have developed in most East European countries but, although some have achieved remarkable electoral successes, in general they have been only moderately successful (similar to ERPs in Western Europe).     

Subnational political opportunity structures and the success of the radical right: Evidence from the March 2004 regional elections in France

Abstract.  This article attempts to explain the impact of department-level political opportunity structures on the electoral success of the French Front National (FN) in the 2004 regional elections. The concept of 'political opportunity structure' refers to the degree of openness of a particular political system and the external institutional or socio-economic constraints and opportunities that it sets for political parties. Comparative analysis across subnational units is conducted where the 94 departments of mainland France are the units of analysis. The significance of electoral institutions (district magnitude), party competition (effective number of parties), electoral behaviour (turnout) and socioeconomic conditions (immigration and unemployment) on the ability of the FN to gather votes across the departments is assessed by means of multiple regression. The empirical results show that the subnational political opportunity structures have been of great importance for the FN. Some four out of the five independent variables are statistically significant and explain a great deal of the variance in the two dependent variables (electoral support for FN list and index of electoral success). Turnout and district magnitude are negatively correlated with the electoral fortunes of the FN, while unemployment and the effective number of party lists are positively correlated with the success of the FN in the regional elections. The variable that indicates the share of non-European immigrants does not provide additional explanatory power in a statistically significant way.     

French “new order”

Recent criticism in National Front publications of conspiracy theories involving Jews must be seen in their ‘argumentative context’. In fact, such rhetoric can be used for purely tactical purposes, in this case in the power struggle between two rival factions of the National Front. Furthermore, pro‐Zionism is not necessarily contradictory to antisemitism since it can reflect a desire to see Jews leave for Israel. Antisemitism remains a continuing influence among extreme right groups despite the fact that there seems to be no political advantage in such a stance.     

Decentralized Governance under Centralized Party Rule in Ethiopia: The Tigray Experience

Abstract

In the mid-1990s Ethiopia adopted a federal constitution promising regional autonomy and the creation and strengthening of local government units below the regional level. Some observers attribute the various shortcomings of Ethiopian federalism that have emerged since then to the original institutional/constitutional design. This paper, however, argues that what is not in the constitution has come to influence the workings of decentralization more than what is codified in it. The dominant national party in power, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), either directly or through affiliates, controls political office at all levels of government, thereby limiting the room for local initiative and autonomy. The presence of a national dominant party limits the responsiveness and downward accountability of Wereda (district) authorities; it also undermines political competition, and by extension, good governance at the grassroots level. The paper is based on field research carried out in the Tigray regional state of Ethiopia. The conclusion is that when one party dominates the politics of the region and its institutions, extra-constitutional intra-party politics determine how things work, thereby subjugating localities’ autonomy and impeding their ability to deliver on promises of decentralization.     

Why is there no Radical Right Party in Ireland?

The rise of the radical or extreme right parties in Europe – parties usually noted for strong, sometimes racist anti-immigrant ideologies – has attracted a great deal of attention in political science. Ireland, despite having some conditions favourable to the growth of such a party has no radical right party. This paper argues that that this is because the ‘space’ usually occupied by such parties – for young, poor people disaffected by economic change – is taken up by Sinn Féin, which though it has similarities to radical right parties, differs markedly in its attitudes to immigrants. It goes on to explain the special circumstances that prevent nationalist parties in Ireland from presenting overtly anti-immigrant platforms. The focus on anti-immigration and liberal economic policies for such parties may mean that other parties with strong resemblances are excluded from studies they might usefully be included.     

Charismatic female leadership and gender: Pia Kjærsgaard and the Danish People's Party

ABSTRACT

Research on the leaderships and electorates of populist right-wing parties emphasizes that most of these parties are charismatic and male-dominated, both as regards their leaderships and their voters. However, while studies about the gender gap focus mainly on demand-side factors, such as electoral support, socio-economic characteristics and the voters’ attitudes towards issues such as immigration, those that analyse the role and position of gender issues are still rare. Similarly, or even more, overlooked is an analysis of the rhetoric, style, charisma and discourse of populist female leaders, such as those representative of two now well-established Scandinavian populist right-wing parties: the Dansk Folkeparti (DF, Danish People’s Party) and Norway’s Fremskrittspartiet (FrP, Progress Party). Both parties have long been led by women although Pia Kjærsgaard of the DF recently stepped down, leaving the party leadership to Kristian Thulesen Dahl, a man of the younger generation of party members; Siv Jensen in Norway smoothly followed the long-term and charismatic leadership of Carl I. Hagen in 2006. The main focus of the paper, however, is on Pia Kjærsgaard, discussing the role gender plays in relation to her style, rhetoric and/or discursive strategies, but also in the gendered constructions featured in the Danish mainstream media. In the article, Meret also refers to the case of Marine Le Pen and the Front national (FN) in order to consider whether the Nordic cases represent a specific framework for female leadership, highly influenced by context and opportunity.     

Representation as a median mandate: Taking cross‐national differences seriously

The extent and ways in which popular preferences influence government policy are absolutely central to our understanding of modern democracy. Paul Warwick's discussion of these in the European Journal of Political Research in 2010 puts itself at the heart of the debate with its critique of the median mandate theory of McDonald and Budge, proposing an alternative ‘bilateralist’ concept of representation. This article questions whether this concept has much to add to our theoretical understanding of representational processes. However, Warwick's further conceptual points deserve serious consideration. These concern the time horizons within which representative processes work, and the status of the median position given multi‐motivated voting. At the evidential level, Warwick argues that survey‐based measures of voter and party left–right positions fail to produce the correspondence between median and government policy positions that median mandate theory would have us expect. However, survey‐based measures of median voter and party placements obscure important cross‐national variation. Using the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems ( CSES 2007 ), as Warwick does, this article shows that survey respondents norm their own and their country's party positions to their national context. The consequence is to make the political centre in all nations appear similar. Allowing for the relevant cross‐national differences brings the relationship between the median voter and government position back in line with expectations.     

Anti-capitalism in the name of ethno-nationalism: ideological shifts on the German extreme right

ABSTRACT

Sommer examines the (re-)emergence of anti-capitalist and anti-globalization themes within the ideology and discourses of the German extreme right. He argues that it would be short-sighted to interpret this development simply as another opportunistic attempt by the extreme right to incorporate Zeitgeist issues into its political agenda in order to appeal to a broader spectrum of supporters. An analysis of the latest campaigns of the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD)—the most successful extreme-right party in recent years—as well as the activities of groups that exist within the larger German extreme-right milieu, the so-called freie Kameradschaften, reveals that the taking up of social questions as well as anti-capitalist and anti-globalization themes marks a deeper shift within the political agenda of the extreme right in Germany. However, the analysis shows that racist and antisemitic issues do not disappear with this shift, but are linked with and incorporated into anti-capitalist and anti-globalization discourses.     

The national front in France and the construction of political legitimacy

The National Front in France has experienced a meteoric increase in support since 1981, attacting about ten per cent of the vote in elections at every level. The principal issues on which the party has won support ‐ immigration and security ‐ have become key domestic issues. This article analyses the rise of the party and the inability of the established parties of the right to maintain the confidence of their supporters. It also examines a process of construction of legitimacy in which political elites of right and left participated. Finally, an evaluation is made of the National Front's ability to maintain and expand its electoral strength.     

A Two-Dimensional Approach to the Political Opportunity Structure of Extreme Right Parties in Western Europe

Previous studies on the electoral fortunes of extreme right parties (ERPs) have pointed to the importance of variables of party competition for the success – or failure – of ERPs. These studies vary greatly when it comes to describing the political opportunity structure of the extreme right. Apart from their methodological differences, existing studies differ especially with regard to the assumed underlying dimension of party competition. This article tests the impact of three frequently discussed variables in the political opportunity structure of ERPs (mainstream party convergence, position of the established right and party system polarisation) on the vote share of ERPs in Western Europe. In addition to examining previous studies in this field, it focuses on the interplay between the economic and the cultural dimensions as part of the political opportunity structure. The authors show that a decrease in polarisation with regard to economic questions is accompanied by a growing salience of ERPs' core issues, leading in the end to an increase in ERPs' vote share.     

Towards a ‘Civic’ Narrative: British National Identity and the Transformation of the British National Party

This article examines the ways in which the BNP utilises the elements of British national identity in its discourse and argues that, during Griffin's leadership, the party has made a discursive choice to shift the emphasis from an ethnic to a civic narrative. We put forward two hypotheses, 1: the modernisation of the discourse of extreme right parties in the British context is likely to be related to the adoption of a predominantly civic narrative and 2: in the context of British party competition the BNP is likely to converge towards UKIP, drawing upon elements of its perceived winning formula, i.e. a predominantly civic rhetoric of national identity. We proceed to empirically test our hypotheses by conducting a twofold comparison. First, we compare the BNP's discourse pre‐ and post‐1999 showing the BNP's progressive adoption of a civic narrative; and second the BNP's post‐1999 discourse to that of UKIP in order to illustrate their similarities in terms of civic values.     

‘Austria First’ revisited: a diachronic cross-sectional analysis of the gender and body politics of the extreme right

ABSTRACT

In this paper, Rheindorf and Wodak provide a discourse-historical analysis of extreme-right cultural politics in Austria, ranging from the blatant racism in the speeches of Vienna’s former Deputy Mayor Johann Gudenus (now MP in the Austrian parliament) to the construction of an idealized national body in the election campaigns of the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ), its programmatic agenda in handbooks and pamphlets, and the performances of far-right pop singer Andreas Gabalier. Rheindorf and Wodak argue that such cultural politics use a wide spectrum of discursive strategies both inside and outside established party politics and that the accompanying production of an ideal extreme-right subject is informed by nativist ideology. The cross-sectional analysis demonstrates that the cultural politics of the Austrian extreme right ranges from appropriated national symbols to coded National Socialist iconography. These politics pervasively construct a gendered and racialized national body, policed by a ‘strict father’ and nurtured by a ‘self-sacrificing mother’, vis-à-vis an apocalyptic threat scenario identified with migration, intellectual and political elites, cosmopolitanism and progressive gender politics.