It's not Economic Interventionism,Stupid! Reassessing the Political Economy of Radical Right‐wing Populist Parties

This paper engages in a comparative analysis of the economic positions of radical right‐wing populist parties in Western Europe. Following Ennser‐Jedenastik ( 2016 ), we argue that those parties’ political economy is best captured in terms of the nativist, populist and authoritarian features of their core ideology, each of which produces a specific set of economic policies independent from the issue of government intervention in the economy. On basis of an analysis of the election manifestos of seven radical right‐wing populist parties in Western Europe in the period 2005‐2015, we argue that those parties share similarities in their economic nativism, authoritarianism and populism, whilst their positions on the traditional role of the state in the economy are more diverse. The findings indicate also a unified ‘nativist’ response to the global financial crisis both in terms of welfare chauvinism and economic protectionism. We discuss the role of internal and external factors in explaining the economic profile of radical right‐wing populist parties.     

Populist Communication and Publicity: An Empirical Study of Contextual Differences in Switzerland

Abstract: This study analyzes the context‐dependency of populist communication and asks whether there are variations in populist communication for representatives of different kinds of parties. In contrast to previous research on European populism, which mostly considers only the right‐wing, this study includes the entire scope of political parties; thus allowing for the possibility of the diffusion of populism in contemporary politics. The empirical contribution is a multilevel analysis of speeches in non‐public and public forums (closed parliamentary committees, open parliamentary floors, and the talk show ‘Arena’) on immigration and asylum amendments in Switzerland. A so‐called populist party, the Swiss People’s Party, played a significant role in drafting the legislation. Analysis reveals that a) different public settings influence populist communication differently; b) a non‐populist party, the Christian‐democrats, employs more populist communication on average than any other party and its populism is employed more consistently across contexts than that of the Swiss People’s Party; c) but when speaking in media forms, the Swiss People’s Party employs substantially more populist communication than any other party. Thus, the type of public forum does not uniformly contribute to higher levels of populist communication, but rather the effect of forum type varies substantially by party.     

Past the saturation point: Why voters switch from mainstream to niche parties and vice-versa

When do voters switch from mainstream to niche parties and vice-versa? To understand these switches, we focus on the saturation of the party system. We theorize that when a party system is oversaturated – i.e. when a higher effective number of parties contests elections than predicted based on socio-political contextual characteristics (the system's ‘carrying capacity’) – it becomes increasingly likely that: (1) mainstream party voters defect to niche parties; and (2) niche party voters refrain from switching to mainstream parties. Based on vote-switching patterns in 15 countries and 53 elections, we find that oversaturation increases shifts from mainstream to niche parties. Further analyses show that this holds for shifts from mainstream to radical left and right parties, but not for shifts to green parties. This has important consequences for research on vote switching, the electoral consequences of policy differentiation and the competition between niche and mainstream parties.     

Compensatory Voting in Direct Legislation. Evidence from Switzerland

In elections, voters sometimes compensate for post‐election bargaining processes by electing parties that are more extreme than themselves. We investigate compensatory voting in direct democracy. Our goals are to develop and test a measure of compensatory voting in direct legislation and assess its extent of compensatory voting. Empirically, we draw on the case of Switzerland, a country with frequent popular votes. We operationalize compensatory voting as voting ‘yes’ on a popular initiative in spite of endorsing arguments that speak against this initiative, under the condition of being well‐informed about the initiative. Using data from post‐ballot surveys on 17'570 individuals having voted on 63 popular initiatives in the period 1993 to 2015, our analysis shows that compensatory voting has not significantly increased in Switzerland in this period.     

So Close But So Far: Voting Propensity and Party Choice for Left‐Wing Parties

While the bulk of the literature focuses on the vote for parties from different blocs, the purpose of our article is to study the vote for two parties that are ideologically very close to each other: The Social Democrats and the Greens in Switzerland. To that end, we develop a two‐step model, where voters first make a selection of parties that are acceptable to them and then make their electoral choice out of this set of acceptable alternatives. We use voting propensities as a measure of the first, consideration step and we show that they strongly depend on the distance between voters and parties on the Left–Right scale. With regard to the second, choice stage of the electoral process we hypothesize about the factors that may account for the varying ability of the two parties to convert potential voters into real voters. Our empirical tests provide encouraging support for our hypotheses regarding the impact of socio‐demographic variables and issue voting. Strategic considerations, by contrast, do not seem to matter.     

Strategic Overshooting in National Council Elections

The Swiss party system has become strongly polarized over the last decade, following the rise of the Swiss People's Party and the electoral losses of center parties. This article suggests that these developments are, at least in part, a consequence of strategic behaviour among voters. As the government policy is the result of institutionalized multiparty bargaining, voters have incentives to compensate for this watering‐down by supporting parties whose positions are more extreme than their own. This article empirically tests extent and conditions of compensatory voting in the 2007 National Council Elections using Selects survey data. Our results suggest that compensatory voting generally outweighs voting based on ideological proximity and increases with rising district magnitude.     

A Welfare State for Whom? A Group‐based Account of the Austrian Freedom Party's Social Policy Profile

What explains the social policy profile of populist radical right parties (PRRPs)? Building on the argument made by Mudde (2007) that socio‐economic policies are secondary elements within the populist radical right ideology, this paper conjectures that the primary elements of that ideology (nativism, authoritarianism, and populism) structure the PRRP's attitudes in the social policy domain. Based on a discussion of the PRRP's core ideology a number of expectations are derived as to which groups should be viewed as deserving or undeserving of support. These expectations are examined through an analysis of the social policies put forward in the election manifestos of the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) between 1983 and 2013. The analysis confirms most of the expectations and highlights an important shift in the FPÖ's social policy agenda, from welfare populist arguments and some retrenchment proposals under Jörg Haider to strong welfare chauvinism after the leadership change in 2005.     

Spain: No Country for the Populist Radical Right?

Although there is growing research interest in populist radical right (PRR) parties in Western Europe, little attention has been paid to the case of Spain – a country where these parties are almost non-existent or irrelevant from an electoral and political point of view. In a nutshell, we maintain that in contemporary Spain there is real demand for PRR parties, but three supply-side factors are impeding their electoral breakthrough and persistence: the cleavage structure of the country, the strategy of competition of the mainstream right and the electoral system. At the same time, we postulate that at least in the case of Spain the Great Recession has not improved the electoral odds of the PRR as such but rather facilitated the emergence of leftist populist forces.     

German Voters in Times of Crisis: The Impact of Perceptions and Economic Context on Electoral Behaviour

This paper analyses the connection between economic context, voters’ individual assessment of the economy, and party identification, taking the German national elections of 2009 as an example. Based on the results of multinomial and multilevel regression models, the article shows that partisanship moderates how the economy affects the vote. In cases of increasing unemployment in the constituency, voters are less likely to vote for the Social Democrats instead of the CDU and the opposition. This effect is particularly strong amongst voters who report that they identify with the Social Democrats. Regarding the effect of voters’ assessment of the national economy, the results are different. In this case, a better evaluation of the regional economy increases the probability to vote for right-wing parties – notably amongst voters without partisanship. These findings suggest that the moderating effect of partisanship on the economy’s impact on voting behaviour should not be overestimated. What is more, this analysis implies that research on economic voting should always account for both contextual factors and voters’ personal assessment of the economy, as these measures reveal different dimensions of economic voting.     

The Welfare Agenda of the Populist Radical Right in Western Europe: Combining Welfare Chauvinism,Producerism and Populism*

Recent scholarship on the populist radical right tends to imprecisely describe the welfare agenda of this party family with reference to its key ideological characteristics of nativism, authoritarianism, and populism. We propose an alternative analytical framework that considers the multidimensionality of welfare state positions and the “deservingness criteria” that underlie ideas about welfare entitlement. Applying this framework to a sample of four European populist radical right parties, we conclude that three interrelated frames inform their welfare agenda. These parties, we argue, advocate social closure not only on the basis of the deservingness criterion of identity (welfare chauvinism), but also on criteria of control, attitude, and reciprocity (welfare producerism) and on an antagonism between the people and the establishment (welfare populism). Understanding the welfare agenda of the populist radical right requires us to move beyond welfare chauvinism and to reconsider the concept of welfare producerism and its interaction with welfare chauvinism.     

Understanding Political Knowledge and its Influence on Voting Preferences in the 2007 Federal Election

In this article we propose a model to explain how voters’ perceptions of their ideological proximity to a party affect their propensity to vote for that party. We argue that political knowledge plays a crucial moderating role in the relationship between party proximity and voting propensity. It is necessary, however, to distinguish between institutional knowledge (information about the political system) and party knowledge (information about the parties’ left–right positions). An analysis of survey data from the 2007 Swiss federal elections supports our main hypothesis that party knowledge enhances the link between party proximity and voting propensity. Institutional knowledge may have additional influence, but clear evidence for this effect was obtained only for propensities to vote for the Swiss People's Party (SVP). Overall, the impact of political knowledge was found to be substantial, even after controlling for the outstanding influence of party identification and other predictors of voting propensities.     

Invalid Voting in German Constituencies

This article studies invalid voting, which has received very little attention so far, given the broad interest and substantial relevance of voting behaviour research. Existing evidence is mostly limited to rather specific and hardly representative countries. Yet, the extent of invalid ballots is not negligible. Despite undemanding electoral rules, more invalid votes are cast in German general elections than votes for niche parties. Against this backdrop, the article describes prevalence of invalid voting in the mixed electoral system of Germany and tests explanations of its variation between constituencies. Analysing data from the most recent Bundestag Election, results give clear support to politico-institutional explanations: voters are more willing to waste their vote if second-order elections are held concurrently. Specifically under the plurality rule, more (first) votes are wasted if there are large shares for parties without direct candidates and many competing candidates.     

The politics of national‐populism: Ideology and policies of the German Republikaner party

In this article, the Republikaner party's ideology and policies are explored on the basis of programmes and other public statements. There will be an emphasis on economic policies and issues of national and ethnic identity. It will be argued that the Republikaner party is targeting a broader electoral coalition than its main competitors and predecessors on the extreme right. In its attempt to mobilise a broad and heterogeneous protest coalition and to attract voters beyond the narrow confines of traditional right‐wing extremism the party makes contradictory promises to various sectional groups without being able to integrate them into a consistent framework of economic policy. These contradictions are covered up by the party's radical nationalism, extreme xenophobia and populist propaganda.     

The Political Consequences of National Crisis Management: Micro-Level Evidence from German Voters during the 2008/09 Global Economic Crisis

How does national crisis management affect the electoral fortunes of coalition governments? Drawing on micro-level data from just before the 2009 federal elections in Germany, this article investigates how voters' evaluation of specific policies against the global financial crisis affected approval of and voting intentions for the then-governing grand coalition. We find that voters in favour of the two most prominent anti-crisis policies, the car-scrap bonus and the public guarantee for banks, were more likely to approve of and to vote for the two incumbent parties. These evaluations of specific policies influenced individuals' vote choice in addition to their assessments of the economic situation more generally and in addition to party identification. This suggests that even in the greatest economic turmoil with blurred political responsibilities, government parties can win or lose voters through the implementation of specific economic policies.     

Salience‐Based Congruence Between Parties & their Voters: The Swiss Case

Policy congruence between parties and their voters is a prerequisite for the latter's representation. Related research typically focuses on the left‐right dimension. We contribute to this literature by conceiving the alignment between citizens and political elites as congruence on issues that individual citizens consider important (salience‐based congruence). Furthermore, we approach salience from the citizen's perspective and measure it at the individual level. Based on data from the Swiss Election Study (2007), we demonstrate that the assessment of party representation changes once we take salience into account. Policy congruence on salient issues is high and niche parties perform better than mainstream parties. Our arguments and findings about the role personal issue salience plays at the individual and party levels have important repercussions for contemporary debates on representation and policy congruence.     

Access to party positions and preference formation: a field experiment

Abstract: Surveys are sometimes used to assess preferences towards policy issues that are remote from experience and that have never been publicly discussed. How do these preferences of isolated survey respondents compare with preferences expressed by voters who have access to advice from competing political parties? I address this question by conducting a field experiment with a sample of the general public in which I experimentally control the subjects’ access to the actual positions of competing parties and interest groups on specific novel policy propositions. Access to party positions decreased approval of the proposed environmental policy among right‐wing voters by over fifty percent, and this effect was similar for different educational groups. When voters had access to party positions, their policy preferences were more consistent with their general political orientation. I conclude by discussing implications of these results for the debate about voter competence and for preference elicitation using surveys.     

Are European Elections Second-Order Elections for Everyone?

Second-order election (SOE) theory has been used to explain voting behaviour in European elections. Voters believe that less is at stake in some elections and some voters hence tend to cast a protest vote. However, most studies on the topic have focused on the demand side of SOEs – i.e. on the voters – and have ignored or only partially tackled the supply side – i.e. the strategic behaviour of parties – and excluded small and marginal parties (SMPs). However, SMPs may have greater incentive to seriously compete in SOEs. The 2019 European Parliament elections in Germany were particularly interesting to SMPs as there was no voting threshold, thereby increasing the chances of SMPs. To capture whether SMPs view European elections as first-order elections and therefore expend more resources than parliamentary parties on these elections, I analysed campaign expenditures and manifestos. Results indicate that SMPs act within a rational actor framework, though not unequivocally.     

Correct Voting in Direct Legislation

Correct voting in elections has been extensively analysed in the recent past. However, thus far, correct voting in direct legislation has hardly been investigated. This is all the more surprising since direct legislation is a more demanding form of democracy and, thus, to vote one's true preferences in direct legislation represents a greater challenge than picking the “right” party or the “right” candidate at elections. Moreover, the few researches on the correctness of individual referendum votes used a measurement method that we think has some methodological shortfalls. Instead, we want to propose another better‐suited method of measuring correct voting in direct legislation settings. This method makes use of voters' stances on the issue at stake. Besides, we will scrutinize the share of correct voting as well as its determinants on the Swiss popular vote of November 2009, which included three rather different propositions. The study shows that a majority of Swiss voters are indeed able to vote their true preferences. The ability to vote correctly depends primarily on the individual voter's project‐specific knowledge, but also, under certain circumstances, on the use of heuristics.     

Is Consensual Politicizing Being Punished in Switzerland?

Over the last decade, Switzerland has been characterized by both a radicalization of its political system and the relative success of the SP and SVP parties, which tend to adopt a strategy of permanent campaigning. Because of this, it is often argued that politicians are held accountable for their behaviour and that their electoral successes depend on their voting behaviour in parliament. We thus explore whether the voting behaviour of representatives, or citizens' evaluations of parties' ideological positions had an impact on their electoral success in the 1995, 1999, and 2003 national elections. More precisely, we assess how far the proximity and directional models explain the electoral success of incumbents and parties using roll call data for the National Council as well as the Selects surveys at the individual level. The results at both levels suggest that voters' choice is largely consistent with what is predicted by the spatial models of electoral behaviour. Swiss voters form their party preference on both proximity and direction, which supports a mixed model of electoral behaviour.     

Leaders,the Economy or Iraq? Explaining Voting in the 2004 Australian Election*

Following the 2001 “border security” election, it was assumed that the 2004 federal election would revert to the traditional campaign battleground of socio‐economic issues. This prediction proved to be only partly true, and while economic and social issues did figure in the election campaign, much more important were popular perceptions of the leaders. Indirectly, the Iraq War also had some impact, mediated through evaluations of John Howard. Analysis of leader effects suggests that Mark Latham was not the electoral liability for Labor that many have subsequently claimed. Ultimately, the Coalition won the election because they had a highly popular leader who had presided over a period of sustained economic growth. The election emphasizes the central role that the party leaders play in modern election campaigns.