Gender and right-wing populism in the Low Countries: ideological variations across parties and time

ABSTRACT

Although scholarship on the general ideological orientation of right-wing populist parties is well established, few scholars have studied their ideas about gender. De Lange and Mügge therefore ask how differences in ideology shape right-wing populist parties' ideas on gender. Drawing on the qualitative content analysis of party manifestos, they compare the gender ideologies and concrete policy proposals of national and neoliberal populist parties in the Netherlands and Flanders from the 1980s to the present. They find that some parties adhere to a modern or modern-traditional view, while others espouse neo-traditional views. Moreover, some right-wing populist parties have adopted gendered readings of issues surrounding immigration and ‘Islam’, while others have not. The variation in stances on ‘classical’ gender issues can be explained by the genealogy and ideological orientation of the parties, whereas gendered views on immigration and Islam are influenced by contextual factors, such as 9/11.     

Rethinking Anti-Immigration Rhetoric after the Oslo and Utøya Terror Attacks

This article examines right-wing populism and populist rhetoric in Norway preceding the July 22, 2011 terror attacks at Utøya and in Oslo. It describes how the mainstream media, academics, and political parties have appealed to the public in an increasingly populist fashion and have spread fear about immigration, immigrants, and integration. It argues that while the populist right-wing Progress Party has adopted immigration and integration as its main cause and has gained support because of it, the Progress Party alone cannot be blamed for the widespread xenophobia in Norway. The media are also responsible for the way immigration, culture, and race have been reported, as are a wide range of politicians for formulating increasingly stricter immigration policies. In the aftermath of July 22 politicians became acutely concerned about their own anti-immigrant rhetoric and how it may have influenced the terrorist Anders Behring Breivik. A broad consensus to address and change the language used in the immigration debate was agreed upon; more openness and more democracy was promised. Much has changed, but even more has stayed the same in Norwegian politics and attitudes to immigration and Islam.     

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.     

The psychological roots of populist voting: Evidence from the United States,the Netherlands and Germany

What are the psychological roots of support for populist parties or outfits such as the Tea Party, the Dutch Party for Freedom or Germany's Left Party? Populist parties have as a common denominator that they employ an anti‐establishment message, which they combine with some ‘host’ ideology. Building on the congruency model of political preference, it is to be expected that a voter's personality should match with the message and position of his or her party. This article theorises that a low score on the personality trait Agreeableness matches the anti‐establishment message and should predict voting for populist parties. Evidence is found for this hypothesis in the United States, the Netherlands and Germany. The relationship between low Agreeableness and voting for populist parties is robust, controlling for other personality traits, authoritarianism, sociodemographic characteristics and ideology. Thus, explanations of the success of populism should take personality traits into account.     

Jean Thiriart in Cairo and Bagdad

ABSTRACT

In the ‘poor’ result achieved by Jean-Marie Le Pen in the 2007 presidential elections, many commentators saw the demise of the Front National. However, when asked by a journalist whether it was the end of her father's political career, Marine Le Pen smilingly replied: ‘I don't think so. In any case, this is the victory of his ideas!’ In this question and answer lies the whole story of the Front National and its impact on mainstream politics in the past two decades. First, Le Pen's defeat was exaggerated, the same way his victory had been in 2002. What Mondon argues in this paper is that the 2002 presidential elections did act as an ‘earthquake’ within French politics. However, this ‘earthquake’ did not trigger a tsunami of support for Jean-Marie Le Pen, but rather a tidal wave of misinformation and misunderstanding as to the real significance of the election results. By concentrating on the 2002 and 2007 presidential elections, Mondon highlights how this reaction led to the consecration of right-wing populist politics, best exemplified in the landslide election of Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007. He also provides an insight into the slippery slope Sarkozy's government took after its election, leading to an extremely rightward-leaning 2012 presidential campaign and new heights for the Front National.     

The effects of populism as a social identity frame on persuasion and mobilisation: Evidence from a 15-country experiment

This article investigates the impact of populist messages on issue agreement and readiness for action in 15 countries (N = 7,286). Specifically, populist communicators rely on persuasive strategies by which social group cues become more salient and affect people's judgment of and political engagement with political issues. This strategy is called ‘populist identity framing’ because the ordinary people as the in-group is portrayed as being threatened by various out-groups. By blaming political elites for societal or economic problems harming ordinary people, populist communicators engage in anti-elitist identity framing. Another strategy is to blame immigrants for social problems – that is, exclusionist identity framing. Finally, right-wing political actors combine both cues and depict an even more threatening situation of the ordinary people as the in-group. Based on social identity theory, an experimental study in 15 European countries shows that most notably the anti-elitist identity frame has the potential to persuade voters. Additionally, relative deprivation makes recipients more susceptible to the mobilising impact of the populist identity frames.     

Evola's interpretation of fascism and moral responsibility

ABSTRACT

The ideological influence that several right-wing radical thinkers exercised on the Norwegian ‘lone wolf’ terrorist Anders Behring Breivik raises the question of how far a writer can be held responsible for acts of terrorism s/he may have influenced. Italian history provides a vital lesson in this respect: namely, the role played by the Italian traditionalist Julius Evola in the crucial passage from Fascism to neo-fascism. After reviewing Evola's ideological development, Wolff then analyses Evola's influence on a young generation of neo-fascists in Italy. Another relevant topic is the ideological continuity between Fascism and neo-fascism identified here, as centred on Evola's view of ‘general fascism’ as the Traditional right.     

Transnationalism and the French Nouvelle Droite

ABSTRACT

Born in 1968, the French Nouvelle Droite (ND) is a ‘cultural school of thought’. It created a sophisticated European-wide political culture of the revolutionary right in an anti-fascist age; it helped to nurture the discourse of ‘political correctness’ among extreme right-wing political parties, and turned former French ultra-nationalists into pan-Europeanists seeking to smash the egalitarian heritage of 1789. Bar-On argues that the ND world-view has been shaped by transnational influences and that the ND has, in turn, shaped a decidedly more right-wing political culture in Europe in a transnational spirit. The transnational impact of ND ideas is a product of three key factors: first, the intellectual output and prestige of ND leader Alain de Benoist; second, the ‘right-wing Gramscianism’ of the ND's pan-European project that mimicked earlier attempts to unite interwar fascists and post-war neo-fascists into the revolutionary right; and, finally, the political space opened up by the decline of the European left after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Bar-On concludes by considering the influence of the ND on contemporary European politics, as well as the implications for the struggles against racism and the extreme right.     

Vom Rand in die Mitte – „Schamlose Normalisierung“

In this paper, I discuss the swing to the (far-)right in (Austrian) party politics during the election campaign and national election on October 15, 2017. This transformation is caused, I claim, by a process of normalisation, an accommodation to the, sometimes also extreme-right, agenda of formerly right-wing populist parties such as the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ). The election campaign of both the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) and the FPÖ focussed primarily on migration and refugee politics, based on a politics of fear and resentment. After first attempting to define the phenomenon of right-wing populism, I trace how tabooed and extreme right contents slowly became acceptable, as soon as the ÖVP shamelessly integrated some (not all) aspects of the FPÖ’s election program.     

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.     

Was ist Rechtspopulismus?

When a new type of party labelled ?right-wing populist“ by political scientists and journalists, arrived on the political scene in Western Europe thirty years ago, many observers thought that it would only be a short-lived manifestation of political protest. Today these parties are present in almost all European countries. Building on an introductory definition, the contribution will assess the root causes of right-wing populism, its ideological and programmatic features, its organizational traits and ways of adressing voters as well as its effects on party systems, governmental policies and the democracy in general. Concluding thoughts offer a number of recommendations how the challengers—which will in all likelihood not disappear in the near future—could be politically contained.     

Economic globalization, job insecurity and the populist reaction

A striking change in the political party systems of many established democracies in recent years has been the rise to electoral and political prominence of right-wing populist parties. Moving beyond the usual anti-statism and racism attitudinal explanatory foci, this article posits that popular support for these parties is associated with the job insecurity that populist party leaders have attributed to deepening international economic integration, or economic globalization. The conceptualization of job insecurity is discussed and its expected relationship to the mercantilism of right-wing populist parties clarified. The hypothesis is tested in the specific context of support for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party in the 1998 election to the Australian federal House of Representatives. The article concludes with a consideration of the wider implications of its findings.     

National past and populism: the re-elaboration of fascism and its impact on right-wing populism in Western Europe

Abstract

The electoral performance of right-wing populism depends on the type of re-elaboration of countries’ national past and their collective memories. Complementing socio-economic and political-institutional factors, the article analyses cultural opportunity structures. Given the link between fascist and populist visions of power, it shows that different collective memories of the fascist past and World War II open up or close down the space for right-wing populist parties. Theoretically, the typology includes four types of re-elaboration: culpabilisation, victimisation, heroisation and cancellation. Results of a comparative analysis of eight West European countries based on a novel measurement method point to (1) culpabilisation and heroisation as types of re-elaboration limiting right-wing populist parties’ electoral performance, (2) cancellation as a type having an undetermined effect, and (3) victimisation as a type triggering the success of right-wing populist parties.     

The personality of populists: provocateurs,charismatic leaders,or drunken dinner guests?

Abstract

The ‘populist phenomenon’ has received a lot of attention in recent years. Yet little is known about the populists themselves: who are they? They are often described as bad-mannered provocateurs disrupting the political game, but also as charismatic leaders able to persuade and motivate. Can a populist ‘style’ or ‘personality’ be identified? This article assesses to what extent populists score differently from ‘mainstream’ politicians on established personality inventories. Using a new dataset based on expert ratings for 152 candidates (including 33 populists) having competed in 73 elections worldwide, it is found that populists score lower on agreeableness, emotional stability and conscientiousness. At the same time, populists score higher on extraversion, narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism. These results have important implications for the study of the success of populists in contemporary democracies and beyond.     

Deliberative qualities in televised election debates: the influence of the electoral system and populism

Abstract

Concerns are raised repeatedly about the quality of televised debates. Both a country’s electoral system and the presence of populist candidates have been argued to influence the deliberative qualities of these debates. By using an extended version of the Discourse Quality Index, this study conducts a content analysis of 12 televised election debates in Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom between 2009 and 2015. Against expectations, results show that politicians in multiparty systems do not justify their policy positions more and are not more respectful in the televised debates. Rather, this study uncovers a clear populist challenge to key deliberative debate qualities across party systems. Left- and right-wing populist politicians adopt more positions without proper justification, and the presence of right-wing populists in the televised debates increases the number of disrespectful interactions, lowering the deliberative qualities of the televised debates in different electoral contexts.     

Mainstreaming populist discourse: the race-conscious legacy of neo-populist parties in Australia and Italy

Curran examines the political legacy of far-right neo-populist parties in Australia and Italy. She argues that assessments of their ‘success’ need to extend beyond the electoral decline or organizational implosion of the parties themselves. An important measure of their impact is the influence they have exerted on mainstream political discourse and styles of communication. That they have been successful in having such an impact is well illustrated in the politically expedient adoption of race-conscious, anti-immigration and anti-asylum policies in Australia and Italy. Curran examines the influence of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party and Umberto Bossi’s Lega Nord (Northern League) on the mainstreaming of populist discourse in these two countries. She focuses on some of the populist themes and styles embraced by the Australian political leader John Howard and his Italian counterpart Silvio Berlusconi, and she concludes that, regardless of their political fragility or outright demise, these far-right neo-populist parties have been successful in injecting populist themes and prejudices into the mainstream political discourse in their respective countries.     

The Blair Governments, Public Sector Reform and State Strategic Capacity

Two books at the end of the Blair era—by Michael Barber and Julian Le Grand—offer to redeem the ‘third way’. Both authors explore the political case for public sector reform and the means by which it can be accomplished. They explore a similar range of reform models: command and control; quasi‐markets; and devolution and transparency. But the circle between efficiency, client service and continuous improvement must be squared. Neither author considers the ‘learning by doing’ alternative. No less fundamentally, neither author addresses the political and technical challenges in developing strategy. How are issues to be aired in advance so as to expose evidence and perspectives? How are interests to be engaged and supporting coalitions formed? How are these processes to occur without executive commitment? How are unconventional ideas to be aired without being over‐ruled by populist or media sensationalism? These are the practical dilemmas that confounded Blair's efforts. These books invite a strategic conversation that is badly needed. But where in the political system can it be pursued?     

Antisemitic Europe and the ‘Third Way’: The Ideas of Maurice Bardèche

Abstract

Maurice Bardèche is an important neo-fascist writer whose ideas derive from those of Pierre Drieu la Rochelle and Robert Brasillach. After 1945 he argued that right-wing thought had been ghettoized and even imprisoned by a post-Nuremberg liberal political establishment. In the face of a US military and cultural occupation of Western Europe and an encroaching Communist Soviet menace, Bardèche argued for a united European ‘third force’ to confront these two enemies. His dream was of a fascist-ruled Europe that would regenerate and defend the continent and the West against Communism and liberalism. Organic and idealist fascist states, without the faults of Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy, would implement a moral revolution, bolster economic affairs and prevent Europe being swamped by foreign goods, such as Asian electronics. He regretted Europe's membership of NATO and its being sucked into Cold War conflicts in the Middle East and in support of Israel. Europe's and fascism's enemies were blamed for all their ills, and a Jewish conspiracy was blamed for its campaign against the world whether in the guise of US financial power or through its control of Bolshevism, the latter being judged responsible for terrorism and subversion in the developing world. Bardèche was purely a warrior of the pen, and was important primarily for providing a link between fascism and neo-fascism and a training ground for new fascist writers in his journal Défense de l'Occident.     

The Measure of a Nation

In his ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, and in several speeches in subsequent years, Enoch Powell claimed that immigration was an ‘issue of numbers’. Britain could not, he believed, accommodate a significant number of non‐white people without threatening the existence of the nation. I argue that Powell's opposition to immigration, and his numerical framing of it, rested upon his racialised conception of British, or English, nationhood. As he was shunned by political elites, Powell articulated an increasingly populist nationalism. Drawing repeated references to Britain's wartime experiences, Powell claimed that the British, or more often the English, were being attacked by an immigrant enemy without, and betrayed by an establishment enemy within. I conclude with some reflections on the similarities between Powellite nationalism and contemporary discourses about national identity during and since the European Union referendum.     

Paternalist populism and illiberal elitism in Central Europe

Through the analysis of the ideology of two Hungarian parties typically considered as populist, this paper investigates how elitism can be integrated into an overall populist appeal. The two parties, Fidesz and Jobbik, exhibit features of paternalist populism and illiberal elitism while offering different responses to the challenges typically confronted by authoritarian populist movements. With regard to Jobbik, the paper uncovers the existence of three distinct ideologies: right-wing populist; ultra-nationalist; and traditionalist and ‘meta-nationalist.’ The paper directs attention to the layered nature of partisan ideological discourses and assesses the relevance of the analysed model for Eastern and Central Europe.