Extreme-right parties in contemporary Estonia

Kasekamp examines extreme-right political parties (ERPs) in Estonia since the restoration of independence in 1991. While nationalist sentiments have been widespread and political discourse has been dominated by the centre right, ERPs have not been successful. It is possible to identify two distinct generations of ERPs in Estonia with two different programmatic emphases: the first of 1992–8 could be labelled ‘anti-Soviet’; the second generation beginning in 1999 focuses on opposition to the European Union (EU) and as such has more in common with the ERPs in Western Europe than the first generation. Following Roger Eatwell’s model for the political breakthrough of ERPs, Kasekamp concludes that conducive conditions do not exist at present for such a breakthrough in Estonia, although opposition to the EU offers notable potential for future mobilization.     

Assessing the diversity of anti-establishment and populist politics in Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract

The more populism enters public debates, the more it needs close scrutiny. Central and Eastern Europe offers a useful context for exploring the diversity of parties identified as populist. Anti-establishment rhetoric provides a suitable conceptual starting point because of its pervasive role in the region’s political discourse. Using a new expert survey, this article details the relationship between anti-establishment salience and political positions, showing that anti-establishment parties occupy a full range across both economic and cultural dimensions and many occupy more centrist positions. Narrowing the focus to content analysis of anti-establishment parties’ thin ideology in the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia, it is concurrently found that for many actors (including those usually labelled as populist) anti-establishment rhetoric is indeed predominant, yet not always extensively combined with other elements of populism: people-centrism and invocation of general will. The findings are important for understanding multiple varieties of anti-establishment politics also beyond the region.     

Varieties of Radicalism: Examining the Diversity of Radical Left Parties and Voters in Western Europe

Radical left parties (RLPs) are diverse and several RLP subtypes have been distinguished in the literature. However, the degree to which these subtypes are linked to significantly different policy proposals has not been analysed, and little is known about whether subtypes are associated with differences in their respective voters’ characteristics. This article analyses the policy positions of RLPs across a number of issues, using manifesto and expert survey data, allowing insights into the differentiation between types of RLPs. RLPs differ in the extent to which they adopt New Politics issues, and the article proposes a classification of Traditional and New Left RLPs. Using cross-national survey data from the European Election Studies series and multilevel multinomial models, the article examines the ideological, policy and social differences in the electorates of the various types of RLPs. It finds socio-demographic and attitudinal differences between the voters of Traditional and New Left RLPs that are consistent with the programmatic differences of the parties.     

(Re‐)join the party! The effects of direct democracy on party membership in Europe

It has been argued that political parties are in decline. While they used to be responsible for connecting citizens to the state by translating their preferences into policies, they have increasingly become part of the state, acting as governors instead. While this perspective emphasises parties’ representative function, it is less clear what their role is in a more direct democratic context. Parties may gain support due to such context, but they may also be seen increasingly redundant in a situation where citizens can co‐decide directly. Focusing on party membership, this study tests these rival expectations on a panel of 16 West European democracies over the period 1980–2008 and finds that parties tend to have higher levels of party membership in a direct democratic context. The usage of referendums, however, does not contribute to this effect.     

Hyperaccountability: Economic voting in Central and Eastern Europe

Are citizens in the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe able to hold politicians accountable at elections? The inheritance of communism—disengaged citizens, economic flux, and inchoate party systems—might be expected to weaken accountability. Looking at the results of 34 elections in 10 Central and Eastern European countries, this paper finds instead a phenomenon that it calls hyperaccountability. Incumbents are held accountable for economic performance—particularly for unemployment—but this accountability distinguishes not between vote losses and gains, but between large and small losses. This result is significant in several respects. The evidence for economic voting restores some faith in the ability of voters to control their representatives in new democracies. The consistency of punishment in the region, however, may mitigate some of the benefits of economic voting. If incumbents know they will lose, then they may decide to enrich themselves when in power rather than produce good policies.     

Communist successor parties and government survival in Central Eastern Europe

This article analyses coalition survival in eleven post‐Communist, Central and Eastern European democracies. Survival analysis demonstrates that Communist Successor Parties (CSPs) are central to understanding government dissolution processes in post‐communism. Coalitions spanning the ‘regime divide’ between CSPs and parties not affiliated with the ancien regime last longer than governments that do not. Regime divide governments also are more likely to fall during periods of positive economic performance, while other governments fall during periods of negative economic performance. The reason lies in parties’ incentives to prolong their regime divide coalition with the CSP, especially in the face of adverse conditions.     

Stepping in the same river twice: Stability amidst change in Eastern European party competition

Party competition in Eastern Europe faces a seeming paradox. On the one hand, research finds increased political volatility in these countries, while, on the other, some authors demonstrate inherent ideological stability in the region. This research note presents a new methodological approach to adjudicating between these two findings, and suggests that while political organisations come and go, the ideological structure of party competition in Eastern Europe is strikingly steady. By developing a number of different measures of the dimensional structure of party competition, the consistency of the measures across countries, as well as their relative stability within countries over time, is demonstrated. The findings speak to current developments in Eastern Europe, and have implications beyond the region. The conclusion that even volatile party systems can be underpinned by stable ideological oppositions points to two different types of party system structure: one related to parties as organisations, and the other related to parties as expressions of political divides.     

Three decades of populist radical right parties in Western Europe: So what?

The populist radical right constitutes the most successful party family in postwar Western Europe. Many accounts in both academia and the media warn of the growing influence of populist radical right parties (PRRPs), the so‐called ‘verrechtsing’ (or right turn) of European politics, but few provide empirical evidence of it. This lecture provides a first comprehensive analysis of the alleged effects of the populist radical right on the people, parties, policies and polities of Western Europe. The conclusions are sobering. The effects are largely limited to the broader immigration issue, and even here PRRPs should be seen as catalysts rather than initiators, who are neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the introduction of stricter immigration policies. The lecture ends by providing various explanations for the limited impact of PRRPs, but it is also argued that populist parties are not destined for success in opposition and failure in government. In fact, there are at least three reasons why PRRPs might increase their impact in the near future: the tabloidisation of political discourse; the aftermath of the economic crisis; and the learning curve of PRRPs. Even in the unlikely event that PRRPs will become major players in West European politics, it is unlikely that this will lead to a fundamental transformation of the political system. PRRPs are not a normal pathology of European democracy, unrelated to its basic values, but a pathological normalcy, which strives for the radicalisation of mainstream values.     

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.     

Catalysts and barriers: Explaining electoral reform in Western Europe

Most accounts of electoral system change tend to consider it as being driven by purely partisan interests. Political parties are expected to change the electoral rules as a way to maximise gains or minimise losses. However, little work has been done on the question of why electoral reforms are so scarce in spite of these potential benefits. In this study, a wide range of both factors that may foster (‘catalysts’) and ones that may hinder (‘barriers’) the change of electoral institutions are investigated. A statistical analysis is performed of 16 West European countries from 1975 to 2005, covering 23 reforms of the proportionality of their electoral systems. It is found that procedural barriers are more effective for explaining the likelihood of electoral reforms than (most of) the catalysts. Additionally, there are indications that courts may play a more active role in triggering reform than previously thought.     

Still men’s parties? Gender and the radical right in comparative perspective

This framing paper introduces the symposium on gender and the radical right. With the exception of a few recent studies, gender issues have received little attention in research on the European radical right. The purpose of this symposium is to address that and examine (1) whether radical right parties are still ‘men’s parties’ – parties led and supported primarily by men and (2) to what extent and how women and women’s concerns have been included by these parties. It argues that radical right parties have changed their appeal since their origins in the 1980s. There is now evidence of the fact that radical right parties, at least in some countries, exhibit an active political involvement of women and engage in some representation of women’s concerns. This puts them in a more ‘standardised’ political position vis-à-vis other parties. Given the current lack of focus on this topic, and given the recent gendered changes in radical right parties, this symposium stresses the academic and political importance of studying gender relations in radical right politics.     

Parties’ policy adjustments in response to changes in issue saliency

Abstract

A number of studies have investigated when parties change their policy positions. However, this growing body of research has had limited interaction with the literature on issue competition. To bring these two perspectives together, this article investigates how and when parties adjust their respective policy positions on immigration, the environment and the welfare state. In the article it is argued that especially large parties in electoral terms adjust their policy positions on specific issues in response to changes in the party system saliency of these issues. When the other parties increase their focus on a given issue, large parties adjust their position in the direction preferred by a majority of the voters. In the article this argument is investigated empirically, based on CMP data from 18 West European countries from 1980 to 2014. The findings largely support the argument and show a strong potential for further integration of the two dominant perspectives on party competition.     

Electoral entry and success of ethnic minority parties in central and eastern Europe: A hierarchical selection model

The paper examines determinants of electoral entry and success of ethnic minority parties in central and eastern Europe. The application of a hierarchical selection model shows that the strategic entry of minority parties depends on their expected electoral success due both to observed and unobserved factors. Drawing on formal models of electoral entry, the electoral success of new (or niche) parties is expected to be influenced by the costs of entry (determined by electoral thresholds) and the potential for electoral support. The latter depends on the reactions of political competitors and electoral demand, measured here as the size of ethnic groups and the saliency of ethnic issues. In line with these expectations, parties only run if they can expect electoral support sufficient to pass the electoral threshold. This finding would have been overlooked by a naïve model of electoral success which does not take self-selection into account.     

Keeping the rascals in: Anti‐political‐establishment parties and their cost of governing in established democracies

Coalition governments in established democracies incur, on average, an electoral ‘cost of governing’. This cost varies across coalition partners, and is higher for anti‐political‐establishment parties. This is because, if such a party participates in a coalition, it loses the purity of its message by being seen to cooperate with the political establishment. In order to demonstrate that anti‐political‐establishment parties suffer an additional cost of governing, this article builds on the work by Van der Brug et al. and refines the standard cost of governing theory by ‘bringing the party back in’. The results of the analyses, based on 594 observations concerning 51 parties in seven Western European countries, cast doubt on the conventional concept of a cost of governing that pertains to all parties equally. The findings call for a major revision of the standard cost of governing literature, while adding a significant contribution to the debate on strategies against parties that may constitute a danger to democracy.     

Institutions and the stabilization of party systems in the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe

Most explanations of party system stability focus on the strength of mass-elite linkages. We highlight the role of institutions, focusing on how electoral rules and elected institutions, especially the presidency, impact elites' incentives to coordinate on a stable set of parties or to form new parties, thus affecting electoral volatility. Using Central and Eastern European elections data, we find that directly elected presidents increase volatility and that presidential power magnifies this effect. Absent a directly elected president, high district magnitude is associated with increased volatility, but district magnitude dampens the impact of an elected president on volatility; hence, our findings underscore the interactive impact of institutions on party systems. We also find evidence that bicameralism and concurrence of presidential and parliamentary elections decrease electoral volatility. Our model not only explains persistently high electoral volatility in Eastern Europe, but the extreme stability of Western European party systems.     

The distribution of individual cabinet positions in coalition governments: A sequential approach

Multiparty government in parliamentary democracies entails bargaining over the payoffs of government participation, in particular the allocation of cabinet positions. While most of the literature deals with the numerical distribution of cabinet seats among government parties, this article explores the distribution of individual portfolios. It argues that coalition negotiations are sequential choice processes that begin with the allocation of those portfolios most important to the bargaining parties. This induces conditionality in the bargaining process as choices of individual cabinet positions are not independent of each other. Linking this sequential logic with party preferences for individual cabinet positions, the authors of the article study the allocation of individual portfolios for 146 coalition governments in Western and Central Eastern Europe. The results suggest that a sequential logic in the bargaining process results in better predictions than assuming mutual independence in the distribution of individual portfolios.     

The survival and termination of party mergers in Europe

Why do constituent parties that participated in a party merger that was intended to be permanent decide to leave the merger to re‐enter party competition separately? To address this question, merger termination is conceptualised in this article as an instance of new party formation, coalition termination and institutionalisation failure. Building on this conceptualisation, three sets of factors are presented that account for which mergers are likely to be terminated by constituent parties and which are not. To test these three sets of hypotheses, a mixed‐methods design is used. First, survival analysis is applied to a new dataset on the performance of mergers in 21 European democracies during the postwar period. The findings support hypotheses derived from a conception of merger termination as new party formation: pre‐ and post‐merger legislative performance significantly affect the probability of merger termination. Furthermore, the institutionalisation of constituent parties helps to sustain mergers if the latter already built trust in pre‐merger cooperation, in line with the conception of merger termination as institutionalisation failure. Two theory‐confirming case studies are then analysed: one case of merger survival and the other of termination. These case studies substantiate the working of the significant variables identified in the large‐N analysis that drove the selection of case studies. They also reveal how mediating factors difficult to capture in large‐N designs help to account for why factors that – theoretically – should have complicated the working of the ‘survival case’, and should have been beneficial to the ‘termination case’, did not generate the expected effects.     

Taking stock of policy performance in Central and Eastern Europe: Policy outcomes between policy reform,transitional pressure and international influence

Despite the ever growing body of scholarly work on policy developments in the post‐communist New Member States of the European Union (NMS), systematic comparisons of policy outcome performance and its determinants are still scarce. This article identifies patterns of post‐communist policy outcomes across the fields of economic, social and environmental policy. By employing pooled time‐series cross‐sectional analysis with a Fixed Effects Vector Decomposition (FEVD) estimator it investigates to what extent policy outcome performance is determined by differing policy efforts (outputs or reform tracks), transitional conditions and international influences. Although citizens are still negatively affected by the initial economic recession, especially in the social domain, policy reforms and efforts are decisive in determining the outcome performance of the NMS relative to one another in the longer run. Successful and comprehensive market reforms and steering capabilities prove to be particularly important in this regard. Furthermore, internationalisation has an important, albeit ambiguous, impact. While exposure to the world market is reflected in negative policy performance, interaction with and financial commitment from Western European Union countries promote positive policy outcomes.     

The Success of the Regionalist Parties in the 2014 Elections in Belgium

In May 2014, and for the second time in her political history, regional, federal and European elections were organized simultaneously in Belgium. In the direct follow-up of the sixth state reform, which increased the powers and autonomy of the Belgian Regions and Communities, these elections were crucial for the future of the country and for the multi-level coalition formation at the regional and federal levels. The political campaign was dominated by socioeconomic issues and demands for further autonomy, particularly in the Flemish region. Regional electoral results confirmed the success of the regionalist parties in Flanders, but also in Brussels and in the German-speaking Community. These successes allowed regionalist parties to enter all regional and federal governments—often as the dominant party—with the exception of the Walloon and the French-speaking Community cabinets.     

Legislative Organisation and its Determinants in European Parliamentary Democracies

Questions regarding the origin and evolution of legislative institutions are at the heart of comparative legislative studies. Much research in this area focuses on the US Congress; in contrast, comparative studies of European democracies have been more limited. Addressing this imbalance, this special issue showcases newly emerging research on legislative organisation in Europe. In doing so, it brings together contributions that explore the rationales behind the emergence of, and variation in, national European voting practices, investiture rules, minority rights, committee power, agenda control, debating rules and individual MPs’ rights.