A Rising Tide? The Salience of Immigration and the Rise of Anti‐Immigration Political Parties in Western Europe

In this article, we consider the causes of the increase in voting for anti‐immigration parties in western Europe in the past decade. We first note that one of the most commonly assumed reasons for this increase is an associated increase in anti‐immigration sentiment, which we show is likely to be false. We also outline the major theoretical explanations, which we argue are likely to be incomplete. We then introduce our proposed explanation: these parties have benefitted from a sharp increase in the salience of immigration amongst some voters. We show that there are strong correlations over time between the salience of immigration and the polling of such parties in most western European countries. We argue that aspects of immigration in the last decade have activated pre‐existing opposition to immigration amongst a shrinking segment of the populations of western European states.     

‘Enoch Powell Speaks for Britain’: The Press,the Public and the Speech

This article explores popular reactions to Enoch Powell's speech in Birmingham on 20 April 1968. It describes the protests by sympathetic workers, such as the Smithfield meat porters, and the responses of the press, both nationally and in the West Midlands. It considers the speech's impact on immigrants themselves and it makes the case that Powell's real significance was as an early champion of a particular kind of anti‐Establishment populism, which has now become a very familiar feature of our political landscape.     

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.     

Why Right‐Leaning Populism has Grown in the Most Advanced Liberal Democracies of Europe

Immigration and new class divisions, combined with a growing anti‐elitism and political correctness, are often used as explanations for the strong gains for right‐leaning populist parties in national elections across Europe in recent years. But contrary to what we might assume, such parties have been very successful in the most developed and comprehensive welfare states, in nations—such as the Nordic countries—with the best scores on economic equality and social inclusion and long established political and judicial institutions enjoying a high degree of popular legitimacy. As argued in this article, this seems to happen because a duopoly of the centre‐left and centre‐right political establishment has kept issues such as immigration and new class divisions off the public agenda and hence paved the way for right‐leaning ‘disruptor’ populist parties with an anti‐immigration agenda in times of increasing immigration.     

Addressing contradictory needs: the Lega Nord and Italian immigration policy

ABSTRACT

Cento Bull addresses the question of whether the Italian Lega Nord, when in government, pursues policies that contradict its rhetoric (politics of simulation or symbolic politics) or policies that are in line with its dominant discourse (politics of identity). Her analysis focuses on immigration policy because this is an area that links together economic issues (immigration is highly functional to the economy of those regions of Italy that form the Lega's strongholds) and identity issues (immigration is seen as visibly threatening cultural values and disrupting community cohesion). She argues that recent legislation in this area, approved in July 2009, is formally in line with Lega rhetoric but also that actual policy outcomes contradict both the party's rhetoric and the legislation itself. This confirms the validity of the concept of ‘simulative politics’ in so far as it refers to a societal practice of self-deception, rather than simply to practices of deception on the part of political actors.     

The roots of the Lega Nord’s populist regionalism

ABSTRACT

Newth’s paper contributes to a greater understanding of the connection between regionalism and radical-right ideology by examining the roots of the Italian Lega Nord’s regionalist, populist and nativist discourse with a new framework of populist regionalism. By analysing the discourse of two waves of regionalist activism in Lombardy and Piedmont, represented respectively by movements for regional autonomy (MRAs) and the Lega Nord (Northern League), Newth underlines a significant connection between populist regionalism and the radical right, represented by the process of Othering directed against both internal and external migrants. At the same time, examination of narratives used during these two waves of activism reveals differences—at times nuanced, at times more explicit—between their respective populist and nativist identities.     

网络民粹主义：反话语表征与消解策略

网络民粹主义是社会底层通过互联网的技术赋权与话语赋权,以话语策略生产参与公共政策的博弈,如参与公共事件舆论、社会运动等,集体聚合来影响行政权力。网络民粹主义在本质上仍然为民粹主义,其具有民粹主义反抗精英、推崇人民、批判性、暴戾性、非理性的基本特征。结合网络民粹主义反话语表征,可以发现其内在机理与背后折射出当前社会的发展弊端。以此提出改善民生、阶层糅合,话语融合、平衡阶层,完善网络法律法规建设,网络社会组织的赋权,提升公众参与网络舆论表达的实践能力来对网络民粹主义的滥觞进行消解,从而使公共政策能够真正回归至公共利益的诉求。     

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.     

Pockets of resistance to globalization: the case of the Lega Nord

ABSTRACT

From its inception, the Lega Nord has been a populist social and political movement obsessed with the Other. In the world-view of the Lega Nord, the Other is anything that threatens the cultural and regional identity of Italians in the northern part of the country, particularly the Northeast. In the early 1990s the Other was constituted by corrupt politicians in Rome, Italian economic monopolies and southern Italians. By the late 1990s the Other had increasingly become the forces of globalization that, according to the Lega leadership's shrill arguments, threatened the economic and social fabric of what the party now refers to as ‘Padania’. Woods explores the manner in which anti-globalization became the dominant ideological Other in the rhetoric of the Lega Nord.     

Conservatism between theory and practice: The case of migration to Europe

This article explores the neglected relationship between conservatism as political theory and conservatism as political practice using the example of recent immigration to Europe. A cursory glance at how European politicians have responded to migration challenges suggests that they roughly divide into an open‐arm, leftist ‘liberal’ camp and a right‐wing ‘conservative’ one. The situation, however, is more complex. This article engages with the resources of conservative theory to argue that there are many distinct conservative theoretical positions for any one policy point. Using contemporary migration patterns as a case study, the findings suggest that Conservative parties have not borrowed much from conservative theory in its variety of incarnations. In fact, conservative theory can buttress a course of action that is generous toward migrants and at odds with the claims of right‐wing populist movements. While certain strands of conservatism imagine a homogenous people, there are others that are no less pro‐pluralism than liberal theories, and sometimes more so.     

政党代表性危机与西方国家民粹主义的兴起

西方国家民粹主义的兴起,是代表性危机的结果。从政党政治的角度,主流政党疏离社会、融入国家,由代表组织转变为统治机构,导致政治回应性的弱化。主流政党代表功能的萎缩,促使社会成员转向民粹主义的替代模式。为了控制政策议程,民粹主义政党仍然需要遵循选举政治的逻辑。民粹主义固然挑战了主流的民主模式,但它同样可以在调整国家与社会关系的基础上重构政党体制,扩展政治代表的渠道。只有客观地分析国家、社会与政党在代表性建构中的互动机制,才能准确地认识民粹主义的社会基础及其发展趋势。     

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 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.     

Do terrorist attacks feed populist Eurosceptics? Evidence from two comparative quasi-experiments

Over recent years, Europe has experienced a series of Islamic terrorist attacks. In this article, conflicting theoretical expectations are derived on whether such attacks increase populist Euroscepticism in the form of anti-immigration, anti-refugee and anti-European Union sentiment. Empirically, plausible exogenous variation in the exposure to the 2016 Berlin attack is exploited in two nationally representative surveys covering multiple European countries. No evidence is found for a populist response to the terrorist attack in any of the surveyed countries. On the contrary, people in Germany became more positive towards the EU in the wake of the Berlin attack. Moreover, little evidence is found that ideology shaped the response to the attack. The findings suggest that terrorist attacks are not met by an immediate public populist response.     

Controlling immigration? How regulations affect migration flows

The aim of this article is to investigate whether or not and how immigration policies affect immigration flows. Such policy impacts have hardly been investigated so far as the necessary data is lacking. For the first time, two new datasets are combined to systematically measure immigration policies and bilateral migration flows for 33 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) destination countries from over 170 countries of origin over the period 1982–2010. The study finds that immigration policies have an important effect on immigration flows and thus that states are able to control their borders. To some extent the control capacities depend on other factors in attracting or deterring immigrants. The article shows that the deterrence effect of restrictive immigration policies increases when unemployment rates are high. It appears that, in these contexts, states start to care more about effectively protecting their national economy. Moreover, policies are more effective for migrant groups from former colonies or when the stock of this group is already high in a destination country. In these circumstances, information on border regulations are more easily disseminated, which in turn makes them more effective.