12 May 2006, Dept. Politieke Wetenschappen, University of Antwerp, Belgium

People

Tim Bale, Hilde Coffe, Sarah de Lange (co-organiser), Mark Donovan, Sheelagh Ellwood, Zsolt Enyedi, Sean Hanley, Kristof Jacobs, Kurt Richard Luther, Marjolein Meijer, Cas Mudde, Teun Pauwels, Nicolas Sauger, Dave Sinardet, Tim Spier, Steven Van Hecke  (co-organiser), Lien Warmenbol, Paul Webb,

Presentations

Where and when? The relationship between the mainstream and extreme right in Europe
Tim Bale, Politics and Contemporary European Studies, University of Sussex, UK

The extent to which far right parties have got into or near to government depends on a mix of the following variables: the governing tradition (majority governments being the only culturally acceptable or institutionally likely form in some countries, for instance); the lack of a pivotal party and/or the existence of strongly bipolar politics; the extent to which the policies and the populism of the far right party in question make it (un)coalitionable; the party's organisational form (is it too charismatic to co-opt or too fissiparous to rely on?); the existence of veto players, be they internal (in mainstream centre-right parties) or external (in civil society or at the international level); whether there have already been 'dry-runs' at the local or regional level; and the signals received from public opinion in the run up to formation. Things also depend on the centre-right in particular: is it fragmented?; what are its models of democracy, its time horizons, its confidence in its ability to 'co-opt and castrate' the far right, its desire to fight in the centre-ground and leave slack on its right flank?; what are the personal ambitions of its leaders; how commensurate and complementary are its own policies and issue emphases compared to those of more radical potential partners ? All these have to be weighed in the balance to work out when and how mainstream and extreme right will coalesce or at least make arrangements for legislative support.

From Pariah to Power Broker. The Coalition Potential of the Radical Right in Western Europe
Sarah de Lange, Politieke Wetenschappen, University of Antwerp, Belgium

Scholars have analyzed what makes radical right-wing populist parties electorally successful, emphasizing both electoral demand and political supply. Recently, academic attention has shifted to these parties' more long-term, structural effects on West European party systems. This throws up one obvious puzzle: in some countries (e.g. Austria, Italy, and the Netherlands), for instance, these parties have joined governing coalitions, although in others (e.g. Belgium and France) they continue to face exclusion. The 'European politics tradition' offers a number of explanations that are complementary to those that can be found in the formal coalition formation literature. An empirical analysis of all coalition formation attempts in the eight West European countries where right-wing anti-establishment parties are represented in parliament for the period 1980-2005 shows that party size and policy distance - both of which are emphasized in formal theory - have only limited explanatory power: we would expect a far higher number of government coalitions involving right-wing anti-establishment parties than is actually the case. Potentially complementary explanations for this include 'anti-pacts', the influence of public pressure and external veto players on politics in general and the coalition formation process in particular, and the perceived unreliability and instability of the parties in question. These explanations are explored by combining a quantitative database with qualitative interviews in eight European countries.

The FPÖ and Government Participation
Kurt Richard Luther, Politics, International Relations and Philosophy, Keele University, UK

A 'bourgeois majority' existed in Austria as far back as 1983 but was not realised until 1999, when the FPÖ's unprecedented electoral success, and the strategy and skill of the ÖVP, combined to create a coalition. In retrospect, the ÖVP's contentious gamble that it could 'co-opt and castrate' its more radical partner paid off spectacularly, though such a pay off was by no means inevitable. The FPÖ did not play its hand well. It realised the risks of incumbency, and hoped to minimize them by delivering on key promises. Some of these, however, particularly on taxation and EU finance conflicted with the realities of governance. Meanwhile (and partly as a consequence of such conflicts) the party's ministerial team soon lost whatever esprit de corps it began with. It also lost touch with the wider party, many of whom suffered loss of office in sub-national elections. Moreover, the party's leader simply did not perform what many would regard as core functions - brokering and holding the ring between ministers and between ministers and parliamentarians and the extra-parliamentary party. Instead, he believed he (and by implication his party) could remain as internal critics of the government of which the FPÖ was a part. Remarkably, when the internal arguments helped precipitate an election in 2002 - one that proved a triumph for the ÖVP and a disaster for Haider's party - the FPÖ chose to reform the existing coalition without attempting to think-through and thereby prevent the recurrence of its problems. For the ÖVP, resuscitating the coalition meant it would have more cabinet seats, stood some chance of keeping on board the voters that defected to it from Haider's party, and would give the latter little chance to re-group and regenerate. The FPÖ's split in the spring of 2005 suggests it may have been another good decision.

Defining and Redefining the Right in Italy
Mark Donovan, European Studies, University of Cardiff, UK

At the party level, the Right has been transformed in Italy. The old centre-right was undone by long-term trends and the catastrophic events of the early 1990s. Since then, the Right has been 'doubly reconstructed'. First, by the collapse and disappearance of the centre-right Christian Democratic Party (DC), which had dominated Italian government for nearly 50 years, and of its allies in government (the Socialists, Social Democrats, Liberals and Republicans) and their substantial replacement, on the right, by four new political parties: the National Alliance, founded in 1995, whose origins clearly lie in the far right MSI which, before 1994, had been rigorously excluded from government; the Northern League, a new party, founded in 1991; Forza Italia, founded in 1994; and the UDC, founded in 2002, but whose origins lie in the collapse of the DC. Whilst all four have been governmental parties since 1994, only the smallest of these parties, the UDC, can unequivocally be labelled centre-right rather than right. Whilst it is undoubtedly they that have defined the nature of the centre-right/right in Italy since 1994, they are an unstable alliance in a political system itself in flux and the identities of these parties has not stabilised. Thus, a second reconstruction of the Right must be understood as also having been under way since 1994. First, the National Alliance has shifted centripetally towards becoming a conservative party. Second, the League has shifted centrifugally, become more extreme - reinforcing the populism of Forza Italia in the process. This double reconstruction of the Right is presented here in terms, first, of coalition-building and the provisional stabilisation of a new party system; and second, in terms of the changing identities of the parties, in left-right terms, as expressed in manifestos, internal party documents and government action. The important issue of the attitudes and values of their electorates, as distinct from those of the party leaders, or at least the volatility and malleability of those electorates, is also addressed, albeit marginally.

Hungary: the Radical Right in a Concentrated Party System
Zsolt Enyedi, Central European University, Hungary and European University Institute, Italy

A number of recent political science theories have been applied to explain the weak electoral performance and the recent decline of MIEP. Ideology may have been one of the factors that contributed to the party's lack of success, although the fact that MIEP does not mimic the original 'winning formula' of Western radical right (liberal economics plus anti-immigration) matters little since the electoral market for such a formula is absent. Indeed, the fundamental character of the party is not in itself that problematic: although its anti-Semitism does it no favours, MIEP is an 'authoritarian xenophobic' party with a culturalist-nationalist ideology and is strongly committed to the idea of a strong state. Institutions also matter: Hungary's electoral rules (eg high electoral thresholds) may have contributed to the party's poor electoral results. On the other hand, they cannot explain their fluctuation. Meanwhile, extensive organization and a party press have, along with charismatic leadership, been major assets. Socio-economically speaking, MIEP is not anchored into a small, decreasing electorate and its performance is only weakly related to economic conditions and to the ideological position of Fidesz on the mainstream right. Ultimately, the bipolarization of party competition and growing competitiveness were found to be the most important reasons behind the performance of MIEP: large mainstream parties call on voters to vote strategically and to regard the defeat of the other bloc as the most important task. With Fidesz doing precisely this, the radical right wing party has little scope.

Closure or permeability? Right Wing Parties' Strategies towards the Extreme Right in France
Nicolas Sauger, CEVIPOF-Sciences Po, France and EUI-RSCAS, Italy

France is generally considered as an ideal-type of cordon sanitaire strategy. With this kind of strategy, moderate right-wing parties systemically refuse any kind of cooperation with the extreme right. France however shows a more nuanced picture. The cordon sanitaire took time to build, only coming into force in the 1980s, and was (temporarily) shattered as soon as significant incentives for cooperation appeared in 1998. Besides, the political space between the right and the extreme right has largely been occupied, by different parties from the old CNI to the more recently founded MPF or RPF parties which have been able to occupy far right positions without suffering the same ostracism from the mainstream. Such a strategy derives from three convictions. Firstly, that there is no institutional necessity for cooperation for moderate right-wing parties at the national level: the electoral system, in particular, has prevented the extreme right gaining any significant parliamentary representation, for instance. Secondly, and beyond the personal reluctance to negotiate such alliances demonstrated by different moderate right wing leaders, there is a strong belief that cooperation would be detrimental to the moderate right: a significant proportion of extreme right supporters have no inclination towards it and it may cause centrist supporters to defect to the moderate left. Thirdly, the issue of the attitude towards the extreme right has been an area of competition within moderate right wing parties, particularly in the early 1990s.

The Populist Radical Right in Europe: an overview
Cas Mudde, Politieke Wetenschappen, University of Antwerp, Belgium

Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe will be published by Cambridge University Press in early 2007. It covers concepts, issues, and explanations. It begins by addressing the problem of conceptualization and provides a new framework centred around the concept of the populist radical right (a combination of nativism, authoritarianism, and populism). Next it deals with the often ignored issue of categorization of political parties, identifying the key populist radical right parties in Europe (both the East and the West) and discussing various borderline cases. The second part of the book covers enemies, women, economy, democracy, European cooperation, and globalisation, filling voids in the literature or revising commonly-held misperceptions. The third part of the book provides a critical assessment of the literature purporting to explain the electoral success of populist radical right parties, looking at the demand-side, the external supply-side, and the internal supply-side. The main conclusion is that the populist radical right is itself a key factor in its inconsistent electoral performance.