Right-Wing Populism and the Future of Electoral Politics

The rise of populist radical right (PRR) parties throughout Europe and now in the United States (via Donald Trump’s capture of the Republican Party) has inspired dozens of columns, think pieces, and a lot of quality academic research.

This morning, political scientist Cas Mudde had an opinion piece in Politico Europe, arguing that mainstream political parties need to get serious about differentiating themselves and offer credible policy alternatives to solve the concerns driving radical right support — immigration, economic stagnation, and so on. Good advice, though short on details of what this would look like. Josef Lentsch, director of NEOS Lab (which seems to be a policy/research arm of NEOS, a newer liberal political party in Austria) quickly wrote a critique. Of course, he’s coming at this from his own party’s perspective, which is seeking to “disrupt” the existing party alignment as new parties do.

Both make valuable points. In Mudde’s defense, one of the worst mistakes mainstream parties have made (Austria’s and France’s current governments have been notable) is attempting to offer “watered-down” versions of radical right policies on immigration and multiculturalism. This is a bad idea for two reasons. First, it mainstreams the rhetoric and policies of the radical right, making it more acceptable for voters to support them. Second, it’s a weak tactic. One concept political scientists have developed is “issue ownership.” Parties don’t compete on equal footing; rather, they seek to develop reputations for commitment and competence on specific issues. Radical right parties thus increasingly “own” issues related immigration (just like social democrats traditional “own” issues related to welfare). Voters who are truly concerned about immigration are going to vote for the party that owns the issue, not one attempting to offer a strategically watered-down version. And by emphasizing the issue of immigration, all that the mainstream does is increase its salience in the minds of voters — making voters more likely to believe that immigration is the most important issue. No surprise, then, that polls show radical right parties leading in the polls in Austria and France.

In Lentsch’s defense, he offers good points as well. His observation that the mainstream parties are in a clinch is reminiscent of this year’s Republican primary: no candidate attacked Trump (until it was too late) for fear of being the one to face Trump’s attacks. This seems a fair observation in Austria and perhaps other EU countries; mainstream political parties still seem to think they can “ride out the wave” without really engaging it. Lentsch argues instead that mainstream parties need reinventing, to offer a “positive, participative, and credible” alternative to right-wing populism.

The Durability of the Radical Right

We cannot understand the rise of the radical right without understanding the objective conditions (the rise of immigration, wage stagnation driven by economic change, etc) or the political responses (the left’s move to the economic center and embrace of multiculturalism, the pan-EU endorsement of “neo-liberal” austerity politics, etc). These two factors opened the door for the radical right by stimulating new anxieties (multiculturalism, wage loss) and diminishing old patterns of class-oriented political conflict. But they do not explain why people vote for the radical right. These conditions exist for all voters, but only some respond by turning to the radical right.

To understand that phenomenon, we have to look at the psychology of the individual voter. This is what my current research focuses on. Here is a chart from a paper I’m presenting at the upcoming American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, which (conveniently) looks specifically at Austria.

This chart shows the probability (based on analysis of the 2013 Austrian Election Study) of voting for the radical right Freedom Party of Austria by authoritarianism — an individual disposition towards order, security, and certainty. The results are pretty clear: the more authoritarian traits you exhibit, the more likely you are to vote FPOe. And this is true throughout Europe (as I show in the paper), and for Trump voters in the US as well.

These results give us a slightly different way of looking at the problem. Thirty years ago, before the rise of immigration, EU membership, etc, my best guess is that you wouldn’t find much difference in how high authoritarians and low authoritarians voted. (This is something I will be researching in the coming months. I have found that authoritarianism did not predict differences in EU support in the 1990s, though it does now). That is because the salient political conflicts of that time did not activate authoritarian dispositions. Now, fears of immigration, terrorism, and the loss of national sovereignty do activate those dispositions, driving high authoritarians towards the radical right. Had mainstream leaders made different choices back then, this might not have happened. But it did. And you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.

So the deeper problem for the mainstream throughout the Western world is that the base of support for the radical right isn’t going away for the foreseeable future. While immigration, Islamic terror, the loss of national sovereignty, etc, remain salient features of our political world, the high authoritarians who feel most threatened by these phenomena will vote for parties promising to stop them. So one may as well give up on the hope that this is going to go away anytime soon. But here is where Mudde and Lentsch are both right: by taking a stand in opposition to the radical right and offering a credible and competent alternative, the mainstream (or newer centrist parties) can ensure that support for the radical right is limited to that 20% or so of voters who truly support their vision. When mainstream parties either copy the radical right (as in Austria or France) or simply govern incompetently, then voters who are not instinctively authoritarian may turn to the radical right as the only promising alternative. (Aside #1, this is what keeps me up at night as an American: if “Trumpism” becomes the ideology of the Republican Party, then it will eventually win an election just because it’s the only electorally viable alternative to the Democrats). (Aside #2, this is what brought the authoritarian and Islamist Justice and Development Party to power in Turkey: it won the 2002 election in the wake of a series of scandals and economic crises that discredited the political mainstream, and subsequently rode the wave of a good international economy while centralizing its control of the state).

In short, the radical right isn’t going away for the foreseeable future. The mainstream can forget about trying to win back the radical right’s core voters. Instead, mainstream/centrist parties need to ensure through their development of credible and competent policies that they do not drive mainstream voters to “try” the radical right. That will require tough choices — reforming old policies, making brave choices on asylum seekers and integration, etc.