Populism and New Patterns of Political Competition in Western Europe 2020033991, 2020033992, 9781138367449, 9781138367456, 9780429429798

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‘Contemporary populist parties present a unique challenge to liberal democracies. They have increasingly exerted pressure on the established parties, forcing them to react in various ways. With its innovative analytical approach and wealth of empirical evidence, this is the best book to date to unravel the mutual interactions between the populist challengers, the political establishment, and each other.’ Hans-Georg Betz, Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Zurich, Switzerland ‘In this book Albertazzi and Vampa and their contributors have provided an important new contribution to the study of populism and contemporary party politics. The book deals with populism in the round, by addressing populism in all its forms and by looking at its effects on politics and party systems in Western Europe. Through concepts, cases studies and comparative contributions, this book will shape the study of populism in Western Europe.’ Paul Taggart, Professor of Politics at the University of Sussex, UK ‘This comprehensive account of the impact of populism on party systems in Western Europe offers a nuanced and fine-grained analysis of the strategies that non-populist parties employ vis-à-vis their populist competitors. It demonstrates that non-populist parties draw upon a far greater range of tactics to counter the rise of populist parties than hitherto assumed, thus showing that diversity continues to characterize European party politics. Rich in theory and empirics, it is a worthwhile addition to the book collection of populism scholars.’ Sarah de Lange, Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands

POPULISM AND NEW PATTERNS OF POLITICAL COMPETITION IN WESTERN EUROPE

This book analyses how party competition has adjusted to the success of populism in Western Europe, whether this is non-populists dealing with their populist competitors, or populists interacting with each other. The volume focuses on Western Europe in the period 2007–2018 and considers both right-wing and left-wing populist parties. It critically assesses the concept and rise of populism, and includes case studies on Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Denmark, Finland, the United Kingdom, Greece, and Italy. The authors apply an original typology of party strategic responses to political competitors, which allows them to map interactions between populist and nonpopulist parties in different countries. They also assess the links between ideology and policy, the goals of different populist parties, and how achieving power affects these parties. The volume provides important lessons for the study of political competition, particularly in the aftermath of a crisis and, as such, its framework can inform future research in the post-Covid-19 era. This wide-ranging study will appeal to students and scholars of political science interested in populism and political competition; and will appeal to policy makers and politicians from across the political spectrum. Daniele Albertazzi is Reader in Politics at the Department of Political Science and International Studies (POLSIS) of the University of Birmingham, UK. Davide Vampa is Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Aston University, UK.

ROUTLEDGE STUDIES IN EXTREMISM AND DEMOCRACY Series Editors:  Caterina Froio, Sciences Po, Paris, France, Andrea L. P. Pirro, Scuola Normale Superiore, Florence, Italy and Stijn van Kessel, Queen Mary, University of London, UK Founding Series Editors: Roger Eatwell, University of Bath and Cas Mudde, University of Antwerp-UFSIA, Belgium

This series covers academic studies within the broad fields of ‘extremism’ and ‘democracy’, with volumes focusing on adjacent concepts such as populism, radicalism, and ideological/religious fundamentalism.These topics have been considered largely in isolation by scholars interested in the study of political parties, elections, social movements, activism, and radicalisation in democratic settings. A key focus of the series, therefore, is the (inter-)relation between extremism, radicalism, populism, fundamentalism, and democracy. Since its establishment in 1999, the series has encompassed both influential contributions to the discipline and informative accounts for public debate. Works will seek to problematise the role of extremism, broadly defined, within an ever-globalising world, and/or the way social and political actors can respond to these challenges without undermining democratic credentials. The books encompass two strands: Routledge Studies in Extremism and Democracy includes books with an introductory and broad focus which are aimed at students and teachers. These books will be available in hardback and paperback. The Anti-Islamic Movement Far Right and Liberal? Lars Berntzen Populism and New Patterns of Political Competition in Western Europe Edited by Daniele Albertazzi and Davide Vampa Routledge Research in Extremism and Democracy offers a forum for innovative new research intended for a more specialist readership. These books will be in hardback only. Policy Responses to the Radical Right in France and Germany Public Actors, Policy Frames, and Decision-Making Bénédicte Laumond The Battle Over Working Class Voters How Social Democracy has Responded to the Populist Radical Right in the Nordic Countries Sanna Salo and Jens Rydgren

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/politics/series/ED

POPULISM AND NEW PATTERNS OF POLITICAL COMPETITION IN WESTERN EUROPE

Edited by Daniele Albertazzi and Davide Vampa

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Daniele Albertazzi and Davide Vampa; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Daniele Albertazzi and Davide Vampa to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Albertazzi, Daniele, 1968– editor. | Vampa, Davide, editor. Title: Populism and new patterns of political competition in Western Europe / edited by Daniele Albertazzi and Davide Vampa. Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2021. | Series: Extremism and democracy | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020033991 (print) | LCCN 2020033992 (ebook) | ISBN 9781138367449 (hardback) | ISBN 9781138367456 (paperback) | ISBN 9780429429798 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Populism–Europe, Western. | Political parties–Europe, Western. | Europe, Western–Politics and government–21st century. | Populism–Europe, Western–Case studies. | Political parties–Europe, Western–Case studies. | Europe, Western–Politics and government–21st century–Case studies. Classification: LCC JN94.A91 P67 2021 (print) | LCC JN94.A91 (ebook) |DDC 320.56/62094–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020033991 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020033992 ISBN: 978-1-138-36744-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-36745-6 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-42979-8 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Newgen Publishing UK

CONTENTS

List of figures List of tables Acknowledgements List of abbreviations Notes on contributors 1 Introduction Daniele Albertazzi, Donatella Bonansinga, and Davide Vampa

ix xi xiii xv xvii 1

PART I

2 Populism and democracy in Europe Davide Vittori and Leonardo Morlino

19

3 The strategies of party competition: a typology Daniele Albertazzi, Donatella Bonansinga, and Davide Vampa

50

PART II

4 Austria Reinhard Heinisch, Fabian Habersack, and Franz Fallend

73

5 France James Shields

92

viii Contents

6 Germany Hartwig Pautz

112

7 The Netherlands Tjitske Akkerman

131

8 Switzerland Laurent Bernhard, Cecilia Biancalana, and Oscar Mazzoleni

148

9 Denmark Susi Meret

168

10 Finland Ann-Cathrine Jungar

187

11 The United Kingdom Davide Vampa

206

12 Greece Emmanouil Tsatsanis

231

13 Italy Caterina Froio

250

14 Conclusion Davide Vampa and Daniele Albertazzi

269

Index

289

FIGURES

1.1 The interactions between populists and non-populists 1.2 Year of foundation of the populist parties analysed in this book 2.1 Populist radical right parties’ electoral performances in 19 European countries (1991–2018) 3.1 Typology Map 3.2 Treating strategies of competition as explanandum and/or explanans 4.1 Vote shares of main Austrian parties, 1990–2017 4.2 Right-left score (RILE) of main Austrian parties 4.3 Sociocultural left-right score of main Austrian parties 4.4 Immigration position of main Austrian parties 7.1 Electoral results: mainstream parties (VVD, CDA, and PvdA) vs populist parties (PVV and SP), 2006–2017 7.2 Policy shifts on immigration issues, 2006–2017 8.1 Electoral performance of Swiss government parties in lower chamber elections, 1991–2015 (%) 8.2 Coalitions between government parties in the National Council (Lower House). One-year periods (in percentages) 9.1 Electoral support for Danish People’s Party (DF) in General, European and municipal elections, 1997–2019 9.2 Share of working-class votes among Danish main political parties (general elections 2011 and 2015) 9.3 Vote share for the Liberal Party (V) and the Social democrats (SD), 1990–2019 9.4 Immigrants and their descendants in Denmark: share of the total population (1980–2016) 10.1 Electoral support for Finnish parties (per cent) in general elections from 1995 to 2019

5 11 24 54 63 77 78 80 81 132 139 151 154 170 171 172 173 190

x

List of figures

10.2 The Finnish party space in two dimensions. Change from 2011 to 2014 11.1 UKIP electoral results (%) in General and European elections from 1994 to 2017 11.2 Combined vote share (%) for Conservative and Labour parties from 1970 to 2017 in General and European elections 11.3 Net migration to the UK (1000s people, 1980–2016) 11.4 Best party on Brexit according to UK voters from May 2017 (before general election) to early 2019 11.5 Voting intentions in UK general elections from beginning of 2018 to June 2019 12.1 Electoral performance of political parties in Greece in national elections, 2000–2019 12.2 Party identification in Greece, 1985–2011 13.1 Right-left positions (RILE) of the PD, FI, League and M5S 14.1 Summary of strategies (% of the total) adopted by non-populist right-wing parties to respond to populists in ten European countries 14.2 Summary of strategies (% of the total) adopted by non-populist left-wing parties to respond to populists in ten European countries 14.3 Summary of interactions between populists (% of the total) in ten European countries

194 208 209 211 224 224 232 237 254 273 276 282

TABLES

1.1 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2A.1 2A.2 2A.3 2A.4 9.1 9.2 9.3

List of cases Populisms: Types and Dimensions Populists in Government in 12 European Countries Populists in Government (1991–2018).Years as a percentage of the total Difference in the GSoD indicators in the decade 2010–2018 in Northern European countries Difference in the GSoD indicators in the decade 2010–2018 in Core Continental European countries Difference in the GSoD indicators in the decade 2010-2018 in Visegrad countries Difference in the GSoD indicators in the decade 2010-2018 in southern European countries Populists in government in northern European countries, scores of the GSoD Index Populists in government in Visegrad countries, scores of the GSoD Index Populists in government in southern European countries, scores of the GSoD Index Populists in government in core continental European countries, scores of the GSoD Index Immigration perceived as a threat to national culture Refugees’ and immigrants’ right to access same welfare benefits as native Danes Party voters’ attitudes towards immigration as a threat and same social benefits to refugees, 2019

8 21 25 29 33 34 36 38 43 44 46 48 174 174 175

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13.1 14.1 14.2 14.3 14.4

List of tables

Electoral results and government participation of major Italian parties Right-wing non-populists’ responses to populists (2007–2018) Left-wing and liberal non-populists’ responses to populists (2007–2018) Interactions between populists (2007–2018) A two-dimensional framework to define political parties

251 272 275 279 284

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The original concept and approach of this book was developed jointly by Daniele Albertazzi and Davide Vampa in 2018, as a collaborative project of the University of Birmingham and Aston University. We started by organizing a workshop at the University of Birmingham in January of the same year on the dynamics of competition between populist and non-populist parties in Europe. We are very grateful to all participants in that workshop, many of whom came from afar, for sharing ideas with us on specific case studies, thus helping us better understand our object of investigation. We also thank the groups and organizations that supported the event: the Italian Politics Specialist Group of the Political Studies Association (particularly Arianna Giovannini and James Newell); the ‘Parties, Voters and Elections Research Group’ of the Department of Political Science and International Studies of the University of Birmingham (particularly Tim Haughton); and, finally, the Department of Politics and International Relations at Aston University (particularly Ed Turner and Yaprak Gürsoy). Once we were clear about our approach and what questions we wanted addressed, we invited a number of colleagues to write on different topics and/or case studies. Our guiding principle was to choose scholars whose work we liked and whom we trusted. We are very grateful to them for following our guidelines so well, putting up with our requests for amendments and changes, and ultimately producing chapters of such high quality. A special thanks goes to Donatella Bonansinga for her excellent work in co-authoring the Introduction and Chapter 3 with us. We also need to thank our contributors for providing very useful criticism of the typology presented in Chapter 3, when it still was at an early stage of development. Here the usual disclaimer applies, of course, and the authors remain solely responsible for its final iteration. This book has also benefited from the feedback of two of the series editors, Stijn van Kessel and Andrea Pirro, and an anonymous reviewer, who have all offered useful

xiv

Acknowledgements

suggestions. Thanks are also due to the previous series editors, Matthew Goodwin and Roger Eatwell, as well as Craig Fowlie at Routledge, for commissioning the volume in the first place. We are also grateful to Hannah Rich at Routledge for facilitating the production of the book and supporting us throughout. Editing and co-writing a volume like this always takes a considerable amount of time – inevitably much more than one had originally planned. Hence, we would like to thank our friends and families for putting up with us throughout and for being so supportive of our work. Daniele would like to dedicate this book to his partner, Liz, and children, Elena and Francesca, while Davide would like to dedicate it to his husband, Arne.

ABBREVIATIONS

Abbreviation AfD ANEL BNP BZÖ CDA CDU CSU CVP DF FI FN/RN FPÖ FvD FDP K KESK KOK

Original party name Alternative für Deutschland Anexartitoi Ellines British National Party Bündnis Zukunft Österreich Christen-Democratisch Appèl Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands Christlich-Soziale Union in Bayern Christlichdemokratische Volkspartei der Schweiz Dansk Folkeparti Forza Italia Front National/ Rassemblement National Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs Forum voor Democratie

English party name Alternative for Germany The Independent Greeks Alliance for the Future of Austria Christian Democratic Appeal (Netherlands) Christian Democratic Union of Germany Christian Social Union of Bavaria Christian Democratic People’s Party of Switzerland Danish People’s Party Come on, Italy! National Front/National Rally (France) Austrian Freedom Party

Forum for Democracy (Netherlands) FDP - Die Liberalen FDP - The Liberals Det Konservative Folkeparti Conservative Party (Denmark) Suomen Keskusta Centre Party of Finland Kansallinen Kokoomus National Coalition Party (Finland)

xvi

List of abbreviations

Abbreviation LFI LN – Lega

Original party name La France insoumise Lega Nord – Lega

LR LREM

Les Républicains La République En Marche

M5S ND ÖVP PASOK

Movimento 5 Stelle Nea Dimokratia Österreichische Volkspartei Panellinio Sosialistiko Kinima PD Partito Democratico PS (Finland) Perussuomalaiset PS (France) Parti Socialiste PVdA Partij van de Arbeid PVV Partij voor de Vrijheid RV Radikale Venstre SD Socialdemokratiet SIN Sininen tulevaisuus SP (Netherlands) Socialistische Partij SP (Switzerland) Sozialdemokratische Partei der Schweiz SDP Suomen sosialidemokraattinen puolue SPD Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands SPÖ Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs SVP Schweizerische Volkspartei SYRIZA Synaspismós Rizospastikís Aristerás TS Team Stronach V Venstre VVD Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie UKIP United Kingdom Independence Party

English party name France Unbowed Northern League – League (Italy) The Republicans (France) The Republic on the Move (France) Five Star Movement (Italy) New Democracy (Greece) Austrian People’s Party Panhellenic Socialist Movement Democratic Party (Italy) Finns Party Socialist Party Labour Party (Netherlands) Party for Freedom (Netherlands) Social Liberals (Denmark) Social Democrats (Denmark) Blue Reform (Finland) Socialist Party Social Democratic Party of Switzerland Social Democratic Party of Finland Social Democratic Party of Germany Social Democratic Party of Austria Swiss People’s Party Coalition of the Radical Left (Greece) Team Stronach (Austria) Liberal Party (Denmark) People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (Netherlands)

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Editors

Daniele Albertazzi is Reader in Politics at the Department of Political Science and International Studies (POLSIS) of the University of Birmingham, UK. He writes on populism, party organisation, Italian politics, and political communication. Davide Vampa is Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Aston University, UK. His research interests focus on multi-level party politics and public policy, rising populism in Western Europe and crises of social democracy. Contributors Tjitske Akkerman is an Affiliated Researcher in the Department of Political Science

at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She has published widely about populist radical right parties in Western Europe. Laurent Bernhard is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Swiss Center of Expertise

in the Social Sciences (FORS), which is hosted by the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. His main research interests include populism, direct democracy, electoral studies, political communication, and asylum policies. Cecilia Biancalana is SNSF Senior Researcher at the University of Lausanne,

Switzerland. Her research focuses on party change, populism, and the relationship between the Internet and politics.

xviii Notes on contributors

Donatella Bonansinga is a Doctoral Researcher at the University of Birmingham,

UK, working at the intersection between political science, international relations, and political psychology. Her research interests lie, more broadly, in populism and its affective underpinnings. Franz Fallend is Senior Scientist in the Department of Political Science at the

University of Salzburg, Austria. His research has focused on Austrian politics, federalism, and right-wing populism. Caterina Froio is Assistant Professor in Political Science at Sciences Po (Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics), France, and an Affiliate Researcher at the Center for Research on Extremism (C-Rex) at the University of Oslo, Norway. She specializes in the study of political parties, politics and digital technologies, right-wing extremism, and populism. Fabian Habersack is a PhD Fellow in the Department of Political Science at the

University of Salzburg, Austria. His research interests focus on political behaviour, populism, representation, and quantitative methods. Reinhard Heinisch is Professor of Comparative Austrian Politics in the Department

of Political Science at the University of Salzburg, Austria. His research interests focus on radical populism, political parties, and democracy. Ann-Cathrine Jungar is an Associate Professor in Political Science at Södertörn

University in Stockholm, Sweden. She has published on populist radical right parties, governmental coalitions, national parliaments, gender equality, and referenda. Oscar Mazzoleni is Professor in Political Science and Director of the Research

Observatory for Regional Politics at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. His main research topics include party politics, populism, nationalism, and regionalism. Susi Meret is an Associate Professor in the Department of Politics and Society at Aalborg University, Denmark. Her main interests are within populism and the populist radical right wing in Europe, politically motivated violence and extremisms, migration, migration regimes, and civil society movements. Leonardo Morlino is Emeritus Professor of Political Science at LUISS, Rome, Italy.

He is the author of more than 40 books and more than 200 journal articles and book chapters published in English, French, German, Spanish, Hungarian, Chinese, Mongolian, and Japanese. Hartwig Pautz is Senior Lecturer in Social Sciences at the University of the West

of Scotland, UK. He has published widely on the relationship between policy, politics, and expertise; in particular with regard to the role of think tanks in social and economic policymaking.

Notes on contributors xix

James Shields is Honorary Professor in French Studies at the University of

Warwick, UK. He specializes in the history and politics of the far right in France. He is a regular media commentator on French politics. Emmanouil Tsatsanis is a Researcher at the Greek National Centre for Social

Research (EKKE) and at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP). His research and teaching experience are located mainly in the subfield of comparative politics, with a focus on topics related to electoral behaviour, political identities, political representation, and party systems. Davide Vittori is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the CEVIPOL Department at Université

Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. He is a Contributor for the Italian Center of Electoral Studies. His main research interests are voting behaviour, political parties, populism, and comparative political systems.

1 INTRODUCTION Daniele Albertazzi, Donatella Bonansinga, and Davide Vampa

Introduction Pointing at the growing impact of populist parties in twenty-first-century Europe has become a cliché, following the Great Recession of 2007–2008. However, a combination of favourable opportunity structures and astute agency has meant that the ‘populist cat’ was set loose among the ‘moderate pigeons’ well before then (Albertazzi and McDonnell 2008), with populists and non-populists having had to co-exist in an increasing number of countries since the turn of the century, sometimes even as governing partners (Albertazzi and McDonnell 2015).The key aim of this book is to analyse the responses of non-populist parties to the emergence and/ or success of populists, and how the latter, in turn, adapt and react once the political environment they operate in changes as a consequence of their very presence (and, sometimes, success). However, while we are interested in responses to populist parties by non-populists, we also consider how different populist forces coexisting in the same political environment have interacted with each other. As parties compete for votes, influence and the spoils of government, their opponents of today can become their closest allies of tomorrow – or act as both friends and foes at different levels of competition (e.g. local vs national). In this complex (and ever-changing) web of interactions, European populist parties have set in motion new dynamics. The aim of this volume is to explore these, by analysing how parties relate to each other in a selection of countries and assess what this teaches us about party competition more generally. One case where the study of these interactions becomes especially fruitful is France, where the radical right-wing populism of Marine Le Pen has shaken the established party system, by forcing other actors to confront her claims on the existence of a detached political elite, and on the alleged damage done to the country by monetary union (EMU). Arguably, Le Pen’s strategic campaigns have

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contributed to what is ultimately a centrist response by Emmanuel Macron (despite his posturing as an anti-establishment actor), but also the rise of a populism on the Left represented by Jean-Luc Mélenchon. As Chapter 5 shows, the latter’s strategy presents interesting similarities with that of his populist right-wing competitor on issues such as globalization and the EU, and may even be said to have adopted elements of her style in recent campaigns. Another interesting case study in this respect is, of course, Italy, where two-thirds of voters chose a populist party at the 2018 general election. The largest among them, the Lega (League) of Matteo Salvini and the Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S – Five Star Movement) of Luigi Di Maio, focused their attacks mainly on the same actor during that campaign: the centre-left Partito Democratico (PD – Democratic Party). The League and the M5S formed a government together after the 2018 election, which ended in acrimony in the summer of 2019, as Salvini tried to cash in on his increased popularity by trying to force an early election which could have crowned him as Prime Minister (but did not come to pass). After the dust had settled, the PD turned into the M5S’s ally in government, accepting some of the M5S’s priorities on corruption and the welfare state in the process. Both the French and Italian cases hence provide evidence of the increasing importance of competition and collaboration between populist actors, but also of the inevitability of a reassessment of relations between populists and non-populists, given the growing relevance of the former, usually at the expense of the latter. This introductory chapter will set the stage for our theoretical and empirical contributions. In the sections that follow, we will first justify the adoption of the ‘ideational approach’ to defining populism in our study. Then, we will mention a new typology of party competition which will be explained in more detail in Chapter 3, providing a novel theoretical contribution to the study of interaction dynamics between political parties. Throughout the book, this typology will provide a framework to investigate the competition between populist parties and their main non-populist counterparts, but also between different populist actors. Finally, the chapter will conclude with a clarification of the geographical scope of our casespecific contributions and by providing an outline for the book.

Definitions The scholarly literature on populism has highlighted that the term tends to be used with a variety of different meanings, including as a synonym for ‘popular’, ‘demagogic’ or ‘extreme’ (Albertazzi and McDonnell 2008). It is also associated to a high number of different actors and issues (Bale, van Kessel, and Taggart 2011). Moreover, scholars conceive of populism differently: for some it is a strategy to gain and retain power (Weyland 2017, 50; Weyland 2001), while others see it as a political style (Moffitt and Tormey 2014), a discourse (Laclau 2005; Panizza 2005;Wodak 2015), or an ideology (Mudde 2007). Despite this apparent lack of consensus, however, students of populism have also reached ‘a fair degree of agreement’ (Moffitt 2020, 10) on what constitutes its core: ‘a central division between “the people” and

Introduction 3

“the elite”’ (2020). In other words, it is widely accepted that there is no populism without the promise ‘to make democracy work’ (Albertazzi and McDonnell 2008, 2), by allegedly giving back to the people the power that rightfully resides with them, and which a set of (economic, cultural, or financial) elites are said to have stolen. As the focus of this volume is what populist parties do in competition with others, what distinguishes the different approaches cited above is not of great relevance to us, even more so since there is fundamental agreement among experts as to which parties and leaders should be regarded as populists (Moffitt 2020, 10). We therefore justify our choice to adopt the ‘ideational’ approach to populism below, but soon enough move on to introduce the main focus of the book: party competition.

Populism: our approach The studies collected in this volume adopt Cas Mudde’s (2007, 23) widely cited definition of populism as: a thin-centered ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people. Of course, a plethora of meanings can be, and have been, attached to the ‘ultimately fictional’ (Müller 2016, 19) people of populist discourse (see Canovan 1984). Hence populists have appealed to citizens’ democratic, socio-economic or ethnic status to construct their people, depending on the context in which they operate (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2013b). The elites have similarly been categorized in different ways, according to economic, political, and cultural factors, and again depending on context. What never changes, however, is the identification of a fundamental moral opposition between the people, on the one hand, and the elites on the other (Müller 2016, 19–20). Hence the elites are depicted by populists as selfserving and corrupt, while the people can only ever be conceived as homogenous, virtuous, and honest. In this context, the will of the people is not only said to exist, but to self-evidently require implementation without mediations, something the elites are said to resist to hang on to their privileges (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2013b). Populists ‘invoke a sense of crisis and the idea that “soon it will be too late”’ (Albertazzi and McDonnell 2008, 5), offering themselves as the last hope for returning the sceptre of full sovereignty to its rightful owner − the people. Since populism revolves around a very narrow range of concepts, however, it has often been defined as a ‘thin ideology’ that does not provide voters with a fully developed vision about how society should change (Stanley 2008). Therefore, even those who conceive it as an ideology always add that it inevitably needs to ‘walk’ hand in hand with other ideologies: for instance, nationalism and socialism.

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The ideational approach has many strengths. As Mudde (2017) puts it, it allows us to distinguish what ‘counts’ as populism, set clear boundaries to detect negative cases (i.e. non-populists), and categorize varieties of populism into logical taxonomies. In other words, by accepting Giovanni Sartori’s (1976) invitation to adopt dichotomous concepts (here: populist vs non–populist) we are able to identify subtypes in the empirical part of the book, as our contributors consider party interaction and competition in different national contexts.1 The ideational approach has the added advantage of not being temporally or geographically specific, hence ensuring its travelability across cases. Finally, it is also versatile, which makes it applicable to different actors, levels of analysis and research designs. Conceptualizing populism along an ideological dimension allows us to work with an ideal-type of populist party, which puts forward a combination of peoplecentrist and anti-elitist messages, with an emphasis on popular sovereignty. However, in the empirical world populist actors can hardly be identified in their ideal-type form; moreover, as already mentioned, as a thin ideology populism comes attached to other ideologies. While left-right ideological distinctions between different populist parties have been made based on Norberto Bobbio’s (1996) classic definition (e.g. Kriesi 2014), Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser (2013a) draw a line between inclusionary and exclusionary populists (see also Chapter  2). Their typology pinpoints whether a populist party includes or excludes specific subgroups from what constitutes ‘the people’, with reference to three fundamental dimensions: symbolic, material, and political.While inclusionary populists are more encompassing when it comes to defining who belongs to the people, who should benefit from state resources and who should participate in the political process, exclusionary populists actively target groups that are said not to belong to the community, thus arguing for their exclusion at the symbolic or political levels, or from the redistribution of resources. In the Western European context, radical left populist parties have (so far) usually adopted an ‘inclusionary’ approach, while radical right ones have been on the ‘exclusionary’ side.

Actions and reactions: who competes with populist parties? The present volume looks at two types of party interaction (Figure 1.1). First, we are interested in the relationship between populist parties and their main non-populist counterparts, which are conventionally defined in the literature as ‘mainstream’ or ‘established’ parties. The volume analyses, in particular, how the latter have responded to the emergence and, in many cases, the strengthening of the former in their political systems. However, we are also interested in a second type of interaction:  between populists. In some countries inclusionary and exclusionary forms of populism coexist and our typology allows us to assess how they relate to each other. Even more interesting is the relationship between older and newer populists (Figure 1.1), which may in fact sometimes be on the same side of the inclusionaryexclusionary divide. The volume will therefore also analyse how more established populist parties react to the emergence of new populist competitors and respond to

Introduction 5

FIGURE 1.1

The interactions between populists and non-populists

* In some countries the interaction between older and newer populists might coexist with, or might be less relevant than, competition between populists with different ideological characteristics (i.e. ‘inclusionary’ vs ‘exclusionary’).

them, providing a novel contribution on a dynamic that has only recently increased in importance and is hardly covered in the literature. Ultimately our work challenges the extant scholarship that commonly defines non-populist actors as ‘mainstream/established’ parties, while bestowing populists with the status of ‘challengers’. As this volume will show, using these categories is in fact reductive, as it neglects how, in some cases, populist parties have gradually evolved and are more and more recognized as established actors that are in turn challenged by populist newcomers. While most of our contributors have chosen to stick to the ‘mainstream vs populist’ dichotomy in their chapters, we offer an extended discussion of this issue in our Conclusion (see Chapter 14), and prefer to speak of a ‘populist vs non-populist’ dynamic, as we have done in this Introduction.

Strategies of party competition: a new typology While the response of established parties to their competitors has drawn attention from a variety of scholars, the latter have been conceptualized differently. Although often adopting terms such as ‘extremist’,‘niche’ or ‘radical’ to define these parties, the common denominator of extant scholarship has in fact been a focus on populists. Scholars have scrutinized their interactions with non-populist actors from a variety of angles to broadly understand their emergence, development, and success. For instance, Steven Wolinetz and Andrej Zaslove (2018) have studied party competition for votes and for government to assess the impact of populist parties on European party systems. Pontus Odmalm and Eve Hepburn (2017) have investigated how non-populist parties’ positional changes on immigration affect the overall success of the populist radical right. And finally, Tjitske Akkerman, Sarah de Lange, and Matthijs Rooduijn (2016) have examined to what extent the pursuit of party goals has produced what they see as a ‘mainstreaming’ of exclusionary populism. While all these studies entail a more or less explicit focus on non-populist vs populist interactions, they still leave some important questions unanswered. What

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happens when non-populist parties engage with populists on issues that go beyond the usual ones (e.g. immigration and ‘Europe’)? Is political competition purely based on ‘issues’ and ‘policies’ or is it increasingly influenced by personality struggles and communication strategies? How do we account for these transformations? Can we apply categories used to assess non-populists’ responses to populists to the analysis of competing populisms? And, even more crucially, how can we systematically capture such interactions? To address these gaps, the present volume introduces a new typology of party competition (see Chapter 3). While grounded on existing literature, this provides a novel and more sophisticated tool to capture the variety of strategic actions that characterize the response of any party to another. More specifically, the typology builds on the work of Bonnie Meguid (2005), who identified three broad categories to capture the competition dynamics between mainstream and niche parties. According to the author, such interactions could be described by three strategies, as mainstream parties can either ignore their competitors (dismissive strategy), converge towards their proposals (accommodative strategy) or oppose them (adversarial strategy). While we acknowledge the analytical value of these categories in capturing how parties relate to each other and are inspired by them, we also depart from Meguid’s work in some important ways. First and foremost, we see a broader potential of applicability for these categories that goes beyond niche parties and can contribute to analysing how any actor responds to another; our typology thus extends the applicability of Meguid’s original categorizations. Second, we introduce a horizontal distinction that discerns whether strategic action targets the competitor as an actor, or else targets its policies. While Meguid’s typology only captures interactions revolving around policies, we suggest that – in addition to it – looking at how parties also relate to each other as actors increases the analytical power of the categories under discussion and allows us to develop a more comprehensive understanding of party interactions. Finally, we introduce a vertical distinction to Meguid’s typology by adding a set of subcategories, which better specify the different strategic forms that dismissive, accommodative, and adversarial behaviour can actually assume. Our typology thus builds upon, but also extends, Meguid’s work, contributing to the sophistication of the analysis of interaction dynamics between parties of any kind. As mentioned, it maintains the analytical focus on three main competition strategies – dismissive, accommodative, and adversarial – while adding five new subcategories (co-optation, clashing, marginalization, cooperation, and fusion). Most importantly for us here, this new typology has guided the analyses conducted by our contributors who, in Part II of the book, examine competition dynamics in a wide variety of contexts in Western Europe. The typology thus serves as a framework to facilitate and ground their comparative empirical work.

Case selection: countries and parties This book analyses party interactions in ten European countries. While the overview provided in Chapter  2 also includes Visegrad countries (Hungary, Poland,

Introduction 7

Czech Republic, and Slovakia), our case-specific chapters focus on Western Europe. We chose to narrow down the geographical scope of our investigation in order to maximize the comparability of our case studies. Indeed, given the legacy of state socialism (Minkenberg 2002; Pirro 2014), party competition for most of the past decades has been structured differently in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) compared to Western Europe. As stated by Peter Mair (1997, 192), CEE countries seem to lack political ‘systemness’, in the sense of ‘patterned interactions’ between parties (italics added). Zsolt Enyedi and Fernando Casal Bértoa (2018, 447) have more recently shown that ‘the consolidation of party politics in the region remained partial’. Particularly, ‘the number of new parties with more than 0.5 per cent of the votes is more than twice as large in the East … as in the West’ (2018, 431). This also makes the identification of relevant non-populist and populist actors less straightforward and more controversial. Of course, this does not prevent future research from engaging with the challenge of assessing parties’ competition strategies in post-communist party systems, which, after 30  years, seem to be slowly moving towards maturation and stabilization. We also acknowledge the fact that even Western Europe cannot be considered as a ‘homogenous’ area. Indeed, the ten countries selected for this book belong to different political ‘macro-areas’ within the region. Ultimately, we accept the distinction made by Swen Hutter and Hanspeter Kriesi (2019) between Southern and North-Western European countries. Whereas the socio-economic divide between Left and Right has structured political competition in both macro-areas, scholars have stressed that, particularly after 2008, the socio-cultural dimension has been more politicized in North-Western Europe than in Southern Europe, where, instead, issues linked to democratic renewal and reform (in a context of high corruption and low transparency) have been more salient and polarizing. NorthWestern Europe can in turn be divided into two groups: ‘Core Continental’ and ‘Northern’ European countries. Yet this distinction is more based on geography than politics, since the second group includes not only the so-called Nordic/ Scandinavian countries but also two ‘insular’ countries: the United Kingdom (UK) and Ireland. While the last two are politically quite distinctive, the Nordic countries (Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland) do share important institutional features:  proportionalism, consensualism, corporatism, and balanced legislativeexecutive relations (Arter 2004). Their political debates and discourses have also been significantly affected by the legacy of ‘social democratic’ welfare regimes (Esping-Andersen 1990; Kuisma 2017). Table  1.1 shows the list of cases we have selected. Core Continental Europe includes Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. Northern Europe includes Denmark and Finland. As mentioned above, the UK is also included in this group but mainly due to its geographical position, since it is politically quite different from the other two countries (but also from the rest of continental Europe). Lastly, Greece and Italy are the two cases we selected in Southern Europe. Both theoretical and pragmatic reasons guided our country selection. We have excluded small states (or ‘micro-states’, as they are also known) such as Luxembourg,

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TABLE 1.1 List of cases

Core Continental Europe Country

Populist parties

Non-populist parties

Austria

Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ)

Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP)

Alliance for the Future of Austria (BZÖ)

Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ)

France

Germany

Team Stronach (TS) National Front/National Rally (FN/RN) France Unbowed (LFI) Alternative for Germany (AfD) The Left

Netherlands

Party for Freedom (PVV) Socialist Party (SP) Forum for Democracy (FvD)

Switzerland

Swiss People’s Party (SVP)

Republicans (LR) Socialist Party (PS) The Republic on the Move (LREM) Christian Democratic Union (CDU) Christian Social Union (CSU) Greens Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) Labour Party (PvdA) People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) Christian Democrats (CVP) Liberals (FDP) Social Democrats (SP)

Northern Europe Country

Populist parties

Non-populist parties

Denmark

Danish People’s Party (DF)

Finland

Finns party (PS) Blue Reform (SIN)

UK

United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) British National Party (BNP)

Conservative Party (K) Liberal Party (V) Social Democrats (SD) Social Liberals (RV) Centre party (KESK) Conservative party (KOK) Social Democratic party (SDP) Conservative Party Labour Party Liberal Democrats

Country

Populist parties

Non-populist parties

Greece

Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) Independent Greeks (ANEL)

New Democracy (ND) Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK)*

Southern Europe

Introduction 9 TABLE 1.1 (Cont.)

Southern Europe Country

Populist parties

Non-populist parties

Italy

League (Formerly Northern League, LN) Five Star Movement (M5S) Forza Italia (FI)

Democratic Party (PD)

* As explained in Chapter 12, since the mid-1990s it is no longer appropriate to consider PASOK as a populist party.

Malta, Cyprus, and Iceland, since political dynamics in these contexts tend to be very peculiar (Eccardt 2005). Moreover, no relevant populist parties exist in Portugal – hence there are no interactions of the kind we are interested in here to assess in this country. Ireland is in a similar position, although Sinn Féin is regarded by some scholars as a populist left-wing party (O’Malley 2008; Suiter 2017). In any case, unstructured patterns of party competition set this country apart from the rest of Western Europe, especially from other North-Western European countries (Hutter and Malet 2019). All Scandinavian countries offer interesting examples of established populists parties that have been competing with non-populists for decades (Albertazzi and McDonnell 2008). In this sense, the cases of Sweden and Norway would have been equally relevant to our discussion, but have been excluded for pragmatic reasons, since we had to consider the country expertise of our contributors and keep the length of the edited book within manageable limits. For the same reasons, Belgium and Spain have also been excluded, although references to the latter – mentioning recent ‘cooperation’ between the centre-left Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE – Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party) and the populist Podemos (We Can!) – are in the Conclusion and are linked to the discussion of how left-wing non-populists respond to populists. Overall, however, our range of cases is sufficiently broad to represent different areas of Western Europe and allow for meaningful comparisons and generalizations. Alongside the countries considered in the book, Table  1.1 also shows the list of the main populist and non-populist parties to be discussed. In the latter group we have included all main established centre-left and centre-right parties in each country. In most cases, however, we focus on more than two ‘non-populist’ parties. This is because even political competition between non-populist parties has become more fragmented and unstable (Dinas and Riera 2018; Chiaramonte and Emanuele 2019), although in some contexts, such as the Netherlands and Finland, this is not a new phenomenon. The populist parties selected are of different ideological orientation on the left-right spectrum. The majority are populist radical right parties, reflecting the balance of forces between different varieties of populism in Western Europe:

10 Daniele Albertazzi et al.

Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (Austrian Freedom Party  – FPÖ), Bündnis Zukunft Österreich (Alliance for the Future of Austria  – BZÖ), Team Stronach (TS), Front National/Rassemblement National (National Front/National Rally  – FN/RN), Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany – AfD), Partij voor de Vrijheid (Party for Freedom – PVV), Forum voor Democratie (Forum for Democracy – FvD), Schweizerische Volkspartei (Swiss People’s Party  – SVP), Dansk Folkeparti (Danish People’s Party – DF), Perussuomalaiset (Finns Party – PS), Sininen tulevaisuus (Blue Reform – SIN), United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), British National Party (BNP), Anexartitoi Ellines (Independent Greeks – ANEL) and Lega (League, formerly Northern League – LN).2 Our selected countries also include a smaller group of significant radical left populist parties:  La France Insoumise (LFI – France Unbowed), Die Linke (The Left), Socialistische Partij (SP  – Socialist Party) and Synaspismós Rizospastikís Aristerás (SYRIZA – Coalition of the Radical Left). Two populist parties, both in Italy, cannot be classified as either radical right or radical left. Forza Italia (FI), the party founded by the media entrepreneur Silvio Berlusconi, has often been defined as ‘neo-liberal’ populist. As argued by Mudde (2007, 47), ‘the core ideology of neoliberal populism … is the combination of primarily economic liberalism with populism’ (see Chapter  2). However, the analysis of Forza Italia’s manifestoes shows that it ‘moved steadily away from the neo-Liberal positions of the 1990s towards professions of support for a “social market economy”’ (Albertazzi and McDonnell 2015, 27). Moreover, as the dominant party of government for much of the 2000s, it consistently shied away from introducing any neo-liberal reforms. This being the case, FI is best classified as ‘centre-right’. The Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S – Five Star Movement), the party-movement founded by comedian and activist Beppe Grillo, can be regarded as an example of ‘valence populism’ (Zulianello 2019) due to its eclecticism in borrowing from both right and left. Indeed it has been able ‘to push the “thin-centered” nature of the populist ideology to its zenith by being able to detach itself from any particular ideology, and/or to attach itself to diverging but coexisting ideologies’ (Pirro 2018, 445). All the populist parties mentioned above have enjoyed electoral relevance in the post-crisis period, and have all won more than 4 per cent of the national vote in at least one general/European election since 2007. The only exception is Blue Reform in Finland, which received less than one per cent of the vote in the only national election it contested (in 2019). Yet following its split from the True Finns in June 2017, this party was an important parliamentary and governmental player until June 2019. For this reason, we decided to include it in our analysis of the Finnish case, despite the fact that it does not meet the threshold. As shown in Figure 1.2, the populist parties considered in this book are not all ‘new’. Some have existed for decades, well before the recent political and economic crises.3 Overall, while ten parties included in the sample were founded before 2000, 11 were founded in the new millennium (and seven after the crisis). Some older parties, such as the FPÖ and the SVP, were not populist from the beginning but underwent a radical transformation towards the end of the twentieth century. Looking in more detail at the time distribution of the parties, it can be noted that

Introduction 11

FIGURE 1.2

Year of foundation of the populist parties analysed in this book

they reflect the different waves of political change occurred in Europe. Parties such as the FN and the SP represent important cultural shifts occurring in the 1970s and 1980s and the emergence of a libertarian-authoritarian political dimension (Kitschelt 1994). One element that UK, Finland, and Denmark have in common is the rise of populist parties in the 1990s, when the process of European integration started to accelerate (Kriesi 2007).The rise of the League and FI in Italy can also be linked to this particular period, which, in fact, can be extended until the mid-2000s, when a number of new populist parties emerged in Western Europe. The financial crisis which started in the aftermath of the fall of Lehman Brothers in autumn 2008 produced a set of economic and political transformations that boosted the final populist wave. This has been much more intense and ‘disruptive’ than the previous ones and, unsurprisingly, has attracted unprecedented scholarly attention. We observe variation not only across but also within countries. For instance, in Austria we have the more established FPÖ competing with the BZÖ (emerged after splitting from the FPÖ) and (briefly) with TS. In this case we can look at interactions between older and newer exclusionary parties. A  similar case is the Finnish one mentioned above, where Blue Reform’s competitive relationship with the Finns party provides an important opportunity to assess interactions between populists. In France, dynamics between older and newer populists intersect with the left vs right dichotomy, since the more established FN/RN, an archetypal populist radical right party, has competed with La France Insoumise, which was founded in recent years and is clearly positioned on the left. In the Netherlands we have the opposite situation, with a more established left-wing populist party (SP), coexisting with newer right-wing populists (PVV and, more recently, FvD). In Italy we have two older populists, the League and Forza Italia, competing with a newer populist challenger, the M5S.4 Also in this case, it is not just age that differentiates these parties but also their ideological/programmatic profiles.

The outline of the book This book is structured in an introduction, two main parts, and a concluding chapter. Part I starts with Chapter 2, which reflects on different forms of populism

12 Daniele Albertazzi et al.

and highlights the importance of populist actors as drivers of change in democratic systems. The chapter provides a general assessment of how populists affect democracy when they are in government, ultimately suggesting that the impact of populist parties on policies and democratic processes might be mainly indirect. Indeed, populists do not need to be in government to make a difference and often play an important role in shaping the political agenda by influencing non-populist parties, even if they are in opposition. Therefore Chapter 2 is key in introducing some of the themes analysed in the book, as this is entirely focused on interactions between parties. Chapter 3 presents our typology of party competition – a framework which is grounded in the literature, but also presents important elements of originality and refinement, as we have already explained. The chapter considers the three different sets of strategies mentioned above – dismissive, adversarial, and accommodative – to which we add some subcategories in order to better specify the tool-kit available to parties competing with each other. Additionally, we argue that our framework is useful to assess both how parties compete on policies and how they relate to each other as actors. We also discuss the value and applicability of our typology and show how it may be deployed in empirical research. Part II of the book includes ten country-specific chapters, which employ the typology presented in Chapter  3. Each case study introduces the reader to the most important populist and non-populist parties in the country during the period from 2007 to 2018, summarizing their ideology, electoral performance and roles in government and/or opposition. Although our contributors focus on the postcrisis period, they also present some evidence from before 2007, particularly when discussing structural factors that can be said to have facilitated the emergence or success of populist parties for a long time (e.g. the case of Switzerland). We have followed Herbert Kitschelt’s definition of opportunity structures as ‘specific configurations of resources, institutional arrangements and historical precedents for social mobilization, which facilitate the development of protest movements in some instances and constrain them in others’ (Kitschelt 1986, 58). Discussion of structural factors in the country case studies provides a platform for the analysis of populist agency (following Albertazzi and McDonnell 2008), by which we mean how populists have taken advantage of the opportunity structures present in their political systems, or indeed failed to do so. The core of each chapter focuses on the interactions between parties by assessing the strategies that non-populist parties have adopted when responding to populists, but also the emerging patterns of competition/cooperation between different forms of populism (e.g. left-wing vs right-wing populist parties, or older vs newer ones). Additionally, our contributors pay particular attention to key policy domains that were affected by party interactions. So, for instance, the chapter on the UK discusses European integration and immigration, the one on Greece focuses on responses to austerity measures, and so on. Finally, in the Conclusion, we draw on the evidence provided by the individual chapters and present an overview of the strategies adopted by non-populist parties

Introduction 13

competing with populists. We highlight that the left-right divide significantly affects these interactions. For instance, while right-wing non-populists resort to cooperation and co-optation when dealing with right-wing populist competitors, left-wing non-populists prefer to clash with the same parties. Of course, there are interesting deviations from this general pattern and we account for those as well.We also discuss how different populist parties competing in the same political system have interacted with each other and we seek to draw general lessons from this analysis. In this case, ideological proximity on the left-right axis does not seem to explain instances of populist cooperation. Hence we point to the possible convergence between different forms of populism in a context of increasing discontent with globalization and European integration (in both its economic and cultural forms) after the financial crisis. In some countries this has resulted in the formation of ‘odd’ coalitions including populist actors with different ideological orientations but equally hostile towards supra-national political and economic forces. Ultimately, the volume provides strong confirmation that populist parties have been so resilient and successful, including in dominating the political and media agenda and forcing others to make room for them in government, to have arguably become ‘the new mainstream’ in much of Western Europe. This is very much the reality non-populist parties will have to grapple with in the years to come, and also one that forces academics to reconsider deep-seated habits determining how they conceive of populists as ‘challengers’  – habits which are clearly no longer justified today.

Notes 1 We are very aware that this is a simplification, however it is a necessary one. While the chapters in this volume acknowledge the extent to which non-populist parties do at times borrow from the populist box of tricks, treating populism as an ideology means seeing it as an essential feature of some parties’ identity and not others. Table 1.1 lists the parties we are concerned with in this volume, stating which ones are regarded as populist on the basis of the available literature and our contributors’ expertise. 2 We have included the Austrian Team Stronach in this group although this party has also been defined as ‘neo-liberal’ populist (see Chapter 2). 3 For instance, since 2008 the Northern League – later just ‘League’ – has been the oldest party represented in the Italian Parliament. 4 Since 2019, another populist (radical right) party is growing, according to electoral polls: Fratelli d’Italia (FdI – Brothers of Italy).

References Akkerman,Tjitske, Sarah de Lange, and Matthijs Rooduijn. 2016. Radical Right-Wing Populist Parties in Western Europe: Into the Mainstream? Abindgon and New York: Routledge. Albertazzi, Daniele, and Duncan McDonnell. 2008. ‘Introduction:  The Sceptre and the Spectre.’ In Twenty-First Century Populism  – The Spectre of Western European Democracy, edited by Daniele Albertazzi and Duncan McDonnell, 1–11. Houndmills and New York: Palgrave.

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Albertazzi, Daniele, and Duncan McDonnell. 2015. Populists in Power. London: Routledge. Arter, David. 2004. ‘Parliamentary Democracy in Scandinavia.’ Parliamentary Affairs 57, no. 3: 581–600. Bale, Tim, Stijn van Kessel, and Paul Taggart. 2011. ‘Thrown Around with Abandon? Popular Understandings of Populism as Conveyed by the Print Media: A UK Case Study.’ Acta Politica 46, no. 2: 111–131. Bobbio, Norbert. 1996. Left and Right. The Significance of a Political Distinction. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Canovan, Margaret. 1984. ‘People, Politicians and Populism.’ Government and Opposition 19, no. 3: 312–327. Chiaramonte, Alessandro, and Vincenzo Emanuele. 2019. ‘Towards Turbulent Times:  Measuring and Explaining Party System (De-)institutionalization in Western Europe (1945–2015).’ Italian Political Science Review 49, no. 1: 1–23. Dinas, Elias, and Pedro Riera. 2018. ‘Do European Parliament Elections Impact National Party System Fragmentation?’ Comparative Political Studies 51, no. 5: 447–476. Eccardt, Thomas M. 2005. Secrets of the Seven Smallest States of Europe. New  York: Hippocrene Books. Enyedi, Zsolt, and Fernando Casal Bértoa. 2018. ‘Institutionalization and Deinstitutionalization in Post-communist Party Systems.’ East European Politics and Societies and Cultures 32, no. 3: 422–450. Esping-Andersen, Gøsta. 1990. The Three Words of Welfare Capitalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hutter, Swen, and Giorgio Malet. 2019. ‘Ireland  – Limited Restructuration in the Poster Child of Austerity.’ In European Party Politics in Times of Crisis, edited by Swen Hutter and Hanspeter Kriesi, 302–325. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hutter, Swen, and Hanspeter Kriesi. 2019. European Party Politics in Times of Crisis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kitschelt, Herbert. 1986.‘Political Opportunity Structures and Political Protest: Anti-Nuclear Movements in Four Democracies.’ British Journal of Political Science 16, no. 1: 57–85. Kitschelt, Herbert. 1994. The tranformation of European social democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kriesi, Hanspeter. 2007.‘The Role of European Integration in National Election Campaigns.’ European Union Politics 8, no. 1: 83–108. Kriesi, Hanspeter. 2014. ‘The Populist Challenge.’ West European Politics 37, no. 2: 361–378. Kuisma, Mikko. 2017. ‘Oscillating Meanings of the Nordic model:  Ideas and the Welfare State in Finland and Sweden.’ Critical Policy Studies 11, no. 4: 433–454. Laclau, Ernesto. 2005. ‘Populism: What’s in a Name?’ In Populism and the Mirror of Democracy, edited by Francisco Panizza, , 32–49. London: Verso. Mair, Peter. 1997. Party System Change:  Approaches and Interpretations. Oxford:  Clarendon Press. Meguid, Bonnie. 2005. ‘Competition between Unequals:  The Role of Mainstream Party Strategy in Niche Party Success.’ American Political Science Review 99, no. 3: 347–359. Minkenberg, Michael. 2002. ‘The Radical Right in Postsocialist Central and Eastern Europe: Comparative Observations and Interpretations.’ East European Politics and Societies 16, no. 2: 335–362. Moffitt, Benjamin. 2020. Populism. Cambridge: Polity Press. Moffitt, Benjamin, and Simon Tormey. 2014. ‘Rethinking Populism: Politics, Mediatisation and Political Style.’ Political Studies 62: 381–397. Mudde, Cas. 2007. Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Introduction 15

Mudde, Cas. 2017. ‘Populism. An Ideational Approach.’ In The Oxford Handbook of Populism, edited by Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser, Paul Taggart, Paulina Ochoa Espejo, and Pierre Ostiguy, 27–47. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mudde, Cas, and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser. 2013a.‘Exclusionary vs. Inclusionary Populism: Comparing Contemporary Europe and Latin America.’ Government and Opposition 48, no. 2: 147–174. Mudde, Cas, and Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser. 2013b. ‘Populism.’ In The Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies, edited by Michael Freeden and Marc Stears, 493–512. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Müller, Jan-Werner. 2016. What Is Populism? Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania. O’Malley, Eoin. 2008. ‘Why Is There No Radical Right Party in Ireland?’ West European Politics 31, no. 5: 960–977. Odmalm, Pontus, and Eve Hepburn. 2017. The European Mainstream and the Populist Radical Right. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Panizza, Francisco. 2005. Populism and the Mirror of Democracy. London: Verso. Pirro, Andrea. 2014. ‘Populist Radical Right Parties in Central and Eastern Europe:  The Different Context and Issues of the Prophets of the Patria.’ Government and Opposition 49, no. 4: 599–628. Pirro, Andrea. 2018. ‘The Polyvalent Populism of the 5 Star Movement.’ Journal of Contemporary European Studies. 26, no. 4: 443–458. Sartori, Giovanni. 1976. Parties and Party Systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stanley, Ben. 2008. ‘The Thin Ideology of Populism.’ Journal of Political Ideologies 13, no. 1: 95–110. Suiter, Jane. 2017. ‘Ireland:  The Rise of Populism on the Left and Among Independents.’ In Populist Political Communication in Europe, edited by Toril Aalberg, Frank Esser, Carsten Reinemann, Jesper Stromback, and Claes De Vreese, 127–137. New York and Abingdon: Routledge. Weyland, Kurt. 2001. ‘Clarifying a Contested Concept. Populism in the Study of Latin American Politics.’ Comparative Politics 34, no.1: 1–22. Weyland, Kurt. 2017. ‘Populism: A Political Strategic Approach.’ In The Oxford Handbook of Populism, edited by Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser, Paul Taggart, Paulina Ochoa Espejo, and Pierre Ostiguy. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 48–72. Wodak, Ruth. 2015. The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Popuist Discourses Mean. London: Sage. Wolinetz, Steven, and Andrej Zaslove. 2018. Absorbing the Blow. Populist Parties and Their Impact on Parties and Party Systems. London: Rowman & Littlefield. Zulianello, Mattia. 2019. Anti-System Parties From Parliamentary Breakthrough to Government. London and New York: Routledge.

PART I

2 POPULISM AND DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE Davide Vittori and Leonardo Morlino

Introduction In contemporary political science, populism is a word that has been used to describe several ways of doing politics. These include references to the polarizing attitude of some political parties, the confrontational rhetoric style of some leaders, and the reliance on the so-called fake news by parties to spread messages against (part of) the establishment or minorities. When the Cambridge Dictionary elected ‘populism’ as the word of the year in 2017, after the referendum on Brexit and the election of Donald Trump in the previous year, it became evident that this word was expressing, according to mainstream media, the explanandum of the crises of the political regimes in Europe, North America, Latin America, and Asia. In the recurrent understanding of the meaning, however, populism has a normative bias: it is frequently associated with all kinds of negative attributes, especially when linked to the functioning of European democracies. In this respect, populism is perceived by sectors of public opinion as a threat to (liberal) democratic values. It is considered to disregard representative politics, freedom of speech, the protection of minority rights and every intermediation between the will of the people and its implementation. In this chapter, first, in the attempt to avoid normative biases, we suggest a distinction among populisms and, then, we assess the growth of populism in Europe and its impact on political institutions. The main conclusion of our analysis is that populism has never been as ‘mainstream’ in society and politics as it is in the posteconomic crisis scenario. Not only have the ideas that populist parties propose become more popular, to the extent that mainstream parties may embrace them in order not to lose their electorate (Bale et al. 2010), but populist parties are also increasingly included in coalition governments as both junior and major partners. As we will see below, populist parties took advantage of the window of opportunity

20 Davide Vittori and Leonardo Morlino

that the Great Recession provided from 2008 onward. Overall, as far as their impact on democracy is concerned, they seem to have had a particularly deep impact on less established democratic systems in Central and Eastern Europe, especially in the Visegrad countries. Moreover, we found some evidence that ‘exclusionary’ populism poses a more serious challenge to liberal democratic institutions than other forms of populism. By analysing the data provided by IDEA on the quality of democracy, we evaluate the performance of both non-populist and populist governments below, and discuss whether some varieties of populism are dangerous for democratic institutions.

Definition(s) and beyond: inclusionary, exclusionary, and neo-liberal populism The experience of populism in different areas of the world, such as Latin America, Asia, and Europe, shows its ‘chameleonic’ nature (Taggart 2000; Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2013). Indeed, even before this term became so widespread, one of the features that scholars agreed upon was the multi-faceted forms that populism could assume in different contexts and epochs (Ionescu and Gellner 1969). Matthijs Rooduijn’ (2014) found no less than 12 features associated with populism, which he then narrowed down to four to find populism’s lowest common denominator: the emphasis on the central position of the people; the criticism of the elite; the idea of ‘the people’ as a homogeneous entity; and the perception of a sense of crisis. In her seminal work, Margaret Canovan (1981, see also Canovan 1999) identifies no less than seven types of populism: (1) farmers’ radicalism; (2) peasant movements; (3) intellectual agrarian socialism; (4) populist dictatorship; (5) populist democracy; (6)  reactionary populism; and (7)  politicians’ populism. These radically different types indicate that populism can co-exist with different forms of government (democracy and dictatorship) and different ideologies (conservatism, radicalism, socialism). As populism is regarded as a ‘thin’ ideology without a core structure, it has frequently been associated with both left-wing and right-wing positions (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2012; March 2011; March 2017; Kitschelt and McGann 1995; Mudde 2007; Ivarsflaten 2008; Minkenberg 2001). It is also sometimes associated with centrist-liberal parties (Zaslove 2008) and, more recently, with post-ideological parties, such as the Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S – Five Star Movement) or the Česká pirátská strana (Czech Pirate Party) (Vittori 2017a; Hartleb 2013). In this chapter, we adopt Cas Mudde’s (2004, 55) definition of populism as ‘a thin-centred ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, “the pure people” versus “the corrupt elite”, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people’.1 To grasp the multifaceted nature of populism, one of the most relevant distinctions proposed by the literature is the one between ‘exclusionary’ and ‘inclusionary’ populism (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2013). In addition to these two, ‘neo-liberal’ populism has also emerged in Europe, for instance in Italy (Forza Italia, FI – Forward Italy), the Czech Republic (Akce nespokojených občanů,

Populism and democracy in Europe 21 TABLE 2.1 Populisms: Types and Dimensions

dimensions types

material

Exclusionary

The ‘people’ includes all Including the members of the nation members of the nation, excluding (ethnicity). Whatever undermines the purity financial/ political/ cultural of the ingroup is seen as a threat, i.e. minority elites and all groups, religion, internal minorities. enemies. The ‘people’ includes Inclusive of all Pro-redistributive all non-elite groups. minorities; policies with no Borderless and reducing the distinction made multicultural conception among the non-elite influence of of the people. The financial/ groups benefiting outgroup is the richest political/cultural from redistribution. and wealthiest class. elites The ‘people’ includes those Against redistribution Reducing the who work hard, regardless power of the and the structures of their status. ‘Lazy’ specific elites that block the free which neo-liberal people and leftist groups market populists oppose. are the main outgroups.

Inclusionary

Neo-Liberal

political

symbolic

Nationally/ Ethnically based pro-redistributive policies

ANO  – Action of Dissatisfied Citizens), Austria (Team Stronach für Österreich  – Team Stronach for Austria), the Netherlands (Leefbaar Nederland, LN  – Liveable Netherlands) and Belgium (Lijst Dedecker – Dedecker List). Inclusiveness and exclusiveness have been operationalized according to three main dimensions – material, political, symbolic  – which provide a framework of analysis through ideal-types. The first dimension is related to the state’s distribution of resources. The political dimension refers to participation in political institutions and the availability of a space for public contestation. The last dimension is the symbolic one: albeit being the least tangible (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2013, 164), it is crucial since it refers to the lines that populist parties draw to distinguish between the ‘people’ and the ‘elite’. Table 2.1 summarizes the features of different types of populism.

Populism in Europe: a synonym for radical right politics? The distinctions mentioned in Table  2.1 notwithstanding, the literature on European populism tends to link it to the radical right. Indeed, as shown in the most recent and significant comparative works on the topic (e.g. Kriesi and Pappas 2015; van Kessel 2015), the cases of populist radical right parties (PRRPs) outnumber both neo-liberal and radical-left ones. In Stijn van Kessel’s (2015) review of populist parties in Europe, a prudential estimation lists at least 30 parties related

22 Davide Vittori and Leonardo Morlino

to the populist radical right out of a total of 51. Moreover, among the most relevant parties identified in the book, only five belong to the neo-liberal and three to the radical-left party families.The remaining ones are: (1) short-lived anti-establishment parties; (2) parties whose placement on the left-right political space is ambiguous, i.e. the M5S in Italy and Obyčajní Ľudia (Ordinary People – OĽaNO) in Slovakia; or (3) parties whose platform has changed dramatically in the last decades, such as the Hungarian Fidesz (Hungarian Civic Alliance). As for the populist radical-right family, Western Europe (Albertazzi and McDonnell 2008; Kitschelt and McGann 1995; Betz 1994) has attracted more attention than Eastern Europe (Pirro 2014). Despite the differences between European countries (e.g. types of democracy, party systems, electoral behaviours, etc.), PRRPs have invariably been strong advocates of an exclusionary kind of populism. While there are differences within the radical right between pro-market parties and more welfare-chauvinist ones (Betz 1994), PRRPs’ economic positions have usually been pro redistribution in recent years (Mudde 2007), while sharing an opposition to immigration and globalization (Ivarsflaten 2008; Mudde 2007). The growth of PRRPs is related to value changes occurred in Europe in the 1960s and 1970s, which opened a unique window of opportunity for those parties (Ignazi 1994; Kitschelt and McGann 1995), with cross-national diffusion processes explaining their electoral success (Rydgren 2005 and 2007). PRRPs were able to reinvent ethnonationalism, anti-establishment and anti-globalization attitudes in different national contexts, by exploiting the decreasing relevance of the socioeconomic cleavage as leverage to legitimate new issues. In this regard, Betz and Johnson (2004, 323) argue that their ideology is ‘a response to the erosion of the system of “ethnonational dominance”, which characterized much of the history of modern nation-states. […] The strategic goal is to reverse this development and reinstall ethnonational dominance.’ PRRPs were able to affect the agenda of mainstream parties in several European polities. Indeed, as shown below, several parties belonging to this family have supported their conservative centre-right counterparts in several policy areas, such as immigration, integration, and security (De Lange 2012). Indeed, as Mudde (2010, 1181) has said, the supply-side of the populist radical-right matched the new, more radicalized, populist and authoritarian attitude of mainstream parties. Hence, Mudde coined the expression ‘pathological normalcy’ to describe either the resilience or the growth of PRRPs in Europe. Although populism has often been considered a synonym of radical right in Europe, left-wing populists can also be found in some countries. Scholars of radical left parties (RLPs), however, have been less inclined to consider populism as a key feature of this family (March 2017). Hence Luke March (2011) used the label ‘populist’ with reference to only two, rather marginal, types of party:  populist socialist parties and social populists. The first is a sub-type of modern democratic socialist parties: these display a democratic socialist ideology coupled with a robust anti-establishment appeal. March includes in this sub-type Germany’s Die Linke (Left Party), the Socialistische Partij (SP – Dutch Socialist Party), and the Scottish

Populism and democracy in Europe 23

Socialist Party (SSP). Social populists, on the other hand, resemble classic ‘populist’ parties, as they are characterized by personalistic leadership and a relatively weak organization (March 2011). These parties fuse left and right-wing themes behind an anti-establishment appeal. Social populists are particularly successful in Eastern Europe, where party competition was never as structured as in the West along the left-right axis. Poland’s Samoobrona Rzeczpospolitej Polskiej (SRP  – Self-Defence), the Irish Sinn Féin (SF) and the Slovakian Smer  – Sociálna demokracia (SMER  – Direction  – Social Democracy) can be included in this category (March 2011). However SMER is a border-line case. According to the Chapel Hill expert survey (Bakker et al. 2015), the salience of anti-elite (3.7) and corruption (3.8) issues is unusually low for a party which could be labelled as ‘populist’, while its most salient issues are redistribution and state intervention. Nonetheless, the party is defined as populist, until 2006, in the recently published The PopuList (Rooduijn et al. 2019, https://popu-list.org/). Less ambiguous cases of Southern European populist RLP (PRLPs) have been electorally successful lately, for instance Podemos (We Can) in Spain, Synaspismós Rizospastikís Aristerás in Greece (SYRIZA – The Coalition of the Radical left) and La France Insoumise (Unsubmissive France). The ideological articulation of these parties seems inspired more or less directly by Ernesto Laclau’s (2005) and Chantal Mouffe’s (2018) work, which sees populism as a democratizing power allowing bottom-up issues to become hegemonic in society. The populism that these parties display is inclusionary, as their vision of the ‘people’ includes all kinds of minorities, while the economic elites are seen as the ‘other’. Moreover, RLPs are much more concerned with social equality. Like other populist parties, their targets have been corrupt elites and supranational institutions, albeit recent research has shown that left-wing Euroscepticism is different from that of the radical right (Tarditi and Vittori 2019). Figure 2.1 summarizes the electoral performance of PRRPs in Europe by main areas:  Northern Europe, ‘Core’ Continental Europe, Southern Europe and the Visegrad Countries.2 Here we only focus on the PRRP family because – as already explained – there is a relatively small number of left-wing and neo-liberal populist parties in this part of the world, hence comparing them to PRRPs would distort the analysis. What Figure 2.1 shows is that PRRPs have been particularly successful in the last decade, i.e. during and immediately after the Great Recession, which represented a unique window of opportunity for them. As shown in the next section, this has also been accompanied by an increasing presence of populist parties in government. PRRPs have performed ostensibly well in the Visegrad Countries and are now majoritarian in Poland and Hungary. Moreover, they achieved excellent results in the very last elections in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. In Northern Europe, PRRPs represent the third-largest party family after (and not very distant from) the social democratic and the liberal-conservative ones. In Southern Europe, the Lega (League, formerly Lega Nord, LN – Northern League) recovered very well from nepotism scandals in the last general election of 2018, and, after the 2019 European

24 Davide Vittori and Leonardo Morlino

Populist radical right parties’ electoral performances in 19 European countries (1991–2018)

FIGURE 2.1

Source: Our own elaboration from Döring and Manow (2019). Radical-left, neo-liberal and other populist parties (such as Pirate Parties, the Five Stars Movement in Italy and Ordinary People in Slovakia) were not included, as there are only very few cases for few countries in only specific decades

election, it has become the largest party in Italy; in Greece, despite the electoral demise of Laikós Orthódoxos Synagermós (LAOS – Popular Orthodox Rally), both Anexartitoi Ellines (ANEL  – Independent Greeks,) and the extremist Chrysí Avgí (Golden Dawn) won representation in the two elections held in 2015.Yet in Greece and Spain, left-wing populism represented a more significant phenomenon, with the rise of Podemos and SYRIZA.3 Core Continental Europe was the only macroregion where PRRPs were, on average, slightly more successful during the ‘short’ decade that goes from the introduction of the Euro to the beginning of the economic crisis. During the period 1991–2000, despite their electoral growth compared to the 1980s, right-wing populist parties were still rather marginal in all macroregions, with other forms of populism being even rarer. There were exceptions, such as Italy, Austria, and France, where PRRPs (the League; the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, FPÖ  – Freedom Party of Austria; the Front National, FN  – National Front), as well as neo-liberal populists (FI) did well in elections. However, except for Core Continental Europe, the data show that, overall, populists remained at the fringes of the political system (especially in the North) (see Figure 2.1).

Populism in government: a new era since the end of the Cold War Table  2.2 summarizes the participation of populist parties in (coalition) governments in the four macro-regions mentioned in Figure  2.1. Of the 20

TABLE 2.2 Populists in Government in 12 European Countries

Country

Political Party

Last Affiliation in the European Parliament

Role in the Government

Years

Government(s) political orientation

Southern Europe

Italy

Forza Italia (1)

European People’s Party

Southern Europe

Italy

(Northern) League

Movement for a Europe of Nations and Freedom

Southern Europe

Italy

Five Star Movement

1994–1995 1995–1996 2001–2006 2008–2011 2011–2013 2013–2013 1994–1995 2001–2006 2008–2011 2018–2019 2018–2019

Right Wing Grand Coalition Right Wing Right Wing Technocratic Grand Coalition Right Wing Right Wing Right Wing Populist Populist

Southern Europe

Greece

LAOS

Europe for Freedom and Direct Democracy -

Major Partner External Support Major Partner Major Partner Major Partner Junior Partner Junior Partner Junior Partner Junior Partner Junior Partner Major Partner Junior Partner

Technocratic

Southern Europe

Greece

SYRIZA

Southern Europe

Greece

ANEL

Southern Europe

Spain

Podemos

Nov. 2011–Feb. 2012 Jan.–Sept. 2015 Sept. 2015–2019 Jan.–Sept. 2015 Sept. 2015–2019 2018–2019

Left Wing

Core Continental European

The Netherlands

Pim Fortuyn List

2002–2003

Right Wing

European United Left– Nordic Green Left European Conservatives and Reformists European United Left– Nordic Green Left -

Major Partner Junior Partner External Support (2) Junior Partner

Populist Populist

(continued)

Populism and democracy in Europe 25

Region

Region

Country

Political Party

Last Affiliation in the European Parliament

Role in the Government

Years

Government(s) political orientation

Core Continental European Core Continental European

The Netherlands

Party for Freedom

External Support

2010–2012

Right Wing

Austria

Freedom Party of Austria

Junior Partner

1999–2005 2017–2019

Right Wing Right Wing

Core Continental European Northern Europe

Austria

European Alliance for Freedom Movement for a Europe of Nations and Freedom (3) -

Junior Partner

2005–2006

Right Wing

External Support

2001–2011

Right Wing

Northern Europe

Finland

Junior Partner

2015–2017

Right Wing

Northern Europe Visegrad countries

Norway Poland

Junior Partner Junior Partner Major Partner Major Partner Junior Partner Junior Partner Junior Partner

2017–2019 2013–2018 2005–2007 2015–2019 2001–2005 2005–2007 2005–2007

Right Wing Right Wing Populist Radical Right Left-wing Populist Populist

Visegrad countries

Hungary

Alliance for the Future of Austria Danish People’s Party European Conservatives and Reformists Finns Party European Conservatives and Reformists Blue Reform Progress Party Law and Justice (4) European Conservatives and Reformists Alliance for Europe of Self-Defence of the Republic of Poland the Nations League of Polish Alliance for Europe of Families the Nations Fidesz European People’s Party

Major Partner Major Partner Major Partner Major Partner

1998–2002(5) 2010–2014 2014–2018 2018–present

Right Wing Radical Right Radical Right Radical Right

Denmark

26 Davide Vittori and Leonardo Morlino

TABLE 2.2 (Cont.)

Visegrad countries

Czech Republic

Visegrad countries

Slovakia

Visegrad countries

Slovakia

ANO 2011

Alliance of Liberals and Junior Partner Democrats for Europe Major Partner Major Partner Smer Progressive Alliance Major Partner of Socialists and Major Partner Democrats Major Partner Junior Partner Union of the Workers of Slovakia

2014–2017 2017–2018 2018–present 2006–2010 2012–2016 2016–present 1994–1998

Junior Partner Major Partner Major Partner Left Wing Left Wing Left Wing Right Wing

Notes: (1) In the case of Forza Italia, cabinet reshufflings are not considered. (2) In 2018 the parliamentary group of Podemos joined the Socialist Party (PSOE) and other regionalist and nationalist parties in the no-confidence vote against the conservative government led by Mariano Rajoy. This led to the formation of a minority government led by the PSOE, which lasted until May 2019. (3) The group was dissolved in 2016. The Table does not include the case of the Swiss People’s Party, as the executive branch in Switzerland – the Federal Council – is a collective body. (4) PiS, Fidesz, and Forward Italy are borderline cases, as the three parties have not been consistently populist throughout the three decades under consideration. (5) According to Popu-list (https://popu-list.org/), Fidesz is considered as populist starting from 2002 onward. Source: Own elaboration from Döring and Manow (2019) and these countries’ Interior Ministries. Populism and democracy in Europe 27

28 Davide Vittori and Leonardo Morlino

countries in the dataset, twelve have had at least one populist party in government (whether exclusive, inclusive or neo-liberal):  Italy, Greece, Spain, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, and the Czech Republic. Switzerland is a peculiar case due to its tradition of power sharing. Portugal, Germany, France, Belgium, the United Kingdom, and Ireland have never had populist parties in government at the national level so far. The overwhelming majority of populist parties performing governmental roles during the period considered belong to the radical right family. This is not so surprising since, as highlighted above, they have been much more successful than radical left and neo-liberal populists in electoral terms. In most cases, they have been junior partners in coalition with other mainstream, non-populist parties. The cases where two populist parties coalesced to form a government have been rather infrequent, but nonetheless quite relevant. Two cases, and five governments, can be found in Italy: in all of them the League played the role of junior partner, whereas FI (in the periods 1994–1995, 2001–2006, and 2008–2011), and the M5S (2018– 2019) were the major partners.4 One case (and two governments) can be found in Greece, where SYRIZA and ANEL were allied from January to September 2015 and from September 2015 onwards. Cases of external support are also relatively rare. Populists supported governments without entering the cabinet in the Netherlands, Denmark, and Spain. In another case, Italy’s FI was the main external supporter of a technocratic government from 2011 to 2013, and even formed a grand coalition with the centre-left Partito Democratico (PD – Democratic Party) for a short period after that.Another interesting (and borderline) case is LAOS in Greece, which joined a national unity government at the end of 2011 but then withdrew its support once austerity measures started to be implemented. Overall, it seems that, since the end of the Cold War until 2000, the inclusion of populists into (coalition) governments was the exception rather than the rule. It concerned primarily exclusionary populists (i.e. PRRPs such as the League and the FPÖ) and increased proportionally with their electoral success (Figure  2.1). Table 2.3 shows for how many years (as a percentage of the total) populist parties played a governmental role during the three periods previously analysed:  1991– 2000, 2001–2009, and 2010–2018. The focus is on the countries already included in Table 2.2, that is, those contexts in which populists were in government for at least six months in the whole period from 1990 to 2018. A first distinction is made between the years when populists were in government and the years when they were excluded. A further distinction concerns the typology of involvement (major partner; junior partner; major partner plus junior partner; external support). If we consider the whole period (last column, bottom row of Table 2.3), populists were in government for one fourth of the time. When they did form a government, they were predominantly junior partners of non-populist parties (9.6 per cent) or major partners5 (7.4 per cent). The major plus junior partner’s and external support formulas were the least frequent, with a respective overall frequency of 4.7 per cent and 4.1 per cent.

Populism and democracy in Europe 29 TABLE 2.3 Populists in Government (1991–2018).Years as a percentage of the total

1991–2000 2001–2009 2010–2018 Whole period: 1991–2018 Major Partner Junior Partner Major Partner + Junior Partner External Support Populist Parties in Government, Total %

0.0% 4.6% 0.8% 0.8% 6.2%

3.4% 10.3% 7.7% 7.7% 29.1%

19.7% 14.5% 6.0% 4.3% 44.5%

7.4% 9.6% 4.7% 4.1% 25.8%

Note: The Table includes the countries in which at least one populist party has participated in government either directly or indirectly from 1991 to 2019. The countries are: Italy, Spain (June 2018-May 2019), Greece, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia. We excluded the Swiss case. The numbers in bold are the mode for each row. Source: Our own elaboration from Döring and Manow (2019).

After the Great Recession, electoral growth increasingly led to inclusion in governmental coalitions. Between 2010 and 2018, populist parties were in government almost half of the time (44.5 per cent, see ‘Total’ row). This figure is quite high if compared to the 2001–2010 (29.1 per cent) and 1991–2000 (6.2 per cent) periods. In the last decade, populists have been more likely to play the role of major partners (19.7 per cent) or junior partners (14.5 per cent). These results are consistent with a picture of ‘mainstreaming’ of populist parties (Akkerman, De Lange, and Roodujin 2016).The ‘major + junior partner’ formula is more frequent in the second (7.7 per cent) than in the third period (6 per cent), mainly due to the (rather peculiar) Italian case. When assessing the external support formula, we observe an even more significant decline between the second and third period, from 7.7 per cent to 4.3 per cent. Again, ‘mainstreaming’ may explain this. As populist parties become a more politically ‘acceptable’ option, their direct inclusion in national executives becomes less problematic, thus reducing the need to rely on looser forms of collaboration. At the same time, populist parties have also become more willing to formally engage with more established parties in processes of government formation. Increasing governmental participation has given populist parties more opportunities to shape the political agenda and impact on policies and democratic processes. Of course, it would be wrong to assume that being out of government means by default being unable to influence political and policy making dynamics. The case studies included in this book clearly show that this is not the case.Yet, the primary focus of this chapter, and particularly the next section, is discussing whether populism in government had a direct impact on different dimensions of democracy. As we will see, important distinctions should be made between different kinds of populists and different European macro-regions.

30 Davide Vittori and Leonardo Morlino

Populism in government: a threat for democratic institutions? One of the most debated topics concerning populism is its relationship with polyarchic institutions. Even though its chameleonic nature has been widely recognized (Taggart 2000), several authors (Abts and Rummens 2007; Pappas 2015; Rummens 2017; Urbinati 2013) pinpoint populism’s rejection of pluralism and its conceptualization of the people as homogeneous. On the basis of this broad general rejection, two main (negative) consequences for the polyarchic environment can be identified: the dismissal of intermediate bodies of representation, which are seen as an obstacle to direct democracy; and the rejection of the intersubjective nature of democracy, compounded by the conception of democracy as an act of distrust (Rosanvallon 2008). The rejection of the intersubjective nature of democracy is related to one of the cornerstones of populist thin-centred ideology: conceiving popular sovereignty as the only source of political legitimation. Besides, according to Rosanvallon, the diffusion of counter-powers within liberal democracy is crucial for a healthy democratic regime. However, other authors stress that populist parties may in fact foster participation and revive positive attitudes toward political institutions (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2012; Laclau 2005; Mouffe 2018). Recently, Huber and Schimpf (2016) have highlighted that populists in opposition may have a positive influence on democratic quality, while, when in government, they negatively affect the political regime. Beyond their impact on political regimes, populist parties also have a more specific influence on political institutions, as they use their role in opposition to convey their anti-elite rhetoric, as well as their repertoire of actions, characterized by a more confrontational style and a focus on scrutiny rather than policy-making (Louwerse and Otjes 2019). Moreover, while in opposition, populist parties can play a significant role in shaping non-populist actors’ behaviour (Bale et al. 2010) or in influencing agenda-setting (Minkenberg 2001). However, when in government, their influence on the functioning of the political system in which they are socialized increases significantly and may materially impact on the functioning of the liberal-democratic institutions which they criticize. In which direction? Rather than considering the impact of populism in general terms, a distinction should be made between exclusionary (right-wing) and inclusionary (left-wing) varieties of populism, since the two define differently who belongs to the ‘people’. This is in turn reflected in their different approach to the participation of the ‘outgroups’ in the political processes, and their attribution of political rights to this or that group. In this section, we evaluate the impact of populists in government in Europe. To do this we rely on the IDEA dataset, which provides essential information on the global state of democracy (GsoD).6 The GsoD indices cover 155 countries, each with over one million inhabitants, in the period 1975–2015. Five attributes are considered:  ‘Representative Government’, ‘Fundamental Rights’, ‘Checks on Government’, ‘Impartial Administration’, and ‘Participatory Engagement’. Each attribute has its subattributes, which, in turn, include subcomponents and then,

Populism and democracy in Europe 31

going down the ladder of abstraction, indicators (the basic units of analysis).7 As GsoD explains in its codebook, the 98 indicators are developed by various scholars and organizations using different types of sources, including expert surveys, standards-based coding by research groups and analysts, observational data, and composite measures. Each attribute – except for ‘Participatory Engagement’ – has its score, which ranges from 0 (lowest score) to 1 (highest score). The same scaling technique is used for subattributes, subcomponents and indicators. The scores on indicators are rescaled to give a 0–1 score on subattributes (or subcomponents, when present), while subattributes scores are rescaled to give 0–1 score on the attributes. In this section, we will look at the five main attributes. However, since ‘Participatory Engagement’, unlike the other four attributes, has no overall additive score, we use the score for ‘Civil Society Participation’, one of its subattributes, as a proxy. To these five categories, we add ‘Freedom of Expression’ (a subcomponent of ‘Fundamental Rights’) and ‘Representation of Disadvantaged Social Groups’ (an indicator of ‘Fundamental Rights’). The first is the conditio sine qua non for the counter-powers enucleated by Rosanvallon (vigilance, denunciation, and evaluation) to be effectively deployed (see also Morlino 2011). On the other hand, the second allows us to make a distinction between exclusionary and inclusionary populism. Exclusionary populism should theoretically undermine the representation of out-groups. On the other hand, inclusionary populism should focus on increasing redistribution and equality between in-groups and out-groups. We calculate the mean of all indicators for each government, regardless of its duration, from 1990–1991 to 2018 in 19 countries. In the Appendix (Tables 2A.1 to 2A.4) we report the data for the whole period 1991–2018. To make the Appendix tables readable, wherever possible we report all the cases of populists in government, and we include the first non-populist government before and after the entrance of populists in government. For example, in the case of Denmark (Table  2A.1) we show the scores of the last non-populist government (1998–2001), before the entrance of a populist party in government for three consecutive times (from 2001 to 2011). After this, we show the score of the first non-populist government after the exit of the populist party from government in 2011. This is then followed by another period of populist participation in government (2015–2019). We use this rationale for all the countries included in Table 2A.2. We also report scores for those countries where populists have never been in government (UK, EIRE, Germany, France, Portugal, Belgium), and for Switzerland, where, due to the way consensual institutions work, populists have consistently been in government (i.e. in the Federal Council) and there is no temporal variation. For this latter group, we just report the years immediately before and after the crisis, as the Great Recession may have worsened the quality of democracy, regardless of the presence of populists in government. We start with an analysis of the pre-crisis years and find that results are only partially in line with our expectations. Hence populism has a limited impact on Italy, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia in the first and the second periods under analysis (1990/1–2000 and 2001–2009) when

32 Davide Vittori and Leonardo Morlino

populists were major partners, junior partners or external supporters of nonpopulist governments (see Appendix). In Italy (Table  2A.3) no indicator significantly changed, as FI and League remained allied in the 1991–2000 and 2001–2009 periods. In Austria (Table 2A.4) all categories, but one, are marked by a high degree of stability.The only score that significantly decreased is ‘Civil Society Participation’, meaning that in this case populists seem to have discouraged participation, rather than improving it. The same goes for the Netherlands (Table 2A.4) where the only significant change between the non-populist executive and populist participation in government is a decrease in ‘Civil Society Participation’. In Denmark (Table 2A.1), which is one of the countries with the highest scores on almost all indicators, one can notice a remarkable decrease of ‘Representation of Disadvantaged Groups’ during the governments externally supported by populists (between 2001 and 2011). In Poland (Table 2A.2), as one assesses the impact of Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (PiS  – Law and Justice) in the 2005–2007 period, it appears that the quality of ‘Representative Government’ slightly increased, while the other categories remained stable. In Hungary (Table 2A.2), on the other hand, during the first Fidesz government (1998–2002) only the scores of ‘Freedom of Expression’ and ‘Civil Society Participation’ decreased slightly (although the party is only considered fully populist from 2002 onward, as mentioned in the notes to Table 2.2). On the other hand, the democratization process in Slovakia brought about a significant improvement in all categories, regardless of whether a populist party was in government. To summarize, up until the beginning of the economic crisis in the late 2000s, populism’s impact on polyarchic institutions appears to have been marginal, even in those cases where populism played a relatively important role, and the political system was jeopardized by corruption scandals (e.g. in Italy). After the economic crisis (2010–2018), however, we observe a general deterioration of democratic attributes across most European countries. The question is whether this can be linked to the increasing role played by populists (particularly ‘exclusionary’ ones) in government. Tables 2.4 to 2.7 below show the results for Northern European, Core Continental European,Visegrad and Southern European countries. In the tables, we report the difference between the scores of non-populist and populist governments since the Great Recession, thus covering the period from 2010 to 2018. In the second column, we indicate whether the difference refers to:  (1) a non-populist government being replaced by another non-populist one; (2) a non-populist giving way to a populist government; and (3) a populist government being replaced by a non-populist one. We highlight in bold all the differences equal to or higher than 5 per cent. Within the Northern European and Core Continental European categories, the UK, EIRE (Table  2.4), and France (Table  2.5) offer the most striking examples of democratic deterioration, despite not experiencing the rise of populism as a governmental force. In the UK (Table  2.4), in particular, the ‘conservative’ decade 2010–2018 was characterized by a marked decrease in the quality of the following:  ‘Representative Government’, ‘Freedom of Expression’ and ‘Representation of Disadvantaged Social Groups’. Also in France (Table 2.5), despite

TABLE 2.4 Difference in the GSoD indicators in the decade 2010–2018 in Northern European countries

Country

Presence of populist government in t0 and t1

Representative Fundamental Government Rights

Checks on Government

Impartial Administration

Civil Society Participation

Freedom of Expression

Representation of disadvantaged social groups

Finland

From non-populist (t0) to populist (t1) From non-populist (t0) to populist (t1) From non-populist (t0) to populist (t1) From non-populist (t0) to non-populist (t1) From non-populist (t0) to non-populist (t1) From non-populist (t0) to non-populist (t1)

-0.02

-0.06

-0.05

-0.02

-0.06

-0.07

-0.07

-0.01

-0.03

0.1

0.1

-0.01

-0.03

-0.04

-0.06

-0.07

-0.03

-0.04

-0.03

-0.04

-0.07

-0.02

-0.02

-0.01

-0.01

0.02

-0.18

-0.01

0.02

-0.02

-0.04

-0.06

-0.07

-0.09

0.02

0.02

0.03

0.01

-0.01

Norway Denmark

UK EIRE

Legend: t0 refers to the first election after 2010, t1 to the election that followed t0.

0

0

Populism and democracy in Europe 33

Sweden

0

Country

Presence of populist government in t0 and t1

Netherlands

From populist (t0) to non-populist (t1) From non-populist (t0) to non-populist (t1) From non-populist (t0) to non-populist (t1) From non-populist (t0) to non-populist (t1) From non-populist (t0) to populist (t1) **

Belgium France* Germany Austria Switzerland

Representative Government

0

Fundamental Rights

Checks on Government

Impartial administration

Civil Society Participation

Freedom of Expression

Representation of disadvantaged social groups

-0.03

0.01

0.01

0.05

-0.03

0

-0.02

-0.04

-0.01

-0.01

-0.01

-0.03

0

-0.12

-0.01

-0.06

-0.01

-0.08

-0.01

0.03

-0.01

-0.04

-0.04

-0.02

-0.02

-0.02

-0.03

-0.03

0.01

0

-0.04

0.01

-0.05

-0.02

0.05

-0.05

-0.03

0 -0.06

0 -0.17

Legend: t0 refers to the first election after 2010, t1 to the election that followed t0.*t1 includes only a one-year record (2017); the result may be skewed by the fact that the French election took place in June 2017. The government is still in power at the time of writing.** As Switzerland has a different form of government, we do not indicate the governing role of the populist party (Swiss People’s Party)

34 Davide Vittori and Leonardo Morlino

TABLE 2.5 Difference in the GSoD indicators in the decade 2010–2018 in Core Continental European countries

Populism and democracy in Europe 35

the absence of populist parties in government, the two post-crisis elections have been accompanied by a substantial deterioration of ‘Representative Government’ and ‘Civil Society Participation’.The democratic decline occurred in France is even more striking if compared with the stability characterizing the Netherlands and Austria (Table 2.5), two countries in which populists have played a more or less direct role in government. The situation appears more stable in Scandinavian countries (Table  2.4). For instance, Norway has been characterized by higher levels of stability than all other countries despite its long record of populists in government. At the same time, Finland, another country where right-wing populists entered government, experienced more severe deterioration in ‘Fundamental Rights’, ‘Civil Society Participation’, ‘Freedom of Expression’ and ‘Representation of Disadvantaged Groups’. Overall, a general pattern of democratic decline emerges across the countries included in Tables 2.4 and 2.5, but it does not seem to be clearly and consistently linked to the presence of populists in government. On the other hand, in the Visegrad countries (Table  2.6) exclusionary populism in government seems to have more clearly contributed to a deterioration of the status of pluralist institutions. In Hungary almost all scores decreased after the last non-populist executive gave way to populist governments (see also Appendix, Table 2A.2). The deterioration of ‘Representative Government’ (-8 per cent) and ‘Checks on Government’ (-19 per cent) can be linked to several well-known reforms pursued by the Orbán government, such as the new majoritarian electoral law and the reduction of the independence of the national central bank. The portrayal of immigrants (and Roma minority community) as a group of ‘outsiders’ (Mendelski 2019) contributed to worsening the ‘Representation of Disadvantaged Social Groups’ (-16 per cent). In the well-known national consultation launched by Orbán, immigrants were targeted as public enemies and a threat to the economy and the security of the country. For this consultation, the PM sent a letter to all Hungarian citizens along with a questionnaire on immigration issues, framing this phenomenon as a danger for the country. The same trend characterizes the PiS government in the last decade. In Poland, the ultra-conservative approach to civil liberties – for example, against the discussion of gender politics, similar to the one pursued by the Orbán government (Grzebalska and Pető 2018)  – significantly worsened ‘Civil Society Participation’ (-11 per cent), ‘Freedom of Expression’ (-15 per cent) and the ‘Representation of Disadvantaged Groups’ (-21 per cent). PiS started an anti-gender campaign as early as 2012; it then became more widespread before the 2014 local and European elections to the point that anti-gender activists even ran for seats. At the same time, sexual minority activists, feminist academics, and people researching gender-related issues, were targeted as potential agents of a transnational lobby (Grzebalska and Pető 2018). In the Czech Republic, the scores of all categories look more stable. In this case, populists in government cannot be categorized as ‘exclusionary’. Indeed, as mentioned above, ANO embraces ‘neo-liberal’ populism, not unlike Berlusconi’s FI. This, however, did not prevent some attributes of democracy from worsening.

Country

Presence of populist government in t0 and t1

Representative Government

Fundamental Rights

Checks on Government

Poland

From non-populist (t0) to populist (t1) From non-populist (t0) to populist (t1) From non-populist (t0) to populist (t1) From non-populist (t0) to populist (t1)

-0.05

-0.05

-0.12

-0.08

-0.03

-0.02 -0.03

Hungary* Cz. Rep.* Slovakia*

Impartial Administration

Civil Society Participation

Freedom of Expression

Representation of disadvantaged social groups

0.2

-0.11

-0.15

-0.21

-0.19

-0.06

-0.16

-0.09

-0.16

-0.01

-0.08

-0.01

0.02

-0.05

-0.21

-0.04

-0.02

-0.02

0.01

-0.04

-0.05

Legend: t0 refers to the first election after 2010, t1 to the election that followed t0. * The data refer to the difference between the last non-populist government and the last populist government

36 Davide Vittori and Leonardo Morlino

TABLE 2.6 Difference in the GSoD indicators in the decade 2010-2018 in Visegrad countries

Populism and democracy in Europe 37

In particular, ‘Checks on Government’ (-8 per cent) and, even more worryingly, ‘Representation of Disadvantaged Social Groups’ (-21 per cent) experienced a decline. Among the Visegrad countries, only Slovakia remained rather stable when populist parties were in government (although, as mentioned above, SMER is a peculiar case):  indeed, in Slovakia, only ‘Representation of Disadvantaged Social Groups’ decreased by 5 per cent (much less than in the other three countries). Other indicators did not change substantially (see also Appendix). This might be because SMER is a more ‘inclusionary’ party than PiS and Fidesz. Moving to Southern Europe (Table  2.7), SYRIZA provides a clear example of a left-wing, ‘inclusionary’ populist party. It entered government in 2015, and, since then, Greek democratic institutions have not experienced significant deterioration. ‘Checks on Government’ and ‘Freedom of Expression’ recorded an only slight decrease (-5 per cent in both cases). Besides, ‘Representative Government’ has increased by 1 per cent. In the same period (decade 2010–2018) in Spain, where two non-populist governments are compared, this last score experienced a 7 per cent drop along with ‘Checks on Government’ (-7 per cent) and ‘Freedom of Expression’ (-10 per cent). In Italy, ‘Representation of Disadvantaged Groups’ suffered a 13 per cent drop. However, in this case, we are comparing a populist government that was followed by a non-populist government (i.e. the transition from the last government led by Berlusconi). Again, no clear pattern emerges in this area of Europe. If anything, it seems that left-wing populism in Greece has not led to more democratic deterioration than in other Southern European countries. Portugal emerges as the least affected country, and this seems to reflect the high levels of political stability it has enjoyed (Ferreira de Silva and Mendes 2019). This may suggest that rather than direct populist participation in government, variables at the party-system level might affect the functioning of democratic processes even more.

Conclusion Populism has been widely regarded as a great threat for liberal democratic institutions. From an empirical perspective, it is certainly remarkably successful, especially in the Visegrad countries. Albeit not as common as the ‘exclusionary’ version, ‘inclusionary’ populism has been embraced by some radical left parties, which took advantage of the crisis of traditional social democracy. Populist parties’ electoral success in 2010–2018 has had an immediate consequence, namely, their inclusion into (coalition) governments as either major or junior partners. In some cases, these parties provided external support to non-populist governments. With what consequences for the democratic institutions? Using the dataset provided by IDEA, we tried to answer this question. As discussed above, the framing of the ‘people’ as a homogenous group by populists may create the conditions for excluding some groups from decisionmaking processes – and indeed this is what PRRPs tend to be in favour of. One

Country

Presence of populist government in t0 and t1

Representative Government

Italy*

From populist (t0) to nonpopulist (t1) From non-populist (t0) to populist (t1) From non-populist (t0) to non-populist (t1) From non-populist (t0) to non-populist (t1)

-0.05

0.02

0.01

-0.02

Greece** Spain*** Portugal†

-0.07 -0.03

Fundamental Rights

0 -0.02

Checks on Government

Impartial Administration

Civil Society Participation

Freedom of Expression

Representation of disadvantaged social groups

0.01

-0.01

-0.04

-0.04

-0.13

-0.05

-0.01

-0.01

-0.05

0

-0.07

0.06

-0.10

0.03

-0.01

0.02

-0.04

-0.01

0 -0.04

Legend: t0 refers to the first election after 2010, t1 to the election that followed t0. * To keep the interpretation of the data as simple as possible, in the Italian case we compare the 2013–2018 legislature with the previous one (2008–2013), even though there was a significant governmental change towards the end of the latter. For further details, see the Appendix. ** In the Greek case, the comparison is between 2009–2012 legislature and the September 2015–2019 one. *** In the Spanish case the comparison is between 2011–2015 and 2016–2018 legislature (data on PSOE-Podemos government are not available); it excludes the 2015 government, which did not receive the confidence vote. † In the Portuguese case the difference is between 2009–2011 legislature and 2015–present legislature.

38 Davide Vittori and Leonardo Morlino

TABLE 2.7 Difference in the GSoD indicators in the decade 2010–2018 in southern European countries

Populism and democracy in Europe 39

may therefore expect that, when in government, these parties will try to turn their ‘exclusionary’ approach into actual policies. However, in Western Europe, it is not possible to detect a clear pattern indicating that in countries in which PRRPs parties have been in government democracy has suffered more than elsewhere. Only in some Visegrad countries the impact of exclusionary populism on the quality of democracy has been substantial (as shown by the cases of Poland and Hungary). However, Slovakia, governed by SMER (which lacks the ‘exclusionary’ profile of Fidesz and PiS) has not experienced similar levels of democratic deterioration. ‘Inclusionary’ populism, when in government, does not appear to have had a clear impact (either negative or positive) on democracy.Yet, the evidence supporting this statement is limited, given the very small number of PRLPs playing a governmental role in Europe. In fact, in our sample we only have two clear cases of leftwing populism, SYRIZA and Podemos (the latter not having been in government during the period considered), whereas SMER is much more difficult to classify. Before concluding, a last critical remark is of the utmost importance. This chapter has studied the direct impact of populism, leaving aside the issue of any indirect effects, for instance when these parties are in opposition. Indeed, it might be that it is not populist parties’ direct participation in government that affects democracy but their existence as political competitors. Mainstream parties are increasingly under pressure to respond to the challenges posed by (mainly right-wing) populist parties and have tried to ‘co-opt’ them or, at least, engage with some of their demands (Bale et al. 2008; Louwerse and Otjes, 2019; see also Chapter 3).Therefore, a sort of populist contagion might have also affected established parties and mainstream politics. This leads to the main theme of this book, which pays particular attention to non-populist parties’ responses to populists. In sum, populists may have an impact on democracy also when they are not formally in power by shaping the political debate and patterns of political competition. The case studies presented in this book provide extensive evidence of this.

Notes 1 Scholars working in different fields have adopted other approaches (see Vittori 2017b), and populism has been described as a communicative style (Jagers and Walgrave 2007), a discursive tool (Laclau 2005), a political strategy used by political leaders (Weyland 2001), and a synonym of political illiberalism (Pappas 2015). 2 Northern Europe includes: Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, the United Kingdom and Ireland. Core Continental Europe includes: France, Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland. Southern Europe includes: Portugal, where neither PRRPs nor PRLPs are present, Spain, Italy and Greece. Finally, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia are listed as ‘Visegrad countries’. 3 The recent success of the PRRP Vox in Spain is not covered in this analysis since the party became electorally relevant in 2019. 4 Italy had two governments during the XIV legislature (2001–2006), as Berlusconi headed two different executives. Since Berlusconi’s most important governing partners, as well as the main ministers from both FI and the League, did not significantly change, we count

40 Davide Vittori and Leonardo Morlino

these two governments as the same one. FI also supported a short-lived government between 2013 and 2014. 5 This category also includes cases of single-party majority. 6 For the methodology and the conceptualization of the indices employed, see Skaaning (2017); for the technical procedures in constructing them, see Tufis (2017). 7 The attribute ‘Representative Government’ has four subattributes (‘Clean Elections’, ‘Inclusive Suffrage’, ‘Free Political Parties’, ‘Elected Government’) and 21 indicators; ‘Fundamental Rights’ has three subattributes (‘Access to Justice’, ‘Civil Liberties’, ‘Social Rights and Equality’), eight subcomponents and 45 indicators;‘Checks on Government’ has three subattributes (‘Effective Parliament’, ‘Judicial Independence’, ‘Media Integrity’) and 15 indicators; ‘Impartial Administration’ has two subattributes (‘Absence of Corruption’, ‘Predictable Enforcement’) and nine indicators; ‘Participatory Engagement’ has four subattributes (‘Civil Society Participation’, ‘Electoral Participation’, ‘Direct Democracy’, ‘Subnational Elections’) and seven indicators.

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Appendix TABLE 2A.1 Populists in government in northern European countries, scores of the GSoD Index. The table includes the data for the last government

(when available), before a populist party enters in the government, all legislatures where populists were in government and the first government after the exit of populist party from the government (when available). Election (Decades)

Legislature

Populist in Representative Fundamental Checks on Impartial Civil Society Freedom of Representation government Government Rights Government Administration Participation Expression of disadvantaged (Role) social groups

Finland Finland Norway Norway Denmark Denmark Denmark Denmark Denmark Denmark Sweden Sweden Sweden UK UK UK EIRE EIRE EIRE

2010–2018 2010–2018 2010–2018 2010–2018 1991–2000 2001–2009 2001–2009 2001–2009 2010–2018 2010–2018 2001–2009 2010–2018 2010–2018 2001–2009 2010–2018 2010–2018 2001–2009 2010–2018 2010–2018

2011–2015 2015–2019 2013–2017 2017–2021 1998–2001 2001–2005 2005–2007 2007–2011 2011–2015 2015–2019 2006–2010 2010–2014 2014–2018 2005–2010 2010–2015 2017–2017 2007–2011 2011–2016 2016–2021

NO YES (JP) NO YES (JP) NO YES (ES) YES (ES) YES (ES) NO YES (ES) NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

0.82 0.8 0.8 0.79 0.79 0.79 0.81 0.81 0.83 0.8 0.84 0.87 0.83 0.88 0.95 0.77 0.82 0.83 0.74

0.94 0.88 0.96 0.93 0.99 0.99 0.99 1.00 0.98 0.94 0.95 0.95 0.88 0.87 0.84 0.83 0.85 0.83 0.85

0.87 0.82 0.95 0.95 0.96 0.96 0.96 0.96 0.95 0.89 0.91 0.91 0.89 0.82 0.84 0.82 0.8 0.8 0.8

0.87 0.85 0.91 0.92 1.00 0.98 0.98 0.98 0.97 0.90 0.89 0.93 0.91 0.86 0.85 0.83 0.77 0.79 0.81

0.95 0.89 0.95 0.96 0.96 0.96 0.96 0.95 0.96 0.93 0.87 0.85 0.84 0.80 0.82 0.78 0.74 0.8 0.83

0.93 0.86 0.92 0.91 0.99 0.99 0.99 0.99 0.97 0.93 0.88 0.88 0.87 0.92 0.9 0.84 0.89 0.88 0.87

0.84 0.77 0.95 0.95 0.84 0.82 0.79 0.68 0.68 0.65 0.53 0.51 0.53 0.74 0.75 0.68 0.37 0.41 0.42

Source: IDEA, The Global State of Democracy Indices (2017). Levels of abstraction of scores (from highest to lowest): attribute, subattribute, subcomponent, indicator. ‘Decades’ refer to the decade in which the election took place. MP = Populist party is a Major Partner in Coalition Government or is in Government alone; JP = Populist party is a Junior Partner in a Coalition Government. ES = Populist party provides External Support to the Government. Figures in bold represent a variation of ±0.05 with the previous government. Legislatures in italics are those that were still ongoing when latest available data (from 2017) were gathered.

Populism and democracy in Europe 43

Country

available), before a populist party enters in the government, all legislatures where populists were in government and the first government after the exit of populist party from the government (when available). Country

Election (Decades)

Legislature

Populist in Representative Fundamental Checks on Impartial Civil Society Freedom of Representation government Government Rights Government Administration Participation Expression of disadvantaged (Role) social groups

Poland Poland Poland Poland Poland Hungary Hungary Hungary Hungary Hungary Hungary Cz. Rep. Cz. Rep. Cz. Rep. Slovakia Slovakia Slovakia

2001–2009 2001–2009 2001–2009 2010–2010 2010–2018 1991–2000 1991–2000 2001–2009 2001–2009 2010–2018 2010–2018 2010–2018 2010–2018 2010–2018 1991–2000 1991–2000 2001–2009

2001–2005 2005–2007 2007–2011 2011–2015 2015–2019 1994–1998 1998–2002 2002–2006 2006–2010 2010–2014 2014–2018 2010–2013 2013–2017 2017–2021 1994–1998 1998–2002 2002–2006

YES (JP) YES (JP) NO NO YES (MP) NO YES (MP)* NO NO YES (MP) YES (MP) NO YES (JP) YES (MP) YES (JP) NO NO

0.81 0.84 0.84 0.84 0.79 0.77 0.77 0.77 0.78 0.71 0.7 0.81 0.78 0.79 0.72 0.78 0.79

0.78 0.78 0.79 0.78 0.73 0.76 0.75 0.75 0.74 0.71 0.71 0.81 0.81 0.80 0.70 0.76 0.78

0.78 0.78 0.78 0.78 0.66 0.7 0.7 0.71 0.71 0.65 0.62 0.79 0.74 0.71 0.59 0.71 0.73

0.66 0.66 0.67 0.65 0.67 0.66 0.66 0.66 0.65 0.59 0.59 0.59 0.61 0.58 0.54 0.60 0.61

0.78 0.78 0.78 0.74 0.63 0.63 0.61 0.61 0.61 0.53 0.45 0.66 0.67 0.68 0.54 0.68 0.64

0.9 0.89 0.9 0.89 0.74 0.88 0.86 0.87 0.82 0.76 0.73 0.91 0.88 0.86 0.71 0.85 0.88

0.58 0.58 0.58 0.58 0.37 0.58 0.58 0.58 0.58 0.54 0.42 0.89 0.86 0.68 0.58 0.39 0.37

44 Davide Vittori and Leonardo Morlino

TABLE 2A.2 Populists in government in Visegrad countries, scores of the GSoD Index. The table includes the data for the last government (when

Slovakia Slovakia Slovakia Slovakia

2001–2009 2010–2018 2010–2018 2010–2018

2006–2010 2010–2012 2012–2016 2016–2020

YES NO YES YES

0.81 0.82 0.81 0.79

0.76 0.77 0.74 0.73

0.72 0.73 0.71 0.71

0.60 0.63 0.61 0.61

0.6 0.66 0.66 0.67

0.86 0.88 0.84 0.84

0.41 0.42 0.38 0.37

Source: IDEA, The Global State of Democracy Indices (2017). Levels of abstraction of scores (from highest to lowest): attribute, subattribute, subcomponent, indicator. ‘Decades’ refer to the decade in which the election took place. MP = Populist party is a Major Partner in Coalition Government or is in Government alone; JP = Populist party is a Junior Partner in a Coalition Government. ES = Populist party provides External Support to the Government. Figures in bold represent a variation of ±0.05 with the previous government. . Legislatures in italics are those that were still ongoing when latest available data (from 2017) were gathered. *Fidesz is not considered populist in this legislature, according to the Popu-list (https://popu-list.org/)

Populism and democracy in Europe 45

(when available), before a populist party enters in the government, all legislatures where populists were in government and the first government after the exit of populist party from the government (when available) Country Election (Decades)

Legislature

Italy Italy Italy Italy Italy

1994–1996 1996–2001 2001–2006 2006–2008 2008–2013

Italy Greece Greece Greece Greece Spain Spain Spain

1991–2000 1991–2000 2001–2009 2001–2009 2001–2009

Populist in government (Role)

YES (MP + JP) NO YES (MP + JP) NO YES (MP + JP) 2011–2013 (MP) 2010–2018 2013–2018 NO * 2001–2009 2009–2012 NO 2010–2018 2012 YES (JP) 2010–2018 2012–2015 NO 2010–2018 2015–2019 YES (MP + JP) ** 2000–2009 2008–2011 NO 2010–2018 2011–2015 NO 2010–2018 2016–2019 NO***

Representative Fundamental Checks on Impartial Civil Society Freedom of Representation Government Rights Government Administration Participation Expression of disadvantaged social groups 0.82 0.83 0.83 0.82 0.86

0.85 0.85 0.85 0.86 0.86

0.75 0.76 0.74 0.76 0.75

0.61 0.66 0.63 0.65 0.64

0.84 0.85 0.81 0.83 0.82

0.91 0.9 0.88 0.88 0.88

0.84 0.84 0.84 0.84 0.84

0.81 0.82 0.79 0.77 0.78

0.88 0.79 0.78 0.72 0.70

0.76 0.76 0.75 0.73 0.68

0.63 0.54 0.54 0.56 0.55

0.78 0.76 0.76 0.76 0.75

0.84 0.93 0.9 0.87 0.82

0.71 0.79 0.79 0.95 0.95

0.82 0.82 0.75

0.85 0.83 0.83

0.84 0.8 0.73

0.81 0.76 0.82

0.71 0.72 0.72

0.9 0.9 0.8

0.74 0.71 0.68

46 Davide Vittori and Leonardo Morlino

TABLE 2A.3 Populists in government in southern European countries, scores of the GSoD Index. The table includes the data for the last government

Portugal 2000–2009 2009–2011 NO Portugal 2010–2018 2011–2015 NO Portugal 2010–2018 2015–2019 NO

0.85 0.85 0.82

0.86 0.83 0.84

0.81 0.82 0.8

0.70 0.70 0.72

0.72 0.69 0.68

0.94 0.92 0.9

0.89 0.89 0.88

Source: IDEA, The Global State of Democracy Indices (2017). Levels of abstraction of scores (from highest to lowest): attribute, subattribute, subcomponent, indicator. ‘Decades’ refer to the decade in which the election took place. MP = Populist party is a Major Partner in Coalition Government or is in Government alone; JP = Populist party is a Junior Partner in a Coalition Government. ES = Populist party provides External Support to the Government. Figures in bold represent a variation of ±0.05 with the previous government. . Legislatures in italics are those that were still ongoing when latest available data (from 2017) were gathered. *In the 2013–2018 legislature, Forward Italy supported a coalition government for less than a year (six months in 2013) ** There were two elections in 2015 (January and September); as the majority remained the same (SYRIZA + ANEL), the two are counted together. *** In Spain there were two elections in 2015 and 2016. As no party obtained the confidence in Parliament, this legislature has not been included. No data available for the months in which PSOE government was supported by Podemos.

Populism and democracy in Europe 47

government (when available), before a populist party enters in the government, all legislatures where populists were in government and the first government after the exit of populist party from the government (when available) Country

Election (Decades)

Legislature

Populist in Representative Fundamental Checks on Impartial Civil Society Freedom of Representation government Government Rights Government administration Participation Expression of (Role) disadvantaged social groups

Netherlands Netherlands Netherlands Netherlands Netherlands Netherlands Belgium Belgium Belgium France France France Germany Germany Germany Austria Austria Austria Austria

1991–2000 2001–2009 2001–2009 2001–2009 2010–2018 2010–2018 2001–2009 2010–2018 2010–2018 2001–2009 2010–2018 2010–2018 2001–2009 2010–2018 2010–2018 1991–2000 1991–2000 2001–2009 2001–2009

1998–2002 2002–2003 2003–2006 2006–2010 2010–2012 2012–2017 2007–2010 2010–2014 2014–2019 2007–2012 2012–2017 2017–2022 2009–2013 2013–2017 2017–2021 1995–1999 1999–2002 2002–2006 2006–2008

NO YES (JP) NO NO YES (ES) NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO YES (JP) YES (JP) NO

0.81 0.81 0.81 0.82 0.83 0.83 0.8 0.81 0.79 0.86 0.92 0.8 0.9 0.79 0.78 0.78 0.78 0.78 0.81

0.87 0.87 0.87 0.87 0.88 0.85 0.93 0.93 0.89 0.88 0.91 0.90 0.96 0.97 0.93 0.90 0.90 0.90 0.90

0.84 0.83 0.84 0.83 0.86 0.85 0.8 0.79 0.78 0.81 0.81 0.75 0.9 0.84 0.8 0.78 0.78 0.78 0.79

0.83 0.82 0.82 0.82 0.82 0.83 0.84 0.85 0.84 0.78 0.76 0.75 0.93 0.92 0.90 0.66 0.65 0.64 0.66

0.82 0.77 0.78 0.77 0.78 0.83 0.85 0.84 0.83 0.84 0.81 0.73 0.95 0.91 0.89 0.85 0.78 0.75 0.8

0.88 0.88 0.88 0.88 0.88 0.85 0.91 0.91 0.88 0.94 0.92 0.91 0.94 0.93 0.91 0.9 0.9 0.91 0.91

1 1 1 1 1 1 0.68 0.68 0.68 0.21 0.29 0.26 0.68 0.71 0.68 0.37 0.37 0.37 0.37

48 Davide Vittori and Leonardo Morlino

TABLE 2A.4 Populists in government in core continental European countries, scores of the GSoD Index. The table includes the data for the last

Austria Austria Switzerland* Switzerland Switzerland

2010–2018 2010–2018 2001–2009 2010–2018 2010–2018

2013–2017 NO 2017–2022 YES (JP) 2007–2011 2011–2015 2015–2019

0.8 0.77 0.82 0.84 0.79

0.88 0.89 0.92 0.92 0.90

0.78 0.78 0.9 0.91 0.85

0.78 0.78 0.88 0.86 0.91

0.89 0.85 0.98 0.98 0.93

0.87 0.88 0.97 0.96 0.93

0.42 0.42 0.84 0.84 0.67

Source: IDEA, The Global State of Democracy Indices (2017). Levels of abstraction of scores (from highest to lowest): attribute, subattribute, subcomponent, indicator. ‘Decades’ refer to the decade in which the election took place. MP = Populist party is a Major Partner in Coalition Government or is in Government alone; JP = Populist party is a Junior Partner in a Coalition Government. ES = Populist party provides External Support to the Government. Figures in bold represent a variation of ±0.05 with the previous government. Legislatures in italics are those that were still ongoing when latest available data (from 2017) were gathered. *As Switzerland has a different form of government, we do not indicate the governing role of the populist party (Swiss People’s Party)

Populism and democracy in Europe 49

3 THE STRATEGIES OF PARTY COMPETITION A typology Daniele Albertazzi, Donatella Bonansinga, and Davide Vampa

Introduction The emergence of new parties has shaken up party systems across Europe and is likely to continue to exercise considerable influence upon them in the foreseeable future (Deegan-Krause and Haughton 2020). Not unexpectedly, therefore, much academic literature has focused on the relationship between ‘mainstream’ (or ‘established’) parties on the one hand, and newer ones on the other. The latter parties are defined in various ways, according to the research interests of different scholars and whatever it is they wish to capture via their conceptualizations. For instance, Sara Hobolt and James Tilley (2016) talk of ‘challenger’ parties, essentially to refer to parties lacking governmental experience, while Bonnie Meguid (2005, 347–348) speaks of ‘niche’ parties as those that ‘politicize sets of issues which were previously outside the dimensions of party competition, (…) appeal to groups of voters that may cross-cut traditional partisan alignments, (…) and eschew the comprehensive policy platforms common to their mainstream party peers, instead adopting positions only on a restricted set of issues’.While the fact that some parties try to politicize new issues that more established parties prefer not to talk about and/or move beyond traditional partisan alignments may have been a good enough reason to try and exclude them from power in the past, this is evidently less and less the case in the current age of fragmentation. Indeed, parties are now forced to seek allies wherever they can find them to remain relevant. Therefore, and whatever the labels one chooses to adopt, it is becoming more difficult to talk in general terms about what kind of parties should be defined as ‘mainstream’ and are likely to take part in government coalitions in the future. Hence, while we draw on the literature on ‘challenger’, ‘radical’, ‘niche’ parties, and more, in order to gain insights into how parties relate to each other, ultimately our focus in this book is, perhaps more simply, the relationships and interactions between populists and non-populists and/ or the interactions between competing populist parties.

The strategies of party competition 51

It is now widely accepted that populist parties have become a fixed feature of political life in Europe, with many having existed for several decades and having accessed government at national and subnational level on many occasions (Albertazzi and McDonnell 2015), from the Italian Lega Nord (LN  – Northern League, now:  the League), to the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ  – Austrian Freedom Party), the Norwegian Fremskrittspartiet (FrP  – the Progress Party), and many others. Even newer populist parties, such as the Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S – Five Star Movement) in Italy, have rapidly accepted the need to take on governmental responsibilities, not to mention that they are focusing on issues (e.g. the environment and the green economy) that are now very much mainstream. If, therefore, it has always been obvious that not all challenger parties are/were ‘populist’ (think of the Greens in the late 1970s), whether populists should be conceived as ‘challengers’ or ‘niche’ parties today is simply a matter of empirical analysis (Zulianello 2019). We will expand on this topic in the Conclusion (Chapter 14), where we provide a two-dimensional framework that posits the existence of four broad categories that can define political parties better than the outdated distinction between ‘mainstream’ and ‘populist’ ones.These are: ‘established/non-populist’, ‘established/populist’, ‘challenger/non-populist’, and ‘challenger/populist’. In this context, suffice to say that the typology of interactions that we advance in this chapter can in fact be applied to map competition dynamics between parties of any kind. Whatever the specific definitions employed to refer to various categories of parties, different literatures converge on a limited set of broad strategies characterizing party competition, and it is to these that we now turn. First, we will cover the literature that has been particularly useful to us, to then introduce our own typology of party competition strategies; having done this, we will consider the value and applicability of our typology and show how it may be deployed in empirical research to guide the investigation of whatever strategies parties adopt, in what contexts, why, and with what outcomes. Ultimately, we aim to offer a broadly applicable typology of party strategic responses to political competitors, allowing us to map interactions between populist and non-populist parties.

Strategies of party competition: suggestions from the literature As we have mentioned, different literatures have contributed to understanding the strategic responses of parties to their competitors, the very varied terminology employed by scholars focusing on these dynamics notwithstanding. As we show in this very brief review of the literature that we have found particularly useful for our purposes, the strategic responses of parties towards one another have in fact been understood in broadly similar terms by different authors. The work of scholars such as Jaap van Donselaar (2003), Giovanni Capoccia (2005), Stefan Rummens and Koen Abts (2010) has paid attention to the ways in which legislative, political and/or civic means have enabled established parties to contain and isolate extremist challengers – ultimately making it possible to defuse

52 Daniele Albertazzi et al.

the threat that these are said to pose to the very foundations of liberal democracy. While also seeing ‘isolation’ as a possible strategy employed by parties when faced by radical challengers, William Downs (2012) departs from this approach by focusing on how mainstream parties may also try to tame their opponents. Hence, in his fourfold typology, the strategic choices to ban/isolate or ignore competitor parties are considered alongside two further strategies:  co-opting another party’s proposals, or agreeing to collaborate with it. In other words, here there is a recognition that challengers can also be neutralized by targeting their political space, and/or getting them to take on responsibilities, rather than necessarily treating them as pariahs. A similar understanding emerges from Matthew Goodwin’s (2011) work, in which he discusses what he calls ‘Populist Extremist Parties’. These are defined as those that ‘oppose immigration and rising ethnic and cultural diversity; and pursue a populist “anti-establishment” strategy that attacks mainstream parties and is ambivalent if not hostile towards liberal representative democracy’ (2011, 10). Attempts by mainstream parties to isolate these ‘extremists’, the author explains, include legislative, political, and civic means. However, it is recognized in this context that attempts to marginalize actors will not necessarily reduce the importance of their signature themes in the eyes of the electorate (in fact, in certain contexts this may well have the opposite effect). This being the case, a different course of action is identified: to either defuse a theme/proposal put forward by the competitor (for instance, by questioning its relevance/utility), or adopt it, thereby turning its salience to one’s advantage. Bonnie Meguid (2005) explicitly stresses the importance of salience for an understanding of how ‘mainstream’ and ‘niche’ parties relate to each other. In reaction to niche parties, she says, mainstream parties may adopt one of three strategies:  ignore the policies their competitors propose (dismissive strategy), converge towards them (accommodative strategy) or actively oppose them (adversarial strategy). What determines whether a mainstream party adopts one strategy or another is whether it believes that the salience of certain issues that are owned by its opponent can be decreased. If this does not seem possible, then attempts to ignore/dismiss the issue (or issues) are bound to fail (or may turn out to be counterproductive). Meguid’s work has pioneered an increasing body of research devoting analytical attention to how actors co-opt the policy proposals and/or style of their competitors  – a strategy that plays an important role in our typology, too (see below). Joost Van Spanje (2010)’s talk of a contagion effect on the immigration stances of mainstream parties by ‘anti-immigrant’ ones (especially those in opposition) can also be traced back to Meguid’s focus on salience, and her suggested categories are indeed adopted in his discussion, too (2010, 566–567). Tim Bale et al.’s (2010) analysis of mainstream left parties’ responses to the radical right also follows a very similar logic to Meguid’s, as it identifies the strategies of holding position, defusing, and adopting, while Andrea Pirro and Paul Taggart (2018, 7) (who specifically focus on populist Eurosceptic parties vs pro-EU ones) similarly mention the strategies of collaboration, co-optation, isolation and ignoring when reflecting on how parties may relate to one another.

The strategies of party competition 53

What all these studies ultimately show is that scholars are starting to converge on a set of categories that, whatever the labels used to define them, invariably acknowledge the possibility for parties to either ignore what they perceive to be a challenger, actively confront it, and/or collaborate with it.1 In the next section we take these ideas forward by proposing a typology of party competition, which is inspired by the literature reviewed above but, at the same time, departs from it in some respects.

Strategies of party competition: a new typology In providing a typology of different strategies of party competition, our objectives are twofold: first, we aim to facilitate the work of our contributors in Part II of this volume, as they assess how parties (populists or not, newer or more seasoned) relate to one another in different contexts, hence ultimately making it possible for us to compare different case studies; and, second, we wish to provide a theoretical contribution to the discussion of party competition more generally.2 As mentioned, our categories are inspired by Meguid’s (2005, 349–350; 2008, 23–30) ideal-typical strategies, which she calls: dismissive, adversarial, and accommodative, however we depart from her work in four important respects. First, we see no reason why these ideal-types could not be drawn upon when analysing interactions between all and any actors within the system  – and not exclusively between mainstream and ‘niche’ parties (the purpose for which they were originally devised). Second, while Meguid uses her categories to describe how parties converge or diverge on policies, we also consider how they relate to each other as actors.3 This affects the way we understand and define these categories – leading to us departing further from Meguid in a third important respect. Since her categories only concern positional convergence and divergence on policies, she sees the co-optation of another party’s proposals as a case of convergence. However, since our typology is concerned with the broader issue of how parties relate to each other and compete, not just on policies, but also as actors, our understanding of co-optation is broader – indeed one among several ways through which parties actively compete with each other (Meguid calls this: ‘declaring hostility’) (2008, 29). In the case of co-optation, as understood in our typology, active competition for votes and influence takes the form of ‘stealing’ each other’s proposals (or style) (see below). Finally, we depart from Meguid by proposing the adoption of subcategories, which, we argue, play an important role in defining interactions that, despite belonging to the same broad category, follow a partially different logic. Before explaining our categories and subcategories and illustrating them via actual examples, some notes of caution are in order. First, it should be kept in mind that what we discuss below are ideal-typical strategies which, in the real world, may not always present themselves in some sort of ‘pure’ form.4 This will become apparent in the analysis of specific case studies in Part II of the book, as contributors identify various ‘gradations of grey’ when discussing how strategies are deployed in actual interactions. In addition to this, parties can (and indeed do) adopt several

54 Daniele Albertazzi et al.

FIGURE 3.1

Typology Map

strategies at once at times, whether they are dealing with one, or more than one competitor, at the same time. There is no reason why this should not be so – party competition is messy, often reactive and constantly in flux. To complicate matters further, parties can move from one strategy to another at different points in time, but such movement may well be slow, gradual, and indeed at times contradictory (as not all party representatives necessarily fall in line once a new strategy is adopted). Finally, parties may also adopt different strategies at different levels of competition, as explained in more detail below. We will now illustrate our typology, to then reflect on its significance for the study of party competition in the final part of this chapter. As already mentioned, we agree with Bonnie Meguid (2005, 2008) that a study of how parties compete identifies three broad strategies, and also adopt her labels to refer to them as dismissive, adversarial and accommodative. However, as mentioned above, our understanding of these categories does not fully coincide with hers. We have added subcategories to two of these (i.e. adversarial and accommodative), in order to better specify the tool-kit available to parties competing with each other. Categories and subcategories are visualized via the Typology Map (Figure 3.1) above, and subsequently discussed below.

Dismissive The first strategy implies an attempt by PARTY A  to suggest that either one or more specific policies put forward by PARTY B, or even PARTY B itself, should be discounted as insignificant by the electorate. A reason why PARTY A may adopt this strategy is that it does not own certain issues  – nor does it believe it could realistically do so in the near future (Meguid 2005, 349). In this case, the salience of the issue inevitably translates into an advantage for PARTY A’s competitor. In addition to this, PARTY A  may fear PARTY B as an actor (e.g. because of the

The strategies of party competition 55

strength of its organization, the perceived qualities of its leader, etc.), and therefore try to deflect attention from it, quite apart from the specific policy stances the latter advocates. This is, of course, easier to do when PARTY B is a new challenger that may struggle to gain visibility, but there is no logical reason why the strategy could not be adopted in other contexts, too (for instance to further weaken a party that is finding it hard to remain relevant). In adopting this strategy, PARTY A remains committed to its own core principles and acts as if PARTY B – or one or more of the policies the latter advocates – were irrelevant, and, as such, not worth dealing with. PARTY A will therefore avoid discussion of certain themes, and/or ignore PARTY B as it tries to put them forward, for instance by refusing to engage in public debates with it.

EXAMPLES: Concerning both policies and actor • The treatment the League (then Northern League) was subjected to in Italy during the 1980s provides a good example of dismissal of both policies and actor. Indeed, the party’s signature proposal of giving greater autonomy to northern Italian regions was ridiculed by the other parties (only to be adopted by most of them years later), while the League was derided as naive, vulgar, ignorant, and lacking credibility. More recently, when a referendum for greater autonomy promoted by the regional leaders of the League took place in Lombardy and Veneto in 2017, the idea was dismissed by Matteo Renzi, former Prime Minister and leader of the centre-left Partito Democratico (PD – Democratic Party), as a ‘useless propagandistic display of the League, at the expense of tax payers’ (D’Attino 2017). • Since the party’s foundation, the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and its most prominent leader, Nigel Farage, were derided by all major UK parties, with the leader of the Conservative party (and future Prime Minister) David Cameron defining its party members as ‘fruit cakes and loonies and closet racists’ (Roberts 2006) in 2006. The party’s signature policy of withdrawing from the European Union (EU) was also widely dismissed by UKIP’s competitors as damaging and unrealistic, only to be co-opted by the same Conservatives after the Brexit referendum of 2016 (to the extent that they ended up running their 2019 electoral campaign by adopting the slogan ‘get Brexit done’).

Concerning the actor • In France, Jean-Marie Le Pen and the Front National’s (FN – National Front; now: RN – National Rally) attitude to Bruno Mégret’s breakaway Mouvement

56 Daniele Albertazzi et al.

National Républicain (MNR – National Republican Movement) following the FN split of 1999 provide a good example of dismissal of the actor. The new challenger was derided, while the FN stuck firmly to its policies. In Le Pen’s own words: ‘Mr Mégret may say he’s the president of the National Front. But he might as well join those deluded people in certain “institutions” who walk around with one hand in their jacket, thinking they are Napoleon.’ (BBC News 1999). After an initially significant challenge that saw around half of FN’s national and local officials defect to MNR, the MNR eventually ran out of steam and the FN fully reasserted its ascendancy on the French far right. • After the success of the M5S in the 2013 Italian general election, the then leader of the PD, Pierluigi Bersani, dismissed the challenger’s victory and sarcastically derided the Movement’s lead figure, Beppe Grillo, by claiming: ‘We lost 4–5 points to the Five Stars Movement. (…) 1–2% is people who are close to us but wanted to send a message. I meet these people… and they tell me “Look, I did a stupid thing by voting for Grillo”… These votes are coming back.’ (quoted in Ruccia 2013)

Adversarial The second strategy identified by our typology is about PARTY A  ‘declaring its hostility’ (Meguid 2008, 29)  to PARTY B’s policy stances, the party itself, or both. An obvious reason for choosing this path is that PARTY B, and/or its policy stances, may already be very salient and shaping the political agenda, hence ignoring them may no longer be an option. Unlike Meguid, however, we specify three distinct ways in which hostilities may be declared, by proposing the subcategories of clashing, marginalization, and co-optation. While marginalization only concerns the relationship between actors, clashing and co-optation can be deployed when focusing on actors, policies or both.

Clashing This subcategory captures the behaviour of PARTY A  when it actively engages PARTY B (and/or its policies) – but only to weaken such party (or policies). It is precisely this engagement that differentiates this sub-category from the dismissive strategy we have already seen above, as here there is no attempt to pretend that certain policies or actors are not salient. Of course, PARTY A  may adopt a dismissive strategy first, only to be forced to move on to an ‘attack strategy’ later, when everything else is shown to have failed. When clashing, PARTY A may actively oppose PARTY B’s policy stances (e.g. in parliamentary debates/votes

The strategies of party competition 57

and in coalition government), and/or target PARTY B qua actor, by engaging in quarrels over issues involving the character and credibility of the latter. In practice the two may often go together, but this is not always necessarily so (for instance, PARTY A  may well judge that it is in its interest to attack a policy without trying to demolish the credibility of its proponent, with whom it may be sharing governing responsibilities).

EXAMPLES: Concerning policies • In Italy, after the 2018 elections the League and the M5S have provided a good example of parties repeatedly clashing over policies, while governing together. This has been done without necessarily targeting each other as actors. For example, while totally disagreeing over the planned construction of a high-speed railway line connecting Italy and France, and over oil and gas exploration off Italy’s coast (both of which the League wanted and the M5S did not), the League attacked what it called ‘the politics of saying “no” to everything’ (Perrone 2019) allegedly adopted by its government partner, without focusing its criticism on the M5S as an actor. • In Greece, the Panellinio Sosialistiko Kinima’s (PASOK – Panhellenic Socialist Movement) leader, Evangelos Venizelos, and opposition parties, attacked the referendum proposed by the Synaspismós Rizospastikís Aristerás (SYRIZA  – Coalition of the Radical Left) in 2015, challenging its constitutionality by referring to provisions of the Greek constitution that do not allow referendums on fiscal matters (Tsatsanis and Teperoglou 2016, 434).

Concerning the actor • A good example of clashing by focusing on the actor is to be found in France, where, during the closing days of Emmanuel Macron’s campaign for the Presidential elections of 2017, the future President focused mainly on demolishing Le Pen’s credibility. For instance, during the last televised debate between him and Le Pen on 3 May 2017, Macron accused Le Pen of ‘talking nonsense’ and of lacking ‘knowledge of any facts’ (Chrisafis 2017). • During the Greek electoral campaign of 2015, all opposition parties accused SYRIZA of being an irresponsible party that could not be taken seriously. Hence Néa Dimokratía (ND – New Democracy) attacked the instability and uncertainty allegedly brought about by the SYRIZA-led government, by saying that ‘the games and the experiments are over’. At the same time, PASOK and Dimokratikí Aristerá (DIMAR  – Democratic Left) highlighted

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SYRIZA’s polarizing tactics while promoting their own image as a responsible government. Finally, To Potámi (The River) attacked SYRIZA’s credibility in breaking away from the ‘old order’, by accusing it of merely representing a ‘new-old’ (Tsatsanis, and Teperoglou 2016: 438–439).

Marginalization PARTY A marginalizes PARTY B by either: (1) ostracizing it – hence convincing other parties not to collaborate with it; or, (2) silencing it, for instance by introducing legislation that restricts public funding for the party, and/or restricts its access to the media. The most extreme version of this strategy, when allowed in law, is to ban the competitor altogether.

EXAMPLES: • In France, Belgium and Sweden, populist radical right parties such as the FN, Vlaams Block (VB – Flemish Block; now: Vlaams Belang, Flemish Interest) and the Sverigedemokraterna (SD – Sweden Democrats) have been subjected to cordons sanitaires for many years, thus being excluded from any positions of power and finding themselves unable to collaborate with others. • In Germany, there have been several attempts to ban the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD  – National Democratic Party), widely seen as a neo-Nazi party, or at least to cut off its access to state funding. A recent initiative was led by Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer from the Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands (CDU  – Christian Democratic Union of Germany) and all 16 German states voted to support it (Gabbatiss 2018).

Co-optation Although, at first, this may sound counter-intuitive, the co-optation of a party’s policies or style is also a way of declaring ‘hostility’ (Meguid 2008, 29)  towards it according to our typology, by becoming a little more like it (e.g. by copying features of how it operates, or by co-opting one or more of its policies). Ultimately, this is done to partially occupy the same political space of the competitor, and weaken it. In real life, the co-optation of a style (say, the ‘language of the streets’) and the cooptation of policies (say, legislation on law and order) may go hand in hand; however, this is again not necessarily the case. Also, while PARTY A may become a little more similar to PARTY B due to co-optation, this does not mean that it wishes to cooperate with it. Indeed we see cooperation as a sub-category of a different strategy: the accommodative one (see below).

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EXAMPLES: Concerning policies • In the UK, the decision by former PM David Cameron in 2013 to hold a referendum on EU membership provides an excellent example of co-optation of policies (see above). This was a proposal long associated with the UK Independence Party (UKIP) (Bale 2018), and was adopted to fight off the electoral threat the latter posed to the Conservatives. • In France, Le Pen’s emphasis on the ‘social’ dimension in the 2017 election campaign (e.g. unemployment, ‘left behind’ areas and suburbs, pensioners) was so much in line with Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s rhetoric that the latter complained about the FN stealing his ideas (Meny 2017, 274).

Concerning the actor • A good example of co-optation that has to do with style can be found, again, in France. Here during the 2017 presidential election, the left-wing populist Mélenchon co-opted aspects of Le Pen’s right-wing communication strategy, by increasingly adopting a patriotic tone in his speeches (e.g. talk of ‘defending the homeland’ against the foreign forces of globalization). Moreover, red flags and the Internationale became less of a common occurrence at his rallies, and were replaced by tricolour flags and the singing of the national anthem (Ivaldi 2018, 9). • The UK Home Secretary (and future PM) Theresa May started talking of creating a ‘hostile environment’ for illegal immigrants (Travis 2013). This was widely seen as an attempt to co-opt UKIP’s language and attitude on the topic and look much tougher on law and order issues.

Accommodative The accommodative strategy is our third (and final) strategy. According to our typology, this is when PARTY A looks for ways to work alongside PARTY B – possibly because convinced of the futility of different courses of action, or else because it has reasons to believe that such collaboration may be in its own interest. As already mentioned above, this strategy is quite different from the one we have defined as cooptation. Ultimately, parties can collaborate at some levels (for instance, by working together to remove a sitting government) while still remaining very distant in terms of their policy proposals and respective styles. The point of departure from Meguid’s framework is thus our understanding of what it means for party A to accommodate party B. While for Meguid (2008, 28) it is a way of competing (indeed it is a strategy used to ‘neutralize’ the opponent),

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we intend it as a way of welcoming the opponent as a partner. This leads A and B to work together regardless of positional convergence. In fact, it can be a ‘genuine’ cooperation if there is an underlying agreement over X issue or Y value, but it can also be a ‘strategic’ cooperation if positions remain distant but forces are joined to achieve a result of interest to both – and we explain this in the cooperation paragraph below. So in Meguid’s framework ‘competition’ (‘between unequals’) has a narrower (and more ‘literal’) meaning than in ours. It follows that, since parties just ‘compete’, the possibility of cooperation does not have a place in her discussion of issue-based strategies. Our work expands this logic, looking at interactions more broadly. Hence, for us, ‘competitors’ may eventually decide to work together and share the benefits of their collaboration, rather than just engage in a zero sum game. We distinguish two sub-categories within the general accommodative category:  cooperation (which, as already mentioned, can concern both policies and actors) and fusion (concerning actors).

Cooperation When concerning policy stances, cooperation between PARTY A and PARTY B entails joint action in one or more arenas:  legislative, governmental or electoral. Hence parties may cooperate in Parliament over specific proposals, or engage in log-rolling; collaborate in government via the ministries they control; organize joint demonstrations and initiatives during an electoral campaign; and so on. Even parties that may diverge in most respects may be able to establish some form of cooperation that concerns the actors, rather than the policies (for instance by working together to remove a government, even if they are themselves distant on policies).

EXAMPLES: Concerning policies • In Greece, the Anexartitoi Ellines (ANEL – Independent Greeks) and SYRIZA employed a common parliamentary strategy well before forming a government coalition together in 2015. Two years earlier, following the government’s decision to shut down the public broadcaster ERT, all opposition parties had accused the PASOK-ND coalition of an undemocratic decision; however, SYRIZA and ANEL went one step further by promising to reinstate the laid-off employees. This policy concurrence was also evident in their joint vote against the 2014 budget a few months later (Rori 2016, 1324–1325). • Starting from 2001, the Dansk Folkeparti (DF – Danish People’s Party) served as parliamentary base of support for the newly formed Liberal-Conservative coalition government, which had failed to gain the necessary seats for a full parliament majority. For a decade, the three parties cooperated on an

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extensive number of policies, including major labour market, welfare and immigration reforms (Careja et al. 2016).

Concerning the actor • The M5S and UKIP have constituted a joint group in the European Parliament after the 2014 election, but only to end up supporting opposing sides of the debate on several occasions throughout the parliamentary term. In other words, they rarely collaborated on policies. • During the 2016 Austrian presidential election, former president Heinz Fischer led the establishment endorsement of the independent candidate Alexander Van der Bellen, alongside the leaders of the two main parties in the country, the conservative Österreichische Volkspartei (ÖVP – Austrian People’s Party) and the centre-left Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs (SPÖ – Social Democratic Party of Austria), as well as the liberal NEOS (Das Neue Österreich und Liberales Forum – The New Austria and Liberal Forum) (Rybak 2016).

Fusion This subcategory concerns exclusively the relationship between actors and describes a situation that may be rare, but certainly not unseen. Fusion may follow a period of cooperation between PARTY A and PARTY B, which eventually leads to something else and rather more radical: parties joining forces on a permanent basis and creating a brand-new entity.

EXAMPLES: • In the UK, the Liberal Democrats (LD) were created in 1988 via a merger of the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party (SDP). • In Italy, the Partito Democratico (PD  – Democratic Party) was created in 2007 via a merger of the Democratici di Sinistra (DS – Left Democrats) and La Margherita  – Democrazia è Libertà (Daisy  – Democracy is Freedom), while the Popolo della Libertà party (PdL – People of Freedom) was created a year later via a merger of Forza Italia (FI – Come on, Italy!) and Alleanza Nazionale (AN – National Alliance).

Now that different strategies of party competition have been considered and discussed, the next task is to make explicit how our typology can help us analyse the dynamics of such competition. We do this in the next section, stressing the

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elements of novelty in our typology, in terms of its broad applicability (horizontally and vertically), and the fact that it focuses our attention on both policies and political actors.

Relevance and use of our typology As was mentioned above, the typology presented in this chapter is useful for the analysis of competition between all types of parties. Having said this, however, our book focuses specifically on:  (1) competition between ‘non-populist’ parties and populists (see Chapter 1 for a definition); and (2) competition between populists themselves (such as established populist parties facing newer populist challengers, or inclusionary populists competing with exclusionary ones) (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2013). The application of the typology encompassing a wide range of interactions between different parties can also be combined with a framework looking at different territorial levels of political competition. While this book focuses on the national level, we acknowledge the existence of different patterns of political competition in multi-level systems (Detterbeck 2012; Libbrecht, Maddens, and Swenden 2011). These include local, regional, national (and sometimes supranational) electoral arenas. Hence, for instance, it is perfectly feasible for a party to adopt an adversarial strategy towards another at national level, only to be accommodative at regional and local levels. Indeed, considering the Italian case, this is how the League related to FI, as the latter supported the governments of the time between November 2011 and November 2013, while the League did not. Linking different levels may also explain change or stability in party interactions. Over time, cooperation at the local level could ‘spill over’ into the national level, producing a shift in the relations between the two parties in the latter context. This is what happened, for instance, in Spain, where collaboration between the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE – Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party) and the left-wing populist Podemos (We Can!) occurred first at the regional level (Rodríguez-Teruel, Barrio, and Barberà 2016, 568) and then at the national one between 2015 and 2018, and again from the end of 2019 to the time of writing at the start of 2020 (as the two parties have reached an agreement to govern together). Of course, the direction of influence might also go downwards from national to regional and/or local levels. For instance, the establishment of a coalition between PD and centrists defecting from Berlusconi’s FI at the end of 2013 led to a process of cooperation also at the regional and local levels. Moreover, parties may well compete electorally at local level (and even ostracize each other), only to converge in the national legislative arena. Equally, parties can cooperate at supra-national level (for example, in the EU parliament), while opposing each other’s policy stances at the national level – or vice versa. The collaboration between Socialists and ChristianDemocrats in the European parliament, for instance, reflects dynamics occurring at the national level in some member states (including Germany, the largest one) but not in others (e.g. Spain). In sum, interactions among parties do not occur in

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a ‘vacuum’ but might be linked to dynamics existing at different territorial levels. For this reason, the typology presented here can be applied to multi-level analyses of party competition. We also stress the importance of looking at both politics and policy. As suggested above, most of the strategies included in our typology concern interactions between actors and/or policy positions. The two dimensions, as we have been at pain to reiterate, do not necessarily go together. For instance, there is arguably a tendency by parties which do not embrace populist policies to steal from the populist box of tricks when it comes to style. In this case, we would need to talk about co-optation of aspects of a competitor’s style and way of communicating, however clashing when it comes to comparing policies. For instance, both Matteo Renzi and Emmanuel Macron have strongly opposed the policies advanced by their populist competitors but have been ready to adopt some aspects of their style, attacking the old political system and promising bottom-up change (Bordignon 2014, 2017). In a context in which politics is increasingly dominated by personal struggles (Karvonen 2010), mediatization and competing communication strategies (Mazzoleni and Schulz 1999), interactions between leaders are usually important during campaigns. At the same time, it is true that convergence in style could facilitate convergence in policies in the long term or vice-versa. An example of the latter could be the Conservative party in the UK, which, after co-opting UKIP’s main policy by fully embracing Brexit under Theresa May, also adopted a more populist ‘style’ by electing a leader, Boris Johnson, who could convey the pro-Brexit message more effectively. Therefore, a first shift in policy facilitated a further shift in the way the party communicated its political message to the electorate. As a rule, we will be able to study these multidimensional processes of convergence and divergence only by keeping actors and policies analytically distinct. Our typology can be deployed whether we study parties’ competition strategies as a dependent or independent variable (see Figure 3.2). For instance, hypotheses can be developed to explain why some parties tend to adopt certain strategies when engaging with other parties. In this case strategies are treated as an explanandum (left-hand side of Figure 3.2). It might be that ideological proximity on the left-right political continuum is a good predictor of adversarial

FIGURE 3.2

Treating strategies of competition as explanandum and/or explanans

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or accommodative strategies – there is indeed evidence of this in this book (see Chapter 14, Conclusions). Yet the rise of exclusionary populist parties has added new dimensions to political competition, which go beyond redistributive policies and concern the libertarian-authoritarian divide instead (de Lange 2007). In the meantime, it is increasingly difficult to discern differences in the economic policies supported by left-wing and right-wing populists. Indeed, as pointed out by Eatwell and Goodwin (2018, 222), the latter ‘have increasingly sought to set out an alternative to the status quo, including the adoption of policies that in the past were advocated on the left, like calling for more infrastructure projects and improving pay’. Therefore, socio-cultural/identity factors rather than socio-economic ones might increasingly drive strategic responses between all parties, populist and nonpopulist ones. Additionally, the Great Recession was not just an ‘economic crisis’ but it also unleashed a ‘political crisis’ (Kriesi and Hutter 2019). A ‘new politics’ agenda (Scantamburlo, Alonso, and Gómez 2018), including demands for democratic renewal/reform and increasing criticism of supranational institutions (Hutter and Gessler 2019, 60), has produced a transformation of political spaces, reducing the importance of traditional ideological divides. This is particularly true in European countries. In a context in which politics is no longer driven only by socio-economic issues and the distinction between populists and non-populists also starts to matter to party competition, we might expect to see increasing cooperation between nonpopulist parties, regardless of their left-right orientation.This could be accompanied by increasing cooperation between populist parties, too, regardless of their inclusionary/exclusionary approach. Some cases seem to confirm this. For instance, in Greece the cooperation between SYRIZA and ANEL, representing two different forms of populism (inclusionary the former, exclusionary the latter), was made possible by their common opposition to other parties that could be depicted as being too supine to the requests of Greece’s creditors. Also in Italy the formation of a ‘populist grand coalition’ (Bordignon and Ceccarini 2019) between the populist M5S (Zulianello 2019) (which borrows widely from both left and right) and the populist radical right League (Albertazzi, Giovannini, and Seddone 2018) was not facilitated by their ideological proximity but, rather, by their similar anti-establishment (and, at least initially, anti-EU) discourse. Germany, on the other hand, does not seem to confirm this trend of convergence between populist parties with different ideological orientations since, so far, left-wing (i.e. Die Linke – DL, The Left) and rightwing (Alternative für Deutschland  – AfD, Alternative for Germany) populists have remained quite distant, ruling out any form of cooperation. This is also true of several other countries covered in this book (see Chapter 14 Conclusions).Yet it is equally true that grand-coalitions between the two main non-populist parties in Germany  – the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD  – Social Democratic Party of Germany) and the Christlich Demokratische Union/Christlich-Soziale Union (CDU/CSU  – Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union)  – both unwilling to reach compromises with their ideologically contiguous populist challengers, have become a stable feature of the German system.

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Of course, other factors, such as the institutional system (i.e. territorial governance, voting system, distribution of authority between executive and legislature), the national political culture (consensus-based vs majoritarian), styles of leadership and the role of the media might all be useful to explain, not only the success of populist parties, but also the emergence of a certain set of competition strategies between different political actors. More generally, ‘political opportunity structures’ (Kitschelt 1995; Arzheimer and Carter 2006) frame the range of options available to political parties when dealing with competitors. So, for instance, as highlighted above, a decentralized system could lead to more diversified strategies across levels of government.This can be observed in countries such as Italy, Spain and Germany, where meso-level institutions are quite powerful. Consensus-based democracy might encourage the inclusion of populists, thus favouring more cooperative strategies.The Netherlands can be regarded as a clear example of this type of democratic system (Lijphart 1968, 2012), whereas in the UK coalition building is made more difficult by the confrontational Westminster model (Lijphart 2012). Personal relations between leaders might also play a role in explaining how parties interact with each other.The case of Silvio Berlusconi and Umberto Bossi in Italy is quite emblematic (Albertazzi and McDonnell 2005), as shifts from clashing to cooperation between their respective parties were significantly affected by how the two leaders interacted privately. Lastly, the media system may influence ostracizing or clashing strategies deployed by mainstream parties responding to populist competitors. For instance, in the 1980s the rise of right-wing populists was framed very differently by the press in Germany and Austria (Art 2007). In the first case, Bild, the main German tabloid, began a relentless campaign against the rightwing Republikaner, which facilitated the decision of the mainstream ruling party, the CDU, to adopt an ostracizing strategy. On the other hand, the largest newspaper in Austria, the Kronen Zeitung, was in fact supportive of the populist FPÖ, which made it harder for non-populist parties to put effective clashing/ostracizing strategies in place. Strategies of competition may also be treated as an explanans. Particularly when assessing policy-making processes, it is essential to identify the strategic responses of key political actors to competitors since they may significantly affect policy outcomes (see right-hand side of Figure  3.2). Policy shifts may not only be determined by openly accommodative strategies (i.e. one party changing its position by formally agreeing to join forces with another party) but also by cooptation (Pirro and Taggart 2018). The case of Brexit in the UK is emblematic, with both Labour and Conservative parties moving towards positions advocated by UKIP without formally engaging with that party. In the case of the Conservatives, this process of co-optation has also resulted in concrete government decisions, which have had a very significant impact on British society and the international position of the country. Italy provides another, albeit less dramatic, case. Here public funding of political parties was abolished by the PD-led government in 2014. This can be regarded as a policy consequence of the co-optation strategy adopted by the new PD leader, Matteo Renzi, towards the populist M5S, which had campaigned

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relentlessly against the idea that parties should be allowed to steal money from the taxpayer – as it saw it. Policy choices can also be determined by a clashing strategy, namely by a party’s need to clearly distance itself from its competitors. So, for instance, Macron’s renewed European agenda, which could still translate into concrete steps towards more political integration within the EU, may be partly explained by his desire to portray himself as the main adversary of the right-wing populist Marine Le Pen (Cottakis 2018). In sum, the competition strategies adopted by political parties may at times emerge as the causal factors leading to the elaboration and implementation of concrete policies. Our typology can therefore be used for a systematic analysis of policy-making processes and outcomes.

Conclusion In this chapter we have presented a framework aimed at assessing strategies of competition between parties. While the typology developed here draws on the scholarly literature, we have highlighted its innovative aspects, in terms of the parties and the kind of interactions it allows us to study. We summarize these elements of novelty below. First of all, our typology can be applied to interactions between all parties, and at different territorial levels of political competition, including local, regional, national and possibly supranational electoral arenas. In this book we look specifically at populist vs non-populist parties (and also populists vs populists) but future studies could use our framework to study interactions between any parties and in geographical contexts other than Western Europe. Second, we have expanded Bonnie Meguid’s framework to account for how parties also cooperate with each other and further refined her categorization by including sub-categories, which better capture specific competition strategies; we hope these may also be found useful by others. For instance, we made a novel distinction between co-optation, clashing and marginalization, pointing out how they can all serve the interests of a party willing to be adversarial towards a competitor. Finally, we have argued that our strategies may concern both policies and actors and that – by keeping them analytically distinct – we will be able to account for complex sets of party responses. Obvious examples of this are cases in which marginalization of the competitor coexists with co-optation of its policies. Lastly, the relevance of our framework has also been made explicit by discussion of its application. The strategies identified in our typology can be used both as explanandum and explanans, that is, as dependent and independent variables. We have not developed a fixed set of hypotheses in this chapter. However, we have pointed to some factors which may influence parties’ strategic choices. We have highlighted that interactions are not only shaped by ‘socio-economic’ conflicts but may be also affected by ‘identity’ politics (socio-cultural factors). Additionally, ‘new politics’ cleavages based on demands for institutional and political reform or opposition to supranational institutions (e.g. the EU) seem to be particularly useful to

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explain how populists and non-populist parties relate to each other. Other contextual factors, such as the institutional system, national political culture, leadership and the media, which are all included in the so-called ‘political opportunity structures’, might also be considered when explaining why parties decide to adopt certain strategies towards their political competitors. At the same time, we have argued that party interactions may have significant policy implications. Indeed, strategies of party competition are not important per se and should not be studied in a vacuum. Rather, they should be analysed as part of a causal chain in which they are clearly linked to their origins and effects.This is why the country chapters in this book will not only provide specific explanations of party responses to populist competitors but will also consider their broader impact on policy making more generally.

Notes 1 A number of studies rely on similar categorizations, see, for instance, Rovira Kaltwasser and Taggart 2016, and Taggart and Rovira Kaltwasser 2016. 2 We would like to express our thanks to all contributors to this volume for providing very useful feedback to us on a previous version of this typology. The usual disclaimer applies. 3 Actor-based strategies are briefly mentioned in Meguid’s framework as ‘organizational tactics’ (Meguid 2008, 30) but are not directly linked to her typology focusing on issuebased strategies. 4 A similar point has been made by Tim Bale et al. (2010, 412), notwithstanding that their ‘ideal-types’ do not coincide with ours.

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PART II

4 AUSTRIA Reinhard Heinisch, Fabian Habersack, and Franz Fallend

Introduction This chapter explores how Austria’s mainstream parties have responded to the rise of the radical rightwing populist Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ  – Austrian Freedom Party) as well as how the latter has strategically adapted to ideologically proximate challengers surfacing over time. From the late 1970s onward, modernization and subsequently the integration into the European Union have resulted in significant voter defections away from Austria’s major parties, the Christian Conservative Österreichische Volkspartei (ÖVP  – Austrian People’s Party) and the Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs (SPÖ  – Social Democratic Party of Austria). This dealignment meant that more votes became available for other parties. The FPÖ, which had already been a well-established formation, profited the most from this dealignment after transforming from a small libertarian nationalist far right party into a radical right populist party in the 1980s. However, as some of the voters alienated by the mainstream parties perceived the FPÖ as being too radical, there was some space left for the formation of other populist parties as well. The main populist competitors of the FPÖ to be addressed in this chapter were Bündnis Zukunft Österreich (BZÖ – Alliance for the Future of Austria) and Team Stronach (TS). Since all the challenger parties compete especially along the sociocultural dimension, mainstream parties who still draw many voters along the socioeconomic axis had to make difficult strategic choices. Given that the major parties in Austria were centrist catch-all parties, they had to contend with pressures coming from the liberal left as well as the sociocultural right. The FPÖ likewise faced challenger parties, albeit these small parties focused largely on similar issues and therefore had a harder time demonstrating their relevance. This chapter intends to explain how both mainstream and populist parties programmatically and strategically adapted to changing environments.

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To this end, we start by analysing the context and causes for the dealignment process and the initial rise of rightwing populism. The subsequent section presents the theoretical argument and draws attention to the expected strategic responses by political actors. Following this theoretical section, we first explore the ÖVP’s responses up to the 2017 elections when it embraced core policy claims of the FPÖ. We then move on to analyse the SPÖ-FPÖ relationship as well as how the FPÖ itself reacted to rightwing populist challengers. The conclusion reflects on the reasons why Austrian parties picked different strategies when dealing with other parties as well as how the Austrian case fits into a more general theoretical discussion of party competition.

The rise of rightwing populism and the context of dealignment For the first four decades following the Second World War, Austria was de facto a party state where SPÖ and ÖVP controlled up to 95 per cent of the votes and seats in the legislature. Both parties had established a political system designed to minimize conflicts to avoid the polarization that had led to the overthrow of democracy in the 1930s. Central to this consensus democracy was a power-sharing arrangement based on grand coalitions for the first 21 years; extensive continued collaboration between the parties in regional government; and the allocation of positions in public and semipublic institutions and enterprises proportional to the parties’ electoral strength. This system was pervasive during the postwar decades but endured in modified form even when the ÖVP was in opposition and was strengthened again when the grand coalition returned in 1986 (Talos 1993, 11–34). Over time, this system became increasingly vulnerable to charges of clientelism. As a result, ‘Austrians expressed a growing disaffection with and even downright alienation from the political system’ (Ulram 1994, 93). This social trend went hand in hand with a pervasive change in lifestyle and cultural values, which was also undermining the traditional political milieu. Being Austria’s dominant party throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, the SPÖ was most affected by the growing voter discontent so that between the mid-1970s and mid-1980s, party identification in Social Democratic milieus declined by nearly one third (Ulram 1994, 93–94). In response, the SPÖ sought to hold on to government by forming a coalition with the FPÖ in 1983. For the FPÖ, the support of, and coalition with the SPÖ was emblematic of the former’s turn towards a more centrist agenda and thus a break with its German-nationalist tradition that had made the party particularly attractive, among others, to war veterans and former Nazis (Pelinka 2002). When this government collapsed in 1986 in the wake of a revolt by the FPÖ’s radical base (led by Jörg Haider) against their more liberal leadership, the pattern of party politics changed. The subsequent national elections were a watershed in Austrian politics. Although coming within 1.8 per cent of the SPÖ, the ÖVP

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failed to regain the helm of government after 16  years in opposition (Hofinger, Marcelo, and Ogris 2000, 117–140). In response, the two mainstream parties chose to cooperate with each other again following six out of nine elections between 1986 and 2017. Grand coalition governments became the normal pattern after 1986 which ensured for the time being that the preponderance of power remained with the mainstream parties, but it also contributed to voter hemorrhaging, as both formations lost support in nearly every subsequent election. As more voters became available on the electoral market, parties such as the newly emerged Die Grünen (GRÜNE – Greens) and Liberales Forum (LiF – Liberals) benefited. However, no party drew a greater advantage from voter defections from the major parties than the FPÖ, which increased its vote share from 4.9 per cent in 1986 to 26.9 per cent in 1999. All Austrian elections after 1986 produced substantial center-right rather than center-left electoral majorities. This raises the question as to why the ÖVP opted to remain a junior partner in an SPÖ-led coalition after two thirds of all subsequent elections but chose to form a coalition with the radical right on three occasions (after the 1999, 2002, and 2017 elections).The FPÖ became a partner for the Conservatives in circumstances when that proved advantageous for key groups within the ÖVP. Nonetheless, the former was also a major competitor. By coming under pressure by the FPÖ from one side and by the Greens (a moderate center-left party in Austria) from the other, the ÖVP exhibited the vulnerability of a centrist catch-all party (Hofinger, Jenny and Ogris 2000, 117–140). While both major parties in Austria faced similar downward trends, changing party competition challenged the centre-right ÖVP more than the centre-left SPÖ, as the radical right tends to affect especially the ‘nearby mainstream conservative counterparts’ (Bustikova and Kitschelt 2009, 470). Nonetheless, also a blue-collar party like the SPÖ could not ignore the FPÖ because starting in the 1990s the latter began to make serious inroads into its own core electorate. In our conceptualization of the mainstream–challenger relationship, we follow the framework laid out in Chapter 3 of this volume and also echo the work of Pirro and Taggart (2018). Fundamentally, parties can either opt to engage or disengage with the populist challenger (Pirro and Taggart 2018, 259). The resulting strategies range from a ‘dismissive’ approach intent on ignoring the competitor and their agenda to adversarial forms seeking to marginalize the challengers by either downplaying the significance of their policy concerns or via policy cooptation. Finally, cooperation can also be seen as a possibility, at least in certain contexts. In Austria, mainstream party reactions include both extremes: a policy of complete isolation and marginalization as well as full-fledged cooperation in government. Crucially, as the Austrian case confirms, the choice of more cooperative over adversarial strategies is informed by the respective ideological proximity between parties but also hinges on the electoral success of challenger parties and their agenda-setting power, which may direct the challenged parties to strategic re-orientations.

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The ÖVP vs the FPÖ: adversarial engagement and accommodation Turning to party competition on the right, the ÖVP initially reacted to the FPÖ’s success by seeking to isolate it politically, but was unsuccessful in decreasing the salience of its agenda. The ÖVP subsequently shifted to an approach whereby it co-opted parts of the FPÖ’s agenda, while pursuing a strategy of marginalization toward it. In this vein, the ÖVP used the concept of the ‘constitutional arch’, implying that the FPÖ was not fit to govern as long as its leadership opposed the basic consensus of the Austrian post-war model and engaged in radical and polarizing discourse toward the political establishment. For the ÖVP, cooperation with the FPÖ was only possible if the latter accepted Austria’s social partnership and European integration, while distancing itself clearly from Nazism (Luther 2010, 81–82; Fallend 2012, 120). The fact that the Conservatives did not fundamentally rule out all cooperation with the FPÖ but rather made it conditional, prepared the ground for yet another shift in strategy toward cooperation. Isolating the FPÖ was significantly harder for the ÖVP than for the SPÖ because the FPÖ’s nationalist and traditionalist positions appealed to many conservative voters. The shift of the ÖVP to an accommodative strategy toward the FPÖ in the course of the 1990s was most pronounced in the areas of multiculturalism and law-and-order. Especially immigration and asylum policy became continually more restrictive (Bauböck and Perchinig 2006, 732–734). Developing an increasingly market-liberal outlook, the ÖVP was also frustrated by the coalition with the SPÖ which was reluctant to go beyond the economic changes necessary for Austria’s entry into the European Single Market. Meanwhile, the FPÖ had adopted a more blurred position on socioeconomic policy. While criticizing globalization, the power of international business, and European integration, the FPÖ was also a vocal critic of Austrian corporatism and the regulatory state and retained close connections to industrialists. In the years prior to the first ÖVP-FPÖ coalition (2000–2005), both major parties gradually lost support – yet, this problem had been more acute for the ÖVP (see Figure 4.1). For one, it had remained junior partner in an SPÖ-led coalition government; and the fact that the SPÖ was able to hold on to the chancellorship had put the ÖVP at a certain electoral disadvantage. For another, the FPÖ, which had constantly mobilized against the grand coalition, had come within striking distance of the ÖVP in the 1990s and even relegated the ÖVP to third place in the 1999 election. Taken together, these pressures resulted in internal debates about the role of the party and its posture vis-à-vis the FPÖ. For a party accustomed to its traditional role in Austrian consensus politics, this required both internal and external reorientation. Internally, those pushing for change had to build support to cope with any political repercussions from pursuing an alliance with the former pariah (Luther 2003, 137). Externally, this strategic and programmatic shift did not just have electoral consequences, it also affected the relationship with interest groups inside the country as well as to other EU member

Austria

FIGURE 4.1

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Vote shares of main Austrian parties, 1990–2017

Note: years on the x-axis indicate general election years; vertical lines denote inauguration of respective governing coalition; labels ‘SPÖ & ÖVP’ and ‘ÖVP & FPÖ’ refer to governing coalitions; own illustration.

states (as evidenced by the diplomatic ‘sanctions’ imposed on the Austrian government under Schüssel in 2000). When a series of leadership changes failed to halt the downward trend, the party selected Schüssel as its leader in 1995. He accepted the position on the condition of being given a freer hand to decide on personnel and party direction than his predecessors. This reflected the fact that ‘[in] an age of greater electoral volatility, political entrepreneurs are more likely to encounter opportunities to alter their respective party’s external competitive environment’ (Luther 2010, 100).Thus, despite a poor showing of his party in the 1999 election, Schüssel found himself in a strong position to steer the party into a new direction and forge the first rightwing coalition in Austria’s Second Republic. In other words, tired of its constant status as junior partner in SPÖ-dominated coalitions, the ÖVP became more willing to take risks – and a sufficiently large part of the Conservatives backed Schüssel’s reform agenda and the strategic shift to a partnership with the FPÖ. Taking this risk paid off as the FPÖ rewarded Schüssel for his willingness to cooperate with the erstwhile political pariah by backing his bid for the chancellorship despite the ÖVP’s third place in the election (Heinisch 2003a, 229). This was the first time the Conservatives abandoned the informal ‘cordon sanitaire’ imposed on the ‘new’ populist FPÖ. The strategic objectives of the ÖVP’s shift were both to break with the perpetual ‘grand coalitions’ and simultaneously neutralize the electoral threat the FPÖ posed. Eventually, the Conservatives were able to contain most of the FPÖ’s radical agenda and prevail as the more successful coalition partner. Thus, even though comparative evidence on the effectiveness of ‘containment through inclusion’ is rather mixed (Dahlström and Sundell 2012; van Spanje and de Graaf 2017), the FPÖ’s sharp decline by 16.9 per cent in the subsequent election appeared to prove this approach successful (Heinisch 2003b; Luther

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2003). However, as a consequence of the FPÖ’s inability to deliver on its core radical right claims, discontent with the government inside the FPÖ rose sharply. This resulted in the creation of the BZÖ, as the more liberal, pro-governmental faction of the FPÖ broke away from it in 2005. After the BZÖ had briefly replaced the FPÖ on the ÖVP’s side in government, the way was paved for the FPÖ (led by Heinz-Christian Strache between 2005 and 2019) to rejoin the opposition and recover from its electoral defeat. Following the 2006 election, the SPÖ and the ÖVP reluctantly formed another ‘grand coalition’ after the new FPÖ leader had unilaterally ruled out joining a government that included the BZÖ. This ‘confirmed that Strache had recognized that opposition was politically a far more lucrative place for a populist party to be in than a junior role in government’ (Heinisch 2008, 83). The radicalization in opposition and steady consolidation of support until the 2017 election, when the FPÖ regained its 1999 level of votes, were indicative of the fact that the Conservatives’ strategy to tame the radical right FPÖ by including it in government, had by no means excluded it from the political process for any extended time period. When previously in office, the FPÖ had undergone a process of ‘mainstreaming’ both by means of its own strategic re-orientation and due to the ÖVP’s influence. In doing so, the FPÖ had toned down its radical rhetoric and anti-EU positions while gradually moving away from its niche party focus on cultural issues toward socio-economic matters (Heinisch and Hauser 2016, 73). As an illustration of how far the radical right FPÖ pushed into the centre, Figure 4.2 shows the parties’ changing left-right position according to MARPOR data (Volkens et al. 2018). Clearly

FIGURE 4.2

Right-left score (RILE) of main Austrian parties

Note: RILE score as defined by Franzmann (2009); MARPOR data.

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noticeable is the break and strong party-level convergence between the ÖVP and the FPÖ in 2017, induced primarily by a move of the ÖVP to the right. In contrast to this, the first ÖVP-FPÖ coalition after the 1999 election was more defined by a move of the FPÖ to the centre to appear more suitable for government. Also noteworthy is that while all parties appear to move in tandem up to the 2002 election, the left and right blocks have drifted apart recognizably after that period. In 2006, the FPÖ largely resumed its role as populist challenger, thereby reviving its anti-establishment agenda and campaign focus on the sociocultural dimension. While the ÖVP’s strategy again aimed at marginalization, it increasingly co-opted the FPÖ’s agenda. Immigration, law and order, Islam, and even EU-criticism became part of mainstream party discourse (Hafez and Heinisch 2018). The appointment of ÖVP hardliners to head the Interior Ministry after 2000 had already indicated how ‘salonfähig’ (politically acceptable) the FPÖ’s discourse had become (Rummens and Abts 2010, 649). Between 2008 and 2013 the SPÖ-ÖVP coalition was rather preoccupied with the fallout of the global economic and Eurozone financial crisis. The focus on policies to combat the recession, stabilize the Euro, and manage Austria’s financial overexposure in Central and Eastern Europe became national priorities. This shifted the public debate temporarily away from sociocultural issues, constraining the strategic options of the FPÖ. The ÖVP leaders Josef Pröll (2008–2011), Michael Spindelegger (2011–2014), and Reinhold Mitterlehner (2014–2017) all attempted to position their party as the architect of the government’s economic policy. This also meant that, after the 2008 elections, the programmatic orientation of the ÖVP shifted away from its restrictive positions on law-andorder and multiculturalism (Figure 4.3). Despite the ÖVP-leadership’s temporary ‘openness’, however, others among the Conservatives had begun incorporating migration and anti-Islam positions of the FPÖ as part of their discourse (Hafez and Heinisch 2018). In the wake of the refugee crisis 2015/16, the sociocultural issue dimension reasserted itself in profound ways. The principal advocate for the ÖVP’s reorientation became the 31-year-old Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz, who was a critic of the SPÖ-ÖVP government’s handling of asylum and immigration policy.When the Conservatives ousted Mitterlehner in 2017 and elected Kurz to become party leader, he ended the coalition with the SPÖ and sharply reoriented the Conservatives’ sociocultural positions (Figure 4.3). Analyses of manifesto and speech data suggest that on a wide range of policy areas, the ÖVP not only adopted policy positions formerly ‘owned’ by the FPÖ, but also the FPÖ’s rhetoric and wording in issues of ‘national sovereignty’ (Heinisch, Werner, and Habersack 2019). In the 2017 election, the ÖVP emphasized immigration above all else despite the FPÖ’s relative moderation in the preceding period. To look at the extent of just how much the two parties moved on migration policy, we draw on the migration position index introduced by Alonso and da Fonseca (2012). Subtracting negative/anti-migration manifesto codes from positives ones, we arrive at a directional measure of pro-immigration claims in party manifestos from 1990 to

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FIGURE 4.3

Sociocultural left-right score of main Austrian parties

Note: Based on Franzmann’s (2009) categorization and MARPOR data. ‘sociocultural left’ = per105-107; per501-502; per602; per704-705; ‘sociocultural right’ = per104; per203-204; per301; per304; per601; per603; per605; per608; sociocultural left-right score calculated as share of ‘right’ minus ‘left’ of all references to sociocultural claims.

2017. Figure 4.4 confirms the change of the FPÖ’s position on immigration, albeit coming from a rather extreme position previously (especially in 2013) – and the shift to the right by the ÖVP at the same time. The migration policy measure was calculated without the ‘law-and-order’ dimension because in 2008 the ÖVP adopted an explicit law and order position which would have resulted in a false interpretation of its immigration position. In the end, the ÖVP was prepared to weaken even its traditional staunchly proEuropean position, by presenting a coalition agreement with the FPÖ in 2017 that was formally pro-European, but added numerous qualifiers, and hinted at the need for reforms (ÖVP 2017). This is significant because, prior to the first Schüssel cabinet, the ÖVP’s position on whether to cooperate with the FPÖ had always hinged on the latter’s unconditional acceptance of a pro-European position. Now whereas in 2000 the FPÖ had changed many of its previously held radical positions, in 2017 Kurz’s ÖVP ditched its previous Europhile posture in favour of a more radical right policy profile. Thus, in contrast to the first ÖVP-FPÖ coalition, the second (2017–2019) was much more marked by ‘collaboration’ between the two coalition partners on the basis of nearly identical policy goals. Taken together, the evidence suggests that whereas the pre-Schüssel ÖVP sought to keep the radical challenger at bay by excluding it from office, first by using

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FIGURE 4.4

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Immigration position of main Austrian parties

Note: Own calculation based on the index by Alonso and da Fonseca (2012) by considering the following MARPOR codes: ‘Immigration’ = pro-immigration (per607; per705) – anti-immigration (per601; per 608).

a dismissive and then an adversarial strategy of marginalization and cooptation, under Schüssel the ÖVP resorted to a policy co-optation in various policy areas while simultaneously trying to tame the FPÖ by inviting it into government. In explaining these strategic choices, several external and internal factors can be identified:  for one, the competitive environment, electoral losses and the ÖVP’s decades-long status as junior partner in an unwanted alliance with the SPÖ, all contributed to growing internal frustration. In parallel, the FPÖ’s rise had created new opportunity structures that benefitted the ÖVP in general and its rightwing faction in particular. Finally, the ÖVP had also moved much closer to the FPÖ in ideological terms and was less reluctant to cooperate with the radical right than were large parts of the SPÖ. Following the Schüssel-era (2000–2007), the Conservatives returned to an adversarial strategy (and to a grand coalition under SPÖ chancellorship) because cooperation was neither numerically feasible nor desired – due to the FPÖ having gone back to a vote-seeking strategy.The adversarial strategy employed by the ÖVP during that period (2005–2017) may be read as a reaction to the FPÖ’s radical course. This changed in the aftermath of the refugee crisis in response to which a new ÖVP leadership under Kurz followed an accommodative strategy towards the FPÖ. Not only did the Conservatives co-opt key policy positions of the FPÖ from 2017

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onward, but the election that year, which the Conservatives clearly won, produced also a ÖVP-FPÖ coalition government under Kurz as chancellor. Given the programmatic affinity of both parties and good relationship on display between Kurz and Strache, it was rather unexpected that the government would collapse less than two years into its term over a scandal involving the FPÖ leader. This so-called ‘Ibiza affair’ involved a recording of then party leader Strache (2005–2019) making promises to a purported Russian oligarch about government contracts in exchange for securing control over the country’s largest daily newspaper, ‘Kronen Zeitung’. The causes leading to this crisis echo conclusions drawn about the FPÖ’s previous collapse in public office:  the party is structured to succeed in opposition but fail in government. More specifically, this failure can be attributed to a ‘lack of institutional development’ (Heinisch 2003b, 101) of populist parties as well as their exclusive focus on the party leader, both of which pose nearly insurmountable challenges when it comes to work in government. Although both coalitions (under Schüssel and Kurz) ended prematurely, the two cases nevertheless demonstrate the ÖVP’s flexibility when it comes to reacting to, and positioning itself vis-à-vis other parties. Keeping an in-between position allowed the ÖVP to strike a coalition deal with the FPÖ when sociocultural issues grew salient and when it was electorally beneficial to do so. By contrast, the SPÖ remained rather locked in a coalition with the ÖVP, primarily for the ideological distance towards the FPÖ. The following section will explore this SPÖ-FPÖ relationship in greater detail.

The SPÖ vs the FPÖ: marginalization and selective accommodation Despite the SPÖ’s hardline position toward the FPÖ, the party may be accused of being the first to make the FPÖ politically acceptable, as it brought it into government in 1983. The traditionally prominent role of former Nazis within the leadership (Pelinka 2010, 328) had ensured that the FPÖ remained a ‘ghetto party’ until the 1970s (Luther 1997, 65). Since then, however, it began moving toward the political centre. Finally, in 1983, the SPÖ needed to compensate for losing its absolute majority and preferred a coalition with the smaller FPÖ to one with the bigger ÖVP, because the former entailed a lesser degree of power-sharing. That the FPÖ leadership at the time was dominated by liberals enabled the SPÖ leadership to overcome intra-party resistance to the coalition by its left wing. The coalition lasted until Haider took over the FPÖ leadership in 1986, in response to which SPÖ-Chancellor Franz Vranitzky (1986–1997) swiftly brought it to an end and shifted to an adversarial strategy. In every subsequent general election campaign until 1999, the SPÖ ruled out a coalition with the FPÖ (Müller 2006, 300). The ‘Vranitzky doctrine’, as it came to be labelled, was based on a fundamental rejection of Haider’s xenophobic policies, his flirtation with German nationalism, and overall radical discourse.

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Vranitzky’s popularity secured the SPÖ a relative majority and thereby the chancellorship in various ‘grand coalitions’ until 2000, even though the party’s vote shares steadily dropped between 1979 and 1999. Despite losing votes, the SPÖ did not devise a clear strategy regarding which voter groups it should primarily address (Müller, Plasser, and Ulram 2004, 152). Its focus fluctuated between the educated middle class (wooed also by the ÖVP and the Greens) and blue-collar workers, who, as primary losers of modernization, were increasingly shifting to the FPÖ. In the 1999 elections the SPÖ fell behind the FPÖ among blue-collar workers for the first time (Fallend 2004, 117) and found no recipe for countering the FPÖ’s new emphasis on popular social policy proposals, including a so-called ‘children’s check’ (Müller, Plasser and Ulram 2004, 162, 164). Although principally intending to marginalize the FPÖ, the SPÖ, like the ÖVP, also made attempts to co-opt the FPÖ’s policy stances, most notably on migration, as is confirmed by the MARPOR data (Figure 4.4). An example of this is provided by the party replacing its liberal interior minister (responsible for immigration and asylum) with Karl Schlögl in 1997. Schlögl was a declared hardliner, who also had close contacts with the FPÖ (Fallend and Heinisch 2018, 42). By doing so, the SPÖ wanted to show it was taking seriously the fears prevalent among its blue-collar electorate that immigrants threatened their jobs and led to lower wages. The major, SPÖ-dominated interest groups of the employees, the Chamber of Labor and the Trade Union Congress, vehemently opposed uncontrolled immigration at the time and were pushing the SPÖ in this direction. Moreover, the SPÖ’s adversarial strategy at the national level could not be all encompassing after all, as the party found itself in power sharing arrangements (mandated at the time by state law in all but two Austrian provinces) with the other major parties, including the FPÖ (Fallend 2010, 181–182). In Carinthia, the FPÖ under its leader Haider increased its share of the votes constantly from election to election until it succeeded even in overtaking the SPÖ as the strongest party in 1999. Even before this year, from 1989 until 1991, and again from 1999 until his death in 2008 Haider assumed the role of Provincial Governor, chairing three-party coalitions with SPÖ and ÖVP. The SPÖ-leadership was naturally aware that its uncompromising stance towards co-operating with the FPÖ at the federal level represented a strategic disadvantage vis-à-vis the ÖVP. In fact, an ÖVP-FPÖ coalition would have yielded a majority of seats in the national parliament in every election between 1986 and 1999. Moreover, a survey of MPs in 1997–8 revealed that in socioeconomic and sociocultural matters, the ideological distance between the ÖVP and FPÖ members of the national parliament was smaller than that between ÖVP and SPÖ (Müller and Jenny 2000, 143–151). Obviously, the SPÖ leadership hoped that by marginalizing the FPÖ it could increase its appeal with left-leaning or moderate voters and make it more difficult for the ÖVP to consider a coalition with the rightwing outsider. Not surprisingly, however, the ÖVP’s role as de facto indispensable coalition partner for the SPÖ led to mutual resentment, and was especially problematic for the ÖVP, which failed to leave its imprint on government policies and ended up paying a

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high electoral price for the unpopularity of ‘grand coalitions’ (Fallend and Heinisch 2018, 36). When in 2000 the ÖVP finally deserted the ‘grand coalition’ to form a government with the FPÖ, the SPÖ felt betrayed (Müller and Fallend 2004, 808). Under their new party chairman Alfred Gusenbauer (2000–2008), the SPÖ, like the Greens, emphatically rejected the new government, not only because of the FPÖ’s proximity to the extreme right, but also because of the alleged ‘social callousness’ of the government’s neo-liberal economic, budgetary and social policies (Müller and Fallend 2004, 817). When that government collapsed prematurely in 2002 (Luther 2003, 139–141), the SPÖ was ill-prepared to take advantage of the situation. Instead, Schüssel led the ÖVP to its biggest victory in 20 years, increasing its vote share from 26.9 to 42.3 per cent. He then proceeded to renew his coalition with a dramatically weakened FPÖ, which had plummeted from 26.9 to 10 per cent. Subsequently, the SPÖ tried to drive a wedge into the coalition, by alleging that the FPÖ had ceased to be an advocate for ‘ordinary people’ (Müller and Fallend 2004, 829). However, this strategy was thwarted at the regional level when, in 2004, the Carinthian branch of the party formed a coalition with Haider’s FPÖ. In 2006, however, the SPÖ’s strategy of harshly criticizing the government’s social policies finally paid off (Plasser and Ulram 2007, 28). Many workers had become alienated from the government (Heinisch 2003a, 113–114; Luther 2010, 90) so that the SPÖ was able to regain its place as the largest party, and an SPÖ-ÖVP ‘grand coalition’ under Chancellor Gusenbauer was reinstalled. This coalition, however, faced problems nearly from the start.The Conservatives blocked several of the SPÖ’s campaign promises (e.g., abolishing student fees and cancelling the procurement of military aircraft), causing a political stalemate (Müller 2009, 514), while the SPÖ co-opted a central issue of the FPÖ, in that Chancellor Gusenbauer and the subsequent SPÖ leader and Chancellor Werner Faymann penned a letter to Austria’s leading tabloid that criticized the EU’s democratic deficit and its neo-liberal economic orientation. Hinting at ‘widespread skepticism toward the EU’ among Austrians, the two proposed that future EU treaty revisions should be subject to national referendums – a significant shift in the SPÖ’s EU policy. A central motive for this shift seems to have been the parallel move of the ÖVP and FPÖ to the right, on the general left-right and on the sociocultural dimension, during the mid-2000s (see Figures 4.2–4.3). Obviously, the SPÖ was afraid of a renewal of an ÖVP-FPÖ coalition and attempted to attract EU-skeptical FPÖ voters to prevent this. Shortly thereafter, the ÖVP terminated the coalition with the SPÖ but lost votes in the subsequent election of 2008 (-8.3 per cent), even more dramatically than the SPÖ (-6 per cent). However, the latter, in spite of its changed EU position, saw a major decline of support among blue-collar voters (-22 per cent), but also among those younger than 30 (-8 per cent) (Müller 2009, 515–516). Given the distribution of seats and the radicalized posture of the FPÖ under its new chairman Strache, SPÖ and ÖVP had little choice but to renew their coalition.

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The government that followed (led by SPÖ-Chancellor Faymann), which lasted until 2013, was overshadowed by the need to consolidate the budget in the wake of the financial crisis. Despite successfully managing the economy, a major corruption scandal breaking out in that period decreased the public’s trust in parties and the government (Aichholzer et  al. 2014, 13–19). However, Faymann also explicitly ruled out a coalition with the FPÖ. But whereas the SPÖ maintained a centre-left policy orientation, ÖVP and FPÖ moved closer to each other on the left-right axis, in spite of a slight move of the ÖVP to the left between 2008 and 2013 (see Figure 4.2). Consequently, in the SPÖ’s campaign for the 2013 election, the party warned against a revival of an ÖVP-FPÖ coalition. During the election campaign the two governing parties mainly attacked each other. This indirectly helped the FPÖ (Dolezal et al. 2014, 100–104). Over 40 per cent of voters (but about 60 per cent of SPÖ voters) preferred a continuation of the SPÖ-ÖVP coalition at the time, whereas an ÖVP-FPÖ coalition was favoured only by about 10 per cent of voters (and about 8 per cent of SPÖ voters) (Eberl et al. 2014, 153–155). The election resulted in further losses for the major parties. Theoretically, the SPÖ and the FPÖ (which had steadily risen from 11 per cent in 2006 to 20.5 per cent now) would have had a one-seat majority in parliament, but a coalition between them would have run counter to the SPÖ’s non-cooperation commitment during the campaign. The ÖVP and the FPÖ, on the other hand, were short of a parliamentary majority on their own, and the FPÖ had ruled out cooperating with Team Stronach, a newly emerged, albeit short-lived rightwing populist party (Kritzinger, Müller, and Schönbach 2014, 235–236). Consequently, in 2013 SPÖ and ÖVP ended up forming their third coalition in a row, soon losing public support because of constant infighting. Over time, the SPÖ’s policy of exclusion toward the FPÖ was repeatedly tested. In 2014, the SPÖ party congress decided not to co-operate with the FPÖ, a decision binding ‘at all levels’ (Neuhold 2015) and, from time to time, Chancellor Faymann reiterated his reservations about forming a coalition with that party. However, some within the SPÖ stressed that in Burgenland – despite the abolition in 2015 of the constitutional provision endowing all major parties with seats in government  – the SPÖ had in fact formed a coalition with the FPÖ, thus rejecting the ÖVP’s advances. The pressure to reconsider the policy mounted when the FPÖ candidate Norbert Hofer came close to winning the elections for the federal presidency in 2016. Hofer beat the SPÖ candidate by a wide margin in the first round (35.1 per cent vs 11.3 per cent), and received the support of nearly half the electorate (i.e. 46.2 per cent) in the run-off against the Green-sponsored candidate Alexander Van der Bellen. While the FPÖ was riding high in the polls, disapproval with Faymann’s leadership mounted among the SPÖ’s rank and file in 2015/16. In 2016 he was replaced as chancellor and party leader by Christian Kern, at the time CEO of Austrian Federal Railways. In January 2017, Kern pitched an ambitious national reform

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agenda (‘Plan A’), intended to re-launch the SPÖ-ÖVP alliance. Seeing this as a major political threat, which could prolong the SPÖ’s dominance over it, the ÖVP installed its popular Foreign Minister Kurz as new party chairman and terminated the coalition. In anticipation of another ÖVP-FPÖ coalition, a discussion broke out within the SPÖ about its relationship with the FPÖ. Finally, the party executive agreed on a so-called ‘values compass’ of rather generally stated principles (e.g., rejection of extreme, fascist attitudes, commitment to human rights, social security, an open education system and gender equality) to serve as guidelines for future cooperation with political competitors. On this basis, no party was excluded a-priori as a possible coalition partner, which could be read as a step towards opening the door to the FPÖ and preventing an ÖVP-FPÖ coalition. The latter had become more likely after Kurz had moved the ÖVP further to the right. An ÖVP-FPÖ government was eventually installed in 2017, sparking further disputes within the SPÖ and another leadership change. The party’s new chairwoman, Pamela Rendi-Wagner, who was elected in 2018, denounced Chancellor Kurz as ‘door opener for right-wing extremists’ (derstandard.at. 2019) and ruled out the FPÖ as a coalition partner. Meanwhile, others in the party, such as the provincial governor of Burgenland, Hans Peter Doskozil, who was himself ruling in coalition with the FPÖ, pushed in a different direction by taking a harder line against ‘leftist’ or ‘green’ ideas. Consequently, as the ‘Ibiza affair’ brought down the ÖVPFPÖ coalition in May 2019, the SPÖ initiated a vote of no-confidence against the ÖVP-led minority government, which was supported by the FPÖ. After the snap elections later in 2019, in which the SPÖ lost 5.7 per cent of the votes and reached its all-time low after 1945, intra-party disputes about the future political direction and the best leadership personnel intensified again. The relationship between ÖVP and SPÖ was already strained before the election. With the onset of the intra-party debates, however, the SPÖ also eliminated itself as a serious option for the following coalition negotiations.

The FPÖ vs other populist challengers: the lure of adversarial strategies For many years the FPÖ was the only relevant radical right populist force in Austria – and one that had succeeded to enter government, as we have seen. However, the compromises the party had to accept during its coalition with the ÖVP led to a split between the moderate, office-oriented party leadership on the one hand, and the more radical, protest- and policy-oriented party officials and supporters on the other. In 2005, the moderate wing (ironically led by formerly quite radical party leader Haider) finally broke away from the FPÖ to form the BZÖ, which then went on to replace the FPÖ as the ÖVP’s partner in government. The BZÖ struggled to gain recognition from the start: by claiming to be distinctive insofar as it was not afraid to take on government responsibilities, the party in the end undermined its chances to be seen as radical. Moreover, hopes that many

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FPÖ members would defect to it were revealed to be unfounded (Luther 2010, 97–98). While bickering about which one was ‘the original’ and which ‘the copy’, during the run-up to the 2006 general election the two parties ended up focusing on similar issues, such as tax relief, migration, and the EU. The FPÖ treated the BZÖ as an adversary, and ruled out any coalitions with what it called ‘traitors’. In the end, the BZÖ only narrowly crossed the 4 per cent threshold to enter parliament, while the FPÖ slightly recovered from its disastrous result of 2002, by gaining 11 per cent (+1) of the votes. Although the ÖVP tried to forge an ÖVP-FPÖBZÖ coalition, the FPÖ was not willing to join in (Müller 2008, 177–179), as this would have legitimized the BZÖ as a serious political contender. The situation was similar in 2008, after the SPÖ-ÖVP coalition had collapsed and snap elections were called, with the FPÖ ruling out any coalitions with the BZÖ. On this occasion, both parties were able to increase their shares of the votes substantially: the FPÖ from 11 to 17.5 per cent, and the BZÖ from 4.1 to 11.7 per cent. Attempts by former Chancellor and ÖVP chairman Schüssel to build a threeparty coalition were destined to fail, however, after Haider died in a car accident (Müller 2009, 516).Without its charismatic leader, the BZÖ was in fact doomed: it failed to regain representation in parliament at the 2013 elections, and ceased to pose a threat to the FPÖ. Another small party displaying populist traits and posing a challenge to the FPÖ (even though only temporarily) was Team Stronach. The Austro-Canadian industrialist Frank Stronach, who founded the party in 2012, wanted, for example, to reduce the budget deficit, establish a flat tax, increase the efficiency of public administration, and introduce the death penalty for ‘professional killers’. In response, the FPÖ’s campaign for the 2013 general election asked questions about the extent to which an 81-old man – such was Stronach’s age – could be credible as a revolutionary leader (Dolezal et al. 2014, 100). Disappointed by the election result (5.7 per cent of the votes), Stronach retired from politics soon thereafter, while other members left his party and/or (re)joined other parties. Team Stronach was finally dissolved in 2017, so that the FPÖ found itself, once again, as the only radical right player left standing in the country.

Conclusion What can we learn from how mainstream Austrian parties have dealt with the challenge posed to them by the FPÖ? The first thing to say is that the ÖVP’s strategic response to the populist radical right appears to have been driven by expediency and programmatic affinity. For most of the time after 2000, the ÖVP was programmatically closer to the FPÖ than to the SPÖ. The salience of the FPÖ’s issues made both a dismissive and an adversarial strategy aimed at marginalization impossible to sustain. Therefore, policy accommodation followed. The ÖVP opted to cooperate with the FPÖ on three occasions (1999, 2002, and 2017), a strategic choice for which there is one major explanation: it did so (at least in 1999 and 2017) only when it deemed its very existence under threat and felt it had to react

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outside the bounds of accustomed mainstream behaviour. It then selected party leaders considered change agents, namely Schüssel and Kurz, who were given special powers to remake the party that had not been granted to other leaders. As the FPÖ gained strength, centrism was perceived by the ÖVP as a lack of profile, and its centrist faction was accused of enabling leftist policies. While frustration over its status as the SPÖ’s junior coalition partner, as well as ideological proximity to the FPÖ, were both decisive in the ÖVP’s shift toward that party, the SPÖ was more internally divided and was eventually outmaneuvered by the Conservatives both in the early 2000s and in 2017. Even though alternative coalitions including the FPÖ had been possible at various points in time, the major parties refrained from cooperating with the ‘pariah’ for long periods, in an effort to maintain the stability of the Austrian consensus model. Arguably, they also felt the responsibility of being Austria’s foundational (‘staatstragend’) parties. This clearly played a role in affecting the management of the financial, and initially also the refugee, crises. Cooperation with the FPÖ was politically costly for the SPÖ and, crucially, could spark much infighting within it, hence the latter explicitly rejected coalitions with the former in 2006, 2008, and 2013. In other words, the SPÖ leadership chose to set limits to what they could do, as they wished to keep the party together, while the ÖVP took more risks. In sum, the Austrian case appears to show that ‘containment through inclusion’ into government can pay off, with the Conservatives making electoral gains. Yet, evidence from other countries suggests that this strategy might in fact be costly in the long run (Dahlström and Sundell 2012; van Spanje and de Graaf 2017). Indeed, both major Austrian parties were initially reluctant to collaborate with the erstwhile pariah – and, it seems, with good reason, given that both rightwing coalitions ended prematurely over incidents involving the FPÖ. Furthermore, the ‘mainstreaming’ of the FPÖ arguably helped establish it as a genuine contender for public office in the eyes of public opinion, and thus a rival for government, something that was clearly shown by the party’s excellent result in the Presidential election of 2016, when it came close to winning the Presidency. At the time of writing, in 2019, the ÖVP appears to be the main beneficiary of the fact that political discourses have shifted to the right: this is not surprising, as it is more compatible with the FPÖ ideologically than its main rival on the left. Consequently, the ÖVP ended up as the clear winner of the snap elections held in September 2019. It increased its share of the votes by 6.0 per cent to 37.5 per cent, which made it the clear pivotal party for the ensuing coalition negotiations. At the same time, the FPÖ was weakened. Haunted by several scandals, at first the ‘Ibiza affair’, then, a few days before the elections, the revelation that its former party chairman and Vice Chancellor Strache seemed to have used party funds for private expenses, the party plummeted from 26.0 to 16.2 per cent of the votes in the elections. The party leadership interpreted the result as meaning that there was no mandate for government participation and recused itself from entering coalition negotiations. As the SPÖ also suffered in the elections (by losing 5.7 per cent of the vote) and appeared rather unstable internally afterwards, the ÖVP started

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coalition negotiations with the second election winner, the Greens.The two parties are divided on many issues, however, above all migration and climate policy, so, at the time of writing (December 2019), it is rather unclear if their negotiations will be successful. As both SPÖ and FPÖ are currently self-absorbed in a process of re-orientation, it is also an open question how the relationship between the mainstream parties and the populist radical right will develop in the future.

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Neuhold, Clemens. 2015. ‘Zehn SPÖs.’ Wiener Zeitung, 8 June 2015. www.wienerzeitung. at/nachrichten/politik/oesterreich/756290-Zehn-SPOes.html, last accessed 12 October 2020. Pelinka, Anton. 2002. ‘The FPÖ in the European Context.’ In The Haider Phenomenon in Austria, edited by Ruth Wodak, and Anton Pelinka, 213–230. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. Pelinka, Anton. 2010. ‘Legacies of the Schüssel Years.’ In The Schüssel Era in Austria, edited by Günter Bischof and Fritz Plasser, 320–338. New Orleans, LA:  University of New Orleans Press. Pirro, Andrea, and Paul Taggart. 2018. ‘The Populist Politics of Euroscepticism in Times of Crisis: A Framework for Analysis’ Politics 38, no. 3 (April): 1–10. Plasser, Fritz, and Peter A. Ulram. 2007. ‘Wählerbewegungen und Parteikampagnen im Nationalratswahlkampf 2006.’ In Wechselwahlen:  Analysen zur Nationalratswahl 2006, edited by Fritz Plasser and Peter A. Ulram, 19–37.Vienna: facultas.wuv Verlag. Rummens, Stefan, and Koen Abts. 2010. ‘Defending Democracy:  The Concentric Containment of Political Extremism.’ Political Studies 58, no. 4 (September): 649–665. Ulram, Peter. 1994. ‘Political Culture and the Party System in the Kreisky Era.’ In The Kreisky Era in Austria, edited by Günter Bischof and Anton Pelinka, 79–95. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. Van Spanje, Joost, and Nan Dirk de Graaf. 2017. ‘How Established Parties Reduce Other Parties’ Electoral Support: The Strategy of Parroting the Pariah.’ West European Politics 41, no. 1 (June): 1–27. Volkens, Aandrea, Werner Krause, Pola Lehmann, Theres Matthieß, Nicolas Merz, Sven Regel, and Bernhard Weßels (2018). The Manifesto Data Collection. Manifesto Project (MRG/CMP/MARPOR). Version 2018b. Berlin:  Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung. https://doi.org/10.25522/manifesto.mpds.2018b.

5 FRANCE James Shields

Introduction For students of political populism, France offers a rich case study. In the first round of the 2017 presidential election, over 40 per cent of votes were secured jointly by Marine Le Pen (21.3 per cent) of the far-right Front National (FN – National Front) and Jean-Luc Mélenchon (19.6 per cent) of the far-left La France Insoumise (LFI – France Unbowed), leaders widely regarded as ‘populist’. The independent centrist Emmanuel Macron, at the head of his newly formed La République En Marche (LREM  – The Republic on the Move), secured 24 per cent, while the candidates of the two mainstream forces that had alternated in power throughout the Fifth Republic, François Fillon for the centre-right Les Républicains (LR – The Republicans) and Benoît Hamon for the outgoing centre-left Parti Socialiste (PS – Socialist Party), attracted 20 per cent and a dismal 6.4 per cent respectively. The narrow margin separating the top four candidates (less than 4.5 per cent) showed how close France came to having its highest political office contested by a right-wing and a left-wing populist.Yet these results merely confirmed pre-election polling that revealed how far attitudes and ideas favouring the growth of populism (loss of faith in traditional representative democracy, hostility to ‘professional politicians’, perceived gulf between ‘ordinary citizens’ and ‘elites’, and a stress on the ‘will of the people’) had taken hold within the French political consciousness (CEVIPOF/IPSOS 2017, 63–64). This chapter examines populism through a focus on Le Pen and Mélenchon primarily, extending its analysis to Macron as a political leader blending populist and anti-populist elements. In keeping with the overarching aims of the book, it considers some of the factors driving populism in France and reflects on what differentiates various forms of populism, examining interactions between competing populists and between populists and mainstream actors. The chapter shows populism both as a consequence and as a cause of a crisis within traditional French political culture.

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First, a brief word on what we mean by ‘populism’ within the French context. The key opposition at the heart of definitions of populism, that between ‘the people’ and ‘elites’ (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2017), traverses modern French history as a recurrent fault line in social and political conflict. The Revolution of 1789 stands as the quintessential expression of that conflict, the overthrow of a repressive monarchical regime in the name of popular sovereignty. The concept of the ‘volonté générale’, the will of the people, first enunciated by the eighteenthcentury philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and embedded in the rhetoric and ideals of the Revolution, has become a first principle of populism as conceived today (Mudde 2004). ‘Nous sommes ici par la volonté du peuple’ (‘We are here by the will of the people’), declared the would-be spokesman of the nation, the Count of Mirabeau, to force concessions from King Louis XVI on the eve of the Revolution in June 1789. The carrying power of this phrase through French political history was a gift to be appropriated by any thereafter who would challenge abuses of power by political authority against the people. It is around that same fracture line between the people and elites that both Le Pen and Mélenchon construct their populist appeal.There is much that differentiates their brands of populism, but on this they are as one: that the sovereign people are being betrayed by remote, self-serving and corrupt political and economic elites. In this, both Le Pen and Mélenchon subscribe to what the would-be godfather of global populism, Steve Bannon, terms ‘the new paradigm’, no longer right versus left but common people versus globalist elite, or, in Bannon’s simple terms, ‘antiestablishment vs establishment’ (Bannon 2018). When Emmanuel Macron went on television in November 2018 to acknowledge that he had ‘not succeeded in reconciling the French people with their leaders’, it was a telling admission. Here was a president who had pledged to face down the populists conceding that he had not deprived them of their most resonant rallying cry. The accompanying comment from a presidential insider – ‘What was a gap between elites and the rest of France has become a rupture’ – spoke more loudly still to the populists’ agenda (Malingre 2018).

Populism in France today By any commonly accepted definition, and by their own pronouncements, both Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon are populists and lead parties that, in their essence, come close to an ‘ideal type’ of far-right and far-left populism (Zaslove 2008). Their presidential campaigns in 2017 were waged respectively ‘Au nom du peuple’ (‘In the name of the people’) and as ‘La force du peuple’ (‘The power of the people’). Both pitched themselves as champions of a French people held in contempt by ruling elites, each appropriating the legacy of Mirabeau to call decisionmaking back to the citizen. Le Pen urged voters to cast a patriotic vote for the ‘restoration of sovereignty to the French people’; Mélenchon called for the abolition of a Fifth Republic whose ‘oligarchy and ruling caste do not represent the people’ (Le Pen 2017, 2–3; Mélenchon 2017, 6).

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While politicians commonly refute the accusation of being populist, Le Pen and Mélenchon embrace it. ‘If populism is government of the people, by the people and for the people, then I’m a populist’, declared Le Pen in April 2013 (Le Pen 2013). This bold claim to populism was, paradoxically, a central feature of Le Pen’s efforts to de-demonize her party and make it more electorally respectable. An image makeover and a change of name in March 2018 to Rassemblement National (RN – National Rally) were undertaken in the service of a strategy to amplify the party’s representativity for a specifically targeted constituency, framed in Le Pen’s Manichaean terms as a ‘silent majority’ of ‘left behind’, ‘invisible’, ‘forgotten ones who have been abandoned by political elites’ (Le Pen, cited in Ivaldi 2019, 29). Espousing a more pluralist and socially inclusive notion of ‘the people’, Mélenchon’s 2017 presidential campaign team declared themselves comfortable with the label ‘populisme de gauche’ (‘left-wing populism’), a designation replaced on occasion by ‘populisme humaniste’ (‘humanist populism’) (Courage and Dodet 2019). This claim to populism owed much to the influence of post-Marxist theorists of left-wing populism like Chantal Mouffe (2018). Mélenchon’s personal rallying cry had been issued in his 2014 book L’Ère du peuple (The People’s Era), calling for a ‘citizens’ revolution’ and proclaiming that ‘the powerful no longer fear the left’ but ‘they fear more than ever the people’ (Mélenchon 2014, cover). To begin the present discussion with Le Pen, the FN/RN represents, in Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser’s (2017, 34)  assessment, the ‘prototypical populist radical right party’. It might be more accurate to term it a ‘national populist’ party, since nationalism is the ideological cement that binds together everything in the FN/ RN’s world view (Eatwell and Goodwin 2018). After a decade in the electoral wilderness, the FN broke through as a political force in the mid-1980s. It faced isolation through political, civic and legal opposition, while centre-left Socialists and centre-right neo-Gaullists and their allies experimented with uneasy combinations of all three of the dismissive, adversarial and accommodative strategies described in the typology developed in Chapter  3 of this book. Early attempts to dismiss this new populist challenger (as an irrelevance, a flash party, a belated expression of 1950s Poujadism) gave way to hostile ostracization aimed at marginalizing and delegitimizing the FN and its leader of the time, Jean-Marie Le Pen, both politically and morally. The established parties’ reactions to the FN included attacks on Le Pen’s character and past, refusal to engage publicly with FN figures, setting up a cordon sanitaire against electoral deals, and taking legal action against certain FN pronouncements or policies. This in turn combined with some more accommodative approaches (isolated local alliances, issue co-optation, overtures to FN voters, and calls by some on the traditional right for a fully accommodative strategy through an electoral pact with the FN) (Shields 2007). Despite a climate of political and media hostility, the FN from the mid-1980s onward averaged over 11 per cent of first-round vote share in National Assembly elections and 16 per cent in presidential elections, though it was shut out of national and regional power by a combination of the two-round majoritarian electoral system, concerted opposition from other parties and tactical voting against it. In

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this, the FN provided a classic demonstration of how the institutional mechanisms and political culture of the Fifth Republic favoured the mainstream and excluded insurgent parties with little or no coalition potential. As a result, the FN acceded to government in only a few small and medium-sized towns. It nonetheless saw off a serious challenge in 1999 from a breakaway movement under former FN deputy leader Bruno Mégret, the Mouvement National Républicain (MNR  – National Republican Movement), confirming the FN’s long-term ascendancy as the populist force on the French far right. The electoral high point was achieved in the 2017 presidential run-off when Marine Le Pen (who succeeded her father as party leader in 2011) gained 33.9 per cent of the national vote, that is the support of over 10.6  million voters. In the first round of that election, Le Pen secured 21.3 per cent, coming first among all candidates in 8 of France’s 13 metropolitan regions (to Macron’s 5), in 47 of the 101 departments (to Macron’s 43), and in 19,038 of France’s 35,500 communes (to Macron’s 7,135) (Shields 2018a, 541–542). Le Pen’s programme in 2017 stayed true to key party policies: on immigration (reduce net immigration to 10,000 annually and tighten conditions for entry, residence and nationality); ‘national priority’ (reserve jobs, social housing and family allowances for French nationals); security (increase the police force, army, judiciary, intelligence services, prisons and border guards, and close all organizations and mosques with links to Islamist fundamentalism); and the European Union (pull France out of the Schengen Agreement on free movement, regain lost ‘monetary, legislative, territorial and economic sovereignty’, and hold a referendum on continued EU membership – the latter proposals being tempered subsequently in the light of the Brexit debacle, their lack of popular appeal and the departure from the FN of their chief advocate, Florian Philippot) (Le Pen 2017). In economic policy, Le Pen pursued a strategic turn towards a left-leaning agenda of state intervention, economic protectionism and social welfarism. She promised to preserve key industries, protect French companies from global competition, raise welfare spending, invest in public services, provide a cost of living allowance to the lowest earners while cutting their income tax, reduce gas and electricity bills, raise the basic state pension, hold down VAT, and lower retirement age from 62 to 60. Le Pen attained her highest levels of support among blue-collar workers (37 per cent of whom voted for her), routine non-manual employees (32 per cent), those with low educational qualifications (30 per cent), those on the lowest incomes (32 per cent) and those finding it most difficult to get by (43 per cent) (IPSOS 2017). The major mobilizing issues for Le Pen voters, however, were not economic but social:  the fight against illegal immigration (for 92 per cent), petty crime (85 per cent) and, above all, terrorism (93 per cent) in the wake of Islamist terrorist atrocities since 2015 claiming over 250 dead and 900 injured (IFOP 2017). Confronting Le Pen from the other extremity of the traditional right-left spectrum is Jean-Luc Mélenchon, head of LFI. A former junior minister and senator from the left wing of the PS, Mélenchon defected in 2008 to form his own Parti de Gauche (PG – Left Party), which combined for a time with the declining Parti

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Communiste Français (PCF – French Communist Party) as the Front de Gauche (FG – Left Front) before being replaced in February 2016 by LFI. Mélenchon broke ranks with the PS over European integration, which he opposed as the furtherance of a neo-liberal project rather than a people’s Europe. Following the economic crash of 2008 and the campaign against the Lisbon Treaty of 2009, Mélenchon embraced an increasingly sovereignist, statist, anti-austerity agenda, posing as the standard bearer of a truly left-wing populism based on social egalitarianism and economic redistribution – a populism of the demos as opposed to the FN’s populism of the ethnos, to borrow Sylvain Crépon’s distinction to sum up the irreducible core of each (Soullier and Mestre 2019). Like Marine Le Pen, Mélenchon fought his first presidential campaign in 2012, coming fourth with 11.1 per cent of the vote behind Le Pen on 17.9. Denouncing inequality and excoriating out-of-touch elites, he called for a new civic culture rooted in a ‘Sixth Republic’. To achieve this, he argued, the old corrupt ruling class needed to be cleared out. The 2012 election showed Mélenchon to be a formidable campaigner and, following the deeply unpopular presidency of the Socialist François Hollande, his confidence was bolstered to take on the established left again in 2017. Winning 19.6 per cent of the first-round vote (to the Socialist Hamon’s 6.4 per cent and with the PCF too weak to field its own candidate), Mélenchon redefined the power relations on the French left and assumed the ‘tribune of the people’ function once reserved for the PCF. Calling again for a clear-out of elites and the creation of a ‘Sixth Republic’, Mélenchon’s 2017 programme pledged to cut income and wealth inequality through higher taxes on the wealthy and on companies (including a 100 per cent top rate of income tax), increase workers’ rights, lower VAT on essentials, recruit more public sector workers, cut the 35-hour working week and lower retirement age to 60. It promised regime change too, ending the ‘presidential monarchy’ of the Fifth Republic (Mélenchon 2017). Mélenchon drew his highest share of support from unemployed voters (31 per cent of whom voted for him), blue-collar workers (24 per cent), routine non-manual employees (22 per cent), those on the lowest incomes (25 per cent) and those finding it most difficult to get by (22 per cent) (IPSOS 2017). The major mobilizing issues for Mélenchon voters were emphatically economic: wages and purchasing power (for 76 per cent), unemployment (71 per cent) and economic insecurity (70 per cent) (IFOP 2017). Beyond the unprecedented strength of radical populist candidates, the outcome of the 2017 election was to enthrone as president a candidate who had never held elected office at the head of a newly formed party (LREM) that went on to win a governing majority in the National Assembly. The centre-right conservative and centre-left Socialist parties that had governed France since the foundation of the Fifth Republic in 1958 were swept aside, condemned to form a demoralized and fractured opposition in the face of Macron’s rise and the challenge from Le Pen and Mélenchon. With over 40 per cent of the presidential vote and a combined 24 per cent in the National Assembly elections, the FN and LFI won between them just 25 seats out of 577 (or 4.3 per cent of parliamentary deputies). The

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geographical distribution of FN and LFI support, combined with an inimical two-round majority voting system and a marked demobilization of Le Pen and Mélenchon voters, ensured that only in rare cases could they convert support into seats. This was enough – just – for LFI to form a parliamentary group (with two seats above the required 15), while the FN fell short with its 8 seats.

The populist challenge since 2007 An observer looking at France in 2007 might have concluded that here was a country where a rising tide of populism had been reversed. In the presidential election of 2002, Jean-Marie Le Pen had shocked the political world by qualifying for the run-off against incumbent President Jacques Chirac. Five years on, the shadow of Le Pen hung heavy again as the 2007 presidential election seemed to present even more favourable auspices for the FN leader’s brand of far-right populism. Unemployment at 8 per cent with youth unemployment at close to 20 per cent, protests against government reforms, political corruption scandals, the failed EU constitutional treaty referendum of 2005 and a national state of emergency provoked by urban riots provided a backdrop of deepening political disaffection in the closing phase of Chirac’s second presidential term as control of his governing centre-right Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP  – Union for a Popular Movement) passed to Finance Minister Nicolas Sarkozy (Shields 2006; Eurostat 2019). Despite these favourable auspices, Le Pen surprised in 2007 not through the strength of his performance but through its relative weakness. Attracting 10.4 per cent (3.8 million votes), the FN leader was beaten into fourth place by the UMP’s Sarkozy (31.2 per cent), the PS’s Ségolène Royal (25.9 per cent) and the centrist candidate François Bayrou (18.6 per cent), with Sarkozy going on to win the runoff against Royal.

Playing the populist’s tunes – Nicolas Sarkozy Far from reversing political populism in France, however, the 2007 election merely distorted its expression. Key to Sarkozy’s victory was his success in siphoning support from Le Pen’s far-right base, attracting more than one in five of those who had voted the FN leader into the run-off in 2002 and more than one in four voters classing themselves as ‘very right-wing’ (IPSOS 2007). Sarkozy approached the election with the declared purpose of winning over Le Pen supporters.This was a strategy born of the failure by the traditional neo-Gaullist and centrist parties to stem the growth of the FN, with approaches varying from local alliances of convenience in the 1980s and 1990s to a strict policy of cordon sanitaire from the late 1990s, with ineffective overtures to FN voters amid denunciations of their party. These failed partial approaches to dealing with the FN  – cooperation, co-optation, ostracism – had also split the centre-right between those supporting the cordon sanitaire and those calling for a new realism and an alliance with the FN as the lesser adversary than the Socialist-Communist left.

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Sarkozy’s approach in 2007 was of a different order of coherence. He ran a systematically populist campaign with strong nationalist and authoritarian tones, confronting the FN leader with a powerful co-optational challenge on his own agenda. After four years as an abrasive interior minister, Sarkozy campaigned on the themes of national identity, immigration control, authority, and law and order. He promised a Ministry of Immigration and National Identity, denounced the corrosive legacy of May ‘68, and scorned political correctness and the culture of repentance over French history. Under the influence of his daughter Marine, by contrast, Le Pen strained in 2007 to project himself as a moderate, drawing lessons from his abject run-off defeat by Chirac in 2002 (invoking ‘liberté, égalité, fraternité’, appealing to ‘French of foreign origin’ and exalting the ‘values of the Republic’ (Shields 2007, 315)). This allowed Sarkozy to occupy much of the FN leader’s traditional ground, pledging a tough public order policy and new controls on immigration, proposing DNA testing in visa applications and annual deportation targets for illegal immigrants, and warning that France faced ‘one of the gravest identity crises in its history’ (Sarkozy 2007). Here was the spectacle of Le Pen targeting centre-right voters and Sarkozy appealing to the radical right. Sarkozy’s resolve to win over Le Pen voters – ‘one by one, and without inhibition’ (L’Obs 2006) – blurred the boundary between right and far right in this election. It also showed how successful a strategy of co-optation, and a challenge to the FN’s issue ownership on immigration notably, could be when wielded by a skilful, seductively transgressive mainstream candidate with no negative incumbency record. Polling found 73 per cent of former Le Pen voters who switched to Sarkozy in 2007 continuing to declare support for Le Pen’s ideas, confirming their tactical shift to Sarkozy as a candidate more likely to be elected and to implement those ideas (Perrineau 2009, 205–207). Sarkozy’s honeymoon with these ‘Lepéno-Sarkozystes’, as Nonna Mayer (2007) badged them, was not to last. Presiding over a government of ethnic diversity incorporating elements of the centre and the left, the new president soon disappointed those hoping for radical right-wing reform. Excesses of personal style and unabashed promotion of neo-liberal values in a France scarred by its social fractures branded Sarkozy a president of the rich, or more colloquially the ‘bling’ president. Controversial measures like tax breaks for high earners and belt-tightening reforms to pensions merely concretized this image. At the same time, Sarkozy’s room for economic manoeuvre was severely curtailed, first by the 2008 world banking crisis then by the 2010–2012 sovereign debt and euro crises, prompting him to abandon early promises of ambitious reform. A country-wide ‘debate on national identity’ in 2009–2010 came to nothing, remembered mainly for the abusive contributions it unleashed; and in late 2010, the Ministry for Immigration, Integration, National Identity and Shared Development that had overseen this abortive exercise was itself abolished. Vigorous support for European integration (rescuing the Lisbon Treaty from the rejected constitutional treaty referendum) was matched by an equally vigorous Atlanticism (bringing France back into the NATO military fold)  – neither calculated to retain the

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affections of many who had deserted Le Pen for Sarkozy in 2007. Police numbers were cut as part of a larger shrinking of the public sector while recorded violent crime rose (Knapp 2013, 47). Despite continued muscular rhetoric on immigration and security, a high-profile deportation policy targeting Roma, and a ban on the Muslim burka and street prayers, Sarkozy’s seduction of Le Pen supporters was over. The incumbent would lose the 2012 election run-off to the PS’s François Hollande by 51.6 per cent to 48.4 per cent, with the decisive element in his defeat being his failure to rally enough supporters of FN candidate Marine Le Pen – this despite once again energetically courting far-right voters, declaring that there were ‘too many foreigners’ in France, appearing open to the idea of ‘national preference’ and judging Marine Le Pen ‘compatible with the Republic’ (Schneider 2012). The election of 2012 thus showed the opposite effect to that of 2007: the failure of a strategy of co-optation when undermined by a negative incumbency record that restored the FN’s ‘ownership’ of its priority issues of immigration, security and a France-first posture vis-à-vis the EU.

Populists on all sides – François Hollande If Sarkozy had been preoccupied by the populism of the far right, President Hollande would find himself confronted with rising populist tides on two, opposing, fronts – a Marine Le Pen emboldened by her 17.9 per cent and decisive role in the 2012 presidential election, and a Jean-Luc Mélenchon drawing lessons on the need to unify the far left from his modest presidential score of 11.1 per cent. The resulting launch of LFI in early 2016 took its organizational and strategic inspiration from Podemos (the ‘We Can’ movement) in Spain. Its objective was not to occupy the left flank of a horizontal political spectrum but to mobilize ‘the people’ from all points on that spectrum vertically against ‘the oligarchs’. This expressly populist stance was one of the levers used by Mélenchon to denounce Hollande’s indulgence as president towards business and finance (La Tribune, 2012), despite his having infused his campaign with left-wing rhetoric against his declared ‘true enemy’, ‘the world of finance’ (Hollande 2012). LFI’s programme called uncompromisingly for state interventionism, economic redistribution and resistance to globalization, coming out against international trade deals and calling for France to renegotiate EU treaties and hold a referendum on the euro. Mélenchon played a prominent role in opposing Hollande’s labour law reforms, which loosened rules on hiring and firing and brought more flexibility to the 35hour work week in a bid to reduce unemployment of over 10 per cent (Eurostat 2019). Hollande’s, he charged, was ‘a government not of the left but of a conservative, reactionary, very, very, very hard right’; a government ‘capable of taking workers back to the 19th century’, Mélenchon exhorted, should be ‘brought down’ (Hausalter 2016). In its place, LFI called for an ‘era of the people’ that would ‘sweep away the oligarchs and abolish the privileges of the political caste’ (LFI 2016). That the same battle cry in defence of ‘the people’ against ‘the cashed-up right and cashed-up left’ (Parrot 2017) was articulated by Le Pen on the opposite extremity

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of the spectrum blurred Crépon’s neat distinction between a populism of the demos and a populism of the ethnos (Soullier and Mestre 2019). For this static distinction takes no account of the gravitational pull exerted by each of these forms of populism upon the other. At one level, their relationship has been one of outright hostility, with Mélenchon taking every opportunity to cast Le Pen as his number-one adversary (a posture most dramatically highlighted by standing, and losing, against her in 2012 in her northern constituency of Hénin-Beaumont). At another level, however, a complex interplay of co-optation and even complicity emerges. Hence the common cause made at times between these two naturally antagonistic forms of populism, as in their combined attacks on ‘le système’ or their radical critique of the EU, austerity politics and economic globalization (Pietralunga et al. 2017). There is common ground, too, in their openness to mutual issue co-optation as they compete for support from working-class and economically vulnerable sectors of society (witness Le Pen’s increasing adoption of social welfarist and redistributive policies, or Mélenchon’s move from left-wing universalism to the patriotic idiom of tricolour, national anthem, and the defence of national interests) (Ivaldi 2019). This partial convergence between two seemingly irreconcilable forms of populism allowed Le Pen to reach out to Mélenchon voters between the two presidential rounds in 2017, claiming to represent their priorities and interests as surely as their own eliminated candidate (Damgé et al. 2017). That initiative was facilitated by Mélenchon’s refusal to call upon his supporters to vote against Le Pen, a clear shift from the anyone-but-Le Pen stance he had previously held. Both had run campaigns denouncing banks, globalization, the EU and the evils of the market economy – and both had found in the one-time investment banker Macron the ideal figure on whom to focus their populist animus. Between the ‘candidate of the extreme right’ and the ‘candidate of extreme finance’, Mélenchon left his supporters to follow the promptings of their conscience – or their greater political resentment (Rieth 2017). In the event, barely one in ten Mélenchon voters switched to Le Pen, with a narrow majority opting for Macron and the rest for abstention or spoiling their ballot (Harris Interactive 2017). This confirmed the distance still separating these two forms of populism despite increased issue convergence and a degree of reciprocal co-optation. It did not, however, prevent Jean-Marie Le Pen from lauding Mélenchon as ‘the best speaker’ of the campaign, or Marine Le Pen from extending her support when LFI offices were subsequently raided by police in an investigation into alleged misuse of public funds similar to that conducted against her own RN (Février 2017; Le Figaro 2018). Nor did it prevent a growing affinity among LFI sympathizers, with 36 per cent in a poll of May 2019 avowing a ‘good opinion’ of Le Pen’s party (a higher approval rate than found among sympathizers of any other party) and 56 per cent deeming the RN a ‘party like any other’ (Odoxa 2019). Mélenchon and Le Pen proved objective allies not just to each other but also to a group of rebels (frondeurs) who challenged the Hollande presidency from within the PS. In strongly populist tones, they pitched themselves as guardians of the people against neo-liberalism and budgetary austerity, arguing for a demand-led economy

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with higher state spending, raised purchasing power, consumer growth and wealth redistribution. But when one of the most vocal rebels, Benoît Hamon, emerged as unlikely winner of the PS presidential primary, Mélenchon stood firm against the idea of striking an actual alliance with a party he was out not to court but to replace in the leadership of the left. While President Hollande and his governing Socialists could dismiss detractors on their left as ‘simplistic’ and ‘unfit to govern’ (Challenges 2017), they could not afford the same dismissive attitude towards Le Pen and the FN.The Hollande administration drew a clear dividing line between the misguidedness of left-wing (inclusionary) populism and the dangers of right-wing (exclusionary) populism (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2013). If there were ‘common factors’ between the two, argued Hollande, there were no ‘common values’ (Challenges 2017). Following the FN’s success in the municipal elections of March 2014, where it won control of 11 towns with a combined population of some 400,000, the response of the governing Socialists was to ‘sound the alarm’ and step up their adversarial strategy towards the FN, denounced as an ‘immense danger’ (Bonnefous 2015). Whereas Sarkozy had declared Marine Le Pen ‘compatible with the Republic’, Socialist Prime Minister Manuel Valls embarked on what the newspaper Le Monde called an anti-FN ‘crusade’, decrying a ‘party that is not republican’, while President Hollande warned of the ‘real danger’ of Le Pen’s ‘demagogy’ and ‘populism’ (Le Monde 2015; Laubacher 2017). The urgency of such warnings was brought home at the ballot box. In a sequence of three nationwide elections in 2014–2015 (European, departmental, and regional), the FN topped the poll and claimed the label of ‘first party of France’ (Shields 2015, 2018b). Alongside this unprecedented surge in the FN’s electoral potency, the Hollande presidency was also marked by a darkening of the social mood. Protests over an ecotax, same-sex marriage and labour reforms signalled a presidency under growing pressure from below. Such was the febrile climate that prefects from the 96 metropolitan departments submitted a confidential report to the Interior Ministry in October 2013 warning of ‘dangerous’ levels of ‘tension, exasperation and anger.’ ‘Throughout the country,’ they reported, ‘a sense of despondency’ and ‘latent discontent’ was ‘erupting in a series of sudden angry outbursts’ and pushing France closer to a ‘potential social explosion’ (Leclerc 2013).

An anti-populist populist? – Emmanuel Macron Such was the context into which Emmanuel Macron stepped in declaring his presidential candidacy in November 2016. On the centre-left, an irredeemably unpopular President Hollande chose not to run again and was replaced as PS candidate by his erstwhile minister and rebellious critic, Benoît Hamon, championing an alternative-left vision within the constraints of trying to unify his fractured party. On the centre-right, the one-time front runner, François Fillon, saw his campaign derailed by a formal investigation for misuse of public funds but refused to stand down. These two developments combined to present an opportunity structure

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favouring not just populists of far right and far left but, more significantly in terms of prospects for election, a default candidate of the centre. After the accommodative attempts at issue co-optation by Sarkozy and the outright clashing stance of Hollande (see the typology developed in Chapter 3), Macron brought a third approach to dealing with the populist challenge. His campaign was a study in how a moderate candidate could, in the right circumstances, deploy populist methods in the name of anti-populism. Macron represented everything that was anathema to the populists of right and left: a consummate technocrat from France’s highest educational echelons, a liberalizing Economy Minister under Hollande, a fervent proponent of the EU, an advocate for the virtues of globalization, and – most damning of all – a former Rothschild investment banker. The televised presidential run-off debate against Le Pen allowed Macron to deploy a strategy focused on demolishing his belligerent opponent’s credibility on economic matters and disparaging her fitness for office. More than that, Macron would make populists his adversary of choice in setting out his political vision, denouncing populism as a ‘form of leprosy’ spreading ‘all across Europe’ (Rose and Jones 2018) and warning against a return to the populist nationalism of the 1920s (Von der Burchard 2018). This provocatively combative stance burnished Macron’s credentials as the ultimate anti-populist. Yet one did not have to look too closely to detect in his political rise strong elements of the populist style. His was from the outset a campaign based on charismatic appeal and a personalization that ran to the very name of his movement, En Marche! (EM! [read its founder’s initials] – On the Move!). The cultivated image of the ‘outsider’, the messianic overtones and the staged fervour of Macron’s rallies, too, sought to echo the Gaullist mystique of the providential saviour  – though there was more here of the youthful Matteo Renzi trying to relaunch the Italian centre-left than of de Gaulle founding the Fifth Republic. In its key objective, moreover, Macron’s mission was not to endorse but to subvert the bipartisan regime – right versus left – cemented in place by the Gaullist Constitution. In the very raison d’être of his candidacy, Macron played to disillusionment with incumbent elites and diagnosed a crisis in traditional politics, deploring a ‘political and media class [that] forms a people of sleepwalkers’. ‘The same faces and the same people who have been around for so long. I am convinced that they are all wrong. It is their models, their recipes, that have simply failed’ (Macron 2016, 7, 41). This was a running theme in Macron’s rise to power, the need to be rid of ‘the same men with the same ideas’ and to heal the resulting ‘divorce between the people and their leaders’. Macron even co-opted a favoured populist argument in denouncing ‘a caste’ of elected officials and technocrats ‘closed in on themselves and imposing their own rules’ while ‘protected by outdated privileges’ (Macron 2016, 7–8, 250– 251). The ‘ineffectiveness’ and ‘irresponsibility’ of the ruling class, he charged, went so far even as to ‘threaten democracy’ (Macron 2017, 5). This instrumentalizing of disenchantment with incumbents and of an antiestablishment mood was straight from the populists’ playbook. It showed a Macron

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intent on clashing with Le Pen and Mélenchon over policies but equally intent on co-opting elements of their populist style. This was consistent with the claim in Macron’s official programme to be harnessing the ‘volonté générale’ (‘volonté partagée’, ‘shared will’) as distilled through consultations with ‘more than 30,000 French women and men of all social backgrounds, all ages, from all corners of France, through 3,000 discussion forums’ (Macron 2017, 5). This direct communion with the people was key to Macron’s self-avowed populism. In a press interview on the eve of his election, he declared: ‘If being a populist is speaking to the people in terms they can understand without going through the whole political apparatus, then I’m happy to be a populist.’ And again to a gathering of mayors in the Elysée Palace in November 2018: ‘We are true populists, we are with the people’ (Soullier and Mestre 2019). No less than Le Pen or Mélenchon, Macron put ‘protecting the French’ at the heart of his presidentialist mission (Macron 2016, 183–196; 2017, 2–5); but his vision of how that protection could be ensured was what set him apart from the populists of far right and far left. The central difference lay in Macron’s open embrace of the outside world, of globalization, of EU integration and of the benefits of managed immigration. Yet the line separating different expressions of populism could be a thin one, as when Macron declared in July 2018 at the outbreak of the Benalla affair (which revealed a close presidential aid impersonating a policeman and assaulting anti-government protesters): ‘We have a press that no longer seeks the truth’, ‘a powerful media that wishes to set itself up as judge and jury’ (Lévrier 2018). From the supreme custodian of France’s institutions and of its counterpowers, this was worthy of Le Pen or Mélenchon, but also of a Viktor Orbán or a certain Donald Trump. The same populist temptation, mixing exacerbated vanity with juvenile bravado, resurfaced when the Benalla affair failed to recede. ‘The only person responsible is me and me alone,’ declared a defiant Macron. ‘If they’re looking for someone to hold responsible, he’s right in front of you. Let them come and get him’ (Les Décodeurs 2018). They did. The ‘gilets jaunes’ (‘yellow vests’), a loosely organized citizens’ movement with no central leadership and no ties to political parties or unions, took a fight to Macron that he had not seen coming and that rocked his presidency in November–December 2018. Until this point, resistance to Macron and his government had been led by Mélenchon and his small parliamentary group and by a Le Pen still recovering from her presidential defeat, with the centre-right Republicans and centre-left Socialists too weak and divided to offer significant opposition. With 308 of the 577 National Assembly seats won by Macron’s party alone, together with a further 42 for their centrist Mouvement Démocrate (MoDem – Democratic Movement) allies, the government’s parliamentary majority was unassailable. This allowed Macron in the first 18 months of his presidency to roll out his programme with limited opposition, implementing labour market reforms making it easier to hire and fire, reducing the power of unions in the workplace, scrapping the wealth tax on everything but property, launching an overhaul of the education system and removing some of the special benefits enjoyed by rail workers. Opposition to these

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reforms from Mélenchon and Le Pen targeted their economically liberalizing thrust and rehearsed the classic populist repertoire of people versus elites, denouncing a ‘social welfare coup d’état’ by ‘a pharaoh-like monarch’ (L’Obs 2017; Public Sénat 2017), lambasting a ‘President of the Republic deaf and blind to the demands of the people’ and evoking a ‘chasm as never before seen’ between president and people (BFMTV 2018b). It was along this same fracture line between people and power that the much greater challenge to the Macron presidency arrived in the form of the gilets jaunes. What began as a protest on social media against a planned government fuel tax rise soon became a widespread insurgency against the political class, focused on economic inequality, taxes, living costs and the relentless thinning out of local services in rural and semi-rural France. With close to 300,000 taking part in the first actions to block roads and tollbooths and demonstrate in some city centres in November 2018, the gilets jaunes, often accompanied by opportunistic wreckers (casseurs), unleashed the worst civil disorder in France for decades, bringing tens of thousands of protesters onto the streets each weekend over six months before seeing their numbers drop below 20,000 for the first time in May 2019. With ‘Macron, resign!’ as one of its rallying cries, this spontaneous protest movement struck at the heart of France’s governing establishment, championing ordinary citizens against out-of-touch and uncaring elites  – the latter perfectly symbolized by a president prone to off-the-cuff remarks conveying a haughty disregard for those at the bottom of the social ladder. Recruiting its activists mainly from the rural lower middle classes and working poor, the movement railed against a lack of genuine political representation under a presidency that had promised to do politics differently. Parallels with Macron’s presidential campaign and launch of LREM were strong – both disruptive movements uniting people from left and right in a challenge to traditional politics. Parallels seemed stronger still with the Poujadist movement of the 1950s in its violent resistance to a clampdown on tax evasion and its defence of ‘the little man’ against a brutal ‘system’ and the punitive effects of a changing French economy. Though Macron himself categorized the gilets jaunes as a ‘modern-day Poujadism’ (BFMTV 2018a), he was wrong. In its lack of central leadership, its wide diversity of grievances, its excessive violence on occasions, and its sustained support across a majority of public opinion, this represented a new form of social media-orchestrated direct action for which Poujadism provided only a partial blueprint.Where the two movements did evince strong similarities was in their ‘anti’ stance (articulating more clearly what they were against than what they were for), their professed apoliticism and their resistance to bids from far right and far left to harness them to their political ends (Shields 2004).Within the context of this book, the mass social movement of the gilets jaunes might best be seen as a testament that those propagating political populism, whether of right or left, have failed in their purported mission to be the trustees of the people’s interests. As the conclusions that follow suggest, the crisis within traditional French political culture to which this points may be a long way yet from finding resolution.

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Conclusion: an unintended legacy? This book asks some pressing questions about populism, and the case of France provides some instructive answers. Since the start of the book’s time-frame in 2007, France saw the growth of powerful populist parties on both sides of the traditional political spectrum. These parties challenged the old ‘horizontal paradigm’ (right versus left) by combining electoral competition and adversarial opposition with a shared populist ‘vertical paradigm’ (people versus elites), a degree of mutual issue co-optation, and even at times some political complicity. In the same period, ideas and attitudes widely associated with populism (anti-elitism, distrust of institutions, rejection of traditional representative democracy) became more embedded within the wider French political consciousness, with all major contenders in the 2017 presidential election sensing the climate and running as ‘anti-system’ candidates (Pietralunga et al. 2017). France in this period provides a graphic illustration, too, of the difficulties for mainstream actors in countering populism. Responses to populist parties ranged from dismissiveness, marginalization and vigorous opposition to tactical cooperation and agenda co-optation. Three French presidents since 2007 deployed very different approaches to meeting the populist challenge. Sarkozy confronted both Jean-Marie Le Pen and Marine Le Pen on their own agenda, winning handsomely against the former in 2007 but losing out against the latter with a similar cooptational strategy in 2012. Hollande deployed a dismissive strategy towards the rising populist challenges to his left and an adversarial strategy against the sustained populist threat on the right. Macron broke with both of those approaches, adopting an aggressive adversarial strategy while co-opting not just elements of populist style but also aspects of populist discourse and argument. Despite these varied strategies of confrontation and containment, the electoral balance sheet over the period makes stark reading. Populist candidates of right and left accounted for under 20 per cent in the presidential election of 2007, close to 30 per cent in 2012, and over 40 per cent in 2017. What lessons can be drawn from France, then, for understanding political populism and its challenges? Let us propose three. First, that an established populist party can, if sufficiently embedded within a defined political space, resist the challenge of newer populist parties of right (MNR) and left (LFI) over a prolonged period; there is no inevitability that a populist party, even under severe and sustained institutional restrictions, will fade to be replaced by others (as with the case to the contrary in Germany of the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands [NPD – German National Democratic Party] superseded by Alternative für Deutschland [AfD – Alternative for Germany], or the United Kingdom Independence Party [UKIP] displaced by the Brexit Party in the UK). The second lesson is that such capacity to survive and see off rival populist parties does not depend on acceding to government at national or even regional level (unlike the counter-examples of the Italian Lega Nord [LN – Northern League, now Lega] or the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs [FPÖ – Austrian Freedom Party]; nor

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does it rely on breaking a cordon sanitaire to forge alliances with mainstream parties or with other populist parties (again unlike the counter-examples of the FPÖ and Lega). The FN/RN has amply demonstrated its capacity to resist and prosper in isolation within a system that requires the ability to forge tactical alliances in order to convert political and electoral strength into executive power. The FN/RN is a rare case of a populist party prevailing outside and against the system for close to four decades, setting the policy agenda on certain issues and competing for votes on both right and left of the traditional political divide despite being systematically barred from high executive office. The third lesson to be drawn from France is that the dismissive, adversarial and partially accommodative strategies deployed by mainstream parties in France (see again the typology set out in Chapter 3) all in turn failed to weaken the FN/RN. As these parties moved from an initially dismissive stance through adversarial/clashing to marginalizing/ostracizing and variously co-optational strategies, they merely reinforced the FN/RN’s hold on its signature themes (of immigration, law and order and Euro-hostility notably). As the contrasting fortunes of Sarkozy’s presidential campaigns in 2007 and 2012 showed, populist issue ownership, once firmly established, can be difficult to shift. This chapter began by considering a presidential election in 2017 that saw Macron beat Le Pen by a run-off margin of 66 per cent to 34 per cent. Twenty months on, an IFOP poll conducted in February 2019 projected the same two finalists in the next presidential race, with a victory margin for Macron of only 56 per cent to Le Pen’s 44 per cent. The same poll projected first-round scores of 30 per cent for Macron, 27 per cent for Le Pen, 12 per cent for Mélenchon, 8 per cent for former LR leader Laurent Wauquiez and 3 per cent for PS leader Olivier Faure. As a damning commentary on the current French political offer and a measure of the crisis within traditional politics in France, this poll projected almost one in ten voters spoiling their ballot in the first round and as many as one in five in the crucial second round (IFOP 2019a). These poll findings argued for far-right and far-left populism in France being at the same level overall as in 2017, with Le Pen and Mélenchon together reaching just short of 40 per cent of first-round support within an ever more disenchanted political climate (CEVIPOF 2019). They also indicated that the far-right brand of populism was thriving much more robustly than the far-left in France. Though Mélenchon’s projected 12 per cent was well down on his 19.6 per cent in the 2017 presidential first round, it nonetheless suggested that he had achieved his purpose in contesting that election: to become the major presidentialist force on the French left, well ahead of former PS candidate Hamon, PS leader Faure and ecologist Yannick Jadot. Some of the above projections were unsettled by the European elections of May 2019; others were consolidated. In the battle for supremacy over a fragmented left, these elections saw Jadot’s ecologists claim third place with 13.5 per cent. This put them far ahead of Mélenchon’s fifth-placed LFI list (6.3 per cent), which haemorrhaged support to abstention, to the ecologists and to Le Pen’s RN (IFOP

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2019b). The RN list came first on 23.3 per cent just ahead of Macron’s LREMled list on 22.4 per cent, while the centre-right and centre-left parties that had alternated in power for over half a century, LR and the PS, were reduced to 8.5 per cent and 6.2 per cent respectively. Of the four major forces that had contested the 2017 presidential election, two remained strong and set to continue in a headto-head struggle for ascendancy, while two were reduced to under 10 per cent, prompting the resignation of Wauquiez as LR leader and a crisis over leadership and direction within Mélenchon’s LFI. Macron set out to destroy populism as his adversary of choice and to advance the case for European integration over nationalist isolationism. His legacy may be to have decimated the traditional forces of political moderation in France beyond his own fledgling centrist movement and cleared the way for a single alternative force, that of right-wing populist nationalism.

Acknowledgement The author gratefully acknowledges the Leverhulme Trust for a Research Fellowship (RF-2017–642\7) that enabled him to undertake much of the groundwork research for this chapter.

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Mouffe, Chantal. 2018. Pour un populisme de gauche. Paris: Albin Michel. Mudde, Cas. 2004. ‘The Populist Zeitgeist.’ Government and Opposition 39, no. 4: 541–563. Mudde, Cas, and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser. 2013. ‘Exclusionary vs. Inclusionary Populism: Comparing Contemporary Europe and Latin America.’ Government and Opposition 48, no. 2: 147–174. Mudde, Cas, and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser. 2017. Populism:  A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Odoxa. 2019. Rassemblement National et populisme en Europe. 15–16 May 2019. www.odoxa. fr/sondage/rn-parti-raciste-dangereux-economie-francais-apprecient-pourtant-de-plusplus/, last accessed 30 September 2020. Parrot, Clément. 2017. ‘Présidentielle:  Marine Le Pen est-elle ‘la candidate du peuple’?’. Franceinfo, 29 April 2017. www.francetvinfo.fr/elections/presidentielle/presidentiellemarine-le-pen-est-elle-lacandidate-du-peuple_2164522.html, last accessed 30 September 2020. Perrineau, Pascal. 2009. ‘La “défidélisation” des électeurs de Jean-Marie Le Pen.’ In Comment les électeurs font-ils leur choix?, edited by Bruno Cautrès and Anne Muxel. Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques. Pietralunga, Cédric, Alexandre Lemarié, Matthieu Goar, Raphaëlle Besse Desmoulières, and Olivier Faye. 2017. ‘Présidentielle: comment les candidats se sont convertis à la critique du ‘système’.’ Le Monde, 22 April 2017. www.lemonde.fr/election-presidentielle-2017/ article/2017/04/19/l-anti-systeme-une-strategie-de-mobilisation-largement-partagee_ 5113300_4854003.html, last accessed 30 September 2020. Public Sénat. 2017. ‘Congrès: Jean-Luc Mélenchon et son groupe boycottent la “réunion” du “pharaon” Macron.’ 29 June 2017. www.publicsenat.fr/article/politique/congresjean-luc-melenchon-et-son-groupe-boycottent-la-reunion-du-pharaon-macron, last accessed 30 September 2020. Rieth, Bruno. 2017. ‘Quelle consigne de vote pour le second tour? Mélenchon donne une semaine de réflexion aux Insoumis.’ Marianne, 25 April 2017. www.marianne.net/ politique/ quelle- consigne- de- vote- pour- le- second- tour- melenchon- donne- unesemaine-de-reflexion-aux, last accessed 30 September 2020. Rose, Michel, and Gavin Jones. 2018. ‘France’s Macron warns of populism “leprosy”, Italy hits back.’ Reuters, 21 June 2018. https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-france-macron/ frances-macron-warns-of-populism-leprosy-italy-hits-back-idUKKBN1JH1QR, last accessed 30 September 2020. Sarkozy, Nicolas. 2007. Discours à Caen. 9 March 2007. www.francophonie-avenir.com/ Archives/Index_MD_Sarkozy,_discours_de_Caen.htm Schneider, Vanessa. 2012. ‘M. Sarkozy courtise sans retenue les électeurs du FN.’ Le Monde, 25 April 2012. www.lemonde.fr/election-presidentielle-2012/article/2012/04/25/msarkozy-courtise-sans-retenue-les-electeurs-du-fn_1690821_1471069.html, last accessed 30 September 2020. Shields, James. 2004. ‘An Enigma Still: Poujadism Fifty Years On.’ French Politics, Culture and Society 22, no. 1: 36–56. Shields, James. 2006.‘Political Representation in France: A Crisis of Democracy?’ Parliamentary Affairs 59, no. 1: 118–137. Shields, James. 2007. The Extreme Right in France:  From Pétain to Le Pen. Abingdon: Routledge. Shields, James. 2015. ‘The Front National at the Polls:  Transformational Elections or the Status Quo Reaffirmed?’. French Politics 13, no. 4: 415–433. Shields, James. 2018a. ‘Electoral Performance and Policy Choices in the Front National.’ Parliamentary Affairs 71, no. 3: 538–557.

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Shields, James. 2018b. ‘Winner Loses All: The 2015 French Regional Elections.’ Regional and Federal Studies 28, no. 3: 367–881. Soullier, Lucie, and Abel Mestre. 2019. ‘Le populisme, nouvelle grammaire politique.’ Le Monde, 12 February 2019. www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2019/02/12/lepopulisme-nouvelle-grammaire-des-leaders-politiques_5422257_823448.html, last accessed 30 September 2020. Von der Burchard, Hans. 2018. ‘Macron Warns Europe Against Return to 1920s Populism.’ Politico, 1 November 2018. www.politico.eu/article/emmanuel-macron-warns-europeagainst-return-to-1920s-populism/, last accessed 30 September 2020. Zaslove, Andrej. 2008. ‘Here to Stay? Populism as a New Party Type.’ European Review 16, no. 3: 319–336.

6 GERMANY Hartwig Pautz

Introduction This chapter analyses how Germany’s four most important mainstream parties – the Christlich Demokratische Union (CDU – Christian Democratic Union) and its Bavarian sister party Christlich Soziale Union (CSU – Christian Social Union), the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD –Social Democratic Party of Germany), and Die Grünen (Greens – Green Party) – have, between 2008 and 2018, and therefore in a decade of crisis, responded to the emergence and electoral success of populist ‘challenger parties’ (Hobolt and Tilley 2012). These are identified, following Cas Mudde’s definition of populism adopted in this volume, as Die Linke (The Left) on the left and the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD – Alternative for Germany) on the right. Furthermore, the chapter considers how these two populist parties have, in turn, dealt with the responses of mainstream parties to their arrival on the electoral stage and, lastly, scrutinizes how far Die Linke, as the older of the two populist parties, may have reacted to the AfD’s emergence. This analysis will be guided by a three-fold typology of strategic choice by mainstream parties – dismissal, accommodation, and adversarialism – which is discussed in full detail in Chapter 3 of this volume. The chapter will proceed as follows: first, a short overview of history, electoral performance and ideological orientation of the six parties discussed is provided. The subsequent main part discusses the strategic choices made by mainstream and populist parties in the specific contexts of, first, European Union (EU) and Eurozone crises and, second, the ‘refugee crisis’, as moments which altered the ‘opportunity structures’ (Kitschelt 1986) in which these parties operated. The main part also addresses the question of whether convergence between populist parties and their policy agendas or a ‘contagion effect’ (Hicks and Swank 1992), i.e. the adoption of the populist agenda by the mainstream parties, has occurred. Lastly,

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the analysis briefly considers how far Germany’s wider political environment may have changed as a consequence of the strategic choices of mainstream and populist parties.

Germany’s mainstream and populist parties – a short overview The German political party system appeared to be ‘frozen’ (Lipset and Rokkan 1967) for roughly 30 years after the foundation of the Federal Republic in 1949. Between 1961 and 1983 only the CDU, CSU, SPD and the small (but ‘pivotal’, or ‘king-making’) liberal Freie Demokratische Partei (FDP – Free Democratic Party) held seats in the federal parliament, the Bundestag. In the late 1970s, the party system started to change. The most noteworthy newcomer parties since then have been the Green Party (1980), Die Linke (1990/2007), and the AfD (2013). The federal elections of 2017 saw the ‘materialization’ of this fragmented party landscape in the shape of a seven-party federal parliament. While increased electoral volatility and unprecedented party competition have so far mainly spread to some, mainly East German, Land (state) parliaments, the transformation of Germany’s party politics is remarkable. Over the past decade, this transformation has contributed to what appears to have become the near-normalcy of centrist federal ‘Grand Coalition’ governments, formed by the catch-all (or people’s parties) CDU, CSU and SPD. In these coalitions, the SPD has played the role of the ‘junior partner’. There are two reasons for this development. First, all federal elections since 2005 – with the exception of those in 2009 – have made it impossible for ‘small coalition’ governments to be formed; for example, between the CDU/CSU and the FDP, as was the case for much of Germany’s post-war history, or between the SPD and the Greens, as was the case between 1998 and 2005. Both CDU/CSU and SPD were simply either too weak on their own to build a parliamentary majority with one of the smaller parties, or had lost their ‘natural’ coalition partner as happened when the FDP failed to clear the 5 per cent electoral threshold in 2013. Second, the ideological barriers between some parties, and also the political culture of noncooperation with ‘extreme’ parties, made it harder to form broader coalitions – for example, between SPD, Green Party, and Die Linke. Indeed, while the SPD has, since unification, rejected any coalition deals with Die Linke and its predecessor certainly on the federal level, CDU and CSU leaders have ruled out cooperation with the AfD. While this may be changing, the last years saw party competition becoming increasingly centrifugal, so that some argue that Germany is witnessing the renaissance of ‘polarized pluralism’ (Schmitt 2018). This describes a situation where, on the left and the right, parties have emerged and stabilized which do not seek compromise and cooperation with any other party, before or after elections. Hence they appear to be mostly interested in seeking votes  – not gain office  – by taking extreme positions, sometimes verging onto the territory of ‘anti-system parties’ (Capoccia 2002). The chapter looks at this development through the lens of the strategic choices of dismissal, accommodation, and adversarialism made by

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parties when competing with each other. Before this analysis is presented, the six parties covered in the discussion are introduced. The two centre-right parties are the CDU and the CSU, both founded after the Second World War. These parties have an electoral pact, whereby the CDU does not compete in the CSU’s homeland of Bavaria, while the CSU does not field candidates in the rest of the country. However, when severe disagreements between the two parties emerge, some representatives (particularly from the smaller CSU) may threaten to terminate this agreement. Combined, CDU and CSU are Germany’s largest parties in terms of membership, despite significant declines over the past decades. Both parties are prototype ‘catch-all parties’ (Kirchheimer 1966), grounding their electoral appeal to skilled workers, the self-employed and business people on their support of the social market economy. Together, CDU and CSU have been the dominant parties since 1949 and led the federal government between 1949–1969 and 1982–1998. They have been in government again since 2005, with either the SPD or the FDP as their junior partners. In the 2017 federal elections only 33 per cent of the vote went to these parties – their worst result since 1949. These losses, and similar losses in Land elections before and since, may indicate that both parties are no longer able to integrate a wide spectrum of voters and that their status as ‘people’s parties’ is under threat. This is also true of Germany’s second-largest party, the SPD, in fact even more so. Founded in 1875 as a revolutionary Marxist working-class party, the SPD reinvented itself as a centre-left catch-all party. By embracing the social market economy, it was able to create a broad electoral alliance of unionized manual workers and middle-class employees. As a consequence of this modernization, the SPD succeeded in ending, at least temporarily, the dominance of CDU and CSU on the federal level and governed the country, between 1969–1982, in a coalition with the FDP. However, in the late 1970s the SPD started to suffer membership decline and waning electoral fortunes. This had much to do with losing some of the ‘post-materialist’ (Inglehart 1977) vote to the emergent Green Party. In the mid-1990s, the SPD adopted a centrist ‘Third Way’ approach, like many social democratic parties in Europe. This shift into the electoral centre contributed to achieving a decisive electoral victory in 1998 so that the party could form a federal government with the Greens. However, in 2003 the SPD started losing support to Die Linke because of its neo-liberal labour market and welfare policies. At the 2017 federal elections, it only gained 20 per cent of the vote. In the 2019 European Parliament elections, it saw its vote plummet from 27 per cent to little more than 15 per cent, leaving it in third place behind the Green Party which enjoyed a doubling of its vote share to nearly 21 per cent.The SPD’s electoral decline has also been accompanied by a loss of members. Despite these developments, the SPD has been a party of government, as junior partner to CDU/CSU, between 2005 and 2009 and from 2013 onwards. These ‘Grand Coalitions’ appear to have worsened the crisis of the SPD, costing it ever more votes and contributing to the alienation between party chiefs and its rank and file.

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The reader may be surprised to find that the Green Party is treated as a ‘mainstream’ party here. However, not only have the Greens moved towards the political centre since the 1990s and served in government, but they have also recently overtaken the SPD as the second-largest party in some Land elections and the European elections. Indeed, some opinion polls from mid-2019 suggested that the Green Party had established a lead over CDU and CSU, too (Forsa 2019). Such mainstream status was unthinkable when the Green Party was founded in 1980 as an ‘anti-party party’ (Poguntke and Scarrow 1996), rooted in the new social movements of the 1970s. Since the 1990s, the Greens have gained considerable experience in government, mostly in coalitions with the SPD. After the federal elections of 2017 – at which they gained a disappointing 8.9 per cent of the vote, thus becoming the smallest party in the Bundestag – the Greens were willing to join a coalition government with the CDU, CSU, and FDP. However, the coalition talks were abruptly terminated by the FDP’s somewhat erratic leadership, and another Grand Coalition between CDU, CSU, and SPD was formed instead. The Greens came out of the aborted coalition talks as a party grown in stature, having demonstrated pragmatism and an ability to compromise in order to govern responsibly. Green voters can be found predominantly in urban areas, they tend to be highly educated and middle class, and the party attracts more female voters than its competitors. Some among the party’s members are uneasy about the Greens’ centrist shift and their professionalization. Moving from non-populist to populist parties, Die Linke’s roots are in the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED  – Socialist Unity Party) of Communist East Germany. After unification, and by building on the SED’s membership, organizational network and finances, in 1990 the Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus (PDS – Party of Democratic Socialism) was set up. Due to its origins, the party was branded ‘extremist’ and treated with disdain by the West German political elite, thus being unable to make much electoral impact in the West. In the East, however, the PDS regularly attracted more than 20 per cent of the vote in Land elections and eventually became the SPD’s junior partner, first informally in the Land of Sachsen-Anhalt in 1994, and later via formal coalitions elsewhere. This happened despite misgivings within the SPD about the arrangement, due to the PDS’s past and personnel. Events in 2003 and 2004 were a game-changer for the PDS. In 2004, trade unionists and former Social Democrats mostly from West Germany founded the Wahlalternative Arbeit und Soziale Gerechtigkeit (WASG – Electoral Alternative Labour and Social Justice) to oppose the neoliberal labour market and welfare policy agenda of the SPD-Green federal coalition government. WASG and PDS signed an electoral pact before the 2005 Bundestag elections to ensure that they would not stand candidates against each other and, in 2007, merged to create Die Linke. Now there was a party to the left of the SPD not only in the East, but across the whole country, and one that considered the SPD as its main competitor. Die Linke currently offers an example of ‘pragmatic populism’ (Hough and Keith 2019). While it governs on the local and Land levels with a commitment to

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problem-solving and a demonstrated ability to strike compromises with coalition partners, on the national level, and also in the West, it behaves more as a populist force in its rejection of economic and political elites and in its quest to overcome the ‘economic system’.The coalitions between SPD, Greens and Die Linke in Berlin and in Thuringia provide an example of the former approach, while the 2011 party programme’s embrace of ‘democratic socialism’, as well as its rejection of capitalism as something that produces ‘farcical’ elections, an example of the latter (Die Linke 2011, 21, 35). When Die Linke entered the seven-party Bundestag of 2017 as the smallest party and, with the self-declared ‘anti-establishment party’ AfD taking seats in parliament for the first time, it suddenly was at risk of being seen as part of the ‘old system’ itself. Worse, while making some gains in the West, in the East Die Linke lost many of its voters to the AfD. When it comes to national elections in Eastern Germany, the two parties are now ‘populist competitors’ (Olson 2018), as they both vie for the voters with the most ‘populist attitudes’ (Vehrkamp and Merkel 2018). The AfD is the latest addition to the now unfrozen German party system. Founded in February 2013, in September of the same year it only narrowly missed the five per cent electoral threshold for the Bundestag elections. The 2014 European Parliament elections were the AfD’s breakthrough:  having gained the same number of votes as in 2013 but on a lower turnout, it gained seven seats. Since then, the party has won seats in each subsequent Land election. The party’s finest moment was when it entered the Bundestag on a vote of 12.4 per cent in 2017, thus becoming the third-largest (and the main opposition) party, while in the 2019 European elections it won 11 per cent (better than in 2014, but below the expectations of some in the party). The AfD has attracted people from very different backgrounds. First, there are the ‘ordo-liberals’  – followers of a variant of economic liberalism, paired with social conservatism, which sees a strong role for the state as the guarantor of the free market (Schui 1997). They rejected the Euro and, during the Eurozone crisis, criticized the ‘rescue packages’ for some EU countries and ‘bank bailouts’, which Chancellor Angela Merkel described as being ‘without alternative’ (Bebnowski and Förster 2014). Second, there are those who had been active in small far-right parties or in the circles of the New Right. Third, the AfD is a home to Christian fundamentalists opposed to same-sex marriage, abortion rights, and the so-called ‘gender ideology’ (see Kuhar and Paternotte 2017). Ordo-liberalism and strong EU scepticism have been the most important ingredients of the party’s early electoral successes. The ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015 and a string of Islamist terror attacks in Europe provided an opportunity to move the party further to the right, onto the fertile ground of ‘nativist’ politics on culture and identity. The party’s programme today is evidence of this shift towards nativism (and populism). It attacks Germany’s ‘political class’ – defined as a ‘secret sovereign’ – and accuses it of exploiting media and education institutions ‘to trick’ the German nation (AfD 2016, 8). The new leadership team after the successful 2017 federal election cemented this shift to the right, as the party developed its links to New and Old Right organizations and

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the Identitarian Movement. In 2019, few if any of the ‘original’ ordo-liberals are still in prominent positions, economic criticism of EU and Euro has been largely supplanted by a nationalist and culturalist discourse, and there are few signs that the party is becoming ‘office-seeking’.

Party strategies: dismissal, adversarialism, and accommodation The main part of this chapter is dedicated to addressing the following key questions:  How have the mainstream parties responded to the emergence and electoral success of populist parties? Have populist parties, in turn, reacted to the responses of mainstream parties, and how has Die Linke, as the older of the two populist parties, reacted to the arrival of the AfD on the electoral stage? This analysis will consider the period from 2008 to 2018, i.e. the ten years which saw the Global Financial Crisis, the Great Recession, the Eurozone crisis, and the refugee crisis unsettle the EU. These crises altered political opportunity structures and facilitated the emergence (or resurgence) of populism on the left and on the right in many European countries, thus requiring established parties to develop new strategies. These strategies – and how they played out in the interaction between parties – will be analysed through the typological lens of strategies of dismissal, adversarialism or accommodation (see Chapter  3 in this volume). The analysis presented here is based on the critical interpretation of party leaders’ speeches and interviews, party manifestoes and programmes, as well as texts documenting internal party discussions. The Eurozone crisis was arguably the most urgent problem that European governments had to tackle between 2008 and 2014. The measures pushed through the Bundestag  – for example, the parliament’s confirmatory vote on the ‘rescue packages’ for highly indebted Eurozone economies, the ‘bank bailouts’, and the various new mechanisms designed to entrench austerity more deeply in the Eurozone  – were by no means undisputed. They were also unpopular among voters – in 2010, close to 70 per cent of Germans were against providing financial assistance to Greece and 76 per cent against creating the European Financial Stability Facility (Politbarometer 2011). However, Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was also the CDU’s leader, said that there was no alternative to these initiatives (Merkel 2010). All mainstream parties were in general agreement and cooperated both inside and outside the Bundestag. This meant that between 2008 and 2013, Die Linke was able to position itself as the only party that offered an alternative to this approach, by rejecting much of the informal ‘super coalition’ consensus of CDU, CSU, FDP, SPD, and the Greens. In this vein, Die Linke accused the Greens of betraying their own ideals when they supported the government’s plans for the ‘rescue packages’ (Lötzsch 2010), demanded that other opposition parties support their challenge to Merkel’s Euro policies in the courts (Wagenknecht 2012), and finally declared that theirs was the only true opposition party left in the country (Gysi in Hollstein 2014). However, in 2013 a new party emerged on the back of the Eurozone crisis that offered a far more powerful criticism of the ‘super coalition’

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and its Euro policies: the AfD.This began to capture the headlines with demands to dissolve the Eurozone, cut the debt of some countries, and reform the EU into one of ‘sovereign states’ (AfD 2013). There is no doubt that the simultaneity of economic crisis and Grand Coalition politics – or, rather, ‘Super Coalition politics’ – provided opportunities for populist forces on the right and the left to emerge and make electoral advances. The palpable disenchantment with the ‘politics of the centre’ was reflected in declining levels of trust in politicians and the political system. For instance, polling data published in 2018 showed 57 per cent of respondents agreeing with the statement that ‘politicians do what they want, regardless of what citizens say’, with 75 per cent not trusting political parties (Ipsos 2018). While Die Linke and the AfD were united in their opposition to Merkel’s EU and Euro politics and policies, they were treated somewhat differently by the mainstream parties. The AfD was largely faced with an adversarial strategy which ultimately sought to marginalize it (see Chapter  3), whilst its proposals of abolishing the Euro and creating a loose EU of sovereign nations and its criticism of how the ‘super coalition’ was dealing with the crisis were mostly dismissed. Die Linke, as a more established populist party, was more readily accepted as a political actor. However, its policies on the Eurozone crisis were countered with what could be described as ‘clashing adversarialism’. In the early days, the strategy employed against the AfD included attempts to stigmatize it as a party with Nazi characteristics. For example, when the party’s co-founder, economics professor Bernd Lucke, criticized how the Bundestag had less and less say over significant decisions on how to ‘save the Euro’ and called German democracy ‘entartet’ (i.e. ‘degenerate’) (Lucke 2013), mainstream parties tried to dismiss his criticism purely on the basis of his choice of words (reminiscent of the Nazi period). Such a marginalization attempt banked on the expectation that Germany’s post-war political culture, characterized by an anti-extremist and anti-totalitarian consensus (Jesse 1998), would finally ‘kick in’ and facilitate the ostracization of the AfD. However, the stigmatization strategy eventually failed. After all, the early AfD focused essentially on the EU and the Euro, not migration, and its leaders were of economically ordo-liberal persuasion, with morally conservative views, usually former CDU or FDP members, and often economics professors or business leaders. At least with hindsight it is hardly surprising that this strategy was not successful: between 2013 and 2015 – when party leader Lucke was toppled and replaced by national-conservative and openly antiimmigration leaders with far less interest in the economics of the Eurozone – the public saw the AfD as only slightly to the right of the CSU (Wagner et al. 2015). Also, mainstream parties’ derogative usage of the term ‘populism’, again to marginalize their challenger, did not catch on. Following accusations by, for example, the SPD’s secretary general, that the party was engaging in ‘foolish populism’ (Fahimi 2014), the AfD kept pushing its narrative that it was standing up to the ‘cartel’ of the ‘Altparteien’ – the old parties (Lewandowsky 2015). While the mainstream parties also dismissed the policy positions of Die Linke on the EU and the Euro as unworkable or ‘ideological’, they made only limited

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attempts to adopt an adversarial marginalizing strategy against that party. This had been tried with the ‘Linksfront’ campaign of the CDU in 1994 (e.g. Der Spiegel 1994), which sought to delegitimize cooperation between SPD and PDS as an attack on democracy and freedom (as it would bring the ‘old Communists’ into power). This strategy was tried again in 2011, after Die Linke’s party leader imprudently spoke of the party’s ongoing search for the ‘paths to Communism’ (see Holzhauser 2014):  on this occasion CDU and CSU, and also some in the SPD leadership, sought to ostracize Die Linke as a party unsuitable for government (e.g. Steinmeier in Meisner and Monath 2011) or even anti-democratic (e.g. Dobrindt in Der Focus 2011). As time moved on, CDU and CSU accepted that SPD and Die Linke would govern together at the Land level in the East so that today few attempts at marginalizing Die Linke are made (usually on the basis of claims that it seeks to undermine Germany’s market economy and democracy). Also, neither CDU nor CSU see Die Linke as their electoral competitor. This is, of course, different for the SPD. The Social Democrats lost voters to Die Linke and its predecessors because of the labour market and welfare reforms of 2003, and the Eurozone crisis raised the possibility that Die Linke would attract further SPD support, specifically thanks to its opposition to the unpopular bank bailouts and due to its anti-elite discourse. However, in the end the SPD stayed the course on the Eurozone crisis like other mainstream parties, while its leadership adopted what could be categorized as an adversarial-clashing strategy against Die Linke at the federal level. This was exemplified by the SPD’s leader in the Bundestag who described Die Linke’s policy positions as those of a party unable and unwilling to govern, going as far as saying that the party was redundant (Oppermann in Paulsen 2012). However, in several Eastern Länder, the SPD actually cooperated with Die Linke. On this level of government, the SPD adopted a strategy of cooperation and treated Die Linke as a party they could do business with. The fact that all mainstream parties – bar the CSU – maintained their positions on the Euro crisis can be explained by their general allegiance to the project of European integration. This position has not been significantly influenced by officeseeking behaviour even at times when Euroscepticism could be expected to be a ‘vote-winner’. Also, everything but dismissal and adversarialism towards the AfD may have cost the CDU and CSU more votes than it could win. As Zohlnhöfer argues, voters had most confidence in the CDU and CSU on the issue of the Eurozone crisis and European politics more generally and professed little faith in the AfD on this issue (Zohlnhöfer 2017) so that any co-optation of these by Merkel could have backfired. This was clearly felt by the CSU, the only mainstream party that diverged from the ‘super coalition’ consensus on the Euro ahead of the 2014 EU Parliament elections and decided to co-opt some of the AfD’s ideas. The party spoke of the EU as a faceless monstrosity, of the Euro as a flawed construct, and of ‘welfare tourism’ by European citizens, by launching the slogan: ‘those who cheat get kicked out’ (Gath et  al. 2014; see also Rohrschneider and Whitefield 2017 about party positions on the EU).This adversarial co-optation strategy was rooted in the CSU’s

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long-standing fear that a party to its right could threaten its dominance of Bavarian politics and weaken its position in federal politics, too.This fear was not irrational, as the (ultimately short-lived) success of Die Republikaner (the Republicans) in Bavaria in the 1980s had shown. However, the co-optation of AfD’s positions ultimately did not work and at the European elections the CSU’s vote declined by 7 per cent, while CDU and SPD held firm, or even improved their share of the vote by sticking to a pro-European discourse. Nonetheless, the CSU strengthened its criticism of Merkel’s course on the Euro crisis, and some even demanded that their party should not preclude a coalition with the AfD (Neuerer 2014). At the same time, CDU and SPD did not revisit their strategy of marginalizing the AfD. For example, the leader of the CDU’s parliamentary party made it very clear that he did not even want to engage in public debates with the AfD (Der Spiegel 2014). In the context of the Eurozone crisis, the dismissive and adversarial strategies adopted by the mainstream parties against the AfD and its policies seem to have paid off, while co-optation damaged the CSU’s electoral fortunes. Likewise, the SPD’s adversarial strategy against Die Linke and its policies was possibly the right choice, as most Germans saw Merkel as competent on the Eurozone and the EU, and a divergence from Merkel’s course by the Social Democrats (who were not seen as equally competent on these matters) could have damaged them. The mainstream parties and Die Linke had several good reasons to hope that the AfD would disappear from the electoral stage once the Eurozone crisis was settled (or at least its salience had dropped). After all, between 2013 and July 2015 – when the refugee crisis started to make headlines and became the most salient political issue (Bauer-Blaschkowski et al. 2019) – voter volatility was still relatively low, and political satisfaction with the work of both the Grand Coalition and the opposition in the Bundestag (i.e. Greens and Die Linke) was surprisingly high, despite the European crisis. At the same time, the AfD’s internal leadership struggle, resulting in the ousting of Bernd Lucke in favour of the national-conservative Frauke Petry in the summer of 2015, saw the party dropping to 2 per cent in opinion polls (Bauer-Blaschkowski et al. 2019). Lastly, the German electoral system could have rendered the AfD a mere ‘flash in the pan’ party. While the country’s federal structure, proportional electoral system, and public party financing promote a multi-party system, the 5 per cent electoral threshold is a powerful constraint on party formation and establishment (Bolleyer 2013). However, the AfD weathered internal troubles and the easing of the Eurozone crisis and used the refugee crisis to their advantage. The number of people seeking asylum in Germany had started to rise already in 2013, but the year 2015 saw this development turn into what came to be discussed as the ‘refugee crisis’. By the end of the year, just under 900,000 people had reached Germany, escaping the worsening civil war in Syria and the situation elsewhere in the Middle East and Northern Africa. Observers had, during the peak of the crisis, predicted that over one million people would seek refuge in Germany. The coalition partners of CDU, CSU, and SPD, led by Chancellor Angela Merkel, adopted a ‘welcome culture’ in the face of the crisis and positioned Germany as a safe haven for refugees. Merkel in particular, with her famous ‘We will do it’ (‘Wir

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schaffen das’) dictum, tried to frame the refugee crisis as a challenge that could unite Germans as defenders of humanitarianism (Merkel 2015). However, it seems that the welcome culture was only short-lived and that the mainstream parties had misjudged the salience of the refugee crisis. Certainly, the AfD  – led, since July 2015, by Petry and now on a clear national-conservative path showing diminishing interest in the Eurozone or other economic matters – turned its full attention to the refugee crisis and immigration matters more generally and successfully linked these with questions of national sovereignty and identity. Furthermore, the refugee crisis provided the opportunity to the AfD to present itself as an advocate of the victims of the neo-liberal labour market and welfare reforms of the early 2000s and to position itself as the sole defender of those not benefitting from European integration and suffering economic hardship while ‘the banks’, ‘the Greeks’ and ‘the refugees’ were saved.The AfD pursued this course with vigour, leading to demands by Beatrix Storch (a leading AfD politician and member of the European Parliament) that German border police fire at refugees illegally crossing the borders, including children (Der Spiegel 2016). Confronted with such discourse and a shift of opinion on the welcome culture and the refugee crisis, the mainstream parties adopted a strategy of marginalization vis-à-vis the AfD by appealing to Germans’ assumed opposition to any form of extremism. For example, the SPD’s secretary general alleged that there were links between the AfD and neoNazis and said that the party should be monitored by the secret services – a first step towards banning it as ‘unconstitutional’ (Barley 2016). Christian Democrat Volker Bouffier, the First Minister of the Land of Hesse and one of Merkel’s confidantes, said that the AfD was unelectable for ‘true democrats’. He equated the AfD to the SED, the party that had ruled Eastern Germany until 1989, when he referred to it as the ‘second German party to advocate shooting at the border’ (FAZ 2016). Die Linke endorsed the proposal of placing the AfD under secret service monitoring, after years of enduring demands from CDU and CSU that it itself be placed under surveillance. Die Linke also accused SPD, CDU and CSU of co-opting AfD policies, specifically in the form of the Asylpaket II legislation brought before the Bundestag in February 2016. The Asylpaket II introduced a tougher approach to asylum matters, including: a) the creation of residential centres for refugees deemed unlikely to succeed in their claim and the restriction of their free movement within Germany to facilitate deportation; b) limitations of the right to family reunification; c) classification of some Maghreb states as ‘countries of safe origin’ to reduce the number of asylum claims; and d) quicker deportation procedures, including for those who were sick. A  proposal coming from the CSU to introduce an annual ‘upper threshold’ for Germany’s refugee intake (e.g. FAZ 2015) was hotly debated within the Grand Coalition and rejected by SPD and CDU leaders. The idea, however was popular among 71 per cent of Germans (Infratest Dimap 2015), and not far off AfD demands to put in place a temporary stop to the refugee intake (Gauland 2015). The CSU’s insistence on legislating for an upper threshold in the refugee intake was motivated by its fear that the AfD could become a permanent fixture on its right and by the

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knowledge that many AfD supporters in Bavaria were former CSU supporters (Schmitt 2018). This mattered a lot before the 2017 federal elections and the 2018 Bavarian elections. After the 2017 elections, the CSU abandoned the terminology of ‘upper thresholds’ and succeeded in enshrining a policy in the 2018 coalition agreement between CDU, CSU and SPD which stipulated that the annual refugee intake should not be higher than 220,000 (CDU, CSU, and SPD 2017 104). In this period the SPD found it difficult to develop a strategy on immigration and asylum which would help them retain their appeal to liberal-minded voters and heed the concerns of those critical of the ‘welcome culture’ and worried about immigration at the same time. The outcome was a somewhat confused approach, evidencing the challenge of trying to attract both ‘populist-minded’ and ‘nonpopulist’ supporters, with both groups each making up about half of the Social Democratic support (Vehrkamp and Merkel 2018). Ahead of the 2017 federal elections, warnings by SPD leader Sigmar Gabriel that the AfD’s entry into the Bundestag would mean that ‘for the first time since 1945, there would be real Nazis in the German parliament’ (Gabriel in Shalal 2017) were clearly meant to ostracize the party. Others in the party, such as Olaf Scholz, had earlier cautioned that this approach might backfire and that the SPD should rather engage with the AfD and its policies without dismissing its voters (Scholz 2016). In late 2015 the positions of mainstream parties on immigration and asylum started to become less liberal (König 2017). This did not mean that mainstream parties co-opted specific AfD policies – in fact, the AfD’s proposals that the right to claim political asylum in Germany should be abolished (Gauland 2017) or that a deportation quota should be introduced were never taken up.While the mainstream parties’ discourse and policy on immigration and asylum were becoming more restrictive, they also ramped up their criticism of the AfD as a populist, right-wing and extremist party. With the AfD doing well in polls and elections throughout 2016 and 2017 (especially in the East) and adopting ever-harsher views on immigration and nativist views on welfare rights, its opponents’ strategy of marginalizing the AfD as a party, and clashing with its discourse, while adopting more restrictive immigration and refugee policies, may have contributed to the AfD’s success at the 2017 federal elections. Generally speaking, opponents of the AfD sent confusing signals in this period. For instance, some in the Green Party adopted a harsh tone on immigration and asylum, too  – especially leading local government politicians whose municipalities had to deal with the consequences of the refugee crisis. Hence during the refugee crisis the popular mayor of Freiburg, Boris Palmer, started to argue against the grain of Green Party positions when he demanded that Germany reduced the intake of asylum seekers and increased deportations. He also moved closer to the AfD’s discourse when he demanded the armed protection of European borders and rejected German ‘refugee idealism’ (Palmer 2015). He, and also the popular Green First Minister of the government of the Land of Baden-Württemberg, Winfried Kretschmann, have since continued with such co-optive rhetoric (Kretschmann in Der Spiegel 2018). These contributions were not welcomed by the Green

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leadership at the federal level, and the Greens did not co-opt such proposals. They also voted against Asylpaket II in the Bundestag and confirmed their support of the ‘welcome culture’ (Grüne 2019), so that the Green Party is now the ‘non-populist party left of the centre’ (Vehrkamp and Merkel 2018 18). Die Linke officially rejected most of the Grand Coalition’s policies on immigration and asylum and remained committed to liberal positions in this policy area. The debate at the time shows that Die Linke was of comparatively little concern to the mainstream parties as they focussed their strategic thinking on the AfD as the most threatening of the two populist parties and the only party with a substantially different view on immigration issues. However, as the refugee crisis wore on and the electoral success of the AfD solidified also at the expense of Die Linke, tensions within the latter party started to show. In particular, the leaders of the party’s left wing, Oskar Lafontaine and Sahra Wagenknecht, made demands which resembled the discourses and policies coming from AfD and CSU. In 2016, after a number of violent crimes, including terrorist attacks, were committed by refugees,Wagenknecht argued that taking in immigrants and refugees in high numbers had caused significant problems, that the state should do all in its power to assure that citizens felt safe, and that those who committed crimes had outstayed their welcome. In addition to this, Wagenknecht seemed to support the CSU’s demand to limit the intake of refugees (Wagenknecht 2016a, 2016b). On top of that, Wagenknecht and the AfD leader, Frauke Petry, agreed to a joint interview in October 2016. While Petry was keen to highlight communalities between the two and their parties, Wagenknecht rejected her advances for co-operation by pointing out to what divided the parties (Wagenknecht and Petry 2016). Nonetheless, by agreeing to do the joint interview Wagenknecht acknowledged the AfD as a competitor and thus adopted an adversarial strategy and engaged with the AfD by discussing its policies – much to the dismay of many in Die Linke. The interview demonstrated how Die Linke was internally divided between those wishing to maintain a liberal approach to immigration in order to keep the party’s cosmopolitan vote, and those favouring more restrictive policy positions, attractive to many of those former Die Linke supporters who had defected to the AfD. A central problem for both factions of Die Linke was how to develop an adversarial strategy to tackle the AfD on policy fields beyond immigration and asylum. On these, the AfD had said little in public debates between 2015 and 2017  – possibly for a good reason, as many AfD voters had little in common with the party’s positions on social and economic policy, as they favoured a more generous welfare state, a higher minimum wage, and a reigned-in market economy (Schwarzbözl and Fatke 2016). In the run-up to the September 2017 federal elections, the AfD started to adopt positions closer to Die Linke when it demanded the partial roll-back of the neoliberal labour market and welfare reforms of the early 2000s and talked increasingly about social justice (FAZ 2017). While this did not amount to a very substantial co-optation of Die Linke’s policies or discourse, it was an acknowledgement by the AfD of the need to address voter concerns beyond those revolving around immigration. This superficial co-optation added to the worries of those

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in Die Linke, for example Wagenknecht and Lafontaine, who had seen their voters shift allegiance to the AfD because of its positions on immigration and refugees. Doubting their party’s ability to challenge the AfD, these two representatives set up a new organization in September 2018, called ‘Aufstehen’ or ‘Rise’. Designed to become a movement to unite the left, attract citizens without a ‘political home’, and diminish support for the AfD, Aufstehen demanded a strong welfare state and a ‘united Europe of sovereign democracies’ (Aufstehen 2018). Whilst little was said on immigration in Aufstehen’s founding manifesto,Wagenknecht, as one of its most high-profile founders, stressed that immigration should be regulated and reduced (Wagenknecht 2018). The AfD itself welcomed Aufstehen as a bridge-builder between left and right (Gauland 2018). In summary, mainstream parties adopted different approaches to Die Linke and AfD during the Eurozone and refugee crisis. Concerning the EU and the Euro, they chose dismissive and adversarial strategies towards the AfD and adopted none of its policies. This approach was maintained throughout the crisis. However, mainstream parties may have paid the price for this approach as it promoted the AfD’s status as an anti-establishment party. Die Linke was more readily accepted as a political actor but its policy proposals on the Eurozone crisis were engaged with through a strategy of clashing adversarialism. The refugee crisis and the debate about immigration more generally saw strategic shifts by the mainstream parties, and also by Die Linke. SPD and CDU initially adopted mostly adversarial-marginalizing strategies to ostracize the AfD, but adjusted their strategic responses to a co-optation approach of the AfD’s policy discourse, taking the lead from the CSU, when polls and elections indicated that the party and its positions were popular. At the same time, they continued to paint the AfD as an extreme party. Die Linke put its internal tensions on public display when some of its most prominent leaders co-opted a discourse resembling that of the AfD and established Aufstehen. Among the mainstream parties, the Greens were the exception as they held onto their positions. By late 2019, no mainstream party has adopted an accommodative strategy towards the AfD by cooperating with it in any form. However, some in the East German branches of the CDU have started discussing publicly whether collaboration with the AfD on the Land level might have become necessary (Sirleschtov 2018) to avoid multi-party coalitions with SPD and Greens and to form right-of-centre governing majorities. Besides analysing the strategies of political parties, our analysis shed light on why asylum and immigration policy have become more restrictive in Germany since 2015.There is little doubt that the pressure of the AfD’s electoral successes has contributed to policy contagion in this field (which did not happen on EU-related matters).While the electorate did not see the AfD as competent in solving problems or proposing credible policy alternatives, its demands pulled CDU, CSU and SPD, but not the Greens or Die Linke, towards adopting tougher policies. If there was contagion, to what extent can we also speak of populist convergence? As the discussion has shown, there was a limited degree of convergence between AfD and Die Linke. Both shared an agreement on the need to roll back neo-liberal

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labour market and welfare reforms and at least some in the two parties shared superficial communalities with regards to immigration. However, the underlying ideological reasons for this convergence on a limited number of issues differ significantly. Hence, regarding labour market and welfare reforms, the AfD claims that ‘the Germans’ deserve a better deal, while Die Linke demands policy change that benefits ‘everybody’. In other words, it seems that left- and right-wing distinctions remain significant enough to disallow full convergence. The main part of this chapter ends with a brief discussion of how Germany’s political environment changed in the context of the two crises and due to the arrival of a new populist challenger party. First, it seems that not all mainstream parties have understood the new realities of party competition. For example, most parties do not want to fully engage with the AfD (even in late 2019), and continue to hope that an adversarial strategy mix of marginalization, clashing and co-optation will diminish its electoral appeal. However, it might be the case that only a clashing adversarial strategy on policy issues beyond immigration may make voters realize that the AfD is a typical case of a far-right party reluctant to discuss its neo-liberal economic and social policy positions in detail in fear of losing votes (Rovny 2013). Some in Die Linke have understood this, but opted to set up a new vehicle in the form of Aufstehen as they could not change their party’s course. With its focus on labour market and welfare policy it might have been a valid attempt to challenge the AfD from outside party politics. However, it has not sustained its initial momentum and, with the resignation of Wagenknecht from its leadership team in March 2019 (Meisner 2019), lost its most prominent founder. Since then, the movement appears to have stalled. At the same time, the AfD’s success has changed German politics in some ways, including how parliaments in the Länder and in Berlin conduct their work. These institutions are now faced with a political party with little experience in, and competence of, parliamentary business, and with parliamentarians who at times show disrespect towards parliamentary democracy and what the AfD calls the ‘parties of the system’. As examples of this approach to politics one can cite AfD representatives in Land parliaments wearing a niqab to underpin their demands for ‘banning the burka’, or their carefully orchestrated collective exits from the debating chamber following an admonition of an AfD representative by the speaker. The fact that the party leadership continues to show little interest in seeking office proves that this extra-parliamentary ‘movement orientation’ is still very much a feature of the party (Schroeder et al. 2017; Rütters 2017). Die Linke, in comparison, even when mainstream parties sought to ostracize its predecessor in the early 1990s, never attempted such a strategy.

Conclusion It seems that the SPD is the only party in need of a strategy that deals with two populist parties at once, the AfD and Die Linke. Given the characteristics of the SPD’s supporters, a populist shift may alienate as many supporters as it may gain. The SPD’s incremental distancing from its own legacy of neoliberal labour market

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and welfare reforms may perhaps be seen as a response to Die Linke, and also to the AfD. However, in matters of immigration and asylum the SPD has found it much more difficult to give in to the ‘populist temptation’. The CDU and the CSU have ‘only’ had to fend off the AfD from amongst the populists:  Die Linke has never posed an electoral threat to them, while the AfD’s rapid growth across the country has come, certainly in the West, at their great expense. Whether the strategy of co-optation of a more restrictive immigration and refugee policies will reconcile former conservative voters is unclear. The Land elections of 2019 were disastrous for the CDU and would not suggest so. It also remains to be seen whether the postMerkel CDU will recapture terrain on its right, and whether the CSU will recover from the electoral inroads the AfD has made in Bavaria in 2018. The Greens seem to be the party which changed its positions the least when it came to the rise of the AfD in the course of the refugee crisis. Staying the course was relatively easy for them and apparently paid off – after all, they only have few supporters with populist mindsets and stand little to gain from co-opting AfD policies. Certainly the polls throughout 2019 (and the European Parliament Elections in May 2019) showed the party coming second only to the CDU and CSU, and replacing the SPD as their main competitor. As a result of this, CDU and CSU are now squeezed not only by the AfD, but also by the Green Party. Last but not least, the pattern of competition between AfD and Die Linke shows only superficial indications of populist convergence.This was largely driven by those who disagreed with Die Linke’s stance on immigration and, later, founded Aufstehen. However, Aufstehen, since its inception, has also struggled to pursue a convincing adversarial strategy to engage with the AfD’s anti-immigration discourse in the hope to regain voters.

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Brandenburg, 29 September. https://afd-fraktion-brandenburg.de/afd-pm-afd-fordertvoruebergehenden-aufnahmestopp-fuer-fluechtlinge-gauland-das-boot-ist-voll/, last accessed 12 June 2019. Gauland, Alexander. 2017.‘Recht auf politisches Asyl ist nicht zeitgemäß.’ Interview with Die Welt. Die Welt, 25 August 2017. www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article167985555/ Recht-auf-politisches-Asyl-ist-nicht-zeitgemaess.html, last accessed 1 May 2019. Gauland, Alexander. 2018. ‘AfD Bundestagsfraktion.’ www.afdbundestag.de/gaulandaufstehen- koennte- parteipolitische- schuetzengraeben- ueberwinden- und- impulseliefern/, last accessed 1 May 2019. Grüne. 2019. ‘Themen.’ hwww.gruene.de/themen/fluechtlinge, last accessed 1 May 2019. Hicks, Alexander and Duance H. Swank. 1992. ‘Politics, institutions, and welfare spending in industrialised democracies 1962–82.’ American Political Science Review 86: 658–674. Hobolt, Sara B., and James Tilley. 2012. ‘Fleeing the Centre: The Rise of Challenger Parties in the Aftermath of the Euro Crisis.’ Paper presented at EES 2014 Conference, November 6–8, 2015, University of Mannheim. http://europeanelectionstudies.net/wp-content/ uploads/2015/11/HoboltTilley_FleeingTheCentre.pdf , last accessed 1 May 2019. Hollstein, Miriam. 2014. ‘Linke feiert sich als einzig wahre Opposition.’ Die Welt, 1 January 2014. www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article123746701/Linke-feiert-sich-als-einzigwahre-Opposition.html, last accessed 11 June 2019. Holzhauser, Thorsten. 2014. ‘“Niemals mit der PDS”? Zum Umgang der SPD mit der SED-Nachfolgepartei zwischen Ausgrenzungs- und Integrationsstrategie (1990–1998).’ Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 62, no. 2: 285–308. Hough, Dan, and Dan Keith. 2019. ‘The German Left Party. A Case of Pragmatic Populism.’ In The Populist Radical Left in Europe, edited by Giorgos Katsambekis and Alexandros Kioupkiolis, 129–145. Abingdon: Routledge. Infratest Dimap. 2015. ‘ARD Deutschlandtrend November.’ www.infratest-dimap.de/ fileadmin/user_upload/dt1511_bericht.pdf, last accessed 12 June 2019. Inglehart, Ronald. 1977. The Silent Revolution:  Changing Values and Political Styles among Western Publics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Ipsos. 2018. ‘Das Misstrauen ist groß  – Studie zu Vertrauen, Populismus und Politikverdrossenheit.’ 27 September 2018. www.ipsos.com/de-de/das-misstrauenist-gross-studie-zu-vertrauen-populismus-und-politikverdrossenheit, last accessed 17 April 2019. Jesse, Eckhard. 1998. ‘Antiextremistischer Konsens. Von der Weimarer Republik bis zur Gegenwart.’ In Wandel durch Beständigkeit. Studien zur deutschen und internationalen Politik, edited by Karl G. Kick, Stephan Weingazn, and Ulrich Bartosch, 151–173. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot. Kirchheimer, Otto. 1966. ‘The Transformation of the Western European Party System.’ In Political Parties and Political Development, edited by J. LaPalombara and M.Weiner, 177–200. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kitschelt, Herbert. 1986. ‘Political Opportunity Structures and Political Protest: AntiNuclear Movements in Four Democracies.’ British Journal of Political Science 16, no. 1: 57–85. König, Pascal D. 2017. ‘Intra-party dissent as a constraint in policy competition: mapping and analysing the positioning of political parties in the German refugee debate from August to November 2015.’ German Politics 26: 337–359. Kuhar, Roman, and David Paternotte, eds. 2017. Anti-Gender Campaigns in Europe. Mobilizing against Equality. London: Rowman & Littlefield.

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7 THE NETHERLANDS Tjitske Akkerman

Introduction The most successful populist parties in the Netherlands are the radical right Partij voorde Vrijheid (PVV  – Party for Freedom) and the radical left Socialistische Partij (SP – the Socialist Party). The PVV is not the only radical right populist party in the country, but it is by far the largest. Established in 2006 by Geert Wilders, the party has managed to build up a solid constituency. Its predecessor, the List Pim Fortuijn (LPF – Pim Fortuijn List) achieved a one-time electoral success when it was catapulted from nowhere to being second largest party at the 2002 general election, but wasted its political capital within a year due to internal conflicts, and was dissolved in 2008. In 2017, a new radical right party entered the frame. The Forum voor Democratie (FvD – Forum for Democracy) gained two seats in parliament under Thierry Baudet’s leadership and has since increased its support considerably (for instance, by becoming the largest party in the regional elections of 20 March 2019, with 14.4 per cent of the votes). Geert Wilders, a former member of parliament for the centre-right Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie (VVD  – People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy), established the radical-right PVV at the beginning of 2006. Essentially an antiimmigration party targeting Islam and immigration from Muslim countries, the party proposes to forbid the Koran, tax headscarves, close Islamic schools and stop building mosques. Tough in rhetoric and in actual fact, the PVV consistently defended the most restrictive positions on these issues in parliament, too (Otjes 2012, 216). It also rapidly became an electoral force that could not be ignored. In the 2006 elections, Geert Wilders managed to gain an unexpected 5.9 per cent of the vote and nine seats in parliament in the Lower House, to then increase the party’s support substantially over time. In the 2010 national election, the PVV became the third-largest party in the country (with 15.5 per cent of the vote). While its vote

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Electoral results: mainstream parties (VVD, CDA, and PvdA) vs populist parties (PVV and SP), 2006–2017

FIGURE 7.1

Source: Kiesraad (www.kiesraad.nl/verkiezingen/verkiezingsuitslagen)

share fell in the next election of 2012, the party recovered this loss in March 2017, when it became the second largest party in the country (see Figure 7.1). The radical left SP developed a populist profile in the 1990s (Vossen 2012). Since then, the party has gained much electoral support, reaching third position in 2006 with 16.6 per cent of the vote. However, the SP has not managed to keep up its electoral progress, declining to sixth position with 9.1 per cent of the votes in the most recent national election of 2017. Although the party has moderated its far-left profile over time, it remains the most left-wing party in parliament. The three mainstream parties – the left-wing Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA – Labour Party), the centrist Christen-Democratisch Appel (CDA  – Christian Democratic Appeal) and the conservative liberal VVD have dominated the political scene for a long time. The VVD is the most right-wing of the three, the CDA is positioned slightly right of the centre and the PvdA is seen as centre-left (Van Klingeren, Zaslove, and Verbeek 2017, 116). Together, these parties used to gain more than 80 per cent of the vote in national elections in the 1970s and the 1980s, with the Christian-Democrats often being the kingmakers (as the centrist party that could form a coalition with both the VVD and the PvdA) (Friso, Van Baalen, and Wilp 2018). In the 1990s, mainstream parties started experiencing electoral decline and the CDA lost its role as the kingmaker. In fact, no mainstream party has managed to score 30 per cent or more of the vote since 1989, and in 2015 the three mainstream parties together lacked a majority for the first time. After a brief section explaining how electoral competition works in the Netherlands, what is left of this chapter will be dedicated to discussing how

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mainstream and populist parties have competed for votes and related to each other. This will allow us to uncover the dynamics of party competition in the country, in line with the overall aims of this volume.

Electoral competition in the Netherlands The Dutch electoral system is very open and inclusive, with a low electoral threshold and a nationwide single electoral district of 150 seats, making it possible to enter parliament with 0.67 per cent of the national vote (Krouwel and Lucardie 2008). Also because of this, political competition is historically fragmented here, with about ten parties being usually represented in Parliament (ROB 2016). This relatively high fragmentation is typical of countries with a proportional electoral system and a consensus-based political culture (Lijphart 1999). More recently, since the 1990s, electoral volatility has increased, although voters do not usually cross the ideological left-right divide (Andeweg and Thomassen 2011;Van der Meer, Walter, and Aelst 2015). Increasing volatility has also affected the stability of the party system. While the three traditionally dominant mainstream parties have been declining, parties at the flanks of the political spectrum – LPF, PVV, and SP – have grown (ROB 2016). Among the many new parties that have entered parliament since the 1990s (63 since 1989), the PVV and the SP have been exceptionally successful (Krouwel and Lucardie 2008) (see Figure 7.1). The electoral breakthrough of populist parties on the right and the left of the political spectrum can be explained, to some extent, by electoral volatility, as voters are now more open to new offerings. While Dutch citizens tend to support democratic ideals, their respect for authorities has declined in recent years, with the electorate having become more cynical towards politics (Hakhverdian, van der Brug, and de Vries 2012; Pauwels 2014). Supporters of Dutch populist parties demonstrate relatively low levels of political trust; this is particularly the case for PVV voters (Pauwels 2014). While the SP pressed the political mainstream from the left, it did so on socioeconomic issues rather than immigration. In the 1990s, the SP profited from a favourable opportunity structure as the PvdA shifted to the centre in socio-economic terms and alienated substantial numbers of loyal voters – for instance, by supporting reductions in social security and industrial disability payments (Van der Steen 1995, 176, 183). Initially, the SP also challenged the mainstream parties on immigration and integration issues. Highly critical of immigration and Islam at the beginning of the 1980s, it eventually moderated its positions since then and, as mentioned, started to focus mainly on socio-economic issues. (Lucardie and Voerman 2012, 44–45; Van Kessel 2015, 10) Accordingly, its voter support differs from that of the PVV. While the PVV has been able to mobilize less educated voters, this was mostly not the case for the social populist SP (Pauwels 2014, 187). Moreover, PVV supporters demonstrate lower levels of tolerance towards immigrants, while SP voters are more

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focused on income equality (Akkerman, Zaslove and Spruyt 2017, 392) The SP is therefore mainly involved in competition with mainstream parties when socioeconomic issues are at stake, while immigration issues have been central to the electoral success of the PVV. Even so, the overall impact of the SP on mainstream parties has been limited, even on socio-economic matters (Otjes 2012, 207, 266). The electoral success of populist radical-right parties (PRRPs) (Mudde 2007) was also due to the opportunity structure provided by the party system (AbouChadi 2016). As mainstream parties tended to converge on immigration issues, they provided an opportunity to entrepreneurial parties to exploit a growing demand for restrictive policies and those fostering monoculturalism, something only the mainstream right-wing VVD made an effort to tackle. Hence in the early 1990s, the VVD began to emphasize its concern about immigration and integration, demanded that newcomers adapted to Dutch norms and values and opened up a debate about the alleged incompatibility of Islam with Western culture. But, as the VVD moved to the centre again in the late 1990s, this provided an opportunity to the radical right to take full ownership of the issue. Moreover, the demonization of anti-immigration parties appeared to decrease in the country after the turn of the millennium. While PRRPs did not manage to break the cordon sanitaire the other parties had put up during the 1990s, the media-savvy Pim Fortuyn finally managed to do so in the local and national elections of 2002, with the newly established LPF. The 9/11 attacks in the United States in 2001 and the fear that more terrorist attacks would be waged against Western countries sparked intense debate about immigration and integration in the Netherlands. After the electoral breakthrough of the LPF in 2002, the strategy of the Dutch media and of centre-right parties changed, with this party (and later the PVV) not having to face a cordon sanitaire anymore. Having better ‘reputational shields’ and being better equipped to fend off accusations of racism and extremism, since they could not easily be associated with (neo-)Nazism or fascism (Van Heerden 2014), the LPF and the PVV found it easier to avoid being marginalized. After all, both Pim Fortuijn and Geert Wilders had been members of mainstream parties before creating their own organizations. It is also worth noticing that the Dutch media began to pay more, and often disproportionate, attention to the voters and representatives of PRRPs (Akkerman 2016), and this may also have been a factor in convincing political parties to also change strategy towards these challengers. Hence the informal cordon sanitaire that had been in place against PRRPs in the 1990s appeared to be no longer tenable in 2002, and the centre-right VVD and CDA began to pursue a more accommodative strategy towards the LPF first, and later the PVV. Proof that things had changed was provided by the fact that the LPF entered government with the latter parties in 2002, as a member of the Balkenende I cabinet (after Pim Fortyun himself had been murdered). Although this experiment appeared to be short-lived and led to the quick demise of the LPF, voters soon found a credible successor party, as Geert Wilders defected from the VVD and established the PVV in 2006, by focusing on themes similar to those of the LPF (i.e. immigration, religion, and identity). Four years later, the PVV not only became

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the third largest party in the country with 15.5 per cent of the vote in a national election, but it also became an informal coalition partner of the Dutch centre-right minority cabinet Rutte I, a coalition that eventually broke down in April 2012. This was yet further proof of the fact that PRRPs could now be accepted by other parties as legitimate partners of government.

Policy shifts on immigration issues The Netherlands is an interesting case study for those wishing to assess interactions between populist and mainstream parties. Indeed, since the stunning electoral rise of the LPF in 2002 and the electoral breakthrough of the PVV in 2006, issues like immigration and integration have become highly important to electoral competition in the country (Pellikaan, de Lange, and van der Meer 2007; van Klingeren et al. 2017), being the object of much debate and gaining salience in political campaigns (Aarts and Thomassen 2008; Pellikaan et al. 2007, 293). Only after the financial and economic crisis of 2008 did socio-economic issues dominate an election campaign for a while (with cultural issues like integration coming second in terms of importance) (Dekker and Den Ridder 2011, 33; SCP 2009, 72; de Volkskrant 2010). Mainstream parties have different options when confronted by successful populist parties that politicize immigration issues, as they can dismiss, challenge or co-opt the agenda of their competitors (see Chapter 3). Moreover, they can even adopt an openly accommodative strategy and co-operate with the populist challenger. There are two main reasons why parties shift policies (Adams 2012). First of all, parties can be responsive to changes in voters’ preferences and keep an eye on changes in public opinion. Second, they can react to electoral threats from other parties (2012). More specifically, credible electoral threats from PRRPs motivate mainstream parties to co-opt their positions on immigration issues. Comparative research suggests that right-wing mainstream parties tend to respond to electorally successful PRRPs by shifting to the right on immigration issues (Akkerman 2015;Van Spanje 2010). The effects on left-wing mainstream parties, however, vary (Abou-Chadi and Krause 2018; Akkerman 2015; Alonso and Claro da Fonseca 2012; Bale et al. 2010;Van Klingeren et al. 2017). This chapter will assess the changes in immigration policies of the three Dutch mainstream parties between 2006 and 2017, by focusing particularly on the extent to which (some) of them co-opted the positions of the PVV in reaction to the electoral threat this posed to them.

Mainstream parties and the strategy of exclusion from government Mainstream parties can attempt to compete electorally with PRRPs by marginalizing them, as happened in the Netherlands in the 1990s. This seemed an effective electoral strategy at the time, as the excluded PRRPs did not manage to overcome their stigma as political pariahs in order to gain broad electoral support. The PVV, however, was never treated as a political pariah (Van Heerden 2014: 33), as we have

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mentioned above. Its path to legitimacy had to some extent been paved by the LPF, at a time when Islamic terrorism had become a highly significant topic, due to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States. In addition, as already mentioned, these parties had effective ‘reputational shields’. As a result, the LPF and PVV did not have to face a cordon sanitaire by the media and other political parties, and strategic flexibility became an option for mainstream parties when dealing with them. Hence, while those who chose to challenge the main policies of the PVV by adopting a ‘clashing strategy’ (see Chapter  3) would not include that party as a coalition partner, those who did not have to bridge large policy gaps found it was seen as acceptable to co-operate with it (De Lange 2012). Yet electoral competition could provide an incentive to exclude the PVV from government anyway. The strategic choice to exclude the PVV from power looked attractive to a mainstream party when there was a prospect that it could win back those PVV voters that cared about their party taking on government responsibilities. In other words, voters for whom both the PVV and some mainstream party were credible options may be expected to vote for the mainstream party if the PVV could be excluded from government. While the PvdA consistently excluded the PVV as potential coalition partner over time, the mainstream right-wing parties CDA and VVD accepted it as an informal coalition partner in 2010. They changed tack in 2017, however, by excluding it as a potential coalition partner during the election campaign and maintaining this position during the period of cabinet formation. This chapter will assess why the two mainstream right-wing parties changed their strategies in 2017.

Periodization and measurement Parties’ policy positions on immigration issues will be assessed over time starting in 2006 (that is, the first national election fought by the PVV), until the most recent national election of 2017. The reactions of mainstream parties regarding cooperation in national office will be analysed by focusing on the election campaigns of 2010 and 2017. During these two elections the right-wing mainstream parties opted for contrasting strategies, while the PvdA stuck to its line that the PVV should be excluded from government. To measure policy shifts on immigration issues this study relies on a dataset which is based on the Nativist Immigration and Integration Policy (NIIP) index. The index enables a fine-grained and differentiated analysis of concrete policy proposals in election manifestoes (Akkerman 2012, 2015). The NIIP index distinguishes at the highest level of analysis the broad policy domains of ‘immigration’ and ‘integration’. The range of positions the index covers go from the cosmopolitan to the nationalist ends of the spectrum. Hence policy proposals that are restrictive on immigration matters and in favour of assimilation are denoted as ‘nationalist’, whereas proposals that favour open borders and cultural pluralism are regarded as ‘cosmopolitan’. This dimension ranges from positive scores on the nationalist side

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to negative scores on the cosmopolitan side. For instance, nationalists are in favour of high hurdles for, or a wholesale stop to, worker immigration, asylum and family reunion, alongside zero tolerance for, and expulsion of, ‘sans papiers’. With respect to integration, cultural assimilation and loyalty to the nation are highly valued. For instance, PRRPs set relatively high requirements when it comes to knowing the national language, and they add requirements concerning civic orientation, and the knowledge of national history and culture. Moreover, they tend to demand loyalty oaths and commitment to what are regarded as national political and cultural values. These parties also propose restrictive policies concerning Islamic attire (e.g. headscarves or burkas), the opening of mosques and Islamic schools, and so on, while they tend to privilege Christian attire, churches, schools, and so on.These aspects of immigration and integration policies can be looked at systematically, with pledges embracing cosmopolitanism scoring negatively (from -0.5 to -1), and those embracing nationalism/nativism scoring positively (from 0.5 to 1).1 To measure electoral ‘theft’, hence possibly explain policy shifts, it is common to consider past election results. ‘Theft’ tends to be operationalized in large-n cases as electoral decline of mainstream parties or success for PRRPs (Akkerman 2015; Van Spanje 2010). A case-study approach allows for a more detailed discussion that specifies the causes of electoral decline of mainstream parties by identifying the ‘thieves’ that are ‘robbing’ them of their votes; in turn, the causes of the PRRPs’ success can be identified by considering what parties are being ‘robbed’ by them. For our purposes here, the voter flows between parties in past elections will be analysed in order to assess which mainstream parties should fear electoral losses to the PVV.

Public opinion and immigration Since the beginning of the century immigration issues have been high on the political agenda in the Netherlands (Pellikaan et al. 2007, 298; Van der Meer et al. 2012). The LPF and PVV politicized them, by drawing attention to events and policies related mainly to Islam and integration, while fear of terrorist attacks in the name of Islam was stoked by the murder of the film director and producer Theo van Gogh by a Muslim fundamentalist in 2004. Wilders had left the VVD shortly before this event took place, and was put under strict and permanent surveillance, having received death threats. While tensions over immigration and Islam had escalated in the Netherlands, creating a fertile environment for the dramatization of immigration (Berkhout, Sudulich, and van der Brug 2015), public opinion had already changed even before 9/11. From the early 1990s onwards, opinion surveys showed that immigration was perceived as the most important problem facing the Netherlands (Aarts and Thomassen 2008; Pellikaan et al. 2007).The three primary mainstream parties  – CDA, VVD, and PvdA  – chose to play down the importance of this issue during the 1990s (Van Kessel 2011), opting for a dismissive strategy, with the exception of a short-lived attempt by the VVD at the beginning

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of the decade to respond to concerns about immigration by sparking debate about multiculturalism. Mainstream parties responded to calls for action with new policy initiatives, such as proposing civic integration courses to advance integration, but by seeking to achieve wide consensus on this they basically tried to neutralize the issue. After 9/11 and the breakthrough of the LPF, however, political debates on the topic became more polarized and competition became more centrifugal (Berkhout et al. 2015). In the 1990s the Dutch electorate had become overall more negative about immigration and multiculturalism. Since then, public opinion has remained fairly stable, with positive and negative views on immigration fluctuating around the mean (Breugelmans et al. 2009; Huijnk and Dagevos 2012). Even during the so-called refugee crisis, which reached a peak in the second half of 2015 and at the beginning of 2016, public opinion did not change much. Although concerns about refugees ranked high on the agenda, there was also growing support for accepting some. Polarization at the margins had increased, but the large group of voters in the middle had remained more or less neutral (NOS 2016; NOS 2017a; Rooduijn 2017; SCP 2016).2 Responsiveness to public opinion, therefore, can hardly be said to provide the explanation for the fact that mainstream parties shifted position on immigration after the turn of the millennium. It is much more likely that it was the increasing electoral threat coming from the right that forced mainstream parties to reconsider their positions. As Figure  7.2 shows, the PVV was always an outlier as far as its position on immigration issues was concerned. Even its main rival, the newcomer FvD, was more moderate than Wilders’ party when it was created in 2017. The mainstream parties were initially very close in 2006, but then started to diverge after the PVV emerged as a serious electoral competitor in the same year. The VVD clearly shifted to the right in 2010 and remained there in subsequent years. The CDA also shifted to the right, but only a little. The PvdA held on to its positions in 2010 and 2012, and even shifted in the opposite direction (i.e. towards a more inclusionary approach) in 2017. The SP had an outspoken cosmopolitan policy profile in 2006, but then shifted to the right in the following elections, overcoming the PvdA on the right in 2017. Nevertheless, the policy programmes of the PvdA and SP remained committed to a cosmopolitan approach. As already mentioned, the remarkable policy shift of the VVD cannot be interpreted as a response to changes in public opinion. Public opinion about immigration and integration remained overall stable after 2000, in fact there was even a slight shift towards a more positive view of immigration and integration since 2008 (Boonstoppel, van Ewijk, and van Elfrinkhof 2015; Huijnk and Dagevos 2012). The ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015/16 did not have an overall negative effect on public opinion, as we have mentioned above, and a large group of voters remained more or less neutral on the issue. Rather than catering to this large group in the middle, the VVD in particular held on to its restrictive and mono-cultural positions. This chapter argues that this, and other shifts by mainstream parties, should be explained with reference to electoral competition.

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FIGURE 7.2

Policy shifts on immigration issues, 2006–2017

Source: My own analysis of party positions in election manifestoes.

The impact of electoral ‘theft’ Of the three mainstream parties, the VVD was by far the most at risk of losing votes to the PVV. When the PVV participated in the national election in 2006 as a newcomer, for instance, the VVD lost 8 per cent of its vote to it (Lucardie et al. 2008, 25). The PvdA, on the other hand, lost most votes to the left-wing populist SP (2008). The analysis of voter intentions between 2006 and 2010 clearly shows that a high percentage of PVV voters had considered voting for the VVD (and vice versa), while such percentage was very low for the PvdA and the PVV. The flow of votes was also moderate between CDA and PVV (Van der Meer et al. 2012). The GreenLeft and the SP were far more threatening to the PvdA than the PVV, while the VVD, and to a lesser extent the CDA, were most vulnerable to competition from Wilders’ party. This remained the case over time. In 2010, again the PvdA hardly lost any votes to the PVV, while the VVD suffered most from its competition (Van der Meer et al. 2012). The CDA lost mainly to the VVD and far less to the PVV. The VVD, therefore, had a stronger incentive than the other two mainstream parties to attempt to beat the PVV by co-opting its policy positions. In 2017, the PvdA was decimated – shrinking from 38 to 9 seats in parliament – but the PVV profited only marginally

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from the large-scale defection of PvdA voters to other parties, again confirming that the two parties were not really in competition with each other. When, in the run up to the 2017 election, undecided voters were asked which sets of parties they may vote for, the PVV was usually mentioned alongside the VVD, and hardly ever together with the PvdA (NOS 2017b; Van de Wardt 2017). Hence the evidence shows that the VVD was the most direct competitor of the PVV, followed (at a distance) by the more centrist CDA. The PvdA had much more to fear from competition on its left than from the PVV. The reactions of the mainstream parties, therefore, confirm the idea that those that experienced electoral ‘theft’ tended to co-opt the policy positions of the PVV in order to minimize the threat posed by this party to their survival.

Including or excluding the PVV as a coalition partner? 2010 versus 2017 On 20 February 2010 the Balkenende IV cabinet – consisting of a coalition of CDA, PvdA and a small protestant party, the ChristenUnie (CU – Christian Union) – fell and an early election was announced for 9 June of the same year. As soon as the government fell, the PvdA claimed that the PVV should not be considered as a potential coalition partner in a future cabinet. Hence the party appealed to the CDA to make a statement excluding this possibility, rather than keeping its options open.This initiative makes clear that the PvdA chose an adversarial/marginalization strategy when it came to co-operation in office with the radical right. However, the CDA refused to play along, with its leader Balkenende only going as far as saying that the possibility of the CDA governing with the PVV was hardly conceivable. The VVD, on the other hand, emphasized that governing with the PVV was a more likely option than governing with the PvdA (NOS 2010), thus suggesting the possibility of full co-operation with the populist challenger. PVV leader Geert Wilders had initially excluded the option of governing with the VVD, but eventually stated his preference for a coalition with VVD and CDA. In other words, while the VVD and the CDA chose to keep their options open, the PvdA said it would exclude the PVV. It is clear that the VVD and the CDA were reluctant to jeopardize their prospects for office on this occasion.With the VVD eventually battling for first place with the PvdA (Holsteyn 2011), and attracting votes from the radical right, the party felt that excluding the PVV would have reduced its chances of creating a right-wing government coalition after the elections. As the electoral pressure of the PVV declined and the VVD eyed the chance to become the largest party in the country, taking control of the government could be prioritized over electoral goals. The exclusion of the PVV as a coalition partner by the PvdA was not caused by electoral competition with it, as we have seen, but was rather meant to emphasize the cosmopolitan profile of the PvdA (as the polls did not give it a good reason to change its position on this issue). Immediately after the fall of the Balkenende IV cabinet the party was expected to increase its tally of parliamentary seats from 21 to

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27, and then grew even further in the polls as a new leader, Job Cohen, took over (Holsteyn 2011). The latter adopted a clashing strategy vis-à-vis Wilders during the campaign of 2010, feeling it was important to remark the distance between his party and the PVV. Hence Cohen called Wilders ‘a danger for the rule of law’ in a television debate (RTL 2010), while the latter characterized the PvdA leader in a TVspot as ‘100 per cent pro-Islam’. He also targeted him as a politician that was soft on integration, someone who tried to solve problems by having tea with Muslim representatives (PVV 2010). Hence, ultimately, the PvdA did not deviate from its clashing strategy, talked of excluding the PVV from government and emphasized its cosmopolitan profile, without trying to target PVV voters. The Dutch parliamentary election of 15 March 2017 was viewed internationally as a key test of whether populism was on the rise. A growth of support for PRRPs was expected, as the ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015/2016, the Brexit referendum and the election of US President Donald Trump had increased expectations of a populist, anti-globalization surge. The PVV profited from this situation and – according to the polls  – had become a contender for first position, which would have given it the upper hand in forming a government. However, in ideological terms, the PVV had radicalized since 2010 and had become increasingly isolated (Akkerman 2016). For example, in March 2014 Wilders had made a controversial statement about Moroccan immigrants for which he was roundly condemned by the other parties and the media. He was subsequently tried and convicted for hate speech due to this statement. Moreover, the PVV had proven to be an untrustworthy coalition partner when it was included as a support party in the Rutte I  cabinet that was sworn in in 2010, only to bring it down prematurely in 2012. This, together with its radicalization, also made it a not very attractive coalition partner for others. The CDA’s leader, Sybrand Buma, ruled out his party would govern alongside the PVV long before the election of 2017, and repeatedly confirmed this position. If the VVD had decided to exclude the PVV, too, the latter would effectively have been barred from government, as there would have been no potential coalition partners willing to govern with it. When the election campaign gathered steam in January 2017, Mark Rutte decided that the VVD, too, would not enter into a coalition with the PVV. The fact that the decision was taken at the last moment reveals that this was not primarily a reaction to the PVV’s radicalization (and Wilders’ indictment for offending Dutch Moroccans back in 2014), but rather a strategic move. The VVD was under pressure to prevent the PVV from becoming the largest party and had suffered its competition throughout the campaign. In 2015 and 2016, the PVV had been doing extremely well in the polls, and had been expected to gain more than 30 seats, while the VVD was remaining far below that figure (Peilingwijzer 2017). With polls suggesting that the PVV had a chance of becoming the largest party for the first time, the horse race between VVD and PVV created a situation in which the VVD could hope to draw strategic voters from the PVV, and voters from other parties who wanted to prevent the PVV ending up as the largest party (and thus having a go at forming the government). Hence the electoral opportunity that could be created by announcing the exclusion of the PVV from government made the increased risk of

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protracted coalition talks after the elections worthwhile (NOS 2015).The CDA had experienced intense internal conflict due to the decision to govern with the support of the PVV in 2010, and the coalition had not been successful. To risk another experiment of the same kind was not an attractive option for them.The CDA therefore excluded the PVV as a coalition partner, too, but opted not to clash with it on immigration issues. On the contrary, both the VVD and the CDA attempted to attract voters from the PVV by drawing media attention to their ‘tough’ positions on immigration and integration. For instance, Prime Minister Rutte published an open letter in major newspapers that spoke to the worries of voters about cultural cohesion, calling on immigrants to adapt to Dutch values or leave. Therefore, the VVD and the CDA adopted a strategy that, while marginalizing the PVV as an ‘actor’, was aimed at co-opting some of its key policies. Competition with the PVV also fuelled an escalating diplomatic feud with Turkey. Shortly before the election, VVD leader and prime minister Rutte barred the Turkish Foreign Minister from entering the Netherlands, and Dutch authorities subsequently detained and expelled the Turkish Family Affairs Minister to prevent her from addressing a rally in support of the April 2017 Turkish constitutional referendum in Rotterdam, citing security concerns. The VVD aimed to demonstrate that it could be as tough as the PVV when Turkey was suspected of trying to influence Dutch citizens with a Turkish background. The rhetorical strategy of the VVD (imitating the provocative tone that had been Geert Wilders’ trademark) also showed that the party was trying to take ownership of issues the PVV had focused on. CDA leader Buma followed the example of the VVD leader and stepped up efforts to compete rhetorically with the PVV, too, by highlighting cultural issues during the campaign. This included emphasizing the party’s Christian identity and focusing its message on family values and cultural traditions, talking up the Christian-Jewish roots of the Dutch nation (NRC Handelsblad 2012, 6–10). This co-optation strategy was mainly rhetorical, because the CDA leader remained vague about the policy implications of going ‘back’ to Christian-Jewish roots. The only concrete proposal made in this period was a requirement for all schoolchildren to stand up and sing the national anthem. In contrast to the strategy adopted by the VVD and the CDA, which combined marginalization of the PVV with co-optation of its positions on immigration (or at least its rhetoric), the PvdA followed a different path. Since it could not hope to attract strategic voters from the PVV, who were much more likely to defect to the VVD or to the CDA, the PvdA chose a strategy of exclusion of the PVV from government, in combination with a clashing strategy that strengthened its cosmopolitan profile.

Conclusion As we have discussed in this chapter, the ways in which Dutch mainstream parties competed with the PVV on immigration issues diverged. Whereas the rightwing mainstream parties  – and in particular the VVD  – chose to co-opt the PVV’s proposals, the PvdA held on to its positions, and even moved further in an

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adversarial, cosmopolitan direction, thus clashing with Wilders’ party.The divergent reaction of the PvdA is not unique among Social Democratic parties in Western Europe (Abou-Chadi and Krause 2018; Akkerman 2015; Alonso and Claro da Fonseca 2012; Bale et  al. 2010; Van Klingeren et  al. 2017). Fairly unique for the Netherlands, however, is that political competition is also marked by the existence of a quite successful far-left populist party, the SP. This has posed an electoral threat to the PvdA at times, but it competed with it mainly on socio-economic issues. This chapter has argued that the divergence between the behaviour of mainstream parties is best explained by looking at how likely they were to lose votes to a radical right challenger. The PvdA was the least likely to lose votes to (or gain them from) the PVV, while the voter flows between CDA and PVV were moderate. The VVD was the most vulnerable among the mainstream parties to electoral ‘theft’ from the PVV, and hence co-opted its positions on immigration issues. The CDA was electorally less vulnerable to competition with the PVV than the VVD, hence shifted somewhat to the right on immigration issues, but to a less noticeable degree. Moreover, as we have seen, policy shifts by the mainstream parties cannot be explained by changes in public opinion on immigration issues, as this remained overall stable after the turn of the millennium. Even during the ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015/16 public opinion did not change overall, even though it became more polarized at the flanks.The increasing radicalization of mainstream parties on immigration policies since the rise of the PVV suggests that a representational gap is emerging between mainstream parties and a large group of voters in the centre with moderate opinions on immigration. A more precise and differentiated comparison of party positions and public opinion would be required to assess the existence of such a gap (see O’Grady and Abou-Chadi 2019;Van Ditmars and de Lange 2019). As we have seen, mainstream parties also diverged when it came to including the PVV in government. The PvdA said in 2010 that it would exclude the PVV, but CDA and VVD remained open to cooperation with it. In 2017, the mainstream parties converged in excluding the PVV for the first time, but for different reasons. When the PVV profited from the ‘refugee crisis’ and the polls indicated that it might become the largest party in the parliamentary election of March 2017, the VVD and CDA decided to exclude it as a coalition partner in order to attract strategic voters from it who might have valued government participation. Hence VVD leader Rutte and CDA leader Buma combined the claim they would exclude the PVV from government with an attempt to appease some of its voters, by co-opting some of its positions and rhetoric. In sum, the reactions of the mainstream parties in terms of policy shifts on immigration issues and with respect to the exclusion of the PVV as a coalition partner in government diverged substantially and depended to a large extent on their electoral overlap with the PVV.

Notes 1 The unit of analysis is the pledge. Compared to quasi-sentences, sentences or other units of text, pledges provide the most substantive understanding of party positions and are

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therefore the best units to use in this context. Pledges are defined as a stated commitment to carry out some action or produce some outcome. 2 The phenomenon described here is not restricted to the Netherlands; it can also be observed in other Western European countries, such as Belgium, Norway, and the United Kingdom (Rooduijn 2017).

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Otjes, Simon P. 2012. Imitating the Newcomer. How, When and Why Established Political Parties Imitate the Policy Positions and Issue Attention of New Political Parties in the Electoral and Parliamentary Arena: The Case of the Netherlands. Doctoral dissertation, Institute of Political Science, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Leiden University. Pauwels, Teun. 2014. Populism in Western Europe. Comparing Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands. London: Routledge. Peilingwijzer. 2017. https://app.nos.nl/datavisualisatie/peilingen/, last accessed 1 October 2020. Pellikaan, Huib, Sarah L. de Lange, and Tom van der Meer. 2007. ‘Fortuyn’s Legacy: Party System Change in the Netherlands.’ Acta Politica 42, no. 2–3 (July): 282–302. PVV. 2010. ‘PVV 2010’ www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-TIejycWko&feature=results_video &playnext=1&list=PL62B95992DB75EB60, last accessed 1 October 2020. ROB. 2016. Signalement. Politieke versnippering. Den Haag: Raad voor het Openbaar Bestuur. www.rob-rfv.nl, last accessed 1 October 2020. Rooduijn, Matthijs. 2017.‘Overal ruk naar rechts?’, 27 November 2017. http://stukroodvlees. nl/overal-ruk-naar-rechts/, last accessed 1 October 2020. RTL.2010.‘Premiersdebat’,26 February 2010.www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxvPXNYhTc8, last accessed 1 October 2020. SCP. 2009. De sociale staat van Nederland 2009. Den Haag: Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau. SCP. 2016. Integratie in zicht? De integratie van migranten in Nederland op acht terreinen nader bekeken. Den Haag:  Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau. www.scp.nl/Publicaties/Alle_ publicaties/Publicaties_2016/Integratie_in_zicht, last accessed 1 October 2020. Van Ditmars, Mathilde M., and Sarah L. de Lange. 2019. ‘Differential Representation? The Gaps between Mainstream and Niche Party Representatives and their Voters in the Netherlands.’ Acta Politica 54, no. 2 (April): 295–314. Van Heerden, Sjoerdje. 2014. What Did You Just Call Me? A  Study on the Demonization of Political Parties in the Netherlands between 1995 and 2011. Dissertation, University of Amsterdam. Van Kessel, Stijn. 2011. ‘Explaining the Electoral Performance of Populist Parties:  The Netherlands as a Case Study.’ Perspectives on European Politics and Society 12, no. 1: 68–88. Van Kessel, Stijn, 2015. ‘Dutch Populism During the Crisis.’ In Populism in the Shadow of the Great Recession, edited by Hanspeter Kriesi and Takis S. Pappas, 109–124. Colchester: ECPR Press. Van Klingeren, Mafijn, Andrej Zaslove, and Bertjan Verbeek. 2017. ‘Accommodating the Dutch Populist Radical Right in a Multi-party System.’ In The European Mainstream and the Populist Radical Right, edited by Pontus Odmalm and Eva Hepburn, 108–127. New York: Routledge. Van der Meer, Tom, Erika van Elzas, Rozemarijn Lubbe, and Wouter van der Brug. 2012. ‘Kieskeurige kiezers:  een panelstudie naar de veranderlijkheid van partijvoorkeuren.’ Ben M:  Tijdschrift voor Beleid, Politiek en Maatschappij 39 no. 2:  153–178 file:///Users/ idoweijers/Downloads/Kieskeurige+Kiezers.pdf Van der Meer, Tom, Annemarie Walter, and Peter van Aelst. 2015. ‘The Contingency of Voter Learning:  How Election Debates Influenced Voters’ Ability and Accuracy to Position Parties in the 2010 Dutch Election Campaign.’ Political Communication 33, no. 1: 136–157. Van Spanje, Joost. 2010. ‘Contagious Parties: Anti-immigration Parties and Their Impact on Other Parties’ Immigration Stances in Contemporary Western Europe.’ Party Politics 16, no. 5 (September): 563–586. Van der Steen, Paul. 1995. ‘De doorbraak van de ‘Gewone Mensen’-partij:  De SP en de Tweede-Kamerverkiezingen van 1994.’ In Jaarboek Documentatiecentrum Nederlandse

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Politieke Partijen 1994, edited by Gerrit Voerman, 172–189. Groningen:  University of Groningen. Van de Wardt, Marc. 2017. ‘Kiezers zweven minder, maar partijen hebben nog veel te winnen of verliezen.’ https://verkiezingen.lissdata.nl/resultaten/, last accessed 1 October 2020. Vossen, Koen. 2012. ‘Marginaal of machtig? Populisme in de Nederlandse geschiedenis.’ Bijdragen en Mededelingen Geschiedenis der Nederlanden/Low Countries Historical Review 127, no. 22: 28–54.

8 SWITZERLAND Laurent Bernhard, Cecilia Biancalana, and Oscar Mazzoleni

Introduction Switzerland is one of the most affluent and politically stable democracies in the world, characterized by socio-cultural and institutional segmentation (McRae 1964; Lijphart 1984; Kobach 1993). The Swiss Confederation is built around four official languages and different religions and, consequently, it might be difficult to posit the existence of a homogeneous people or a common heartland here, as populists always need to do (Canovan 1981; Mudde 2004; Taggart 2000). Since the government is based on power-sharing rules and all the main parties are also enduring government parties, it would be hard to identify a political actor that does not belong to the ‘corrupt elite’, too. Switzerland also offers the paradigmatic case of a country relying heavily on direct democracy. Swiss citizens have the opportunity to express themselves in referenda and initiatives, thus making clear to whom sovereignty ultimately belongs (Canovan 1999). However, while some may see these features as impediments to the spread of populism in the country, they have in fact created conditions that have facilitated the growth of the most successful right-wing populist party (RPP) in Western Europe:  the Schweizerische Volkspartei (SVP  – Swiss People’s Party).1 The literature has already investigated several aspects of the SVP’s success (e.g. Kriesi et  al. 2005; Albertazzi 2008; Albertazzi and McDonnell 2015; Mazzoleni 2008, 2016, 2018). There is no doubt that the party’s growth increased the competitiveness of the political system and its overall politicization, contentiousness, and polarization (Marcinkowski 2007; Skenderovic 2009b). However, the responses of the so-called mainstream parties to the challenges posed by the SVP, and how the party itself adapted to the new context in which it operated, have not been analysed in depth.

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In fact, among the questions raised by the increasing success of populists in Western Europe, that of their relationship with mainstream parties is increasing regarded as important (Odmalm and Hepburn 2017). Do populists affect mainstream parties, making them change their policy preferences and discourses on key issues, such as immigration, law and order and European integration, or do they ultimately fail to do so? Several studies argue that, to some extent, populist parties have had an impact on their mainstream counterparts, making them shift position in the hope of seizing the ownership of certain issues (Bale et al. 2010; van Spanje 2010; Abou-Chadi and Krause 2018; Minkenberg 2001; Wagner and Meyer 2017). Moreover, it is also relevant to consider how populists perform in a context shaped by their own success and in reaction to mainstream parties. Inspired by recent attempts to analytically grasp this phenomenon (e.g. Taggart and Pirro 2018), we aim to study the interactions between Swiss mainstream parties and the SVP. Given that the SVP is currently the only Swiss nationwide party providing strong populist stances (Bernhard 2017), we do not address the aspect of inter-party populist competition in this chapter.2 The SVP represents a peculiar case in Western European democracies for several reasons. Since the beginning of the 2000s, it has become the most successful Swiss party at national elections, and the one with the biggest parliamentary group. The SVP is currently the Western European populist radical right party (PRRP) (Mudde 2007) with the largest vote share gained in national elections (Bernhard 2016). Moreover, the party has been continuously represented in the federal government during the last decades – apart from a brief period in 2008. At the same time, it has been able to systematically exploit the tools provided by direct democracy for its own purposes. The ‘new’ SVP, however, is a by-product of the ‘old’ – that is a party rooted in Swiss agrarian legacies since the first decades of the twentieth century (Mazzoleni & Skenderovic 2007). Finally, the mainstream parties that compete with it are also long serving members of the government, however the political culture and strength of the SVP dictate that they must govern alongside it (Albertazzi and McDonnell 2015; Mazzoleni 2018). Considering this peculiar configuration, the analysis will focus on the interplay between the largest Swiss parties at federal level: the SVP, the FDP.Die Liberalen (FDP  – The Liberals), the Chistlichdemokratische Volkspartei (CVP  – Christian Democrats) and the Sozialdemokratische Partei der Schweiz (SP – Social Democrats).3 As we will show, responses to the SVP by traditional mainstream parties (i.e. the other parties that form the national government) show a mix of cooperation, co-optation, clashing and dismissive strategies (see Chapter 3 in this volume). Whilst some cooptation tends to become dominant as far as immigration and law and order are concerned, clashing strategies tend to arise when it comes to European integration. However, as the SVP is far from a niche party, one might expect attempts to co-opt its proposals to fail (Meguid 2008). Moreover, mainstream parties can hardly avoid collaborative strategies, too, given that the SVP is their partner in government. The period considered in our analysis covers a wide time span of thirty years (1989–2018), within which the SVP consolidated its success – including the period

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after the global financial crisis of 2007–2008, which did not impact greatly on the growth of the party (Bernhard, Kriesi and Weber 2015). Indeed, and by contrast to most West-European countries, the post-2007 recession only lasted for a year in Switzerland and did not affect the Swiss political agenda to a great extent, arguably not leading to a further strengthening of populism in its wake (see Kriesi and Pappas 2015 on what has happened elsewhere). Due to the absence of a longlasting recession and the fact that the decision-making process covers many years, if not even decades, in the extraordinary stable political context of Switzerland, it is necessary to start from the early 1990s in order to fully understand the growth of populism in this country. The remainder of this chapter is structured as follows. After a brief overview of the structural factors that have facilitated the SVP’s emergence and success, and a discussion of how the party took advantage of such a structure of opportunity (Kitschelt 1986), we will analyse the mainstream parties’ strategies to cope with it by focusing on immigration, law and order, and European integration. The conclusion will summarize how such parties have related to a rising SVP.

The SVP vs ‘the elite’? The rise of the SVP in the 1990s and 2000s is one of the most striking features of the Swiss party system since the Second World War. Moving largely away from its agrarian legacy, in recent decades the party adopted a sharp anti-establishment and anti-immigration stance. It devised a discourse focused on criticizing the political class and ‘defending’ the country’s sovereignty and national identity (see its opposition to international treaties and organizations, allegedly to preserve Switzerland’s isolation and neutrality) (Albertazzi & Mueller 2013; Mazzoleni 2008; Skenderovic 2009a), while embracing liberal conservatism on economic matters. Along with (and arguably because of) its radicalization, the SVP also experienced increasing electoral success, hence becoming the largest party of government – compare the 11.9 per cent of the votes it gained in 1995 with the 29.4 per cent it won in 2015. The party electoral growth has been primarily achieved at the expense of the FDP and the CVP, with the SP largely managing to hold on to its share of the vote (Figure 8.1). The SVP managed to take advantage of some contingent opportunities during the 1990s and the 2000s, as socio-economic changes fostered by globalization and growing European integration started to have an increased impact on the country (Mazzoleni 2008). A  relevant role in the party’s strategy was played by its grassroots, financial resources, strong leadership and durable integration within federal institutions. In fact, the continuous participation of the SVP in national government before and after its ideological radicalization (e.g. Mazzoleni & Skenderovic 2007) is one of the features that differentiate it from most PRRPs in Europe. Having never experienced the life of the ‘outsider’ party, the SVP is a prominent example of a populist party that fully belongs to the ‘mainstream’ (see Chapter 14 of this volume). Whilst being simultaneously in government and in opposition might

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Electoral performance of Swiss government parties in lower chamber elections, 1991–2015 (%)

FIGURE 8.1

Source: Swiss Federal Statistical Office.

seem bizarre, this is not the case in Switzerland, where even the mainstream media rarely even use the term ‘populist’ with reference to this party. To a large extent, therefore, the SVP has always been part of the Swiss mainstream, although since the 1990s it has adopted strong nationalist and populist stances. Due to its close and enduring relationship with other government parties– namely the Liberals, the Christian Democrats, and the Social Democrats  – it is hardly surprising that a cordon sanitaire has never been put in place against it. Against this backdrop, in order to succeed the party took advantage of its internal resources, as mentioned above, but also the opportunities provided by some peculiarly Swiss institutional settings, especially in the government and direct-democratic arenas.

The government arena Among the institutional and political settings favouring the success of the SVP, electoral rules and the structure and functioning of the Swiss government deserve to be cited first. The Swiss government system is unique among contemporary democratic regimes (Lijphart 1984; Linder 2010), as there is no prime minister and each member of the federal executive (the Federal Council) takes on the role of presiding over the government following a one-year turnover. An appreciation of electoral rules is also important to the understanding of how government parties can still play the part of the ‘outsider’ in certain circumstances. Each member of the government is elected by MPs via a majoritarian system based on multiple rounds. According to the informal rule of concordance, the major political parties are represented in government according to their electoral strength. Members of government are expected to comply with the ‘collegiality rule’,

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implying that they have to defend the decisions of the government in public, even if they happen to disagree with them. Due to this rule, members of the Swiss Parliament usually elect moderate and compromise-oriented politicians to the Federal Council (Burgos et al. 2011). Since 1959, the SVP occupied one seat in the Federal Council, which was consistently granted to moderate members of the party.4 Since the 1999 federal elections, however (when the SVP went from being fourth to first party), it started claiming that it should be given an extra seat. Initially, the SP, CVP, and FDP refused.5 However, things changed in 2003, when following yet another electoral victory at a federal election, the SVP could no longer be denied a second government seat, which it gained at the expense of the shrinking CVP (see Figure 8.1). Contrary to the informal rules of the game, the SVP imposed for the job the man that had sparked the party’s radicalization, Christoph Blocher, by threatening to leave government altogether had he not been elected (Church 2004). Thinking that Blocher’s co-optation would help contain the SVP electorally and lead to a government’s turn to the right that would ultimately also suit them, the Liberals of the FDP supported the move, which was opposed by the SP and the CVP. In government, Blocher decisively contributed to the tightening of asylum policies, the lowering of government spending and the abandonment of Switzerland’s strategic goal to join the European Union (EU). He also repeatedly violated the principle of collegiality by constantly interfering in the business of other Federal Councillors and criticizing government decisions in public. In addition, during a visit to Turkey in October 2006, Blocher criticized the Swiss anti-racism provision, which allows for the penal prosecution of racist discrimination as well as the denial of genocide. He also refused to tone down his provocative anti-establishment style. In a programmatic speech held in January 2006, for example, he described two Albanian refugees as criminals and in December 2004 he argued that the federal administration resembled a sheltered workshop for disabled people (geschützte Werkstatt). At the end of Blocher’s first term in office – at the 2007 federal elections – the SVP’s vote share went up again. Despite this, a narrow majority of MPs decided to eject him from the Federal Council due to his unorthodox confrontational behaviour, by replacing him with a moderate member of his own party: Eveline WidmerSchlumpf. While Blocher claimed that this coalition of MPs (built around the SP and the CVP) had no convincing reasons to vote him out, a narrow majority of them remained of the opinion that he could not be ‘domesticated’ via government participation (Church 2008). With most FDP MPs agreeing with Blocher and the SVP (although to no avail), the latter moved into opposition after expelling the cantonal section to which Ms Widmer-Schlumpf belonged, as she had refused to stand down from the government.6 This led to the creation of the Bürgerlich-Demokratische Partei (BDP – Conservative Democratic Party), which attracted some former moderate members of the SVP, alongside Widmer-Schlumpf and also the second SVP Federal Councillor at the time:  Samuel Schmid. Hence the newly created party

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immediately found itself with two seats in government, while the largest party in the country from which it had originated, the SVP, suddenly had none. This situation was not sustainable in the long run and was resolved a year later, as Parliament appointed the SVP’s Ueli Maurer as Minister after Samuel Schmid’s retirement on health grounds. A long-serving party president (1996–2008), Maurer could undoubtedly be considered a representative of the radical right. However, contrary to Blocher, the newly elected Federal Councillor was immediately noted for complying with the principles of collegiality. As is usually the case for members of the Swiss executive, Maurer adopted a pragmatic and technocratic ‘non-partisan’ approach when addressing the public. In fact, he eventually managed to reshape his image, from the strong oppositional figure that he had been into a respected statesman who has to a large extent emancipated himself from the SVP’s pronounced anti-internationalist positions. The same can be said of Guy Parmelin, the other representative of the SVP in government. Elected to the Federal Council in 2015 after Ms Widmer-Schlumpf ’s resignation following the disappointing electoral performance of the BDP in the federal elections of the same year (Bernhard 2016), Parmelin ended up publicly endorsing deepening relations with the EU despite his personal reservations. Yet it is important to stress that the return to government of the SVP did not lead to the moderation of the party in the country at large. Absent a ‘government program’ in Switzerland, Blocher’s party could continue to act independently from its own Federal Councillors and avoid being ‘tamed’. Hence it continued to stick to its positions and mobilize citizens in support of its causes, without changing its ideological profile and mobilization strategy.

The parliamentary arena By considering the linkage between government and parliament one can better understand why parties can afford to be autonomous from their government representatives. Although ministers are elected by MPs, neither them nor the government as a whole can be removed by Parliament.This makes the notion of ‘coalition’ unsuited to the country’s politics. It also means that parties such as the SVP can vote differently from the other government parties in Parliament without necessarily causing government ‘instability’, as the government does not need to ‘prove’ that it enjoys the confidence of Parliament. Because of the absence of a government program, ad hoc alliances formed on specific issues are widespread in Parliament. Studies of roll-call votes in the lower chamber show that in the 1970s and in 1980s there was a fair amount of convergence among all government parties, as a recurrent coalition pattern pitted the FDP, the CVP, and the SVP against the SP (Lüthi, Meyer, and Hirter 1991; Lanfranchi and Lüthi 1999; Schwarz 2009). The period since 1996 has been characterized by new trends, as relevant changes in the distribution of seats within the party groups occurred. Figure 8.2 depicts the development of the most frequent coalitions in the

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Coalitions between government parties in the National Council (Lower House). One-year periods (in percentages)

FIGURE 8.2

Source: smartmonitor.ch (December 2018).

National Council (lower house) from December 1995 to December 2018. Three major trends stand out. First, the percentage of parliamentary votes backed by all government parties went down from 19 to 11 per cent in the course of the full period considered. Second, it became slightly less frequent for all right-wing parties (i.e. CVP, FDP, and SVP) to vote as one against the SP (from 42 to 38 per cent). Third, votes that saw the FDP, CVP, and SP oppose the SVP went up (from 12 to 23 per cent) (Vatter 2018).7 In other words, and as a consequence of the SVP’s radicalization, the traditional left-right cleavage has been losing salience in the country, while clashes between populists (the SVP) and non-populists (the FDP, CVP, and SP) have become more common. The SP, the second largest party, the only left-wing one in government and the one that was ‘co-opted’ last into it, has developed relatively strong links with civil society and trade unions, using referenda and initiatives relatively often in order to counterbalance the strength of the centre-right parties on social and economic issues. It is not surprising for this party to clash with the SVP, along with the traditional right-wing parties. A relatively new trend is one whereby SP and CVP face the SVP and the FDP together (this indeed happened in almost 30 per cent of the votes held in the last one-year period considered), something that is reducing the SVP’s isolation in the Lower Chamber. This is a consequence of the two parties sometimes working together on the election of a government (including in 2013, when Blocher became a Minister), but also of ideological convergence between the two. In fact, the SVP’s radicalization on economic issues coincided with a similar trend within the FDP, as the SVP adopted a more obviously neo-liberal, anti-tax philosophy (Otjes et al. 2018; Mazzoleni 2018). Also traditional mainstream parties must have believed that

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the ‘new’ populist SVP would resign itself to signing up to the Swiss culture of compromise which, after all, the party adhered to in the past. However, this has not happened so far. When crucial foreign and international issues have been at stake (e.g. European integration), the party has increasingly differentiated itself from traditional mainstream parties. Looking more specifically at the strategies used by traditional mainstream parties to ‘contain’ the SVP (see Chapter 3 of this book), the idea of dismissing their competitor would only have been feasible in the 1990s, as the SVP started to grow. This is true especially for the SP, which, as we will see below, tried to diminish the relevance of law-and-order and immigration issues. However, it also applies to the FDP and CVP, when it came to discuss EU-related matters. During the 2000s, it became much harder to adopt this strategy of dismissal, hence even the SP had to start talking about issues such as security and foreign criminals, as these were obviously salient for the electorate, given the success of the SVP. Moreover, in some cases, SP and SVP even started collaborating to an extent vs FDP and CVP, for instance on issues such as the ‘defence’ of public pensions (Mazzoleni 2013). Hence, overall, the three strategies that traditional mainstream parties tended to favour when facing the SVP in the parliamentary arena were cooperation (especially on economic and fiscal issues – see the behaviour of the FDP), co-optation, and all-out clashing (see in particular what happened as the issue of Switzerland’s relation with supranational institutions came up, particularly the discussion of bilateral agreements with the EU). The two ‘centre-right’ parties, the FDP and the CVP, which were also those that had been badly damaged by the electoral success of the SVP, often adopted a mixture of co-optation and cooperation. Consequently, they made alliances with the SVP on many issues, while sometimes being divided in the parliamentary arena, and also when referenda were on the cards (Bühlmann et al. 2012; Schwartz 2009). The frequency of legislative coalitions that included all government parties declined between 1990s and 2013, because the SVP pursued its own strategy on controversial issues such as immigration and welfare (see Afonso and Papadopoulos 2015; Traber 2015; Mazzoleni 2018). In the next section, we will consider the policy-making interactions between the SVP and the three major mainstream parties (FDP, CVP, and SP), by focusing on issues that are core for the radical right, such as asylum/immigration, law and order and the country’s relations with the EU.

Interactions across arenas and the impact of direct democracy When considering the relationship between traditional mainstream parties and the SVP one should not focus exclusively on what happens inside representative institutions. The main goal of the SVP in the last decades has been to become the most important right-wing party in Switzerland, so as to shape politics in a nationalist and conservative direction. In order to achieve this, the SVP has made large use of the means provided by direct democracy, more so than any other government party (except the SP), and in fact usually in opposition to them. The

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opportunities provided by direct democracy have therefore allowed the party to fulfil the role of ‘outsider’ and government party at one and the same time, particularly when focusing on the issues it cares about: immigration, law and order and EU integration. Referenda can virtually be called on any law adopted by Parliament, while popular initiatives allow people to seek partial amendments to the Constitution. As is well known, referenda and initiatives can have a profound impact on the decision-making process in Switzerland. Even simply the fact that any new law could be put to a referendum obliges the legislator to consider the interests of veto players, which include the main national parties. Thus, direct democracy is often mentioned as one of the main culprits behind the ‘consensual’ Swiss political culture, also due to the difficulty of excluding from government any large party that would be able to challenge it via the means offered by direct democracy. On the other hand, however, no member of the executive is expected to resign whenever referenda or initiatives are passed against the advice of the government. In this sense, direct democracy influences voter mobilization and policy-making, but obviously does not affect the stability of the government. Since the beginning of the 1990s, federal referenda and initiatives have been deployed by the SVP, allegedly as an expression of popular sovereignty, but also as the main means through which to challenge the ‘political class’. Hence the party developed an innovative cross-arena strategy of mobilization on its core issues, by forcing government and parliament to include its key issues in the national agenda and to take position on them. Mobilization preceding referenda helped to organize electoral mobilizations before national elections and reinforced the SVP’s ownership of certain themes, with the party investing a lot in terms of communication and marketing. It might therefore be possible to distinguish different types of interplay between the SVP and traditional mainstream parties across different arenas. In what follows, we will consider the three core policy domains of PRRPs in Western Europe (Biard, Bernhard, and Betz 2019):  immigration, law and order and European integration, by focusing on some of the specific initiatives the SVP has embarked on in recent years concerning asylum, the deportation of foreign criminals and bilateral relations between Switzerland and the European Union. A discussion of these themes will allow us to consider the interplay between the SVP and the traditional mainstream parties across the arenas of direct-democracy, parliament and government. This section is based on a systematic reading of the coverage of the three already mentioned themes by the German-language daily newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) from 1989 to 2018 as well as selected official documents, such as the Explanations of the federal government regarding the referenda and popular initiatives we deal with in the empirical part of this chapter.8 For the latter, the number of documents amounts to 13. The decision to focus on the NZZ relates to the fact that it is the only Swiss newspaper of record that was available for the entire period under investigation. We selected all articles published in the section on Swiss politics that dealt with asylum politics, deportations and European politics. More specifically, we used the following search criteria: asylum

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law (Asylgesetz), deportation (Ausschaffung) and European politics (Europapolitik). This procedure resulted in a sample of 3,450 newspaper and online articles.

Clashing and co-optation strategies on asylum matters Considering the introduction of legislation on asylum is very useful for our purposes, this being an important topic for the SVP. Since its first introduction in 1981, the federal asylum law has been subject to no less than 11 major revisions, including a root-and-branch one in 1999. The guiding principle has been to make the law ever more restrictive (under pressure by the SVP). Two popular initiatives launched by the party in the 1990s contributed to this process of continuous tightening of asylum procedures. Despite the fact that these arguably radical proposals were defeated by voters, the wide support they gained encouraged traditional rightwing parties to make substantial policy concessions to the SVP. By contrast, the SP and its allies from the left and civil society actively opposed the introduction of more restrictive asylum legislation and challenged it via referenda. However, their ‘clashing’ strategy ultimately proved unsuccessful. In January 1992 the SVP launched the first popular initiative in the party’s history, which it called: ‘Against illegal immigration’ (AII).The aim was to establish the principle that asylum applications lodged by illegal immigrants should not be dealt with at all. In addition, this initiative demanded a shortening of the period during which failed applicants could lodge an appeal. In order to reduce the economic attractiveness of Switzerland, it also stipulated that the income of working asylum seekers would be managed by the federal authorities so that they could cover the costs incurred while hosting refugees. Proposals of this kind had no chance to be approved by Parliament, and were in fact only supported by some minor radical right parties and the SVP. On 1 December 1996, citizens narrowly rejected this initiative, which was opposed by 53.7 per cent of voters. A post-referendum survey caused quite a stir, as it showed the FDP electorate to be deeply divided on this matter (Hardmeier 1997). Given how much support the defeated initiative had enjoyed, the SVP kept focusing on its objective of tightening asylum legislation. While its MPs failed to incorporate demands from the AII into legislation, they nonetheless managed to tighten the rules and to fight abuses thanks to the support of the FDP. In June 1998, both chambers of Parliament enacted an encompassing revision of the federal asylum law. Apart from some specified rules about the protection of war displaced persons, the introduction of time limits regarding asylum procedures at airports and increased incentives for people who return to their home countries, this reform included an extension of the obligation of asylum seekers to cooperate with Swiss authorities, the dismissal of applications in the case of abuses (such as illegal stay, deception over one’s identity and non-presentation of identity documents) and the detention of people who entered Switzerland despite a ban.The revision of the asylum law as well as its measures on fighting abuses, which immediately entered into force by means of an urgent federal decree, were unsuccessfully challenged by the left and civil society

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organizations in the framework of a referendum held on 13 June 1999 in the context of the Kosovo War. Indeed, 70.8 per cent of voters came out in favour of the urgent federal decree and 70.6 per cent in favour of the revision. In May 1999, in the run-up to the federal elections, the SVP launched another popular initiative on the topic, called: ‘Against asylum abuses’ (AAA). It called for lowering welfare payments to asylum seekers, the dismissal of asylum applications by those who had already made their application in a safe third country, as well measures against airlines that were regarded as not fulfilling their security commitments concerning their passengers. As this initiative was discussed, SP, CVP, and FDP all came out recommending rejection. In fact, on 24 November 2002 49.9 per cent of voters endorsed the initiatives, again showing that the SVP was arguably speaking on behalf of many supporters of the other parties. In a survey conducted after the referendum had taken place, over 90 per cent of those who had voted in favour indicated as their main reason for doing so their dissatisfaction with the country’s asylum policy and political authorities (Hirter and Linder 2003). In addition to this, it emerged that many FDP and CVP voters had in fact supported the initiative against the advice of their own parties (2003). In Switzerland, one does not necessarily need to win a referendum in order to push a specific agenda. A combination of the minority-oriented political culture and fear to lose a fresh referendum on a topic may justify the adoption of a strategy of co-optation, whereby government-sponsored policies basically resemble what had originally been proposed by a failed initiative (Linder 2010). This can be seen in this case, as the Federal Council (i.e. the executive) conceded that a tightening of the federal asylum law was in fact ultimately necessary. As the government put forward its proposal, FDP and CVP backed it, while the SP expressed scepticism, and the SVP said that it did not go far enough. As it happened, the law was further tightened by parliament, with the SVP leader Christoph Blocher, the newly elected Minister for Justice, arguing it should be made stricter and most FDP and CVP MPs also backing the idea.The most significant measures of the bill adopted by both chambers in December 2005 included denying assistance to asylum seekers whose applications had been rejected, adopting more restrictive rules for those who could not provide proof of identity, and introducing a series of coercive and restrictive procedures. The bill also stipulated that applications for asylum received by those who had already dealt with the authorities of countries regarded as safe would no longer be heard by the Swiss authorities. Adopting a clashing strategy, left-wing parties (including the SP) and some dissidents from the right opposed this revision of asylum legislation after it was adopted by Parliament, with the support of the SVP and many FDP and CVP MPs. However, the referendum the left managed to call was lost in September 2006, as 67.8 per cent of voters supported the revised law following a long campaign. Revising the law on asylum matters in 2012, a parliamentary majority made up of SVP, FDP, and CVP introduced some ‘urgent measures’ that resulted in a further tightening of the procedures (Bernhard and Kaufmann 2018). Political actors from the left and civil society organizations (but without the SP) launched another

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referendum to repeal what had been approved, and this again was unsuccessful. On 13 June 2013, these measures were finally approved by a two-third majority of voters, namely 66.8 per cent. In the end, as we have seen, the SVP achieved its goal of tightening asylum legislation, by taking advantage of divisions within other parties, and by making good use of the opportunities provided by direct democracy. To sum up, on matters concerning asylum we have clearly seen that, while the FDP and the CVP mostly co-opted the ideas of the SVP, as they felt the pressure of public opinion, the SP decided to clash with it and lost.

Co-optation on the issue of ‘foreign criminals’ As we have seen above, the SVP is skilled at using federal popular initiatives to reshape the national agenda. Exactly the same strategy was adopted in June 2007 – a few months before the federal elections took place  – when a referendum was launched on a different topic, albeit one having to do, again, with ‘migration’: the initiative for the deportation of foreign criminals (DI). The issue was new, and opened the way for the party’s mobilization in the period leading up to the elections. What is again worthy of comment is the capacity of the SVP to push the traditional mainstream parties in its own direction, using referenda as a crucial pressure tool. The DI represented a major challenge for the traditional mainstream parties. In February 2008, the SVP deposited 200,000 signatures – twice the number required to qualify a popular initiative to the ballot. Trying to co-opt this issue while also toning down the legislation, the FDP lodged a parliamentary initiative which accepted the principle that foreign criminals had to be expelled, but proposed that deportation should only be dished out to those committing very serious offences. However, in the Lower Chamber this parliamentary initiative was rejected, with SP and SVP representatives voting against it for opposite reasons, given that the former judged it too harsh and the latter too lenient. After long discussions, a majority of the representatives in both chambers rejected the DI and agreed that a more moderate counter-proposal should be submitted to voters in addition to the popular initiative.9 While the counter-proposal did take up the initiative’s main concern of not allowing foreigners who had committed crimes to stay in the country, it aimed to comply with the principles of the Federal Constitution and international law by targeting only the most dangerous offenders. The FDP and CVP voted in favour of this counter-proposal, alongside a majority of SP representatives. However, during the referendum campaign, the SP was internally divided, and eventually recommended rejecting both the DI and the counter-proposal. On 28 November 2010, the initiative was adopted by the electorate and the counter-proposal rejected. This was a great victory for the SVP, as its initiative was supported by both a majority of voters (i.e. 52.9 per cent) and cantons (14 cantons plus a half canton voted in favour, out of 23). Importantly, the text of the initiative forced parliament to guarantee implementation within five years. However, as experts consulted by the executive recommended implementing the initiative in ways that the SVP saw as diluting it (in order to comply with the rule of law

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and international law), in 2012 the SVP decided to launch yet another initiative. This was called the ‘enforcement initiative’ (EI) and was aimed primarily at putting pressure on mainstream parties so that they would finally accept a stricter implementation of the original proposal. This new initiative listed many offences that would lead to deportation, including inflicting bodily injury, kidnapping, public incitement to crime or violence, counterfeiting currency or committing sexual offences against children. Feeling the pressure, Parliament eventually rejected the government’s approach to implementation and agreed to take a harder line at the request of the FDP president, Philipp Müller. However, the Council of States (i.e. the higher chamber) chose a middle course between the proposal tabled by the government and that approved by the lower chamber. It therefore introduced a ‘hardship clause’, whereby the courts were given the power to refrain from deporting people in exceptional circumstances. This compromise solution was eventually adopted by Parliament, however the SVP came out against it. With large majorities of representatives in both chambers voting to reject the EI initiative sponsored by the SVP, the electorate eventually opposed it, too, in February 2016, with a majority of 58.9 per cent. While this was a defeat for the SVP, it had ultimately managed to take control of the political agenda by forcing other parties to debate an issue of its choice for a long time. In the end, the SVP’s competitors (the FDP, CVP and, initially, also the SP) felt they did not have a choice but to co-opt the SVP’s approach, while trying to soften its proposal a little. Hence, while the initiative was defeated, tougher legislation on the matter was indeed passed. The added bonus for the SVP was that this whole saga had exposed divisions within the SP on an issue that could be framed as being essentially about the safety and security of Swiss citizens.

Relations with the EU: constant clashing and the growing radicalization of the SVP Switzerland is one of the few Western European countries still outside the EU. However, since the 1990s its relationship with it has been a main preoccupation for both traditional mainstream parties and the SVP. The latter party certainly opposed EU membership – in fact any kind of supranational integration, as this was perceived as a danger for national sovereignty  – however it looked divided on the issue at times. Winning a referendum opposing the idea that the country should join the European Economic Area (EEA) in December 1992, albeit narrowly (i.e. with 50.3 per cent of the vote), represented a first important victory for the radicalized SVP headed by Christoph Blocher. This referendum is generally regarded as the most important of the Swiss post-war period, and the SVP was the only government party that actually opposed EEA membership. Having said this, however, the SVP was not always consistent on these issues, mainly due to internal factionalism (see below). Following the vote rejecting EEA membership, the traditional mainstream parties focused on finding alternative ways to cooperate with the EU, which is a key

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economic partner for the country. Therefore, the federal government negotiated with the EU what will be known as the ‘Bilateral Agreements’ (on free movement, technical trade barriers, government procurement, agriculture, land transport, air transport and research), with support by all mainstream parties. Parliament approved these agreements in 1999, with only 11 MPs (five of whom from the SVP) voting against.This decision was challenged via a referendum launched by two small populist radical right-wing parties, the Ticino League and the Swiss Democrats, and opposed by all government parties. Interestingly, however, the SVP split on this issue, as 14 out of 26 of its cantonal branches decided to ignore the official party line and actually supported the referendum. In May 2000, the electorate overwhelmingly backed the Bilateral Agreements by a two-thirds majority (67.2 per cent), and the country signed nine additional agreements with the EU in 2004. Of these, the Schengen Association Agreement was opposed by the SVP, which launched a referendum (opposed by SP, CVP, and FDP), allegedly to safeguard national sovereignty. In June 2005, the majority of participating citizens accepted the Schengen Association Agreement by a margin of 54.6 per cent, thereby inflicting a defeat on the SVP. Three months later, Swiss citizens also agreed that the free movement of people should be extended to the ten Eastern European states which had joined the EU, with 56 per cent backing the proposal. A similar vote occurred in February 2009, when 59.6 per cent of voters supported the idea that freedom of movement should also be extended to Bulgaria and Romania, which had also joined the EU. These referenda were also launched by the SVP, although divisions within it meant that mobilization was not as effective as it could have been. On 9 February 2014, a political earthquake occurred in the country, as 50.3 per cent of voters and a majority of cantons accepted the popular initiative ‘against mass immigration’ (AMI), again launched by the SVP and opposed by the SP, CVP and FDP. The initiative called for limitations to be imposed on immigration, but contradicted what stated in the just mentioned Bilateral Treaties. The SVP’s competitors responded by adopting a clashing strategy, as Parliament implemented the initiative in December 2016 in such a way as not to breach the Bilateral Agreements. Hence the bill, supported by large majorities in both chambers and opposed by the SVP, gave priority to Swiss-based job seekers in industries with high levels of unemployment (currently at least 8 per cent), but without introducing immigration quotas. To add salt to the SVP’s wounds, the Federal Council also proceeded to sign an agreement with the EU which extended the free movement of people to Croatian citizens. However, the SVP has clearly not abandoned plans to oppose the deepening of relations with the EU in recent years, via the means afforded to it by direct democracy. Hence in February 2015, the party launched an initiative in favour of ‘selfdetermination’, aimed at making sure that national laws could override international agreements. Opposed by all other major parties, the initiative ended up failing in 2018, having been supported by a mere 33 per cent of voters. In January 2018, the SVP launched another initiative to limit immigration, claiming that Switzerland should be in charge of its own immigration policy. If the initiative is accepted by

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the people – the vote is expected to take place in September 2020 – the government would have one year to negotiate the matter with Brussels. Meanwhile, after a long negotiation, in late 2018 the EU asked Swiss authorities to approve the socalled ‘Framework Agreement’, which consolidates the Bilateral Agreements, and confirms the principle of freedom of movement. On this issue too, the SVP is likely to mobilize, despite the problems this could cause Swiss companies working in the EU common market. The radicalization of the SVP on EU issues was not affected by the withdrawal of the application to join the EU by the Swiss government in 2016. By doing so, the FDP and the CVP were trying to partially co-opt the SVP’s Eurosceptic attitude, however it is very doubtful that they have managed to defuse the issue of EUSwiss relations. Originally submitted in 1992 when the EU was still the European Community, during the 1990s SP, CVP and FDP had been in favour of eventually joining, despite the reservations to the idea of some on the right (Fontanellaz 2018). However, after the Bilateral Treaties came into force at the turn of the millennium, approval for the idea of EU accession significantly decreased among party elites. To sum up, we can say that on the issue of the relationships between the EU and Switzerland, the SVP’s competitors usually adopted a clashing strategy, leaving the SVP alone to oppose EEA membership and freedom of movement. While the action of traditional mainstream parties in the parliamentary arena softened the hardest provisions contained in the initiatives launched by the SVP, it is clear that the party managed to shift Switzerland (a country traditionally hostile to supranational integration) to an even more ‘Eurosceptic’ position by using the means provided by direct democracy – see the withdrawal of the application to join the EU by the Swiss government.

Conclusion This chapter has focused on the interplay between the SVP and the other Swiss parties, by considering the peculiarities of Blocher’s party within the context of the country’s institutional setting. First, we have mentioned that the SVP is in fact a radicalized mainstream party, with a history as a member of the Swiss political system and its federal executive. In other words, it has never been a ‘niche’ party, nor an ‘outsider’ (see Chapters 1 and 3 of this volume). Second, in the 2000s the party became the largest Swiss national party with almost 30 per cent of the vote and has therefore been able to interact with the other major governing parties – the FDP, CVP, and PS – from a relative position of strength. Third, thanks to the peculiar rules of the Swiss political system, whereby the members of government do not need to share a common program before joining the executive, the SVP parliamentary groups have enjoyed great freedom of manoeuvre to create coalitions with different parties depending on the topic at hand. Finally, the Swiss political system provides strong opportunities to any group or party willing to counter parliamentary decision-making or affect the political agenda via the means of direct democracy, and the SVP has exploited this extensively.

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Since the 1990s, when it started radicalizing and growing, the SVP has both exploited and challenged these institutional settings via its adversarial strategy towards the other parties. The distribution of seats in government, unchanged since 1959, was eventually altered in the SVP’s favour in 2003. This is proof of the other parties’ willingness to collaborate with the SVP when the latter shows it is willing to do so. In contrast, the SVP is increasingly isolated in parliament, although this trend has been partially reversed during the last legislature, as it has cooperated more with the FDP on economic and fiscal issues. As for the referendum arena, as we have seen, the SVP has often been opposed by two, or even three, traditional mainstream parties at once. In fact, the direct-democratic arena remains of strategic importance for the SVP, not only to help mobilizing its supporters before elections, but also as a means to shape the agenda and pressurize government and parliament on the issues it cares about. How have the other major parties reacted to the success of the SVP? They appear to have adapted their strategies and policy orientations to the changing context to an extent, by adopting a variety of different strategies. When it came to the SVP’s core issues (i.e. immigration, law and order, and European integration), the FDP and CVP have sometimes co-opted the SVP’s approach, while the SP has tended to clash with it. In some cases, namely reform of the asylum system, the SVP has managed to modify governmental and parliamentary policy-making thanks to the means afforded to it by direct democracy. Regarding the relations between Switzerland and the UE, the SVP has deployed a two-fold strategy during the 1990s: it has opposed joining the EEA and the EU, however it has generally agreed to ratify bilateral agreements.This strategy was devised after the referendum of 1992 regarding EEA membership had failed, and received a boost after the country withdrew its application to join the EU. During the 2010s, however, polarization around EU issues has increased, with Blocher’s party consolidating its anti-establishment, anti-EU image, thanks to referenda and initiatives in which issues having to do with immigration, law-and-order and international relations were all addressed. In this more recent phase, whilst the SP has remained in favour of EU membership, and has clashed with the SVP on issues such as asylum, the right-wing CVP and FDP have embraced a more ambivalent strategy. For instance, the approval of the law on the deportation of criminal foreigners mentioned above has shown the willingness of the moderate right to sometimes co-opt the SVP ideas (or at least accept its priorities), albeit sometimes also clashing with it. In sum, the developments of the last decades have made the Swiss political landscape more receptive to populist appeals, as migration and the EU provided new opportunities for mobilization for the self-proclaimed defenders of national sovereignty. Regarding the future, it is unlikely there will be fundamental changes in these trends. Of course, in the last national elections, held in October 2019, the SVP achieved ‘only’ 25.6 per cent of the votes (-3.8%), due to the relevance acquired by environmental issues and the success of the Grüne Partei der Schweiz (GPS – Green party). However, the SVP remains the biggest party in the Lower Chamber and it is ready to mobilize again on migration and EU issues.

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Notes 1 The name of this party is Union démocratique du centre in French and Unione democratica di centro in Italian. It is not the objective of this chapter to investigate the extent to which the SVP is ‘populist’. For a definition of the term, see Chapter 1 of this volume, and for a detailed critical discussion of its uses in the literature, see De la Torre and Mazzoleni (2019: 94–95). 2 Apart from the SVP, the Lega dei Ticinesi (LDT  – Ticino League) and the Mouvement citoyens genevois (MCG – Geneva Citizens’ Movement) can also be regarded as populist parties, but only operate in specific cantons. 3 The respective names of these parties are Parti radical-libéral, Parti-démocrate chrétien and Parti socialiste suisse in French and Partito Liberale Radicale, Partito Popolare Democratico and Partito Socialista Svizzero in Italian. 4 Since 1959, the cabinet was put together on the basis of what is known as the ‘magic formula’ granting two seats to the FDP, the CVP, and the SP, and one to the SVP. 5 Indeed, the SVP’s attempts to take a seat away from the Social Democrats failed both in 1999 and 2002. In the 2000 replacement elections of the party’s unique seat, Parliament elected a moderate MP (Samuel Schmid) to the Federal Council, despite the fact that the SVP had endorsed two representatives of its radical wing. 6 Individual party members can only be expelled by the cantonal branches of the SVP, not the federal organization. 7 See also https://smartmonitor.ch/koalitionen/koalitioncsbildung/, last accessed 2 October 2020. 8 These are documents that the government prepares in view of a consultation. They contain the information relating to the topic at stake, the positions of those in favour and against, and the official position of the Federal Council. 9 Parliament can submit counter-proposals to popular initiatives. Such proposals usually take up the main concerns of the latter, however tend to be less radical in terms of content.

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9 DENMARK Susi Meret

Introduction The 2019 general election marked an important moment in the recent political history of Denmark. The Socialdemokratiet (SD – Social Democrats) and the other parties of the centre-left, the Radikale Venstre (RV – Social Liberals), the Socialistisk Folkeparti (SF – Socialist People’s Party) and the Enhedslisten (EL – The Unity List), managed to oust the incumbent centre-right (minority) government. The SD is among the oldest parties in the Danish Parliament (Folketinget) and it has roots in nineteenth-century classic social democratic reformism. The party gained parliamentary representation for the first time in 1884 and was Denmark’s biggest party in the period from 1924 to 2001.Today it is again the largest party, although in 2019 its share of the vote marginally declined compared to the 2015 results and it remains significantly lower than in the 1990s. The RV is a party with a liberal ideology on the economic dimension, but with a progressive and left-leaning agenda on value issues. This party was founded in 1905 and in the 1990s it played a crucial role in Danish politics, acting as a strategic partner for the formation of either a ‘bourgeois’ or a Social Democratic led minority cabinet. The SF is a left-wing party, whose ideology is based on democratic socialism and on environmental and social justice issues. It was launched in 1959 by former members of the Danish Communist Party, who maintained that socialism had to be achieved through democratic, nonrevolutionary means by embracing a political agenda based on socioeconomic equality, human and gender rights and pro-environment positions.The EL is placed further to the left. It is also known as the ‘red-green’ alliance and was established in 1989 by the merger of former minor radical left-wing parties: the Left Socialists, The Danish Communist Party, and the Socialist Workers’ Party. The 2019 election also had important consequences for the right. The Dansk Folkeparti (DF  – Danish People’s Party), which is Denmark’s populist radical

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right party, characterized by nationalism and anti-immigration (nativist) ideology, received its worst electoral result since its foundation in the mid-1990s. At the same time, the Venstre (V – Liberal Party), a classic liberal party with roots in the Nordic agrarian tradition, and the Konservative Folkeparti (K – Conservative Party), another centre-right political party formed in 1915, were able to regain substantial electoral support compared to 2015. Nonetheless the centre-right lost control of government. Furthermore, the 2019 election saw the emergence of two new far-right parties, the Nye Borgerlige (NB – New Right) and the anti-immigrant and strongly Islamophobic Stram Kurs (SK – Hard Line).While only the former passed the electoral threshold of 2 per cent, gaining 2.3 per cent of the vote and four parliamentary seats, the rise of these two new parties is noteworthy, especially when considered in relation to the 2019 electoral collapse of the DF. The results of the 2019 general election raise questions – relevant for this book – about the role played by the DF as a steadfast external backer of successive Liberal and Conservative governments since 2001. How did the party adjust to this situation? Did the DF’s position ultimately and negatively affect its electoral performance? And what political strategies have mainstream parties put in place to deal with and contain right-wing populist demands in the country? Can these help explain the DF substantial loss of votes at the last election? The chapter delves into some of the central events and developments that have defined Danish politics in the past decades. It aims to examine the shifting relations between the main Danish political parties and the DF. The first part provides an overview of the context in which support for the DF grew and stabilized. It considers the impact of the Great Recession (2007–2008) and the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ in spring 2015 and it ends with some reflections on the last general election. It also looks at the factors that explain the success of the DF. This allows us to move to an analysis of how mainstream parties of the right and of the left (V and SD, in particular) have engaged with right-wing populist demands. It is shown that they have responded to the challenges posed by the DF by adopting counterstrategies that have changed over time but ultimately converged towards practices of cooperation and co-optation.

Understanding the context: the rise of the Danish People’s Party in the Danish party system For more than two decades, the DF has been a sort of textbook case of an electorally successful and influential right-wing populist party, also outside the Nordic region (Jungar 2017; Widfeldt 2015; Jungar and Jupskås 2014). The role played by this party can only be grasped and fully understood in the light of the broader changes occurring in Danish society and politics since the 1990s. From 1995, the date of its foundation, until 2015, the DF increased its electoral support in almost every election round (Figure 9.1). In the 2015 general election, the DF reached its peak, gaining 21.1 per cent of the vote. The party came second after the SD (26.3 per cent) and ahead of the V (19.5 per cent). Just a year before, the DF had achieved a

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Electoral support for Danish People’s Party (DF) in General, European and municipal elections, 1997–2019

FIGURE 9.1

remarkable result in the European election by becoming the largest party with 26.6 per cent of the vote. Notably, the party main candidate, Morten Messerschmidt, was also the politician with the highest score of personal preferences (540,000). The DF had emerged in the mid-1990s as an anti-immigration, Eurosceptic and welfare nationalist party (Meret 2010). Since its inception, the party has been overrepresented among the Danish skilled and non-skilled manual workers (Goul Andersen 2017, 58). It is not an overstatement to say that the DF is the most successful party among working-class voters in Denmark (see also Goul Andersen 2017, 56), as shown in Figure 9.2. It is important to bear in mind that the DF was founded by former members of the now defunct Fremskridtspartiet (FrP – Progress Party). In the 1970s the FrP had successfully run on an anti-tax and ultra-liberal platform. The FrP was among the newly formed parties that, in the so-called Landslide Election of 1973, dramatically transformed the Danish political landscape. The party was also the forerunner of the anti-tax and anti-establishment wave that swept across the Northern countries and contributed to the disruption of the post-war frozen-cleavage system (Lipset and Rokkan 1967), introducing new political issues and coalition alternatives (Goul Andersen and Bjørklund 1999; Pettersen and Lawrence 2004; Rydgren 2006). It also served as a model for the (still existing) Fremskrittspartiet in Norway. In the 1980s the FrP had developed a virulent anti-immigration and a strongly Islamophobic programme and rhetoric. Within the FrP, former DF founder and party leader (1995– 2012) Pia Kjærsgaard, had held a prominent role. Yet in 1995 Pia Kjærsgaard and four acolytes decided to exit the electorally declining and internally divided FrP to launch their own party – the DF. The new party relied on an anti-immigration,

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FIGURE 9.2 Share of working-class votes* among Danish main political parties (general elections 2011 and 2015) * Includes only those employed at the time of the survey

Source: Goul Andersen 2016. Based on YouGov data 2011, 2015.

anti-Islam, and Eurosceptic platform, but dismissed the FrP ultra-liberal and taxprotest profile. Unlike its predecessor, the DF decided to develop a welfare nationalist approach, defining social rights in nativist terms. Two years after its foundation, the DF could already count on a solid parliamentary representation, with 7.4 per cent of the vote and 13 seats in the Folketinget. This happened while the SD was still in power. In 1998 the results reconfirmed PM Poul Nyrup Rasmussen at the head of his fourth mandate (1998–2001), leading another centre-left minority cabinet with the RV. All four Nyrup Rasmussen cabinets (1993–2001) had been made possible by the support of the RV, which still played a pivotal role in the formation of Danish governments, moving from one bloc to another. This situation changed from the beginning of the 2000s when the RV started occupying a more stable position in the centre-left. In the same period, the Liberals and the Conservatives turned to the DF to win enough political support to form centre-right governments. Minority cabinet coalitions are not unconventional in the Danish political system, at least not since the 1973 Landslide Election, when several new parties entered the parliament (Green-Pedersen 2001). Yet, the 1998 election delivered an even more fragmented and unstable political landscape (Andersen et al. 1999, 17–22). As a consequence, the traditionally dominant role played by the SD in Danish politics started to be questioned. Thus, the rise of the DF was accompanied by the decline of the SD, which was only partly compensated by the success of the liberal right represented by the V (Figure 9.3). Significantly, in those years immigration became one of the main political issues (Andersen et al. 1999, 115–126) and this would strongly influence not only voters’ preferences, but also the opportunity structure and the range of options available for coalition building (Green-Pedersen and Odmalm 2008). Signs of shifting political dynamics were already visible in the 1998 election, despite the re-election of the

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FIGURE 9.3

Vote share for the Liberal Party (V) and the Social democrats (SD),

1990–2019

centre-left government.The terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 only intensified and accelerated the course of the political events which would profoundly transform Danish politics.

Explaining the rise and success of the DF The years from 2001 to 2011 were particularly important for the success and consolidation of the DF. The party acted for three consecutive legislative terms as external supporter of minority governments including both Liberals and Conservatives. Unencumbered by the direct responsibilities of holding office, the DF could play two apparently conflicting roles, that of ‘government maker’ and ‘government shaker’. This strategy paid off until the last 2019 elections. In particular, this position gave the DF the opportunity to exert significant influence on immigration, asylum, integration and citizenship policies during political negotiations with the ruling parties. The DF resorted to what can be termed as a ‘reward’ strategy: it would vote in favour of government reforms and budget but expected to receive a policy ‘reward’ in return. While gaining increasing political legitimacy thanks to its collaboration with mainstream centre-right parties (Bale 2003; Bale et al. 2009), the party managed to grow electorally at both national and municipal levels (Meret 2010). Yet it was not only its advantageous position in coalition building that helped the party, as there were other, more long-term, factors that favoured its rise, too. Since the 1970s, the traditional mass parties (particularly the SD) had started to lose their electoral strength, while the rise of new political players had started to

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challenge their power and position. By the late 1990s, new values and cultural issues had gained political importance, influencing voting patterns and party identification. This was linked to the reconfiguration of class politics (Bornschier 2010). At the end of the 1990s, it was clear that political competition in Denmark was based less on traditional cleavages than in the past. This was due to a general shift from class voting towards what can be defined as ‘issue-voting’ (Borre and Goul Andersen 1997). The implications of a vote increasingly based on issue preferences, rather than class identity, became evident in Danish politics particularly from the 2000s (Borre 2003; Stubager 2010; Hjorth 2017). These socio-political transformations helped prepare the ground for the rise of new parties which would politicize new issues, such as immigration, integration, and multiculturalism. Thus, the DF could succeed by developing a right-wing populist ‘winning-formula’ (Kitschelt and McGann 1995; de Lange 2007) adapted to the Danish context. In particular, immigration had started to attract increasing attention and concern. This phenomenon can be partly explained by the increasing number of immigrants, which went from less than 3 per cent of the whole population in 1980 to 12.3 per cent in 2016 (Figure 9.4). Results from Danish election surveys conducted from 2001 to 2015 clearly show an increase in voters’ hostility towards immigration and multiculturalism. Since 2001 there has been a rising opposition towards multiculturalism and against increased ethnic diversity in the country. On the question of whether immigration represents a serious threat to Danish culture, the per cent difference index (PDI) between those agreeing and those disagreeing was negative in 2011 (-14 per cent), but turned positive in 2015 (+6 per cent), showing a relatively higher percentage

Immigrants and their descendants in Denmark: share of the total population (1980–2016)

FIGURE 9.4

174 Susi Meret TABLE 9.1 Immigration perceived as a threat to national culture. PDI (percentage difference index: strongly agree/agree – disagree/strongly disagree)

2001 2005 2007 2011 2015

EL

SF

SD

RV

V

K

DF

all

-90 -63 -73 -73 -49

-67 -60 -55 -60 -42

-15 -17 -24 -21 -8

-82 -66 -81 -74 -63

9 16 21 7 28

-6 -6 -15 -37 18

73 76 68 72 80

-5 -3 -15 -14 6

Source: The Danish National Election Study 2001–2015 (weighted data). Wordings: Immigration represents a serious threat to our national culture (vores nationale egenart). TABLE 9.2 Refugees’ and immigrants’ right to access same welfare benefits as native Danes. PDI (strongly/agree- strongly/disagree)

2001 2005 2007 2011 2015

EL

SF

SD

RV

V

K

DF

all

67 41 70 42 6

28 22 32 11 -13

-12 -3 4 -21 -32

27 22 35 2 4

-52 -38 -44 -58 -68

-44 -38 -41 -46 -65

-77 -68 -71 -76 -81

-29 -18 -16 -32 -44

Source: The Danish National Election Study 2001–2015. Wordings: Refugees and immigrants should have same right to social benefits as Danes, even if they do not have Danish citizenship (agree-disagree).

of people who feel culturally threatened by immigration (Table 9.1). Interestingly supporters of all parties seem to have moved in this direction, although there is a clear difference between supporters of non-populist left-wing (EL, SD, SF, RV) and right-wing parties (V and K). The latter are now much closer to DF voters. Voters have also expressed increasing opposition to immigrants’ rights to access the same benefits as native Danes. Table  9.2 shows the trend since 2001. In this case a negative number means more opposition to extensive social rights for the immigrant population. It is noticeable that in 2015 only two parties, the EL and RV, still had a positive score, although much lower than in the past. All other parties, including the left-wing SF and SD, had negative scores. These results also suggest the joint role played by cultural and economic dimensions in explaining the Danish voters’ hostility towards immigrants and refugees. In this context, the DF, with its strong anti-immigration, xenophobic, welfarenationalist and Eurosceptic profile, could thrive. From the beginning, the party expressed grievances about the effects of what it called the ‘massive inflow of immigrants’, which would give rise to a ‘multi-ethnic society’ endangering the very core and future of Danish national identity, culture, and welfare state. Indeed, according to the party, immigration would disrupt the country’s social cohesion

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TABLE 9.3 Party voters’ attitudes towards immigration as a threat and same social benefits to refugees, 2019. PDI (strongly agree/agree – strongly disagree/disagree)

EL SF SD RV V K DF all

Immigration is a threat to national identity*

Immigration is a cultural threat*

Refugees/immigrants same rights to social benefits**

-43 -28 21 -50 47 40 89 21

-56 -24 23 -65 58 27 87 24

34 -1 -39 14 -69 -62 -89 -43

Source: YouGov data 2019. *Positive values = more anti-immigration. **Negative values = more anti-immigration.

and its internal ethnic and cultural homogeneity, undermining the very pillars of the Danish national identity and social model (Dansk Folkeparti 1997, 5–6). Additionally, the DF expressed its criticism of further European political integration, which would lead to the loss of national sovereignty and autonomy. It is important to observe that immigration fears and anxieties can be triggered by rather different factors, spanning from concerns about national security issues (terrorism and fundamentalism) to cultural and national identity issues, from feelings of social and political marginalization (Gidron and Hall 2019) to lack of social cohesion and labour market transformations. Nonetheless, it is remarkable how attitudes towards immigration, and Islam (Meret and Beyer Gregersen 2019), continue to be negative, despite some positive results achieved in the past decade in terms of increasing labour market participation, integration levels, educational attainment and lower criminality among immigrants. The DF electoral defeat in the 2019 general election cannot be explained by a general drop in immigration grievances and concerns, since they remain quite strong in the Danish electorate (Table 9.3). In fact, it might be that mainstream parties have changed and, by coopting issues that were once mainly owned by the DF, have ultimately been able to win voters back.

Right-wing populism in times of crisis The 2005 and 2007 general elections were both won by the Liberal-Conservative centre-right incumbents. The 2007 election took place earlier than planned, formally because PM Fogh Rasmussen wanted to ‘revitalize’ cooperation between the parties in government. In reality, the aim was to strengthen the government’s position in view of the major reforms planned to be carried out within the public sector. In 2009, Lars Løkke Rasmussen replaced incumbent PM Anders Fogh Rasmussen,

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when the latter decided to accept the position of NATO general secretary. At that point, despite the crack of the Danish Roskilde Bank at the end of August 2008, the full effects of the crisis were not yet visible. It took some time before political parties started to fully grasp the difficult economic and financial situation of the country (Birch 2010). In 2009, Lars Løkke Rasmussen carefully started to communicate some concerns (Løkke Rasmussen in Altinget 2009) about the Danish economy being affected by the housing market crisis. The years prior to the 2011 election were thus devoted to implementing rescue measures to secure the Danish banking system from the shocks of the global crisis. In the period 2008–2013, no less than six so-called ‘Bank Packages’ were implemented. In May 2010, a major welfare policy reform (genopretningspakken) targeted welfare benefits and earlyretirement provisions, with the aim of cutting public expenses. These reforms were both comprehensive and contentious and would greatly change the quality of welfare state provisions. However the DF was among the parties ratifying these reforms, which reduced welfare state provisions and opportunities, thus contradicting its pro-welfare statements. This, however, was part of the ‘reward strategy’ mentioned above. After all, the DF tended to focus more on socio-cultural issues, such as immigration and law and order, and downplay economic policies. For instance, the party advocated the introduction of border controls to fight narco-criminality and human smuggling, something that it believed was facilitated by free movement of people within the Schengen area. Therefore, in exchange for its support for budget cuts and austerity measures, the DF was able to obtain the approval of tougher border control measures. In 2011, this attracted significant criticism from the rest of the EU but allowed the DF to point to its success in influencing policies that were clearly linked to its law-and-order profile. At the same time, the party could divert public attention away from its support for pro-austerity economic policies. Yet, due to the crisis and its deep and prolonged effects, socio-economic, rather than socio-cultural, issues played a central role in the electoral campaign of the 2011 general election. After a decade dominated by value politics and identity issues (2001–2011), voters seemed to pay more attention to the state of the economy and the welfare state (Stubager, Møller Hansen, and Goul Andersen 2013). This helped the centre-left parties, which were more focused on socio-economic issues, to oust the centre-right government after ten consecutive years in power.Yet, despite winning the election, centre-left parties received less electoral support than expected. On the other hand, the V, despite losing its position as the main ruling party, remained the largest Danish party and even managed to increase its share of the vote. The defeat of the centre-right government was mainly due to the collapse of the K, while support for the DF only slightly declined. Therefore, although rightwing populists were penalized by the increasing saliency of socio-economic issues vis-à-vis sociocultural ones, they were helped by the fact that they did not formally join the centre-right government and were not directly held accountable for unpopular welfare and economic reforms. The 2011 result was only a temporary (and limited) setback for the DF in its trajectory of growth. Indeed, in the 2015 general election the party obtained a

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remarkable result, 21.1 per cent of the vote, which made it the second largest political force in Denmark, only 5 per cent points behind the SD (26.3 per cent). It was a historic success for the DF, which gained 37 seats in parliament (out of 179). At the same time, the V slipped to third position, obtaining only 19 per cent of the vote: its worst election result since 1988. Yet the DF did not make use of this remarkable electoral achievement to advance claims for key ministerial positions. In fact, the party decided to turn down this unique office-seeking opportunity and went instead (once again) for the role of external backer, thus confirming the strategy it had adopted between 2001 and 2011. The DF party leader Kristian Thulesen Dahl explained his decision arguing that: ‘[…] for the time being there is not enough interest [from our side] to get the DF into government […] as our [political] influence will not be as strong by pursuing that strategy’ (in Riis Lund 2015)1. Officially, the DF and the V could not agree on a program that would include border controls, higher public spending for healthcare and pensions, and more police on the streets. But in reality it seemed that the DF leadership preferred to play the safer card: by avoiding to take direct government responsibility, the party would keep the establishment at distance, while being able to achieve concrete political results on immigration and asylum politics, as it had successfully done in previous years.The bases of this win-win strategy were already laid down in a 1997 party document (Principprogram) suggesting that the main goal of the DF ‘[is] to give the Danish voters a real alternative to the politics pursued by the existing political parties’, but also that such an alternative should ‘play an active role in the parliamentary life’ by reaching ‘political results through the collaboration with other parties’ with the goal ‘to attain as many political results as possible’ (Dansk Folkeparti 1997, 4). For the party this meant remaining outside government, if this role offered better perspectives to exert more political influence than being in government. However, while this strategy had worked when the party was still consolidating its position, it turned out to be much less rewarding after its unprecedented success in 2015. Eventually, Kristian Thulesen Dahl later acknowledged that it was a mistake not to enter the government in 2015.2 In his words: We should have gone into government in 2015. […] In future we need to make clear that the party is ready to get into government, should the centreright coalition get the majority of the vote again. The DF experienced a significant defeat in the 2019 general election, collapsing from 21.1 per cent to 8.7 per cent of the vote. According to Thulesen Dahl, such a dramatic reversal in the party’s fortunes was due to two major ‘mistakes’. On the one hand, as already highlighted above, voters were disappointed with the party’s decision not to seek office in 2015 when it was in a very strong bargaining position. On the other hand, before the 2019 election, the DF, which had never fully committed to a comprehensive governmental alliance with the centre-right coalition, started considering alternative options, including a possible collaboration with the main

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centre-left opposition party, the SD.This ambiguity might have contributed to confusing the DF electorate. Generally, these reflections seem to suggest that the position of the DF vis-àvis the so-called political ‘mainstream’ is particularly important if we want to fully understand the role it played in shaping Danish politics in recent years. So far we have focused on its ascending and descending political trajectories. In the next section of this chapter we focus on how the traditional mass parties responded to the rise of right-wing populism by referring to the categories identified by the typology presented in Chapter 3 of this volume.

How mainstream parties responded to the rise and consolidation of the DF As explained above, the DF gained significant political legitimacy after accepting to back a centre-right government (without formally joining it) in 2001. This was pivotal to the party consolidation and growth. In return for this, Liberals and Conservatives could rely on the support of a party representing a segment of the electorate that would be less likely to vote for the traditional right. For instance, in the past, lower-educated manual workers (skilled and unskilled), who are also among the groups showing higher levels of concerns with regard to immigration, asylum, and Islam (Frølund Thomsen 2017, 268–278), would have cast their vote for a pro-welfare left-leaning party. Therefore, Liberals and Conservatives adopted an accommodative-cooperative strategy towards the DF and, as a result, the centre-right government adopted policies supported by this party, thus mixing cooperation and co-optation. The period from 2001 to 2007 was characterized by sustained economic growth, which was accompanied by increasing immigration. The cabinets led by Fogh Rasmussen, leader of the V, put in place several heavy restrictions on immigration and asylum from 2001 to 2009. This included the ‘start help’ in 2002, which fixed social assistance benefits at a lower rate for people with less than seven years record as residents of Denmark. Moreover, a law was approved on matters of family immigration policy which required that both partners ought to be at least 24 years old, and their common attachment to Denmark should be stronger than to any other country, to be given the right to stay in the country. The Danish government also introduced stricter criteria to obtain citizenship. In 2005, the publication of twelve drawings on Islam – most of them depicting the prophet Muhammad in ways that were considered deeply offensive by the Muslim community in Denmark (and abroad) – further ignited an already inflamed political environment, where anti-Islam and anti-Muslim rhetoric had started to thrive (Hervik 2018). The cartoons triggered a crisis of international proportions, which contributed to intensifying anti-Islam and anti-Muslim tones in the media and in political discourses. This resulted in narratives portraying Islam as an illiberal and dogmatic faith with a fundamentalist worldview, and, as such, difficult to integrate (Yilmaz 2016), or even incompatible with Western liberal democratic culture

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(Meret and Bayer Gregersen 2019). A  gender-based argument was then used to criticize Islam for promoting male chauvinistic and homophobic views (Meret and Siim 2013). Therefore, a ‘struggle over values’ came to dominate political debates, underpinning the conviction that policy problems should be framed as morally and culturally driven, and should be resolved accordingly. This also contributed to the framing of immigration as a ‘problem’ to be taken care of, preferably by means of an assimilationist approach, rather than through integration. In all this, the DF had played a central role, while collaborating with centre-right parties and influencing their policies. While mainstream centre-right parties adjusted quite quickly to the success of the DF by collaborating with it, the rise of identity politics posed a serious challenge to the left, traditionally more focused on socio-economic issues. In 2005 Helle Thorning-Schmidt became the new leader of the centre-left SD. She succeeded Mogen Lykketoft, who had resigned after having been defeated in the 2005 general election. Initially this leadership change did not seem to reverse the decline of the party, which lost again in 2007. Yet in 2011 the SD was able to return to government by forming a coalition with the RV and SF, which, for the first time, was part of a governing cabinet, with six cabinet ministers. Before the elections, the SD and the SF had developed a common political platform, mainly focusing on welfare state issues and labour market initiatives. This emphasis on socio-economic issues can be regarded as a deliberate attempt to dismiss/defuse the salience of immigrationrelated issues supported by the DF. By resetting the political agenda, the two parties aimed to shift voters’ attention away from immigration debates, where their position was clearly much less strong. For instance, the SD and SF campaigned for a labour market reform called ‘Twelve more minutes a day’ (Fair Løsning 2011). Its aim was to persuade workers, trade unions and the employers’ association to work twelve minutes more a day, to contribute securing the future of the Danish welfare state. Yet in the end the SD and SF did not get enough votes to form a government and had to rely on the support of the RV, which instead had run a campaign based on a clearly clashing strategy that critically and directly addressed both the DF and the immigration policies introduced by the Liberal-Conservative government. At the same time, the RV adopted clear pro-market positions on the economic dimension. This provoked some problems and tensions within the centre-left coalition. The SD and the SF had to make concessions to convince the RV to join the government and this affected their reputation as pro-welfare parties, while also forcing them to take a clearer stance on immigration. Tax reforms, failed collective wage agreements in 2013 and lower unemployment benefits (dagpengereform), which the RV had supported under the previous centre-right government, undermined the popularity and the credibility of the centre-left government on economic issues in the eyes of the electorate that had voted for them (Olsen 2013). The refugee crisis in 2015 is another major turning point in Danish politics.The images of hundreds of asylum seekers walking along the Danish A45 motorway in an attempt to reach a safer place in Denmark, or Sweden, came to symbolize those dramatic days.The real and imagined pressure and the intense and emotional media

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coverage that characterized that period paved the way for harsher restrictions on inflows, as well as major retrenchments in the extension of rights to asylum seekers and refugees. Already before the elections, the SD had developed stricter positions on immigration and asylum policies that were part of the party’s co-optation strategy to deal with the pressures exerted by the DF. For instance, poster campaigns showed images of SD party leader Helle Thorning-Schmidt stating: ‘Tighter asylum regulations and more duties for immigrants’, or ‘If you come to Denmark, you must work’. Also the V launched the electoral campaign by using a harsher rhetoric and discourse than in the past, claiming for instance that ‘immigration flows have gone out of control’, due to the relaxed policies approved under the SD-led government. The media framing of the refugee crisis contributed to a shift in public opinion, which started focusing less on economic and welfare issues and paying more attention to asylum and migration, often regarded as the real ‘problems’. This largely benefitted the centre-right (Bisgaard and Vinæs Larsen 2017, 225–244). As mentioned above, in the 2015 general election, the DF achieved its best result ever, coming very close to the SD and surpassing the V. All main parties (SD, V, K, RV) did very poorly on this occasion and the election was compared to the so-called Landslide Election of 1973, which had been the first real electoral ‘earthquake’ in Danish politics (Møller Hansen and Stubager 2017). The 2015 election also clearly showed the deepening of the centre-periphery and urban-rural cleavages, which further reduced the importance of the traditional class cleavage and benefitted the DF, which was particularly strong in rural and more ‘peripheral’ areas (Møller Hansen and Stubager 2017, 69–95). Therefore, the 2015 election was remarkable for the comeback of value politics and, in particular, of themes linked to immigration and asylum (Frølund Thomsen 2017). Voters indicated immigration as one of their top priorities (second only to the welfare state) and this issue reached almost the same saliency as in 2001, when it was at its peak (and the DF had its electoral breakthrough). In 2015 the framing of immigration and asylum as ‘problems’ affected the tones and rhetoric of the whole electoral campaign, which was even harsher than in previous years. This also had an impact on policies. Since 2015, more laws and regulations focusing on the restriction of rights and welfare provisions for refugees were passed. These included:  stricter rules to obtain permanent residence and family reunion, the opt-out of Denmark from the UN yearly refugee quotas, the controversial ‘jewellery law’, which allowed authorities to seize asylum seeker’s personal assets (exceeding a certain value), the re-introduction of the asylum welfare provision (introduktionsydelse) and the creation of deportation camps for rejected asylum seekers and their children. As for integration policies, the new measures approved included:  the banning of various sorts of full-face covering from public spaces (known as the ‘burqa ban’) and a plan aimed at preventing the thriving of ‘parallel societies’ in underprivileged urban areas, the so-called ‘ghettos’ (Ghettopakken). Both measures were passed by a large majority. Generally, the strategy pursued by the V from 2015 to 2019, when the party was back leading a minority government backed by the DF, was multifaceted and,

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once again, included forms of cooperation with the DF, but also attempts to co-opt DF’s policies and positions. As part of this strategy, the V appointed Inger Støjberg, a party member supporting a hard-line on immigration and asylum issues, as Minister for Immigration, Integration and Housing. Paradigmatic of her role was the way the Minister decided to celebrate the approval of her fiftieth amendment aimed at restricting immigration in March 2017: she posted a picture on Facebook showing her smiling at a camera while holding a cake decorated with a Danish flag and the number 50.3 By the end of her mandate in 2019, the number of restrictions had reached a total of 114, as displayed by a ministerial dedicated homepage.4 The SD, too, eventually resorted to more aggressive forms of co-optation to deal with the DF and its right-wing populist demands. When Mette Frederiksen succeeded Helle Thorning-Schmidt as leader in June 2015, the party clearly moved to the right on immigration and asylum policies. Frederiksen publicly acknowledged that the SD had committed a mistake by not listening to the immigration grievances expressed by some SD mayors, who, back in the 1980s and 1990s, had complained that Muslims were a problem and were ‘incapable of integrating’ (Altinget 2019). The leader stated that by holding on to ‘politically correct’ views, previous SD leaders had created some of the integration problems that Denmark was facing. This narrative was used to legitimize the harsher line adopted by the party (Meret forthcoming). The SD, for instance, supported the centre-right government’s decision (inspired by the DF) to ultimately reject UN refugee quotas.5 The party justified this by stating that Denmark ought to focus on integrating the refugees and immigrants already living in the country, before taking new ones in. The SD also proposed to stop the influx of immigrants by making border controls permanent, hence helping refugees ‘in their neighbouring countries’. This position was accompanied by the motto ‘We need to help more and better’ (Vi skal hjælpe flere og mere). In 2019 the SD endorsed the so-called ‘paradigm shift’ on asylum matters, which was advocated by the V and the DF (Westersø and Ritzau 2019). According to this approach refugees are no longer considered as people fleeing from wars and conflicts, who are entitled to rights – including the right to stay and settle in a safe country – but as people who are only temporarily in the country and should be sent back as soon as possible. By emphasizing that there are limits to what the welfare state can do and insisting on a ‘duties-before-rights’ discourse, the SD has significantly reduced its opposition to the restrictive line characterizing the Liberal and Conservative governments, also backed by the DF. The convergence of the traditional parties towards stricter positions on migration and asylum seems to have had a negative impact on support for the DF, which in the 2019 election collapsed. Therefore, one could argue that cooperation and co-optation might help non-populist parties to weaken populist competitors. Yet, the ‘mainstreaming’ of the DF nativist discourse might have also contributed to opening up a political space on the right, as the rise of two new parties at the 2019 general elections illustrates. Both the NB and the SK (see introduction to this chapter) participated in the 2019 election campaign. However, only the former

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passed the 2 per cent electoral threshold (with 2.4 per cent of the votes), thus winning four parliamentary mandates. The NB election campaign was run on the basis of an adversarial strategy against the migration and asylum policies approved by the centre-right government. In particular, both far right parties attacked the DF, accusing it of having moderated its original positions on immigration and asylum as a consequence of its support to mainstream governments. At the same time, the NB leader portrayed her party as the only genuine champion of stricter immigration and asylum rules and the only viable alternative for unhappy V and DF voters. In sum, both co-optation and accommodative strategies have been put in place by the traditional parties to deal with the DF and to regain support from those sectors of the electorate that still feel threatened by newcomers and fear for the future of the welfare state and their national identity. To do this, the V, K and, more recently, the SD, have tapped into the discourse of the DF, by closely connecting the triad represented by the nation, the welfare state, and liberal democracy. Within this frame, growing ethnic and cultural-religious diversity are seen as factors that risk deteriorating the country’s social cohesion, its welfare and national identity.

Conclusion Danish ‘mainstream’ parties of the left and the right have adopted shifting strategies to respond to right-wing populism. Their strategic repertoires have varied since the late 1990s, ranging from attempts to dismiss the challenge posed by the DF to efforts to cooperate with its representatives. To be sure, a proportional voting system, a tradition of consensus politics and the legacy of the FrP helped the DF play an important role in the party system and facilitated its inclusion in processes of government formation. When the party significantly increased its share of the vote in 2001, it was quickly accepted as a political ally by Liberals and Conservatives, although it did not formally enter the executive. This was possible in a context in which minority cabinet coalitions had been for a long time the rule rather than the exception. The V and the K could also benefit from the ‘flexible’ relationship established with the DF, hence could easily distance themselves from this party whenever its positions were deemed to be too radical. At the same time, by cooperating with it, the mainstream right contributed to legitimizing the DF, therefore increasing the salience of immigration, integration, and asylum policies, which were a clear priority for the populist radical right. In this sense, at least in the short to medium term, the accommodative/ cooperative strategy chosen by the V and the K did not help reduce the overall electoral strength of the DF. While in the first decade of the twenty-first century the centre-right adopted an accommodative approach, the SD initially attempted to dismiss the challenge posed by the DF by focusing more on economic and welfare issues, which were not clearly ‘owned’ by this party. Nonetheless, both general elections in 2005 and in 2007 were won by the incumbent centre-right coalitions and confirmed the

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decreasing relevance of traditional class politics. Eventually a centre-left coalition returned to power after the 2011 election, mainly thanks to the renewed importance of socio-economic matters in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. Only the RV, a medium-sized liberal-radical party that eventually joined the centre-left government, really adopted a clashing strategy towards the DF. It did so by emphasizing its pro-migration positions and support for multiculturalism, while opposing the nativist stances of its populist competitor. The 2015  ‘refugee crisis’ led to a re-emergence of political debates focusing on socio-cultural issues. Centre-right parties and the DF were able to seize this opportunity by campaigning for stricter rules and control of asylum and immigration. In this context, the SD was eventually compelled to abandon its prioritization of economic and welfare issues and co-opt policy stances of its competitors on the right (and even cooperate with them by voting for some of their measures in Parliament). Migration started to be almost unanimously framed as a ‘problem’ to be solved, often linking it to the vulnerability of the Danish welfare state. It is perhaps too early to say if the enactment of these strategies from both non-populist left and right have contributed to containing the populist threat. For sure, the DF suffered a serious defeat in the 2019 general election – its electoral support more than halved compared to 2015. Additionally, the SD re-gained power, by leading a minority government.Yet, this was also regarded as a Pyrrhic victory for the Social Democrats, considering that their party did not manage to reverse its electoral decline. It won the election, but it did not gain more votes (in fact it lost 0.4 per cent). It remains to be seen whether the defeat of a populist competitor will last and will also lead to a redefinition of policy priorities in Denmark.

Notes 1 In 2012 the DF had changed leader: its founder and leader Pia Kjærsgaard stepped down after 17 years at the helm of the party and Kristian Thulesen Dahl took over. 2 www.berlingske.dk/politik/thulesen-dahl-erkender-en-fejl-at-vi-ikke-gik-i-regering-i2015, last accessed 2 October 2020. 3 www.kristeligt-dagblad.dk/samfund/stoejberg-saetter-facebook-i-brand, last accessed 2 October 2020. 4 https://uim.dk/gennemforte-stramninger-pa-udlaendingeomradet, last accessed 2 October 2020. 5 This measure was revoked in July 2019 by the current Minister of Immigration and Integration, Mattias Tesfaye, who notified the UNHCR that Denmark would again take in the agreed refugee quota.

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Bale, Tim. 2003. ‘Cinderella and her Ugly Sisters: The Mainstream and Extreme Right in Europe’s Bi-polarizing Party Systems.’ West European Politics 26, no. 3: 67–90. Bale, Tim, Christoffer Green-Pedersen, André A. Krouwel, Kurt Richard Luther, and Nick Sitter. 2009. ‘If you Can’t Beat Them, Join Them? Explaining Social Democratic Responses to the Challenge from the Populist Radical Right in Western Europe.’ Political Studies 58, no. 3: 410–426. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2009.00783.x. Birch, Sørensen. 2010. ‘Nedturen i Dansk økonomi:  Hvor meget var selvforskyldt?’, Samfundsøkonomen 1:  29–34. http://web.econ.ku.dk/pbs/Dokumentfiler/Publications %20(Danish)/Samfunds%C3%B8konomen%20PBS_revideret.pdf. Bisgaard, Martin, and Martin Vinæs Larsen. 2017. ‘Den økonomiske situation og det politiske ansvar.’ In Oprør fra udkanten: Folketingsvalget 2015, edited by Kasper Møller Hansen and Rune Stubager, 225–244. København: Jurist- og Økonomforbundets Forlag. Bornschier, Simon. 2010. Cleavage Politics and the Populist Right. The New Cultural Conflict in Western Europe. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Borre, Ole. 2003. ‘Dynamisk Issue Voting.’ In Politisk forandring. Værdipolitik og nye skillelinjer ved folketingsvalget 2001, edited by Jørgen Goul Andersen and Ole Borre, 279–289. Aarhus: Systime. Borre, Ole and Jørgen Goul Andersen. 1997. Voting and Political Attitudes in Denmark. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, pp. 65–85. Dansk Folkeparti. 1997. Principprogram. København: Christiansborg. De Lange, Sarah. 2007. ‘A New Winning Formula? The Programmatic Appeal of the Radical Right.’ Party Politics 13, no 4: 411–435. doi: 10.1177/1354068807075943. Fair Løsning 2020. 2011. www.socialdemokraternefrhavn.dk/Udgivelser/en%20fair%20 loesning.pdf. Frølund Thomsen, and Jens Peter. 2017. ‘Indvandring som politisk skillelinje blandt »os«.’ In Oprør fra Udkanten: Folketingsvalget 2015, edited by Kasper Møller Hansen and Rune Stubager, 265–279. København: Jurist- og Økonomforbundets Forlag. Gidron, Noam, and Peter A. Hall. 2019. ‘Populism as a Problem of Social Integration.’ Comparative Political Studies, 1–33, October. https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414019879947. Goul Andersen, Jørgen, and Tor Bjørklund. 1999. ‘Anti-Immigration Parties in Denmark and Norway: The Progress Parties and the Danish People’s Party.’ Working Paper: Department of Economics, Politics and Public Administration 4. Aalborg: Aalborg Universitetsforlag. Goul Andersen, Jørgen. 2017. ‘Portræt af vælgernes sociodemografi.’ In Oprør fra Udkanten, edited by Kasper Møller Hansen and Rune Stubager, 41–67. København: Jurist- og Økonomforbundets Forlag. Green-Pedersen, Christoffer. 2001. ‘Minority Governments and Party Politics: The Political and Institutional Background to the “Danish Miracle”.’ Journal of Public Policy 21, no. 1, 53–70. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0143814X01001039. Green-Pedersen, Christoffer and Pontus Odmalm. 2008. ‘Going Different Ways? Right-wing Parties and the Immigrant Issue in Denmark and Sweden.’ Journal of European Public Policy 15, no. 3: 367–381, doi: 10.1080/13501760701847564 Hervik, Peter. 2018. ‘Ten Years after the Danish Muhammad Cartoon News Stories: Terror and Radicalization as Predictable Media Events.’, Television & New Media 19, no. 2: 146–154 Hjorth, Frederik. 2017. ‘Issue voting ved folketingsvalget 2015.’ In Oprør fra Udkanten:  Folketingsvalget 2015, edited by Kasper Møller Hansen and Rune Stubager, 207–224. København: Jurist- og Økonomforbundets Forlag.

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Holm, Lærke. 2006. Folketinget og Udlændingepolitikken – diskurser om naturaliserede, indvandrere og flygtninge1973-2002. Aalborg Universitet:  SPIRIT Ph.d. series. https://vbn.aau.dk/ ws/portalfiles/portal/18649043/spirit_phd_series_4_holm.pdf. Jungar, Ann-Cathrine. 2017. ‘Continuity and Convergence: Populism in Scandinavia.’ In The Routledge Handbook of Scandinavian Politics, edited by Peter Nedergaard and Anders Wivel, 147–160. London: Routledge. Jungar, Ann-Cathrine, and Anders Jupskås. 2014. ‘Populist Radical Right Parties in the Nordic Region: A New and Distinct Party Family?’ Scandinavian Political Studies 37, no. 3: 215–238. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467–9477.12024. Kitchelt, Herbert, and Anthony J. McGann. 1995. The Radical Right in Western Europe:  A Comparative Analysis. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Lipset, Seymour Martin and Stein Rokkan. 1967. Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Crossnational Perspectives. New York: Collier and Macmillan. Meret, S. 2010. ‘The Danish People's Party, the Italian Northern League and the Austrian Freedom Party in a Comparative Perspective:  Party Ideology and Electoral Support.’ Institut for Historie, Internationale Studier og Samfundsforhold, Aalborg Universitet. Spirit PhD Series, 25. Meret, S. (forthcoming). ‘Duties First and Rights Next! The Danish Social Democrats Right Turn on Migration Politics.’ Social Democracy in the 21st Century, Comparative Social Research 35: 225–246. Meret, Susi, and Andreas Bayer Gregersen. 2019. ‘Islam as a “Floating Signifier”: Right-Wing Populism and Perceptions of Muslims in Denmark.’ www.brookings.edu/research/islamas-a-floating-signifier-right-wing-populism-and-perceptions-of-muslims-in-denmark/., last accessed 2 October 2020. Meret, Susi, and Birte Siim. 2013. ‘Gender, Populism and Politics of Belonging: Discourses of Right-Wing Populist Parties in Denmark, Norway and Austria.’ In Negotiating Gender and Diversity in an Emerging European Public Sphere, edited by Birte Siim and Monika Mokre, 78–96. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Møller Hansen, Kasper, and Rune Stubager. 2017. ‘Stenbroen og udkantsdanmark  – geografiske forskelle i partiernes tilslutning.’ In Oprør fra udkanten:  Folketingsvalget 2015, edited by Kasper Møller Hansen, Rune Stubager, 69–95. København: Jurist- og Økonomforbundets Forlag. Olsen, Lars. 2013. En bygning slår revner. Socialdemokratiet og det folkelige Denmark. København: Gyldendal. Pettersen, Per Arnt, and Rose E. Lawrence. 2004. ‘Høyrebølgene  – de store og små: Velgerprofilene til Høyre og Fremskrittspartiet i flo og fjære.’ Norsk statsvitenskapelig tidsskrift 20: 3–37. Politisk forståelse mellem Socialdemokratiet, Radikale Venstre, SF og Enhedslisten. Retfærdig retning for Danmark. 2019. www.altinget.dk/misc/Retf%C3%A6rdig%20retning%20 for%20Danmark_2019-06-25_ENDELIG.pdf. Riis Lund, Søren. 2015. ‘DF: Derfor gik vi ikke i regering.’ Altinget, August 5, 2015. www. altinget.dk/artikel/df-derfor-gik-vi-ikke-i-regering. Rydgren, Jens. 2006. From Tax Populism to Ethnic Nationalism: Radical Right-Wing Populism in Sweden. Oxford: Berghahn Books. Stubager, Rune. 2010. ‘The Development of the Education Cleavage: Denmark as a Critical Case.’ The Structure of Political Competition in Western Europe, edited by Kevin DeeganKrause and Zsolt Enyedi, 91–119. London: Routledge.

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Stubager, Rune, Kasper Møller Hansen, and Jørgen Goul Andersen. 2013. Krisevalg. Økonomien og Folketingsvalget 2011. København: Jurist- og Økonomforbundets Forlag. Westersø, Rikke Struck. 2019. ‘Nu er paradigmeskiftet vedtaget i Folketinget.’TV2 Nyheder, 21 February 2019. https://nyheder.tv2.dk/politik/2019-02-21-nu-er-paradigmeskiftetvedtaget-i-folketinget. Widfeldt, A. 2015. Extreme Right Parties in Scandinavia. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Yilmaz, F. 2016. How the Workers Became Muslims:  Immigration, Culture, and Hegemonic Transformation in Europe. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

10 FINLAND Ann-Cathrine Jungar

Introduction Finland presents an interesting case for the investigation of mainstream party reactions to the rise and persistence of populism. Contrary to elsewhere in Western Europe, where mainstream political parties have increasingly opened the door to cooperation with previously isolated populist radical right parties (PRRPs), the Finnish case is about the mainstream doing the opposite – and that is moving from cooperation with these parties to isolating them. Since its inception in 1995 and parliamentary breakthrough in 2011, Finland’s PRRP, the Perussuomalaiset (PS – Finns Party), has experienced different reactions from more established competitors. Initially, the PS was perceived as a legitimate party by the political mainstream as it was the successor of the Suomen maaseudun puolue (SMP – Finnish Rural Party), an agrarian populist party that was in government between 1983 and 1990. The PS was also invited to the negotiations for the creation of a new executive after its electoral success in 2011. Although it initially refused to join any coalition, it eventually entered a centre-right government after the 2015 parliamentary election. Yet this accommodative/cooperation strategy came to an unexpected end after two years. It was replaced by an adversarial/isolationist strategy, when the longstanding party leader Timo Soini stepped down and the more radical Jussi Halla-aho was elected party leader. Mainstream political parties explained this change by pointing to the fact that, with the takeover by the nationalist faction, the party had radicalized to such an extent that cooperation was no longer possible. Representatives from the moderate faction, among others the four PS ministers including the former leader, Timo Soini, defected from the party and formed an autonomous parliamentary group, and then a new party. This opened a new front of competition between the PS and a newly formed populist party. The Finnish

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case is therefore crucial because it also shows how intra- and inter-party dynamics determine the adoption of different competition strategies. This chapter is structured as follows. First, an introduction to populism in Finland is provided, starting from the SMP and moving to its evolution into PS.This section is followed by an overview of the main parties competing in Finland, which makes it possible to explore the factors that led to the success of the PS in the post-crisis period. The effects of this success are then assessed by considering how the party impacted on the dimensions of party competition and how mainstream parties responded to its challenge (with references to the strategies identified in Chapter 3). Before moving to the conclusion, a section also focuses on how the PS interacted with the new populist party formed after its split in 2017.

Populism in the Finnish party system Populism has a longstanding presence in the Finnish party system. As mentioned above, the PS is a successor of the SMP, formed in 1959. The latter was an antiestablishment party, which appealed to agrarian smallholders and rural entrepreneurs supporting traditional values and opposing corrupt politicians and communists. Its parliamentary breakthrough in 1966 was followed by electoral growth in the 1970s. Between 1983 and 1990, the SMP was even part of a governmental coalition. This, however, paved the way for its dissolution, since its voters did not agree with the significant compromises it had to make while in government. In 1995 the PS was founded on the ashes of the collapsed SMP. While it maintained the social-conservative ideology of the predecessor party  – reflected in support for traditional family values, anti-feminism, anti-LGBTQ, and antiabortion positions – the PS was much more critical of the EU and, over time, increasingly embraced nationalism and anti-immigration positions. In more recent years, the PS has also clearly positioned itself on one side of the debate on climate change, breaking the political consensus in favour of reducing CO2 emissions. Both the SMP and the PS have self-identified as populist. According to its 1992 party programme, the SMP ‘is a populist (party) or a party that listens to the popular will, which is neither left - nor right-wing. It emanates from the everyday thinking of people with the aim to empower the individual’ (SMP 1992). In the 2011 electoral manifesto the PS defines itself as a patriotic, Christian social party embracing a populist conception of democracy, which relies on the consent of the people (Perussuomalaiset 2011). It has been claimed that populism has come to play less of a role than nationalism in the appeals of the PS after 2015, when the concept was discarded in the electoral platform (Elmgren 2018) and the party defined itself as ‘a patriotic and Christian social party, which defends the national interest. We value and want to strengthen the voice of ordinary people in politics’ (Perussuomalaiset 2018). Yet ordinary people are still mentioned as a group that needs to be safeguarded. Generally, however, while the SMP has been defined as an agrarian populist party (Sänkiaho 1971; Fryklund and Peterson 1981), the PS

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represents the so-called ‘new radical right’ (Pekonen 1999) and can be considered a member of the PRR party family (Jungar and Jupskås 2014). The electoral success of the PS was quite modest until the earthquake in the 2011 parliamentary election, when, led by the popular charismatic party leader Timo Soini, it increased its share of the vote from 4 to 19 per cent. In the 1999 parliamentary election, the PS had received only one per cent of the vote, and one parliamentary seat. In the 2003 election, the party increased its vote to 1.6 per cent and obtained three seats.

Other key actors in the Finnish party system Until the parliamentary breakthrough of the PS, the Finnish party system was dominated by three large political parties: The Keskusta (KESK – Centre party), the Suomen Sosialidemokraattinen Puolue (SDP – Social Democratic party), and the Kokoomus (KOK  – Conservative party). The KESK combines a centrist socioeconomic position with socio-cultural conservatism. The party has traditionally played an important role in Finnish politics because of its strategic centrist location and as a member of both centre-left and centre-right governments. Moreover, as the party of the longstanding president Urho Kekkonen (1956–1982), it had a privileged position in government formation. Kekkonen used his presidential powers (which were quite significant before the 2000 constitutional reform) to influence government formation. Despite a shrinking rural population, the KESK has been successful in maintaining its electorate and, during the last decade, it has received between 15 and 20 per cent of the vote. The SDP has been electorally weaker than the other Scandinavian social democratic parties, but programmatically it is very similar to them with its pro-welfare and tax-based redistributive policies. The SDP’s electoral support has declined and in recent years the party has achieved its lowest electoral results since the early twentieth century. The conservative party KOK is placed to the right on the socio-economic dimension, emphasizing privatization, support for entrepreneurship and lower taxes. In the Nordic context, conservative parties, despite generally supporting the welfare state, have increasingly favoured the introduction of market solutions in the public sector. The Finnish party system also includes four minor parties: the Vasemmistolitto (VAS – Left Alliance), the Vihreä Liitto (VIHR – Greens), the Kristillisdemokraatit (KD  – Christian Democrats), and the Suomen ruotsalainen kansanpuolue/Svenska Folkpartoet (RKP/SFP  – Swedish People’s Party of Finland), which is the party representing the Swedish speaking minority in Finland. The VAS is the political successor of communist groups, which were divided between euro-communists and a Soviet-friendly faction. After the fall of the wall and the demise of the Soviet Union, the party maintained its leftist socio-economic position and has adopted liberal values in terms of immigration, gender equality, and environmentalism. The RKP/SFP represents the conservative and liberal Swedish-speaking minority and also tries to attract Finnish-speaking liberal voters.The KD was formed in 1958 and

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FIGURE 10.1

Electoral support for Finnish parties (per cent) in general elections from

1995 to 2019

received its first parliamentary seats in 1970. It combines socio-cultural conservatism with a centrist economic position. The VIHR started out as an environmental movement, and received its first two seats in the 1987 parliamentary election. It was the first European green party to take part in a government, which it joined in 1995. Over the last 20 years, the electoral support of these political parties has ranged between 3 and 10 per cent, with the exception of the Greens (VIHR) that in the recent election surpassed 10 per cent (Figure 10.1).

The political opportunity structure The PS parliamentary breakthrough in 2011 and the ‘mainstreaming’ of this challenger party took place in a particular institutional and contextual setting. The political opportunity structure, as defined by Kitschelt, consists of the structural and institutional factors that can help and constrain the development of political contenders (Kitschelt 1986). Finland has a proportional electoral system with no electoral threshold, which favours parliamentary representation of new parties. Since the SMP first achieved parliamentary seats in 1966, the Finnish parliament has seen eight other new parties gain representation.This is the largest number of new parties among the Nordic countries (Bolin 2012). Due to the dominance of the larger political parties, party system fragmentation has nevertheless remained stable. The presence of populist parties in the Nordic countries has been linked to the consensual character of their democracies and to their welfare states based on corporatist structures (Paloheimo 2012). Finland has been characterized by cross-bloc oversized or surplus majority governments, including two of the larger parties and

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some of the smaller political parties (Jungar 2002). The existence of a broad consensus, also involving trade unions and employer organizations, has thus provided an enabling environment for a populist challenge to the political establishment. Obviously, the political institutional setting alone cannot explain the electoral growth and the parliamentary breakthrough of the PS. This party relied on an anti-EU political message in combination with a leftist socio-economic agenda supporting a more equal social welfare, particularly for pensioners and families with children in the rural areas. The party also expressed its opposition to immigration, although for many years this was not a very salient issue. How then can the five-fold increase in its electoral support between 2007 and 2011 be explained? What made one fifth of the Finnish electorate susceptible to populist appeals? In addition to the general downturn in the aftermath of the 2008 economic recession, which forced the government to make structural reforms in the welfare system in order to cut public expenditure, three other factors should be mentioned:  a corruption scandal involving representatives from several political parties; the euro crisis; and the gradually increasing saliency of immigration. First, in 2008 it was revealed that representatives from several parties had received funding for their electoral campaigns in exchange for support for property developments plans. The main governmental parties were involved, and this obviously provided fertile ground for a populist attack on the political elite colluding with the business sector (Ylä-Anttila and Ylä-Anttila 2015). Second, the euro crisis, and particularly the bailouts of Greece, Spain, and Portugal, were events that the PS used to mobilize voters. Timo Soini, the party leader, was elected to the European Parliament in 2009 with the largest personal share of the vote – 130,000 votes – among all Finnish MEPs by questioning why the Finnish taxpayers should pay for malfunctioning economics in the three members states hardest hit by the euro crisis. After the PS electoral breakthrough, Timo Soini expressed his view on the bailouts and their consequences in the Wall Street Journal: […] we made a solemn promise to oppose the bailouts of euro-zone member states. Europe is suffering from the economic gangrene of insolvency – both public and private. Unless we amputate that which cannot be saved, we risk poisoning the whole body. (Soini 2011) Before the euro crisis, consensus had prevailed among the Finnish political parties on the benefits of the EU and the euro (Raunio 2005). As there was no other party voicing its opposition to European integration and Finnish participation in the euro zone, the PS was successful in carving out an EU-critical niche. In times of increasing scepticism towards the EU, the PS acted as an outsider party challenging the euro project. This paved the way for the parliamentary breakthrough of 2011 (Jungar 2016). Third, immigration had become a more salient topic in the political debate (Ylä-Anttila and Ylä-Anttila 2015). The PS adopted more radical anti-immigration

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positions with the inclusion of nationalist-minded, anti-immigration and Islamophobic groups with roots in different nationalist associations and on-line communities from 2008 onwards (Jungar 2016, 122–123; Nurmi 2017, 22). The strategy, supported by the party leader, to include these groups, was electorally rewarding in the short term, although, as shown below, it also created tensions within the party. The PS increasingly voiced concerns over the weakening of Finnish sovereignty within the EU and claimed that Finnish culture and identity were threatened due to immigration and multicultural policies embraced by ‘leftwing, liberal’ politicians who did not understand ordinary people. Nationalism was clearly formulated in the PS electoral manifesto: Love of the nation and the Finnishness unites the people irrespective of social class, income, education, party-political differences and other convictions. The basis for our immigration policy is that the Finns have the right to decide under what conditions foreigners settle in our country. (Perussuomalaiset 2011) The left-wing liberal establishment was said to be imbued with elitism by PS leader Timo Soini: The green elitism considers the people of Finland stupid… the greens are the pharisees of politics, judging the lifestyle of the people, their eating habits and travels abroad, their use of energy resources, and so on. (Soini 2010) Until the 2011 parliamentary election, economic issues, particularly those linked to the Eurozone crisis, were quite important for the PS.Yet this has changed over the last years (Grönlund et al. 2019). The PS has increasingly focused on socio-cultural debates and has been quite successful in meeting and, at the same time, mobilizing an increasing demand for anti-immigration and anti-EU policies.

The impact of the PS on the party system The parliamentary breakthrough of the PS has affected the structure and dimensionality of the Finnish party system and the process of government formation. In line with Sartori (1976, 44), who defines a party system as ‘a system of interactions resulting from inter-party competition’, the interactions between the relevant parties have changed as a consequence of the presence of the PS. As mentioned above, during the post-war period, the Finnish party system has been dominated by three almost equally sized parties: the KESK, KOK, and SDP. These parties have constituted the core of the political system, alternating as government formateurs and government coalition partners. Executives have usually been ‘oversized’ and have also been open to participation of the smaller parties, VIHR, VAS, KD, and RKP/SFP.

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After the 2011 parliamentary election, a so-called ‘six-pack’ government coalition including the KOK, SDP and all the four smaller political parties was formed. The primary goal of this oversized coalition was to address the growing economic deficit by introducing major structural reforms in social welfare and labour market policies in the aftermath of the economic recession. Obviously, this broad alliance of political parties ranging from the far left to the centre-right was an attractive target for populist, anti-establishment appeals. In opposition, the PS could rely on its ‘welfare chauvinism’, highlighting how immigration and integration were negatively affecting ordinary people in times of economic recession (Kuisma and Nygård 2017). As shown above, the success of the PS, and its unwillingness to establish alliances, initially ‘forced’ the other main parties to form heterogeneous coalitions. Yet the consolidation of a strong populist actor on the right soon introduced some elements of ‘bipolarity’ into the Finnish political system.Tim Bale (2003) has developed a well-known argument that, as they transformed into ‘coalitionable political parties’, PRRPs contributed to the formation of centre-right governments fully alternative to the left/centre-left, thus reducing the level of ‘consensualism’ in some democratic systems. In the Nordic region, the Norwegian Progress party and the Danish People’s party have favoured the creation of centre-right governments by joining or externally supporting the executive (see Chapters 2 and 9). This also happened in Finland in 2015, when the PS joined a centre-right government with the KESK and the KOK (Kuisma and Nygård 2017).This was an unusual, ‘minimal winning’ coalition, very different from the more ‘inclusive’ ones that had ruled Finland in previous years. This also implied that any of the three parties could bring the government down. Interestingly, Timo Soini, the PS party leader, did not immediately exclude an alliance with the social democrats, since the Centre and the Conservative parties were more right-wing on the socio-economic dimension (Jungar 2016). At the same time, the PS contributed to reducing the role of the smaller parties, which for many years had functioned as balancing actors and prevented larger parties from playing a dominant role in the distribution of ministerial portfolios (Jungar 2002). If we consider the dimensions of party competition, the importance of the socalled ‘liberal-authoritarian’ dimension has increased significantly since the PS’s electoral breakthrough in 2011 (Jungar 2016). Additionally, whereas the positions of mainstream political parties on the socio-economic dimension have been stable, those on the liberal-authoritarian dimension have become more polarized (Figure  10.2). The socio-economic dimension has traditionally been the most salient political cleavage in Finland, as elsewhere in the Nordic region (Arter 2006, 48–49). The Finnish party system has also been characterized by a strong conflict between urban and rural interests represented by the KESK. The PS occupies a centrist location on the socio-economic dimension and is situated between the SDP and the KESK (Bakker et  al. 2015). This is also the case for the Greens, whereas the KD position itself to the right. The VAS is, as expected, the most leftist on this dimension, whereas the KOK and the RKP/ SFP party clearly place themselves on the socio-economic right. As can be seen

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FIGURE 10.2

The Finnish party space in two dimensions. Change from 2011 to 2014

from Figure 10.2, the movements of the political parties on the socio-economic dimension between 2010 and 2014 have been minimal, while the movements on the liberal-authoritarian dimension tapping nationalism, law and order, defence and traditional values are larger. According to the experts evaluating the placement of the Finnish parties in 2010 and 2014 (the CHES does not include Finland in 2017) a process of polarization has taken place. In addition to immigration and integration, and the linguistic rights of the Swedish speaking minority, equal marriage rights were topical during the period. As a result of a citizen initiative gathering 166,000 signatures, the Finnish parliament passed a law on same-sex marriage and adoption rights for same-sex couples in 2013.The law came into force in 2017 and was opposed not only by the PS, but also by the KD and the KESK (Edenborg and Jungar 2020). All three parties moved in a more authoritarian direction. For the PS this coincides with its nationalist radicalization (Jungar 2016; Kuisma and Nygård 2017). The more ‘libertarian’ parties – the VAS, SDP,VIHR, and the RKP/ SFP – moved in the opposite direction between 2010 and 2014. Based on expert opinions, the breakthrough of the PS seems to have brought about greater polarization between socially ‘progressive’ and ‘conservative’ political parties.

The strategic responses of mainstream parties to the rise of the PS The increasing polarization on the socio-cultural dimension can be linked to the strategies that mainstream parties adopted towards the rising PS. As was highlighted

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above, at the time of the parliamentary breakthrough in 2011, the PS was perceived as a legitimate political party, since it was the successor of the SMP. Thanks to this ‘reputational shield’, the PS did not have to defend itself from allegations of extremism (Ivarsflaten 2006). Indeed, none of the main parties ruled out a pact with the PS at that point. The main exception was represented by the Greens, which immediately adopted a clashing strategy and announced that they would not sit in the same government with the PS. The RKP/SFP voiced similar concerns on the anti-immigration and anti-Islam positions existing within the PS. Yet, as the main representative of the Swedish speaking community, it was above all critical of the PS’s nationalist platform, targeting the language rights of the Swedish-speaking population. Mainstream centre-right parties quickly adopted an accommodative strategy towards the PS, as its ‘reputational shield’ facilitated a process of convergence.When international media commented on the inclusion of the PS in government 2015, the outgoing Prime Minister Alexander Stubb, a member of the KOK, in an article in Financial Times denied the accusations of extremism made against the PS, by saying that Timo Soini and ‘his party sometimes get put and lumped into the wrong corner with the likes of European far right parties’ (Jungar 2016, 136) (Financial Times, 17 June 2015). The President of Finland, Sauli Niinistö, also denied the fact that the PS was similar to other European radical right parties (Jungar 2016, 136). Moreover, the PS was treated favourably by the media. Already during the 2011 electoral campaign, the party was allocated the same amount of time in television and radio programmes by the Finnish public broadcaster as the other large parties. This decision was based on the opinion polls predicting a substantial increase in the PS vote. This obviously benefited the party and particularly the party leader Timo Soini, who is a very talented and charismatic performer. This further indicates that no ‘dismissive’, ‘clashing’ or ‘marginalization’ strategies were systematically adopted by mainstream parties or media to contain the challenger party during the electoral campaigns of 2011 and 2015 (and also during the process of government formation in 2015). Quite the contrary. The prevalence of accommodative strategies does not necessarily imply that parties in Finland are more inclined to collaborate with radical or populist challengers than those in other countries. During the democratic history of Finland, strategies aimed at isolating extreme ideologies and anti-system parties have been developed on many occasions. They also derived from foreign policy concerns related to the specific relationship between Finland and its eastern neighbour, the Soviet Union. Communism was outlawed in the 1930s until the 1944, whereas fascist parties were banned as a consequence of the Peace treaty that Finland signed with the Soviet Union after the Second World War. The SMP was at times accused of being extreme right and fascist, mainly due to its strong anti-communist positions, but, as shown above, this changed at the beginning of the 1980s as the SMP elected a more moderate leader. Also the communist party SKDL and the KOK were not perceived as legitimate governmental parties after WW2. Yet they were slowly integrated into mainstream politics in the following decades.

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According to the Finnish parliamentary tradition, the largest parties (or those which substantially increase their share of the vote) are expected to take part in governmental negotiations (Jungar 2002). This was also the case after the 2011 parliamentary elections. PS supporters were hoping that the party would be included in the new executive, yet the PS leader was far more reluctant. In the end, Timo Soini decided to stay in opposition and motivated this choice by arguing that the Eurozone bailouts were non-negotiable and that the PS could not support the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), as he also explained in a Wall Street Journal article (Soini 2011). He also feared that the compromises the party would need to make in government, particularly in relation to the EU, would harm its longterm, office-seeking opportunities. Moreover, he did not think that there were enough PS candidates ready to hold government offices. Indeed, the parliamentary group consisted of a substantial number of newcomers without substantial political experience (Soini 2014; Jungar 2017,129–130). Lastly, the PS decided to adopt a more radical position towards the Euro, arguing that Finland should leave the Eurozone. The other parties were not willing to cross this threshold and further negotiations with the PS collapsed.Yet in 2013 the PS party congress reformulated its position on the Euro and no longer demanded an immediate withdrawal from the Eurozone. This chain of actions and reactions between (centre-right) mainstream parties, ready to engage in negotiations, and the populist challenger gradually moderating its positions, opened the door for full governmental collaboration after the 2015 parliamentary elections. When the PS joined the executive, Timo Soini became Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs. The party also received three important portfolios: Defence, Social Affairs and Health and Justice and Employment. When the government was formed, the Prime Minister Juha Sipilä announced that the content of the governmental programme and mutual trust between the coalition partners were central to the future success of the government. Yet, even though mainstream parties accepted to cooperate with the PS in government and made some concessions, they did not fully adjust their policies to the PS agenda. According to Kuisma and Nygård (2017, 88): while the PS went for an openly anti-immigration strategy  – which thus contributed towards producing the electoral goods for them in the 2011 and 2015 elections  – the approaches pursued by the three mainstream parties were, if anything, to downplay the importance of the ‘issue’, instead focusing on economic policy and the structural reforms needed to get Finland out of the recession. Thus, while collaborating with the PS, mainstream parties adopted a dismissive strategy towards some of its key policies and aimed to place more emphasis on their ‘responsible’ and ‘trustworthy’ profiles, leaving the anti-immigration and anti-EU discourse to the PS.

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When rumours spread in January 2017 that Timo Soini would step down – he announced his resignation on his blog on 7 March 7 – Petteri Orpo, leader of the KOK, stated that it would be difficult for him and his party to remain in a government with representatives holding views ‘against our values’. He was referring to the likely winner of the new leadership contest within the PS, Jussi Halla-aho, representative of the radical wing of the party (Palonen 2018). The KOK and the KESK, which for many years had not seemed concerned about the extremist tendencies within the PS (even though Jussi Halla-aho and other PS members at the local level had been sentenced for hate speech and religious slur), changed their approach once the radical faction became clearly dominant within the party. Immediately after the election of the new PS leader, Juha Sipilä, the Prime Minister, announced that the composition of the government had to be reconsidered. Moreover, the Finnish president Sauli Niinistö commented in public that representatives of that nationalist faction, of which some had committed hate crimes, had taken over the leadership of the PS in a well-prepared and orchestrated coup (Nurmi 2017).The message was that the party had transformed in such a way that the future of the governmental coalition was put into question. Even though the role of President has been weakened by a reform passed in 2000 and his/her role in the process of government formation has been reduced, the statement of President Niinistö, a very popular figure, was of symbolic importance. Not only was Halla-aho elected the new party leader in 2017, but all the top positions in the party (three vice-chairmen and the party secretary) were occupied by well-known representatives of the more radical faction. Thus, at the 2017 congress there were no attempts to achieve a more balanced distribution of power between the two factions within the party, as none of the close allies of Timo Soini standing for candidates were elected to top party positions. The takeover had been prepared for over six months (Nurmi 2017). The new party leadership had initially no intention to leave the cabinet, but immediately after his election Jussi Halla-aho stated that governmental participation should not be taken for granted. In short, the PS wanted the government to pursue stricter immigration policies, which had been relaxed during the inflow of immigrants after 2015. On 12 June 2017, after meeting Jussi Halla-aho, the leaders of the other two coalition parties posted identical tweets stating that they saw no possibility whatsoever for future cooperation with the new leader of the PS. Additionally, while acknowledging that differences on immigration policies had existed under the previous PS leadership, they argued that the divide had further expanded with the election of Halla-aho. According to them, a threshold had been crossed, implying that the ‘new’ PS was too extreme and lacked governmental credibility. Therefore the KOK and the KESK quickly turned to a marginalization strategy, which took the new PS leadership somewhat by surprise. A very brief governmental crisis followed. The Prime Minister announced that he would meet the President to announce the resignation of the government. Yet the following day he stated, rather unexpectedly, that the governmental crisis

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had been cancelled. The explanation was that the former party leader Timo Soini, together with the three other PS ministers and 20 parliamentarians, had left the PS. They formed the parliamentary group Uusi vaihtoehto (New Alternative), which later became the party Sininen tulevaisuus (SIN – Blue Reform). By remaining in government, Soini and his followers thereby secured a continued majority for the centre-right cabinet. How could this abrupt shift even occur? What explains this move from cooperation to the creation of a cordon sanitaire against the PS? After all, as mentioned above, the KOK and the KESK had not voiced major doubts about the PS in spite of the controversies caused by Halla-aho and several other PS members (Jungar 2017). On the contrary, representatives of the mainstream parties in government had even been quite active in fending off accusations of extremism and racism and defining hate speech episodes and contacts with extremist persons and groups as ‘internal affairs’ of the PS (Jungar 2017). The widening divisions within the PS, which led to the split, can probably explain the radical change in strategy pursued by mainstream political actors. According to Sarah De Lange a cordon sanitaire is set in place and maintained when, and as long as, the isolated party is not relevant for parliamentary cooperation and government formation (de Lange 2008). In theory the PS was still relevant before the governmental crisis, since the cabinet would have lost its parliamentary majority without it. Yet, it had become increasingly clear that the PS would no longer behave as a cohesive political actor and that a group of defecting MPs could secure the survival of the government. While the victory of the radical faction within the PS had been skilfully prepared by the supporters of Halla-aho, there had been signs that a significant number of party representatives were not going to accept this leadership change (Nurmi 2017). In this context, cooperation with a more ‘extreme’ PS became unnecessary. The KESK and the KOK would have probably been more cautious had they not known that the splinter group would support the cabinet. The government was pursuing two grand reforms on the reorganisations of health and care (privatisation) and a territorial reform introducing a new regional political-administrative level. A  governmental crisis and the formation of a new government would have meant the renegotiation of the whole reform package.

The relationship between PS and SIN As mentioned above, there had been rumours before the PS leadership election that the party could split, and that its former leader,Timo Soini, could leave. Before the 2017 party congress, he was still denying these speculations:  ‘The thought that I would leave the Finns party is insane. It was Judas who strangled himself ’ (Soini 2017). The split eventually happened but it would be a mistake to think that it was just determined by the events of 2017 and personality struggles. In fact, it was the result of a relatively long, and deep, process of internal transformation. Since 2008, the PS had included two factions, one of which (the radical

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one) de facto acted as a ‘party within the party’ (Kuisma and Nygård 2017). The traditional faction cherished the legacy of the predecessor party, the SMP, and combined strong anti-establishment rhetoric with support for social justice and hostility towards the EU. However, in the post-crisis period, during the years of its electoral growth, the PS attracted more radical groups, which had previously been organized in various nationalist associations and web communities (Jungar 2016). As a result, the party started placing more emphasis on anti-immigration policies and adopting a more radical discourse (Jungar 2016, 7). Once in government, the internal contradictions of the PS started to emerge and different positions became increasingly irreconcilable. Thus the split of the PS transformed the populist landscape in mid-2017. Two PRRPs were competing in Finland: one in opposition, the PS, and one in government, the SIN. In the end only one survived. As a matter of fact, the SIN became the first victim of what Timo Soini himself had feared in 2011, namely that the PS would disintegrate in government. In 2015 when the PS joined the governmental coalition, it pressed for a change in the rules on party funding to the parliamentary party groups, the so-called Lex Vennamo. In 1972 the parliamentary political parties decided that defectors leaving their party group were entitled to a proportional share of the funding from the parliamentary group they abandoned. This was a decision directly targeting the PS predecessor party, the SMP, which the other political parties wanted to destabilize by incentivizing defections.Timo Soini pressed for a change of this regulation in the governmental negotiations in 2015, as he believed that the more nationalist-minded factions could defect and take their share of the party funding with them (Jungar 2016, 138). Ultimately, he had to taste his own medicine, since the SIN did not receive any economic support when a new parliamentary group was created. After the split, the electoral prospects seemed quite dim for both the PS and the SIN. Participation in government had impacted negatively on the electoral support of the PS, and its decline continued after the split. Support for the PS in opinion polls remained below 10 per cent between summer 2017 and early 2019 (compared to the 17.7 per cent won in 2015). Support for SIN was even lower, so low – under two per cent – that it was not even registered in the opinion polls. Therefore, neither the PS in opposition, nor the SIN in government, appeared to benefit from their respective positions. The PS appeared to be too extreme for the more moderate immigration-sceptics, whereas the SIN was accused by the PS of being more interested in holding power than in representing the people. Furthermore, the two parties had to clash to attract votes from the same sector of the electorate. However, in the 2019 general election, the PS surprisingly managed to get very close to its 2015 result, whereas the SIN failed to achieve any parliamentary seats. What can explain these diverging trajectories? A reasonable explanation is that, by deciding to abandon the PS and stay in government, Timo Soini appeared to prioritize his career as Foreign Minister, a position that offered few chances of initiating reforms affecting his former and potential supporters. Additionally, the SIN was much more inclined than the PS to

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compromise and accept policies that its leadership had previously contested, such as cuts in social welfare, EU bailouts and rising immigration. Generally, it became increasingly difficult for Blue Reform to carve out a proper niche between the PS and the other conservative political parties, such as the KESK, KOK and KD (Pitkänen and Westinen 2018). Additionally, despite losing most of its parliamentary group, the organization of the PS remained intact after the split, while the SIN had small economic resources thanks to which to build a proper party structure and conduct an efficient electoral campaign. The SIN tried to capitalize on the stigmatization of the PS as extreme and racist by launching the slogan: ‘realism without racism’. In its party programme it described itself as a ‘reformist liberal conservative’ party (Sininen Tulevaisuus 2019): reformist rather than radical (thus different from the PS), liberal on economic matters, and conservative on socio-cultural issues. Moreover, the SIN presented itself as ‘patriotic’, by rejecting xenophobia and supporting controlled immigration. Again, the aim was to develop a profile that would clearly distinguish the party from the PS, which instead moved in an even more radical direction by promoting campaigns aimed at stopping immigration, limiting the rights of asylum seekers and introducing rehoming policies. Timo Soini declared that the SIN was the spiritual continuation of the SMP, the voice and defender of ordinary people with no racist connotations (Iltalehti 2019). However, this did not seem to have a positive impact on voters’ support. For the second time, after the bankruptcy of the SMP in 1995, Timo Soini experienced a dramatic political failure.Yet, in contrast to 1995, when Soini built a new party on the ashes of the old, this time he left the sinking ship in 2019. The PS thus managed to limit the damage produced by competition with a new populist party and its resilience also determined a further change in the strategies pursued by mainstream parties. Before the 2019 parliamentary elections only the leaders of the VAS and the Greens rejected any form of collaboration with the PS, while the RKP/SFP, representing the Swedish minority, was less radical in its anti-PS statements. Even the SDP, while stating that an alliance with the PS was ‘unlikely’, did not exclude it in uncertain terms. A similar position was taken by the KOK. Once the 2019 elections had taken place, the KESK and the KD did not rule out being in government with the PS, stating that it was all dependent on the content of the governmental programme. However, having won the election, the SDP managed to form a centre-left five-party government with the KESK,VAS,VIHR and RKP/SFP. Having said this, and judging from the statements of party leaders in 2018, it is not unlikely that the PS will eventually be involved in future government negotiations with the KESK and the KOK. This would be in line with the thesis that populist parties are less likely to be marginalized and ostracized when their votes become more relevant for government formation.

Conclusion The electoral breakthrough and persistence of the PS has transformed the Finnish political system. This development is in many respects similar to that of other

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European party systems where PRRPs have established themselves as relevant parties for government formation. Obviously, the impact of these parties varies depending on country-specific factors. The establishment of the PS has transformed the structure of the party system in several ways. For most of the post war period the Finnish party system was dominated by three almost equally sized parties: KESK, KOK, and SDP. These parties used to alternate as government formateurs and government coalition members. Today, with the rise of the PS, the Finnish party system consists of four almost equally sized parliamentary parties that are polling between 15 to 20 per cent of the vote. The consolidation of support for the PS also contributed to consolidating a bi-polar Finnish party system, in line with what argued by Mair (2001) and Bale (2003). Traditionally the process of government formation had involved parties belonging to different blocs and relied on oversized majorities.Yet in 2015 a centreright minimal winning coalition government was formed by the KESK and the KOK, including the PS. Generally, whereas the large mainstream parties, including the SDP, were all prepared to cooperate with the PS, the smaller parties, especially the VAS and RKP/SFP were more reluctant. Only the Greens adopted a clearly adversarial/clashing strategy against the PS. Generally, the PS was perceived as a legitimate political actor which could not be excluded a priori from government negotiations. This was partly due to its ‘reputational shield’ as the successor of the old SMP. Moreover, the PS produced a transformation in the dimensionality of party competition by determining an increase in the importance of the socio-cultural dimension (although it did not completely replace the previously dominating socioeconomic left-right dimension).The strengthening of the PS has also corresponded with an increasing polarization on the socio-cultural dimension, whereas party positions on the socio-economic left-right dimension have remained stable. Particularly, the value-liberal parties – the SDP, VAS, VIHR and RKP/SFP – have repositioned themselves towards the liberal end. The move towards the opposite (authoritarian) end of the socio-cultural dimension has been less radical in the case of mainstream conservative and centrist parties (apart from the KD). Therefore, while collaborating with the PS, mainstream centre-right parties did not experience a significant programmatic shift and left the Finns party almost completely alone to occupy the more ‘authoritarian’ sector of the political space. Participation in government turned out to be electorally costly for the PS and contributed to exacerbating internal tensions.The victory of the ‘nationalist’ faction at the 2017 party congress was partly linked to conflicts over the compromises made in government on core policies, particularly immigration and the EU. Considering these intra-party dynamics, it seems that participation in government further radicalized the PS, since it resulted in the strengthening of its less moderate and traditional components (closer to the SMP tradition). Unlike many of the cases presented in this book, the PS is a case of a PRRP that moved from the mainstream to the margins of the political system (at least until 2019). A cordon sanitaire was put in place in 2017 after the party fell under the

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control of its more radical faction. Hence the reaction of its governmental partners changed from cooperation to marginalization in a very short period of time. In the literature it has been suggested that ostracizing strategies are set in place and maintained for parties that are not necessary for government formation, whereas they are removed when these parties become relevant (de Lange 2008).The Finnish case illustrates very well these strategic dynamics. Even though some high-ranking representatives of the PS had been sentenced for hate-speech, between 2011 and 2017 this was not seen as an impediment for cooperation and government formation. However, the party leadership change and particularly the subsequent split of the PS made marginalization strategies  – motivated by accusations of radicalization – possible. The splinter group formed a new party, the SIN, and remained in government, thus securing a parliamentary majority. Later on, when the PS started to recover from the split and the electoral weakness of the SIN became evident (until its complete defeat in 2019), mainstream parties such as the KESK, KOK, and KD, stopped being entirely dismissive of the party. In the meantime, at the 2019 election, the PS almost managed to become the largest party in the country (it obtained 17.5 per cent of the vote, while the SDP, the largest party, won 17.7 per cent). In this context, and given the traditional pluralism of Finnish governmental majorities, any cordon sanitaire could not hold. The PS was eventually excluded from government but just because the SDP managed to form a centre-left coalition.The PS started leading the polls soon after the last general election: hence its return to power, perhaps as part of a new centre-right alliance and in an even more dominant position, can hardly be ruled out in the near future Lastly, Finland provides some evidence of how populist parties may compete against each other. After the split, the PS and the SIN sought to appeal to the same segment of voters. The SIN presented itself as a less radical, more reformist option than the PS, portraying itself as the true successor of the old SMP. Initially the split seemed to negatively affect both parties, but within two years the PS had managed to recover, while the SIN collapsed and basically disappeared. The latter failed to create a niche between the PS and the conservative centre-right parties. Moreover, being in government did not make things easier, since the party had to compromise on many core issues, thus alienating many of its core and potential voters. On the other hand, by adopting a clashing strategy and by accusing the SIN of betraying its core principles, the PS managed to regain the support temporarily lost after the split. In some respects, the dynamics between PS and SIN resemble those that could be observed in Austria (see Chapter  4) between the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ  – Freedom Party of Austria) and its splinter party, the Bündnis Zukunft Österreich (BZÖ – Alliance for the Future of Austria), with the latter remaining in government and experiencing electoral decline (although less rapid than in the case of the SIN). Generally, it seems that splinter groups challenging more established populist parties are not able to succeed if they emerge as more ‘responsible’ and ‘moderate’ alternatives, which are fully involved in governmental coalitions (see also the case of Switzerland, analysed in Chapter 8).The role of party organizational

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resources is also crucial.The PS (like the FPÖ), despite losing a significant part of its representation in parliament, could still rely on a solid organization and could also access public finances, which the SIN lacked. This proved to be of vital importance for the party and allowed it to overcome its crisis and stage an unexpected comeback in the 2019 election.

References Arter, David. 2006. Democracy in Scandinavia: Consensual, Majoritarian or Mixed? Manchester: Manchester University Press. Bakker, Ryan, Catherine de Vries, Erica Edwards, Liesbet Hooghe, Seth Jolly, Gary Marks, et  al. 2015. ‘Measuring Party Positions in Europe:  The Chapel Hill Expert Survey Trend File, 1999–2010.’ Party Politics 21, no. 1:  143–152. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1354068812462931 Bale, Tim. 2003. ‘Cinderella and Her Ugly Sisters: The Mainstream and Extreme Right in Europe’s Bipolarising Party Systems.’ West European Politics 26, no. 3: 67–90. https://doi. org/10.1080/01402380312331280598 Bolin, Niklas. 2012. ‘Målsättning riksdagen: Ett aktörsperspektiv på nya partiers inträde i det nationella parlamentet.’ PhD dissertation, University of Umeå. De Lange, Sarah. 2008. ‘From Pariah to Power: The Government Participation of Radical Right-wing Populist Parties in West European Democracies.’ PhD dissertation, University of Antwerp. Edenborg, Emil, and Ann-Cathrine Jungar. (forthcoming 2020). ‘The Nordic Radical Right and LGBTQ rights.’ In The Nordic Radical Right:  Voters, Ideologies, Organizations and Societal Interactions, edited by Anders Jupskås and Ann-Cathrine Jungar. London and New York: Routledge. Elmgren, Ainur. 2018. ‘The Double-Edged Sword:  The Political Appropriation of the Concept of Populism.’ Journal of Political Ideologies 23, no. 3:  320–341. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/13569317.2018.1502940 Financial Times. 2015. ‘Sick Finland Ready for Austerity Medicine, says Alexander Stubb.’ Financial Times, 17 June 2015. www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/fb55b4f2-14fc-11e5-950900144feabdc0.html#axzz3dmlUxjqc, last accessed 4 October 2020. Fryklund, Björn, and Tomas Peterson. 1981.‘Populism och Missnöjespartier i Norden: Studier av Småborgerlig Klassaktivitet.’ PhD dissertation, University of Lund. Grönlund, Kimmo, and Kim Strandberg. 2019.Voting and Public Opinion in Finland  – The Parliamentary Election of 2019. Åbo Akademi. Institutet för samhällsforskning. Iltalehti. 2019. ‘Näkökulma: Siniset kalastavat vaalipaniikissaan samoilla apajilla kuin Hallaahon perussuomalaiset – oikeusvaltio ei milloinkaan tahraa käsiään vereen.’ Iltalehti, 13 January 2019. www.iltalehti.fi/politiikka/a/d4f3032e-f577-45c5-b99e-ffee4524d873, last accessed 4 October 2020. Ivarsflaten, Elisabeth. 2006. ‘Reputational Shields: Why Most Anti-immigrant Parties Failed in Western Europe, 1980–2005.’ Paper presented at the 2006 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia. Jungar, Ann-Cathrine. 2002. ‘A Case of a Surplus Majority Government:  The Finnish Rainbow Coalition.’ Scandinavian Political Studies 25, no. 1:  57–83. https://doi.org/ 10.1111/1467–9477.00063. Jungar, Ann-Cathrine, and Anders Jupskås. 2014. ‘Populist Radical Right Parties in the Nordic Region:  A New and Distinct Party Family?’ Scandinavian Political Studies 37, 3: 215–238. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467–9477.12024.

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Jungar, Ann-Cathrine. 2016. ‘From the Mainstream to the Margin? The Radicalisation of the True Finns.’ In Into the Mainstream. Radical Right-Wing Parties in Western Europe, edited by Tjiske Akkerman, Sarah de Lange, and Mathis Rooduijn, 113–143. London and New York: Routledge. Jungar, Ann-Cathrine. 2017. Populism i Norden:  från marginalen mot den politiska mittfåran. Helsingfors: Tankesmedjan Agenda. Kuisma, Mikko, and Mikael Nygård. 2017. ‘Immigration, Integration and the Finns Party. Issue Ownership by Coincidence or by Stealth.’ In The European Mainstream and the Radical Right, edited by Pontus Odamalm and Eve Hepburn, 71–89. New  York and London: Routledge. Kitschelt, Herbert. 1986. ‘Political Opportunity Structures and Political Protest:  AntiNuclear Movements in Four Democracies.’ British Journal of Political Science 17, no. 1: 57– 85. https://doi.org/10.1017/S000712340000380X Mair, Peter. 2001. ‘The Green Challenge and Political Competition:  How Typical Is the German Experience?’ German Politics 10, no. 2:  99–116. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 772713265. Nurmi, Lauri. 2017. Perussuomalaisten hajoamisen historia. Helsinki: Into Kustannus. Ovaskainen, Teppo, Karkkola Minna, and Markku Huusko. 2018. ‘Halla-ahon perussuomalaisten kanssa hallitukseen? -2 puoluetta suora “ei”, 2 voisi harkita.’ Uusisuomi, 14 September 2018. www.uusisuomi.fi/uutiset/halla-ahon-perussuomalaisten-kanssahallitukseen- 2- puolueelta- suora- ei- 2- voisi- harkita/ 32e25750- 14ad- 330d- b5f5a20bb4dd858b, last accessed 4 October 2020. Palonen, Emilia. 2018. ‘Finland:  Political Development and Data for 2017.’ European Journal of Political Research Political Yearbook 57, no. 1:  92–97. https://doi.org/10.1111/ 2047–8852.12219. Paloheimo, Heikki. 2012. ‘Populismi puoluejärjestelmän vedenjakajana.’ In Muutosvaalit 2011, edited by Sami Borg, 324–344. Helsinki: Oikeusministeriö. Pekonen, Kyösti, ed. 1999. The New Radical Right in Finland. Jyväskylä: The Finnish Political Science Association. Perussuomalaiset. 2011. Suomalaiselle sopivin Perussuomalaiset r.p:n eduskuntavaaliohjelma. Available at: www.perussuomalaiset.fi/getfile.php?file=1536. (electoral manifesto) Perussuomalaiset. 2018. Perussuomalaiset.R.P. Periaateohjelma, 19 October 2018. www. perussuomalaiset.fi/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/periaateohjelma.pdf, last accessed 4 October 2020. Pitkänen, Ville, and Jussi Westinen. 2019. ‘Siniset pyrkivät pois perussuomalaisten varjosta.’ Suomen Kuvalehti, 20 January 2019. https://suomenkuvalehti.fi/jutut/kotimaa/politiikka/ siniset- pyrkivat- pois- perussuomalaisten- varjosta- puolueella- on- omia- painotuksiamutta-riittaavatko-ne/, last accessed 4 October 2020. Raunio, Tapio. 2005. ‘Hesitant Voters, Committed Elite: Explaining the Lack of Eurosceptic Parties in Finland.’ Journal of European Integration 27, no. 4:  381–395. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/07036330500366483. Sartori, Giovanni. 1976. Parties and Party Systems, A  Framework for Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sininen tulevaisuus. 2019. Periaateohjelma. Helsinki:  Sininen tulevaisuus. www. sininentulevaisuus.fi/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Hyväksytty-periaateohjelma-uusitaitto.pdf Soini,Timo. 2010. ‘Kateudesta vihreät.’ In Timo Soini ploki, 10 August 2010. http://timosoini. fi/2010/08/kateudesta-vihreat-vihreat/., last accessed 4 October 2020. Soini, Timo. 2010–2017. Timo Soini ploki (blog). http://timosoini.fi., last accessed 4 October 2020.

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Soini, Timo. 2011. ‘Why I Don´t Support Europe’s Bailouts.’ Wall Street Journal. 9 May 2011. www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703864204576310851503980120. Soini, Timo. 2014. Peruspomo. Helsinki: WSOY. Soini, Timo. 2017. ‘Juudas meni ja hirtti itsensä.’ Timo Soini ploki. 3 June 2017. http:// timosoini.fi/2017/06/juudas-meni-ja-hirtti-itsensa/., last accessed 4 October 2020. Sänkiaho, Risto. 1971. ‘Populismi ja populistiset liikkeet.’ In Vennamolaisuus populistisena joukkoliikkeenä, edited by Voitto Helander, 22–44. Hämeenlinna: Karisto Publishers. Suomen Maaseudun Puolue. 1992. Suomen Maaseudun Puolueen Puolueohjelma. Approved by the party congress held in Helsinki on 31 July and 1 August 1992. Ylä-Anttila, Matti, and Tuomas Ylä-Anttila. 2015. ‘Exploiting the Discursive Opportunity of the Euro Crisis: The Rise of the Finns Party.’ In European Populism in the Shadow of the Great Recession, edited by Hanspeter Kriesi and Takis S. Pappas, 57–72. Colchester: ECPR Press.

11 THE UNITED KINGDOM Davide Vampa

Introduction The United Kingdom is probably the Western European country in which the rise of twenty-first-century populism has had the most dramatic consequences. At first, this statement may seem too radical and unsupported by substantial evidence. Indeed, populist parties have won elections and entered government in important countries on the Continent, whereas they have remained at the margins of the British political system. The results of the 2017 general elections also suggested that a two-party system, dominated by the mainstream Tory and Labour Parties, might have been re-established after decades of significant political fluidity. Indeed together the two parties obtained the largest combined vote since 1970. Yet this apparent return to political ‘normality’ was short-lived and occurred in a context of dramatic international and domestic change, which followed the European Union (EU) membership referendum in 2016. A  Brexit scenario would have been significantly less likely to occur without the emergence and strengthening of the UK Independence Party (UKIP). Its campaign against the EU was clearly framed in populist terms (Mudde 2004) by appealing to the British people in the struggle against the European elites, accused of lacking democratic legitimacy. Also mainstream British parties were targeted by UKIP. They were portrayed as representatives of a ‘LibLabCon consensus’, which was too subordinate to the demands coming from Brussels (Tournier-Sol 2015). If we focus on political and policy impact, UKIP can be regarded as one of the most successful European populist parties. To be sure, populist parties in other EU member states have had significant (direct or indirect) influence on specific policies and may have contributed to exacerbating tensions within the EU. However, none of them has led to a fundamental revision of the international position of a country, with important consequences for its constitutional system and its domestic

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policies  – including, in particular, immigration. At the same time, UKIP can be regarded as a victim of its own success since its support collapsed once Brexit was (or seemed to be) achieved. Therefore, despite Nigel Farage’s efforts to diversify its political platform and expand its constituency (Usherwood 2015), the party still heavily relied on one key issue: UK membership of the EU. All other issues emphasized by the party in its anti-immigration or law and order campaigns were linked to the core anti-EU message. After the referendum, UKIP seemed unable to provide answers to social and economic questions that Brexit would not eliminate. This chapter starts with an overview of the British political landscape from 2007 until 2018. It then moves to a short analysis of the causes of success of UKIP and the reactions triggered by its rise. It briefly considers how the party interacted with its main populist competitor, the British National Party (BNP), and how its political platform changed over time. This is followed by a section focusing on how the mainstream centre-right and centre-left parties have adjusted to the rise of UKIP and to increasing Euroscepticism that culminated in the pro-Brexit vote. Some evidence is provided in support of the argument that a process of ‘populist diffusion’ has occurred over the last decade. This is accompanied by a discussion of how the populist message has been interpreted on the right and on the left of the political spectrum. In particular, following the typology presented in Chapter 3, it is shown that the Conservative Party has responded to UKIP by coopting its Eurosceptic and anti-immigration positions. These used to be popular at the margins of the party establishment but are now supported by its core. The Labour Party, despite being ideologically much more distant from UKIP, has not responded to the populist challenge by adopting a clearly ‘clashing’ strategy but has also resorted to co-optation (although to a more limited extent than the Tories). Additionally, under Jeremy Corbyn’s unconventional leadership, Labour has relied on a more ‘people-centric’ discourse, thus suggesting the existence of some elements of ‘stylistic’ co-optation in its strategy. After discussing developments in the post-referendum period, the last section of the chapter reflects on the lessons that can be drawn from the British case.

The context: UKIP and the British party system UKIP emerged as a ‘single issue’ party in the early 1990s and, for many years, it was not regarded as a clear case of radical right-wing populism (see, for instance, Mudde 2007). Not only did the party have a much less diversified political platform than other populist radical right parties (PRRPs) in Western Europe, but, having being founded by a former Liberal,1 it lacked the ‘nativist’ and ‘authoritarian’ characteristics (as defined by Mudde 2007) of parties such as the National Front or the Freedom Party of Austria. However, the party experienced a process of programmatic transformation, which started in the early 2000s and accelerated during the Great Recession. This shift was determined by various factors, some of which will be analysed below when discussing the causes of UKIP’s success. Here it is sufficient to say that UKIP started

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paying increasing attention to socio-cultural and immigration issues (Usherwood 2015), although they were still clearly framed within its anti-EU discourse (particularly after the EU enlargement to Central and Eastern Europe in 2004). This was combined with a ‘populist narrative’, with UKIP portraying itself as a ‘commonsense’ party that championed ordinary people’s interests and challenged a policy cartel of unresponsive cultural, economic, and political elites (Clarke et al. 2016). The broadening of the party agenda, which increasingly resembled that of ‘classic’ PRRPs, occurred in a period of rising electoral success. As shown in Figure  11.1, the party made its electoral breakthrough in the 1999 European election and continued to grow until it reached a peak in 2014, when it became the party with the highest number of votes in a European election, with 26.6 per cent of the vote. A  proportional voting system and the second-order nature of political competition in EU elections certainly contributed to this success, which was much less evident in general elections.2 Yet 2015 marked a change also in the latter electoral context, with UKIP achieving a double-digit result (although this translated into just one seat won in the Commons) and becoming the third largest electoral party. Figure 11.1 also shows the drastic reversal in the party’s electoral fortunes in 2017, which is discussed in more detail below. The rise of UKIP was accompanied by the relative weakening of the two mainstream parties, the Labour Party and the Conservative Party, which, for almost a century, have alternated in government under the majoritarian Westminster system. Labour is a centre-left, social democratic party and, since 1945, it has been in government for a total of 30 years. Between 1997 and 2010, under the leadership of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, the party has enjoyed its longest uninterrupted period in government. The Conservative Party, also known as ‘the Tories’, is the oldest British party and is positioned on the centre-right of the political spectrum.

FIGURE 11.1

UKIP electoral results (%) in General and European elections from 1994

to 2017 Source: Audickas, Hawkins and Cracknell (2017).

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Its Prime Ministers ruled Britain for most of the post-Second World War period (45 out of 75 years since 1945). Under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher, who governed for 11 consecutive years, the party fully embraced neoliberal policies and oversaw a transformation of the British economy and society, which has also had a lasting impact on politics. After a long period in opposition in the late 1990s and 2000s, the party returned to power in 2010, with a reformed platform that tried to reconcile Thatcherism with a more liberal (not to be confused with ‘neoliberal’) agenda focusing on civil rights and environmentalism. Yet this attempt to reform was partial and not devoid of contradictions, as highlighted below when discussing the party’s approach to Europe and immigration. Figure  11.2 shows that in 1974 the combined vote share for the two main parties had already fallen below 80 per cent (it was above 90 per cent in the 1940s and 1950s and slightly below 90 per cent in the 1960s) but it remained above 70 per cent until the end of the tweniteth century. The 2000s saw a further decline in their support, which went and remained below 70 per cent (until the 2017 general election). Of course, this decline was only partly due to the rise of UKIP, which, until 2015, remained electorally quite weak in general elections. It was the success of the Liberal Democrats (Lib Dems) and Scottish National Party (SNP), rather than UKIP, which seemed to undermine the Tory-Labour ‘duopoly’ in general elections. On the other hand, the impact of UKIP was much more significant in European elections, where the combined vote for the two main parties collapsed to less than 50 per cent (even approaching 30 per cent in 2009).

FIGURE 11.2 Combined vote share (%) for Conservative and Labour parties from 1970 to 2017 in General and European elections

Source:  Author’s own calculation based on data provided by Audickas, Hawkins, and Cracknell (2017).

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European elections also proved to be a competitive arena for another challenger party, which was positioned to the right of UKIP: the British National Party (BNP) led by Nick Griffin. According to Mudde (2007), the BNP meets the definition of PRRP and, in fact, at least until the late 2000s, was probably closer to such definition than UKIP (which is only briefly mentioned in Mudde’s seminal study). The party had a first electoral breakthrough in the 2004 European election (winning 4.9 per cent of the vote) and further expanded its electoral support in 2009 (6 per cent), when it managed to elect two MEPs. It is difficult to define the relationship between UKIP and BNP. The former always tried to distance itself from the latter by stressing its non-racist character and preventing former BNP members from joining the party (Tournier-Sol 2015, 146). While the BNP has been regarded as a form of right-wing populism that usually qualifies people via ethnic nationalist terms (‘native/indigenous British people’), UKIP has been defined as a ‘Eurorejectionist neoliberal populist’ party, which deliberately distinguishes itself from the ‘blood and soil’ ethnic nationalism and espouses a more open, inclusive civic nationalism (March 2017, 293). However, the dividing line between the two parties was quite thin and episodes of openly racist outbursts by UKIP members were not rare (Tournier-Sol 2015, 146). More generally, as discussed in more detail below, the success of UKIP in the post-crisis period corresponded with a phase of decline in BNP support, pointing to significant overlaps in their electorates.

Explaining the success of UKIP The success of UKIP may be explained by considering a combination of demandand supply-side factors (Mudde 2007). Economic and cultural changes mainly deriving from the transition to a post-industrial economy, globalization and the process of European integration have contributed to a significant transformation of British society over the last four decades. Partisan attachments and links between partisanship and social class identities have been weakening in Britain as in most western democracies since at least the 1970s, when cleavage boundaries started to become ‘more porous’ (Katz and Mair 2018, 47). As a consequence, today voters may be more susceptible to the appeals of insurgent parties such as UKIP, ‘especially in political-economic contexts characterised by continuing hardship and uncertainty’ (Clarke et al. 2016, 140). To be sure, the economic crisis that started in 2008, and the austerity measures implemented by governments afterwards, have also had an important impact on British citizens’ lives and perceptions. Yet immigration can probably be regarded as one of the most visible socio-demographic shifts experienced by British society over the last decades. Figure 11.3 clearly shows that before the acceleration of the EU integration process in the early 1990s, net migration in the UK was close to zero, meaning that the number of people coming to the UK did not significantly exceed (and sometimes was even lower than) the number of those leaving the country. This situation radically changed in the early 2000s, when a bloc of Central and Eastern European countries joined the EU. In the two years preceding the

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FIGURE 11.3

Net migration to the UK (1000s people, 1980–2016)

Sources: www.migrationwatchuk.org/statistics-net-migration-statistics;www.ons.gov. uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/ articles/explore50yearsofinternationalmigrationtoandfromtheuk/2016-12-01

Brexit vote, yearly net migration to the UK hit two consecutive records, going well above 300,000 individuals. This context of rising economic uncertainty and significant increase in immigration provided the ‘breeding ground’ for the success of challenger forces (Mudde 2007, 202), which could exploit perceptions of insecurity and fears of threats to national identity. Particularly the latter point, linked to the so-called ‘socio-cultural’ (rather than ‘socio-economic’) dimension of politics (de Lange 2007) plays an important role for the mobilization of PRRPs. Yet demand-side factors and changing socio-economic and socio-cultural conditions (at both macro- and micro-levels) are not sufficient to explain the sustained success of a new party. Mudde (2007) also highlights the importance of the institutional and political contexts in which PRRPs compete (supply-side factors). In particular, we can refer to what Arzheimer and Carter (2006, 423) define as medium-term variables within the ‘political opportunity structures’ (Kitschelt 1986): the ideological position of other competitors in the party system, the degree of convergence between the mainstream parties and the process of coalition formation. Looking at the developments within the British party system since the mid1990s, it is clear that changing dynamics within the political mainstream might have increased the chances for populist challengers to succeed. First of all, after the traumatic defeat in 1997, the Conservative Party started a process of gradual ideological transformation and modernization. The party needed to find a new identity to respond to the challenges posed by Tony Blair’s New Labour, which had also undergone a process of ideological moderation. The shift of the

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Tories to the centre was symbolized by the election of David Cameron as leader of the party. Cameron tried to distance the party from the legacy of Margaret Thatcher by promoting a more moderate form of ‘liberal conservatism’. Interestingly, however, this shift was based upon a marriage between social and economic liberalism and soft Euroscepticism (Heppell 2013, 341). Therefore, while distancing the party from Thatcherite social conservatism, Cameron paid more attention to the demands coming from Eurosceptic fringes within and outside the party. Thus, the Tory leadership converged with New Labour on the ‘left-right’ axis but also contributed to the legitimization of Eurosceptic positions that had been marginalized in previous decades.This partly reflected a strategy of issue co-optation since, already in the 2004 European election, UKIP and BNP together had polled more than 20 per cent of the vote, thus becoming a more serious challenge for the Conservative Party.3 In fact, however, Cameron invested much more political capital in his new ‘centrist’ strategy, with his Big Society narrative, and tried to downplay the importance of EU-related issues (at least until UKIP started to rise again in the polls, as shown in the next section).4 The process of convergence within the mainstream facilitated the creation of a coalition between the Conservative Party and the pro-EU Lib Dems in 2010, when the former became the largest party but failed to win a majority of seats. This was the first coalition government since the Second World War and the need to negotiate and reach compromises was seen as an anomaly in a system like the Westminster one in which confrontation, rather than consensusbuilding, had dominated. Additionally, by entering the government, the Lib Dems ceased to play the role of ‘traditional catch-all protest party’. Consequently the party ‘forfeited much of its appeal to voters searching for an alternative to the major parties’ (Clarke et al. 2016, 140). These developments opened up new opportunities for UKIP, which could further develop its political project and expand its appeal. Using the categorization suggested by Lucardie (2000), we can say that it started as a ‘prophet’ party, articulating a new, systematic anti-EU ideology when Euroscepticism was still confined to the fringes of the political establishment (while it remained well-rooted in British society and media). Yet the shifts occurring within and between the three main parties also allowed it to act as a ‘purifier’, accusing the Tories of betraying social conservatism by moving to the centre but also attacking Labour for abandoning its working-class roots. Interestingly, UKIP could also play the role of ‘prolocutor’, since, after the Lib Dems became a governmental force, it could claim to be the only ‘outsider’ giving voice to those who were not represented by the establishment. Therefore, in the new scenario presented above, UKIP not only aimed to attract the support of an increasing number of Eurosceptics5 but it also started appealing to voters’ negative judgments on how the three main parties (including the official opposition) were dealing with the economy, NHS, and immigration. More general public dissatisfaction with these salient valence issues ‘worked to increase UKIP’s electoral stock’ (Clarke et al. 2016, 149). Of course, Nigel Farage, leader of the party from 2006 to 2009 and again from 2010 to 2016, also played a key role in conveying these messages to the wider

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electorate. Indeed, among the so-called ‘internal supply-side’ factors explaining the success of populist parties, one should not only consider ideological and programmatic aspects but also the role of leadership and organization (Mudde 2007, 260– 275). Farage reinvented himself as an outsider, calling himself ‘man of the people’, despite his elite background. Generally, he was able to build a strong ‘external’ leadership, appealing to important sectors of the electorate thanks to his rhetorical skills and effective use of traditional and new media (Engesser et al. 2017). In 2015 Farage was the second most popular party leader on Facebook with around 240,000 ‘likes’ (David Cameron, the then Prime Minister, was first with 547,000 and Ed Miliband was third with 109,000). Interestingly, UKIP had almost as many followers as the Tories (around 460,000), while at that time Labour had less than 300,000 (Rothwell 2015). Yet Farage’s ability to establish a direct connection with voters was not matched by ‘internal leadership qualities’ (De Lange and Art 2011). Farage did not pay sufficient attention to the construction of a strong organizational structure and did not rely on so-called ‘coterie charisma’ (McDonnell 2016) by creating a ‘hard core’ of followers within the party, particularly at the leadership level. Therefore, while external charisma can explain the rapid success of the party, the lack of a strong organization (and the lack of political personnel that could effectively lead the party after Farage’s departure) may partly explain its equally fast collapse after the 2016 referendum. As already highlighted above, the surge in UKIP support occurred between 2013 and 2015.The success of the party in the local and European elections (and in by-elections) was amplified by increasing media attention. This had a destabilizing effect on the Conservative Party, which in 2014 even experienced the defections of two MPs to UKIP. Yet, as shown in the next section, the Tory leadership soon started to deploy various strategies to respond to the challenges posed by Nigel Farage’s party. However, before moving to a discussion of mainstream parties’ reactions, it is worth analysing UKIP’s programmatic shifts and its relationship with another competitor in the populist right-wing camp – the BNP. Indeed, while the two parties had their first significant successes in the same period (early to late 2000s), soon their electoral trajectories started diverging. From the beginning, UKIP adopted a dismissive strategy towards the other party (see typology in Chapter 3), rejecting any dialogue or collaboration with its leadership, regarded as too extreme, given its ‘blood and soil’ nationalism.Yet, while clearly dismissing the actor, UKIP gradually started co-opting (and contributed to the mainstreaming of) BNP policy stances. It moved from its original libertarianism to developing a more ‘authoritarian’, ‘law and order’ profile and being increasingly opposed to immigration and some aspects of globalization. A  comparison between the 2005 manifesto and the 2015 one clearly shows this shift. In 2005 the party already started focusing on ‘immigration’ and ‘law and order’, supporting stricter policies, although these issues were included in its manifesto only after the economy, health, welfare, and education. In the 2015 manifesto, immigration came second after the economy, signalling the increasing importance of this issue. A set of restrictive policies was listed in much

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more detail than in 2005. Overall, in 2005 immigration and related words (immigrant, immigrants) were mentioned only 12 times and the EU was mentioned 121 times, a ratio of 1 to 10. In 2015 the party manifesto was longer (thus reflecting a process of differentiation and increasing complexity of the party’s programmatic profile) and immigration was mentioned 46 times. Also the number of references to the EU increased (223). Yet this time the ratio between immigration and EU was just 1 to 5. Therefore the saliency of immigration relative to the core (anti-) EU focus increased. Overall, Farage was able to occupy a new dimension of political competition deriving from ‘a spiral of interconnected immigration fears and Euroscepticism’ (Evans and Mellons 2019, 84). In this context, while Farage always tried to distance himself from the leaders of parties and movements positioned to his right, he did not renounce to engage with their voters and supporters. He did so by reframing some issues and policies, which were deemed as too radical, in more respectable terms. In fact, during a debate in the period leading to the triumphal 2014 European election, Farage even stated that he was ‘proud’ to have taken most of BNP support and added that, thanks to UKIP, voters would no longer have ‘to hold their nose’ over what he described as the BNP’s ‘racist agenda’ (Graham 2014). In sum, he portrayed the party as a ‘polite’ alternative to the BNP (Tournier-Sol 2015, 151). This strategy allowed UKIP to get rid of potential competitors and become the dominant voice of the campaign against the political mainstream.

How mainstream parties responded to the rise of UKIP Before the EU referendum In the first two years following the formation of a coalition government between Tories and Lib Dems, the EU did not seem to be a central (and polarizing) issue in the political debate. David Cameron drew on a ‘technocratic/modernist narrative to argue that membership of a reformed EU was in the national interest’ (Atkins 2018, 105). Even before winning the election, during the first years of his leadership (2005–2010), Cameron had decided, at least temporarily, to avoid issues such as immigration, crime and Europe … and focus instead – at least, in public – on ‘softer’ issues, such as the environment, while making forays into Labour territory, such as the NHS and public spending more generally. (Patros and Bale 2015, 171) However, things started to change when UKIP emerged as an increasingly successful political force in local elections and by-elections. Polls also suggested that, by the beginning of 2013, it had overtaken the Lib Dems as the third largest political party at the national level. Cameron could no longer ignore a party, which in the past he had dismissed as a group of ‘fruitcakes and loonies – and closet

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racists mostly’ (quoted in Abedi and Lundberg 2009, 76). The Prime Minister was under increasing pressure to adopt a more explicitly Eurosceptic position (Laws 2016). Resorting to a co-optation strategy, Cameron delivered a speech in the London headquarters of Bloomberg in January 2013. He presented his vision of a reformed EU and even committed his party to an in/out referendum on Britain’s membership (Atkins 2018, 105). This concession soon had an impact on the more Eurosceptic factions of the Conservative Party, which put pressure on Cameron to deliver on his promise. More broadly, this move forced the other mainstream parties to take a clearer position on the EU issue. Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg, leaders of the Labour Party and Lib Dems, also advocated their support for a EU referendum, although they soon added caveats to their position, the main one being that an in/out referendum should take place only in case of further transfers of power to Brussels (Oliver 2015, 78). In a ranking of which party co-opted more aspects of UKIP platform the Conservatives clearly came first, followed by Labour and the Lib Dems. In fact, the latter soon reversed to a clashing strategy. The introduction of a Referendum Bill by Tory MP James Wharton in May 2013 gave Eurosceptics the opportunity to push their agenda. This was a Private Member’s Bill, a type of legislation that usually has a very low chance of success in the UK Parliament. However, feeling the pressure from his party’s backbench, Cameron decided to support it. He stated:  ‘I totally support it. It is my policy written into law. I would say to all MPs, turn up and vote’ (quoted in Watt 2013). The bill eventually failed to reach the final stage of the legislative process, mainly due to the opposition coming from the Lib Dems and Labour.Yet it was symptomatic of the increasing importance (and ‘mainstreaming’) of the EU issue and of the challenges it posed to the Coalition government, and to the Conservative Party in particular. The success of UKIP in the 2014 EU election just confirmed that Euroscepticism was on the rise. Indeed 2014 can be regarded as a critical year in the relations between mainstream parties and UKIP. Having achieved good results in local elections and byelections, Farage’s party was expected to win a significant share of the vote in the European election. The Lib Dems, which had already started hardening their pro-EU position during the discussion of the Referendum Bill, tried to reverse their electoral decline by adopting a clearly clashing strategy towards UKIP. A few weeks before the election, Nick Clegg, leader of the Lib Dems, even participated in a BBC debate, where he and Nigel Farage could clearly express their opposite views on Europe (Wintour, Watt, and Mason 2014). By portraying themselves as the main opponents to UKIP’s Euroscepticism, the Lib Dems hoped to shift voters’ attention from their underwhelming governmental record.Yet they did not succeed in transforming the election into a referendum between their unambiguous proEuropean stance and the equally unambiguous anti-EU position of Farage’s party (this strategy would work in the 2019 EU election, though). Their result was disappointing and anticipated their collapse in the 2015 general election. The other two parties, particularly the Tories, were more ambiguous in their electoral and programmatic strategies.The EU had traditionally been an ‘awkward issue’ for both

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(Startin 2015, 313)  and this became increasingly evident as they were forced to respond to the challenges posed by UKIP. Labour was unable to exploit its role as the main opposition party in 2014. Indeed, for the first time since 1984, the official opposition failed to win the largest share of the vote in a European election.6 With almost 27 per cent of the vote at the national level, UKIP was the clear winner of the electoral competition in 2014. This ‘political earthquake’ (Wintour and Watt 2014)  had important consequences for the Conservative party. Two Eurosceptic MPs, Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless, defected to UKIP in the following months. They then triggered and won by-elections with significant majorities.Therefore, for the first time, UKIP managed to elect representatives in the House of Commons. This was a source of particular concern for David Cameron, since general elections were looming and polls showed that the race with the Labour opposition was getting tighter. As a consequence, a debate started within the party about the strategy to adopt towards UKIP. Already in May 2014, when a UKIP victory in the EU election seemed imminent, some hard-core Eurosceptic MPs (including Jacob Rees-Mogg, who would then become one of the most vocal ‘Brexiteers’) had suggested that the Tories should try to maximize the Eurosceptic vote by standing candidates agreed with Farage’s party (Watt 2014). Therefore, an openly accommodative strategy  – establishing electoral and policy co-operation with UKIP – was advocated by sectors of the party. This move was quite unprecedented, since it would have ended a long tradition of Conservative self-sufficiency. It was an acknowledgment that the Tories could no longer aim to present themselves as a ‘broad church’. Since the party no longer seemed able to appeal to a wide spectrum of centre-right positions, it needed to formally engage with other, more radical, forces in order to win a majority in Parliament. Yet the party leadership rejected this solution and instead intensified its co-optation strategy (Watt 2014). The party moved from a lightly Eurosceptic proposition in the 2010 election manifesto: We will be positive members of the European Union but we are clear that there should be no further extension of the EU’s power over the UK without the British people’s consent.We will ensure that by law no future government can hand over areas of power to the EU or join the Euro without a referendum of the British people. (Conservative Manifesto 2010, 113) to a much clearer and more radical message in 2015: We will negotiate new rules with the EU, so that people will have to be earning here for a number of years before they can claim benefits, including the tax credits that top up low wages. Instead of something-for nothing, we will build a system based on the principle of something-for-something. We will then put these changes to the British people in a straight in-out referendum on our membership of the European Union by the end of 2017. (Conservative Manifesto 2015, 29–30; italics added)

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In some respects this could be seen as a major concession to the Eurosceptic sectors of the party and an attempt to aggressively co-opt the UKIP message. What had been proposed in a Private Member’s Bill in 2013 and failed to get to the final stages of the legislative process, became official party policy. However, before the 2015 election, polls suggested that no party would achieve an overall majority of seats and a repeat of the Conservative-Lib Dems coalition seemed to be the most likely outcome. Therefore, this manifesto pledge could have been easily and justifiably sacrificed if, in the absence of a parliamentary majority, Cameron had been ‘forced’, once again, to reach a governmental agreement with a pro-EU partner. Yet 2015 opinion polls proved wrong and the election result surprised many (including the Prime Minister):  the Conservative Party won an absolute majority of seats and could govern on its own. There was no excuse this time. The party had to deliver on its promise of an in/out referendum. And it did. This move towards Euroscepticism was also accompanied by a similar process of co-optation of immigration issues. Interestingly, David Cameron’s first years as leader were characterized by the commitment to ‘detoxify’ the Tories’ reputation, which was still dominated by Margaret Thatcher’s legacy. This implied the development of a ‘modernizing’ agenda, which would reach out to ethnic minorities and social groups that had traditionally been suspicious of the Conservative Party. Yet hard-line rhetoric and policies soon began to emerge as concerns about UKIP’s competition mounted. As highlighted by Partos and Bale (2015, 172): Initially, this was accompanied by a stress on distinguishing between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ immigration, presumably in order to please its nostalgics and traditionalists without completely alienating its modernisers and, indeed, its business backers. Since entering government, however, and with UKIP breathing more and more heavily down their necks, the Tories seem to have downplayed modernisation in favour of talking (and sometimes even acting) tough. Theresa May is an emblematic example of this shift. She was one of the so-called ‘modernizers’ and even coined the expression ‘nasty party’ to stigmatize the party’s focus on a narrow constituency of male, white, privileged voters (White and Perkins 2002). Yet, when she became Home Secretary in 2010, she presided over the development and implementation of a very ‘restrictive’ agenda, aimed at reducing immigration ‘to the tens of thousands’.7 The Government’s actions reached an unprecedented level of controversy when the Home Office launched a billboard campaign telling illegal immigrants to ‘Go home or face arrest’ (Wintour 2013). The initiative attracted a lot of criticism – even from UKIP’s leader Nigel Farage (Travis 2013) – and was eventually withdrawn. If the Tories underwent a significant (although far from linear) process of programmatic ‘adaptation’, Labour was not immune from this phenomenon either. Although it was less internally divided on the EU issue, it also had to find a way to respond to the challenge posed by UKIP and, more generally, the rise of

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Euroscepticism and its increasing link to anti-immigration and anti-establishment feelings. In fact, scholars have debated on whether the success of Farage’s party was equally damaging for Tories and Labour. According to Ford and Goodwin (2014a, 270), despite initially having a Conservative basis of support, UKIP soon became a working-class phenomenon… UKIP are not a second home for disgruntled Tories in the shires; they are a first home for angry and disaffected workingclass Britons of all political backgrounds, who have lost faith in a political system that ceased to represent them long ago. Therefore, the party was able to make significant inroads into Labour core constituencies and replace it as the main party of the working class. Yet other scholars have challenged this view and argued that the working-class voters opting for UKIP after 2010 had already defected from Labour to other parties (mainly the Conservatives) during the Blair and Brown governments (Evans and Mellon 2015). UKIP therefore mainly attracted the support of working-class voters that had already moved towards the Tories. Therefore, in the years of its maximum electoral success, the party posed a greater challenge to David Cameron than to Ed Miliband. This, however, did not prevent Labour from cautiously adopting a co-optation strategy towards Nigel Farage’s party. In 2010 the Labour party manifesto stated: We are proud that Britain is once again a leading player in Europe. Our belief is that Britain is stronger in the world when the European Union is strong, and that Britain succeeds when it leads in Europe and sets the agenda for change. Sullen resistance and disengagement achieve nothing… On the Euro, we hold to our promise that there will be no membership of the single currency without the consent of the British people in a referendum. (Labour Manifesto 2010, 10:4) Thus, the party only proposed a referendum to decide on whether the UK should be a member of the single currency (a pledge that had already been included in previous manifestos). Yet by 2015 Labour’s position had already shifted to address the rising Euroscepticism represented by UKIP: Labour’s priority in government will be protecting the NHS and tackling the cost-of-living crisis. It is not to take Britain out of Europe. However, Labour will legislate for a lock that guarantees that there can be no transfer of powers from Britain to the European Union without the consent of the British public through an in/out referendum. (Labour Manifesto 2015, 103; italics added) The rise of UKIP also forced Labour to reconsider its position on immigration. It is true that, since the 1960s, the party had to find a balance between controlling the

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numbers of migrants settling in the UK and promoting equality for ethnic minorities (Bale 2014, 85). The party had already attempted to adopt a tougher stance on immigration during its last years in government. For instance, the (in)famous phrase ‘British jobs for British workers’ was pronounced in 2009 by Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown well before UKIP reached its electoral peak (Summers 2009). Yet it is undeniable that the rise (and transformation) of Farage’s party put increasing pressure on the party, which was trying to find a way back to power after its defeat in 2010. Labour struggled to develop a coherent approach and was caught in a ‘trilemma’ between trying …to preserve elements of its traditional liberalism (hold), to insist on the primacy of the cost of living (defuse) and to shift to a perceptibly more restrictive position (adopt). (Bale 2014, 85) The last strategy, which in this book is defined as ‘co-optation’ (see Chapter  3), became particularly relevant in the months preceding and following UKIP’s triumph in the 2014 European election (Bale 2014). On 10 April 2014, at the beginning of the election campaign,Yvette Cooper, the then shadow Home Secretary of the Labour Party, delivered a speech aimed at opening ‘an open honest debate that doesn’t promote hostility but doesn’t ignore concerns’ (Cooper 2014). After praising the ‘rich history of immigration’ in the UK, Cooper moved to the ‘challenges of immigration’, admitting that the last Labour government got things wrong on immigration. We should have had transitional controls in place for Eastern Europe. The figures were wrong, and migration was far greater than we expected. Accusing David Cameron of failing to reduce immigration to the tens of thousands, as he had promised, she proposed the introduction of ‘stronger controls’ and ‘exit checks so that visas can be enforced and action can be swiftly taken to make sure people leave when their time runs out’. She suggested that the UK should ‘distinguish between different types of immigration’ (implying, for instance, that skilled and unskilled immigrants should be treated differently) and argued that ‘it isn’t fair if new arrivals from Europe can claim benefits straight away’. The whole speech, while condemning extreme rhetoric, was clearly aimed at addressing the concerns of voters who were attracted by UKIP’s messages. In sum, both the Tories and Labour adjusted their positions on the EU and immigration and moved in the same direction. Of course, the former party experienced a more radical shift towards Euroscepticism and anti-immigration stances than the latter. Ideological proximity to UKIP may explain this difference, although there is an ongoing debate among scholars about the impact of Nigel Farage’s party on working-class voters (who used to be Labour’s core constituency). Considering these general changes in mainstream parties’ positioning on key issues is essential

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in order to understand the results of the 2016 referendum and the developments occurred after.

After the EU referendum On the morning of 24 June 2016 the result of the EU referendum was announced: 51.9 per cent of UK voters had chosen to leave the European Union. It was clear that British politics was entering a completely new era. David Cameron, who, after a short period of renegotiations with the EU, had called for the referendum, resigned. He had campaigned for ‘Remain’, hoping to persuade the majority of British voters that the deal he had struck with the EU would keep the UK outside further integration processes. Yet, from the start of the campaign, Cameron had to face an unexpectedly strong opposition coming from within his own party. Indeed, the core of the ‘Leave’ camp was not led by Nigel Farage and his party but by senior members of the Conservative Party (and the Cabinet). Boris Johnson and Michael Gove were at the forefront of the pro-Brexit movement and contributed to the creation of the ‘Vote Leave’ group, which was designated by the Electoral Commission as the official campaign in favour of leaving the EU. Research has shown that the involvement of Tory leading figures played a key role in determining the final result. Particularly the ‘Boris effect’ was ‘clearly advantageous for the Leave side’ (Clarke, Goodwin, and Whiteley 2017, 170–172). Therefore, during the referendum campaign, the Tories were split into two roughly equal factions pursuing diverging strategies and behaving like different parties: whereas Cameron, after the negotiations with the EU, moved to a clearly clashing strategy against Eurosceptic positions, significant sectors of his party resorted to aggressive co-optation of such positions by adopting openly populist slogans (‘Take back control’) and targeting immigration and EU institutions. It is emblematic that the Vote Leave campaign distributed leaflets stating that Turkey was ‘set to join the EU’ and, consequently, suggesting that there would be an invasion of immigrants from there (Forsyth 2016). Another clear example is that of the bus used by Boris Johnson during his Leave campaign, on which the following statement (then proved to be inaccurate) was written: ‘We send the EU £350m a week. Let’s fund our NHS instead’ (Henley 2016). At the same time, while coopting UKIP’s positions and style, pro-Brexit Tory members adopted an ostracizing strategy towards Nigel Farage and his party organization. Indeed, it is telling that the UKIP leader was systematically excluded from the official ‘Vote Leave’ campaign.8 This, as shown below, would have important implications after the vote. Labour was much less divided than the Conservatives on the EU membership issue. Indeed, whereas 138 of the 323 Tory MPs declared their preference for Leave, only 10 of the 228 Labour ones chose that option (BBC 2016).9 Yet the referendum campaign occurred after the party frontbench had experienced a radical transformation. Following Ed Miliband’s resignation in 2015, Jeremy Corbyn, a backbencher who had consistently been on the left of the party, was unexpectedly

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elected as Labour leader. A  long-time Eurosceptic, Corbyn soon found himself under pressure from the parliamentary group (and the rest of the party) to adopt a clearly pro-Remain position. He eventually did that, but his campaign ended up being ‘decidedly lukewarm’ (Clarke, Goodwin, and Whiteley 2017, 28). To be sure, Labour did not become a Eurosceptic party, despite the anti-EU past (and persisting ambiguity) of its new leader. In fact, large part of the membership, including those young members and activists who contributed to Corbyn’s election, remained convincingly pro-EU, even more so after the referendum (Bale, Webb, and Poletti 2018). Generally, it is difficult to argue that Corbyn’s rise was primarily driven by an attempt to co-opt UKIP policies.Yet Farage’s party might have had a ‘stylistic’, indirect influence on Labour’s adoption of a more ‘people-centric’ rhetoric. Although scholars have been cautious in defining Corbynism as a form of ‘left-wing populism’ (Atkins and Turnbull 2016; Maiguashca and Dean 2019), some of its slogans – ‘For the many not the few’, for instance, became the title of the 2017 Labour manifesto – clearly reflected the new leader’s attempt to distance himself and the party from the political establishment (including former Labour leaders). In some respects, Corbyn’s discourse is not very far from that of ‘inclusive’ populist parties that are typical of Latin America and Southern Europe (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2016; Maiguashca and Dean 2019). The focus on ‘the many’ and the figure of Jeremy Corbyn, a political outsider turned leader, were used as ‘empty signifiers’ to establish a ‘chain of equivalence’ (Laclau 2018) between a plurality of unsatisfied demands (from women’s rights to LGBT groups, from low paid students to far left, anti-capitalist groups). Additionally, Corbyn’s strong personal appeal to supporters, the so-called ‘Corbyn-mania’ (Blakey 2016), could resemble some aspects of the ‘leader-dominated’ politics that characterizes many populist parties (including ‘exclusionary’ ones like UKIP). In sum, the situation after 23 June 2016 was clearly in flux. Yet, surprisingly, it was Labour that suffered most in the immediate aftermath of the referendum shock. Jeremy Corbyn faced intense criticism of his approach to the Remain campaign in the referendum. His ability to lead the party in future elections (particularly in a general election) was seriously questioned. A no-confidence vote was triggered by the Labour parliamentary group.This led to a new leadership election which, however, was once again won by Corbyn (Crines, Jeffery, and Heppell 2018). On the other hand, the deep divisions that had emerged within the Tory party during the referendum campaign almost completely disappeared. David Cameron resigned but this did not lead to any serious infighting.Theresa May, Home Secretary since 2010, was quickly elected as new leader. A former ‘Remainer’ – yet regarded by many ‘Brexiters’ as a figure who could (re-)unite the party – the new Prime Minister soon clarified that she was determined to implement Brexit. After her election she famously pronounced the sentence ‘Brexit means Brexit’ to highlight her commitment to delivering the country’s exit from the EU. (Cowburn 2016). The months that followed the referendum saw the Conservative Party become ‘the party of Brexit’ (Forsyth 2018). This swift move was possible for two reasons. First, as mentioned above, the Leave campaign was led by senior Tory members,

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who were promptly included in the new Cabinet with key roles (including the leadership of the newly created Department for Exiting the European Union). Theresa May adopted a strategy of full collaboration with those sectors of the party that campaigned to leave the EU, also in order to boost her pro-Brexit credentials. Secondly, by ostracizing Farage from the official Leave campaign, pro-Brexit Tories, particularly Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, managed to attract most of the media attention in the post-referendum period, hence eclipsing the UKIP leader. Overall, it can be said that UKIP was a victim of its own success.The party never won more than two seats in Westminster, and was never able to form coalitions with mainstream parties or blackmail national governments. And yet its impressive results in second order elections had a profound impact on the country and on the Conservative party, which, by the end of 2016, had become an almost unanimously pro-Brexit party. Farage’s resignation as leader of UKIP in July 2016 seemed to acknowledge the fact that the party mission had been accomplished and its ideas had become mainstream. If UKIP provided the ‘vision’ for Brexit, the Tories could rely on their governmental expertise to portray themselves as ‘implementers’ of a feasible exit strategy. The move from dream to reality imposed a change in political paradigms. Idealistic, anti-establishment messages needed to be replaced by a more positive and pragmatic approach that would deliver a good Brexit deal.Theresa May initially seemed to embody the spirit of this new phase. The extent to which UKIP’s previously ‘niche’ positions had become mainstream was even more evident in Labour’s changing approach to Brexit. After the re-election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader, the party seemed more ready to accept and implement the result of the referendum. At the beginning of 2017, Labour voted with the Tories to trigger article 50 of the Lisbon treaty, which would start the process of withdrawal from the EU. On that occasion, 498 MPs, 76.6 per cent of the representatives sitting in the House of Commons (BBC 2017), ratified a decision that only a few years before would have been almost unanimously stigmatized by the political establishment. This new pro-Brexit consensus reached its peak in the months after article 50 was triggered. Theresa May, who was still relying on Cameron’s thin majority, announced her decision to call for an early general election, which, after obtaining Parliament’s approval (again with Labour’s support), was held on 8 June 2017. The campaign was noticeable because it was clearly dominated by the two mainstream parties after a series of elections characterized by the strengthening or emergence of new challengers. Somehow the legacy of UKIP was entirely absorbed by the Tories and Labour. Of course, the former could present themselves as the ‘party of Brexit’, thus neutralizing UKIP’s electoral appeal (Dennison 2017). Labour also promised to implement Brexit but, aware of the divisions existing within its own electorate10 – which were far greater than among its members – tried to downplay the importance of the issue. Thus it mainly focused on anti-austerity policies in an attempt to reach the so-called ‘left-behind’ – a group which used to be particularly sensitive to UKIP’s appeals (Ford and Goodwin 2014b) – and shift the public’s attention from Brexit to more domestic issues, such as the NHS and education (Goes 2017). Only

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the Greens, Lib Dems and nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales represented clear pro-Remain positions in the election. The results of the general election surprised many observers, who were expecting a clear victory (even a landslide) for the Tories. UKIP’s share of the vote collapsed from 12.6 to 1.8 per cent. The Tories seemed to have benefited from this, while Labour was able to gain votes from other minor parties, especially the Lib Dems and Greens (Burn-Murdoch et al. 2017). It is beyond the scope of this chapter to fully explain these electoral shifts but, overall, the results of the 2017 election seemed to mark the return to two-party politics in the UK. The strategies adopted by the two main parties towards their challengers (including not only the populist UKIP but also Greens, Lib Dems and nationalist parties11) seemed to have worked.Yet this did not translate into a clear mandate for either of them.The Tories, which had hoped to increase their majority in fact lost seats, due to the unexpected surge in Labour vote in a first-past-the-post system. This forced Theresa May to form a minority government relying on the external support of the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). The months following the general election were characterized by increasing uncertainty over the direction of Brexit. Theresa May had proven unable to deliver an election victory and, as a result, her position within the party was significantly weakened. Lacking a clear parliamentary majority and facing re-emerging divisions within her Cabinet and party backbench, the Prime Minister struggled to develop an effective negotiating strategy. A split between factions supporting radically different versions of Brexit (‘soft Brexit’ vs ‘hard Brexit’) soon emerged. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the final withdrawal agreement that the Prime Minister signed with the EU was not ratified by the House of Commons. This led to a postponement of the Brexit deadline, with the UK not being able to leave the EU on 29 March 2019, as initially promised by Theresa May.The Conservative party (and the whole country) plunged into a crisis, which, in turn, facilitated the resurgence of a populist challenger. This time, however, it was not UKIP that posed an electoral threat to the establishment, but another party led by the same leader: Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party. Figure 11.4 shows that by the beginning of 2019, the Tories’ advantage over their main competitors on the Brexit issue had basically disappeared. Interestingly, Labour did not benefit significantly from this crisis.The party never managed to replace the Tories as the party of Brexit. Its success in the 2017 election suggested that Corbyn had found a new ‘winning formula’: attacking austerity measures implemented by Conservative-led governments without taking a clear position on Brexit other than promising to deliver it. However, as shown in Figure  11.5, Labour was not able to transform its surprising result into a clear lead over the Tories in opinion polls. In fact, when Theresa May’s attempt to pass her EU withdrawal agreement failed at the beginning of 2019, support for both parties collapsed. Generally, the almost completely dismissive strategy adopted by Jeremy Corbyn’s party towards Brexit (after timid attempts to co-opt) did not seem to be electorally rewarding. A clashing strategy was supported by important sectors of the party, and most party members (Bale, Webb, and Poletti

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FIGURE 11.4 Best party on Brexit according to UK voters from May 2017 (before general election) to early 2019

Source:  YouGov political tracker https://yougov.co.uk/topics/political-trackers/ survey-results

FIGURE 11.5

Voting intentions in UK general elections from beginning of 2018 to

June 2019 Source:  YouGov political tracker https://yougov.co.uk/topics/political-trackers/ survey-results

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2018), but was not fully (and unambiguously) endorsed by the leadership. This provided an opportunity for other parties, such as the Lib Dems, Greens, Welsh and Scottish nationalists, to swiftly occupy the pro-Remain camp and reap an electoral dividend in the 2019 local and European elections. Surprisingly, even UKIP seemed unable to take advantage of the problems experienced by the Conservative Party. In the post-referendum period it struggled to find a new role, since it could no longer campaign for something that the government was already fully committed to deliver. The new leadership tried to diversify the political platform of the party by focusing more on immigration and anti-Islam issues. UKIP experienced a clear shift to the right but this did not seem to have a positive impact on its support (see Figure 11.5). Nigel Farage, who had stepped down as leader in 2017, increasingly distanced himself from this process of radicalization. In December 2018 he decided to quit the party, which, in his view, was ‘unrecognisable because of the “fixation” with the anti-Muslim policies’ (Walker 2018). A few weeks later, Farage staged a comeback with a new political project, the ‘Brexit Party’, which saw a return to single issue politics with a campaign exclusively focused on leaving the EU with or without a deal.This was made possible by the increasing inability of the Tories to retain their pro-Brexit credentials. In May 2019, British politics seemed to have gone back to square one: the UK was still in the EU and Farage’s Brexit Party posed a great challenge to the political mainstream by voicing the frustration of significant sectors of the electorate.

Conclusion The Tories’ co-optation strategy turned out to be successful in the short term. Immediately after the 2016 referendum the party quickly adopted a pro-Brexit position and was able to neutralize UKIP’s competition. On the eve of the 2017 general election (i.e. in May), Theresa May’s party was considered the best party on the Brexit issue by UK voters, well ahead of Labour and UKIP itself (see Figure 11.4). Yet, the Tories failed to secure a majority in Westminster and, consequently, experienced serious problems in finding a compromise between different factions and reaching out to other groups in Parliament.Yes, the Conservative party had become ‘the party of Brexit’, but what kind of Brexit? It soon became clear that Brexit did not just mean Brexit, as Theresa May had famously stated, but could mean many different things ranging from a ‘Norway-style’, single market solution to a no-deal. When the details of Brexit started to emerge, the reputation of being the only party able to deliver on ‘the will of the people’ began to fade. This led to the downfall of the second Tory Prime Minister in slightly more than two years and paved the way for the rise of a new leader, Boris Johnson, who seemed to be more in tune with those sectors of the electorate that wanted to ‘get Brexit done’. Johnson’s success in the 2019 general election (the third in four years) is beyond the scope of this chapter, but clearly indicates how, after co-opting UKIP’s policy positions, the Conservative Party even co-opted its style, by selecting a leader who did not refrain from using (rather effectively) an openly populist rhetoric.

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The British case teaches us three important lessons about the impact of populism on mainstream politics and the relations between populist and established parties. First of all, populists do not need to be in government to have a deep impact on political dynamics and policy making processes. In fact, they do not even need to be represented in the national parliament. At its peak, UKIP only controlled two seats in Westminster, but this did not prevent this party from playing a key role in the political debate. Second, ideological proximity to the populist challenger may only matter to a limited extent. As we have seen, both Tories and Labour felt the pressure coming from UKIP and responded to it by moving in a similar direction. This may be due to the declining salience of the traditional left-right political cleavage and class-based voting behaviour. In a context of increasing electoral fluidity, mainstream parties are no longer able to rely on ‘core’ constituencies and they are equally vulnerable to challenges posed by populist actors. In turn, populists can use their more ‘flexible’ or ‘chameleonic’ programmatic approach to appeal to different sectors of the electorate. Lastly, co-optation strategies developed by mainstream parties seem to work mainly in the short term. It is true that a mainstream party could reverse its decline by effectively occupying the space of a populist challenger.Yet the immediate electoral reward deriving from this strategy does not eliminate the tension between ‘responsible’ and ‘representative’ government (Mair 2009) and the long-term costs that addressing this dilemma implies.

Notes 1 UKIP was founded by Alan Sked, who had been a candidate for the Liberal party in the 1970 election. He remained socially liberal and strongly opposed UKIP’s turn to the right after he left the party in the late 1990s (Sked 2015). 2 UKIP also achieved good results in the local elections between 2013 and 2016 and managed to take control of a district council (Thanet) for the first time in 2015. 3 UKIP ran in the 1999 election and obtained 6.5 per cent of the vote. This was a fairly good result but could be considered ‘physiological’ in a second order election (which was, for the first time, held under a proportional representation system). It was also very far from the 33 per cent won by the Tories in the same election. In 2004, on the other hand, UKIP and BNP together received almost as many votes as the Conservative party, 22 per cent vs 27.4 per cent. 4 The idea of the ‘Big Society’ supported and promoted by David Cameron stood in contrast with Thatcherite individualism, which had famously denied the existence of ‘society’. It put considerable ‘emphasis on the role of civil society, the third sector and social enterprise to step in and succeed where the state has arguably failed’ (Scott 2010, 132). 5 After the Eurozone debt crisis, attitudes towards the EU became markedly more negative. As shown by Clarke et al. (2016, 141), in spring 2013 nearly 60 per cent of respondents to the Continuous Monitoring Survey conducted by YouGov disapproved of EU membership. 6 The first two European elections in 1979 and 1984 were won by Margaret Thatcher’s Tories shortly after their triumphs in general elections (in 1978 and 1983). 7 This target was never achieved, and this is believed to have contributed to widespread concerns that the government was powerless when dealing with immigration, mainly coming from the EU.

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8 In the end, Farage and UKIP endorsed a different campaign group, Leave.EU, which was founded (and funded) by Aaron Banks, a British businessman. 9 Two Labour backbenchers, Gisela Stuart and Kate Hoey, played a rather important role in the Leave campaign. The former was also chair of the cross-party Vote Leave group, which, however, was clearly dominated by Tory figures. 10 Both Conservative and Labour parties won most of their seats in pro-Leave constituencies. However, while an overwhelming majority of Tory constituencies was pro-Leave – 75 per cent pro-Leave vs 25 per cent pro-Remain  –Labour ones were more evenly split – 64 per cent pro-Leave vs 36 per cent pro-Remain (Hanretty 2017). 11 In 2017, the SNP also lost 13.3 per cent of the Scottish vote and 21 seats, although it remained the largest party in Scotland. In Wales, the nationalist Plaid Cymru lost 1.7 per cent of the vote but, despite this, it managed to win an extra seat in the House of Commons.

References Abedi, Amir, and Thomas Carl Lundberg. 2009. ‘Doomed to Failure? UKIP and the Organisational Challenges Facing Right-Wing Populist Anti-Political Establishment Parties.’ Parliamentary Affairs 62, no. 1: 72–87 Arzheimer, Kai, and Elisabeth Carter. 2006. ‘Political Opportunity Structures and RightWing Extremist Party Success.’ European Journal of Political Research 45, no. 3: 419–443. Atkins, Judi. 2018. Conflict, Co-operation and the Rhetoric of Coalition Government. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Atkins, Judi, and Nick Turnbull. 2016. ‘Jeremy Corbyn’s Rhetorical Dilemma:  Left-wing Populism or Mainstream Convention?’ LSE Blog. 26 April. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/ politicsandpolicy/jeremy-corbyn-rhetorical-dilemma/, last accessed 5 October 2020. Audickas, Lukas, Oliver Hawkins, and Richard Cracknell. 2017.‘UK Election Statistics: 1918– 2017.’ House of Common Library, Briefing Paper CBP7529 (August). Bale,Tim. 2014. ‘Putting it Right? The Labour Party’s Big Shift on Immigration Since 2010.’ Political Quarterly 85, no. 3: 296–303. Bale, Tim, Paul Webb, and Monica Poletti. 2018. Grassroots Britain’s Party Members: Who They Are, What They Think, and What They Do. London:  Mile End Institute  – Queen Mary University of London. BBC. 2016. ‘EU Vote: Where the Cabinet and Other MPs Stand.’ 22 June. https://www.bbc. co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-35616946, last accessed 5 October 2020. BBC. 2017.‘Brexit: MPs Overwhelmingly Back Article 50 Bill.’ 1 February. www.bbc.co.uk/ news/uk-politics-38833883, last accessed 5 October 2020. Blakey, Heather. 2016. ‘Corbyn-Mania:  Cult of Personality or Political Movement.’ Open Democracy. 3 August. www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/corbyn-maniacult-of-personality-or-political-movement/, last accessed 5 October 2020. Burn-Murdoch, John, Billy Ehrenberg-Shannon, Aleksandra Wisniewska, and Avtar Rai. 2017. ‘Election 2017:  How the UK Voted in 7 Charts.’ Financial Times. 9 June. www. ft.com/content/dac3a3b2-4ad7-11e7-919a-1e14ce4af89b, last accessed 5 October 2020. Clarke, Harold, Matthew Goodwin, and Paul Whiteley. 2017. Brexit:  Why Britain Voted to Leave the European Union. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clarke, Harold, Paul Whiteley, Walter Borges, David Sanders, and Marianne Stewart. 2016. ‘Modelling the Dynamics of Support for a Right-wing Populist Party:  The Case of UKIP.’ Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties 26, no. 2: 135–154. Conservative Manifesto. 2010. Invitation to Join the Government of Britain. www.conservatives. com/~/media/Files/Manifesto2010, last accessed 5 October 2020.

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Kitschelt, Herbert. 1986. ‘Political Opportunity Structures and Political Protest: Anti-nuclear Movements in Four Democracies.’ British Journal of Political Science 16, no. 1: 57–85. Labour Manifesto. 2010. A Future Fair for All. www.cpa.org.uk/cpa_documents/ TheLabourPartyManifesto-2010.pdf , last accessed 5 October 2020. Labour Manifesto. 2015. Labour’s Manifesto Budget Responsibility Lock. https://action. labour.org.uk/page/-/A4%20BIG%20_PRINT_ENG_LABOUR%20MANIFESTO_ TEXT%20LAYOUT.pdf , last accessed 5 October 2020. Laclau, Ernesto. 2018. On Populist Reason. London: Verso. Laws, David. 2016. Coalition:  The Inside Story of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition Government. London: Biteback Publishing. Lucardie, Paul. 2000. ‘Prophets, Purifiers and Prolocutors:  Towards a Theory on the Emergence of New Parties.’ Party Politics 6, no. 2: 175–185. Maiguashca, Bice, and Jonathan Dean. 2019. ‘Corbynism, Populism and the Reshaping of Left Politics in Contemporary Britain.’ In The Populist Radical Left in Europe, edited by Giorgos Katsambekis and Alexandros Kioupkiolis, 145–167. Abingdon: Routledge. Mair, Peter. 2009. ‘Representative versus Responsible Government.’ MPIfG Working Paper 09/08. March, Luke. 2017. ‘Left and Right Populism Compared:  The British Case.’ The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 19, no. 2: 282–303. McDonnell, Duncan. 2016. ‘Populist Leaders and Coterie Charisma.’ Political Studies 64, no. 3: 719–733. Mudde, Cas. 2004. ‘The Populist Zeitgeist.’ Government and Opposition 39, no. 4: 541–563. Mudde, Cas. 2007. Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mudde, Cas, and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser. 2016.‘Exclusionary vs. Inclusionary Populism: Comparing Contemporary Europe and Latin America.’ Government and Opposition 48, no. 2: 147–174. Oliver, Tim. 2015. ‘To Be or Not To Be in Europe: Is That the question? Britain’s European Question and an In/Out Referendum.’ International Affairs 91, no. 1: 77–91. Partos, Rebecca, and Tim Bale. 2015. ‘Immigration and Asylum Policy under Cameron’s Conservatives.’ British Politics 10, no. 2: 169–184. Rothwell, James. 2015. ‘Election 2015:  Which Party Has Won the Social Media War?’ The Telegraph. 6 May. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/11585233/ Election-2015-Which-party-has-won-the-social-media-war.html, last accessed 5 October 2020. Scott, Matthew. 2010. ‘Reflections on “The Big Society”.’ Community Development Journal 46, no. 1: 132–137. Sked, Alan. 2015. ‘The Case for Brexit.’ The National Interest. 21 October. https:// nationalinterest.org/feature/the-case-brexit-14109, last accessed 5 October 2020. Startin, Nicholas. 2015. ‘Have We Reached a Tipping Point? The Mainstreaming of Euroscepticism in the UK.’ International Political Science Review 36, no. 3: 311–323. Summers, Deborah. 2009. ‘Brown Stands by British Jobs for British Workers Remark.’ The Guardian. 30 January. www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/jan/30/brown-british-jobsworkers, last accessed 5 October 2020. Travis, Alas. 2013. ‘‘‘Go home”Vans Resulted in 11 People Leaving Britain, Says Report.’ The Guardian. 31 October. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/oct/31/go-home-vans11-leave-britain, last accessed 5 October 2020. Tournier-Sol, Karine. 2015. ‘Reworking the Eurosceptic and Conservative Traditions into a Populist Narrative: UKIP’s Winning Formula?’ Journal of Common Market Studies 53, no. 1: 140–156.

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12 GREECE Emmanouil Tsatsanis

Introduction Even though the study of Greek politics through the lens of populism is nothing new, the economic crisis and the recent rise of populist challenger parties such as Synaspismos tis Rizospastikis Aristeras (SYRIZA – Coalition of the Radical Left) and Anexartitoi Ellines (ANEL – Independent Greeks) has breathed new life into studies of Greek populism. The interest of populism scholars in recent developments in Greek politics is understandable. Greece is one of the rare cases where there have been electoral successes for both left-wing and right-wing populist forces and, even more interestingly, the only case where left-wing and right-wing populists were able to collaborate and capture government (Italy being the closest other example). However, most recent investigations of Greek populism take either the form of populist party case studies (particularly of SYRIZA) or electoral behaviour studies that attempt to explain the populist vote. The present chapter, in line with the rest of the volume, takes on a different research question and focuses on the transformations of inter-party dynamics between mainstream parties and populist actors, as well as between the populist actors themselves. In the rest of the chapter we will explore how the economic crisis completely upended decades-long patterns of political competition via the increasing salience of a new dimension of political competition and how the gradual erosion of this dimension led in the medium term to the partial restoration of traditional patterns of competition and cooperation. The structure of the chapter is as follows. In the first section we briefly present the most relevant populist and mainstream actors in Greece. The following section focuses on recent developments in Greek politics, with a focus on the political opportunity structures that facilitated the rise of populist challenger parties and the new inter-party dynamics that emerged in the transformed party system. The chapter concludes with some thoughts on the lessons learned from the Greek case.

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Populist and mainstream actors in Greece Scholarly attention to populism in Greece predates the explosion of interest on rightwing populism in Europe in the last two decades as well as the widespread adoption of the minimal definition of populism (which is the one adopted in this chapter and the rest of the book; see Chapter 1 of this volume). Studies of Greek populism go back to the 1980s and associate the phenomenon with the ascent to power of the Panellinio Sosialistiko Kinima (PASOK – Panhellenic Socialist Movement) in 1981. PASOK, under the leadership of Andreas Papandreou, expressed a people-centric rhetoric more effectively than any other European political party during the 1980s and early 1990s (Clogg 1993). After the change in leadership in the mid-1990s, the party gradually abandoned its populist rhetoric and turned into a mainstream centre-left party of government pursuing modernization and Europeanization. Until the 2012 double parliamentary elections (in May and June), PASOK was the most successful party of the ‘Third Republic’, namely the period that started following the return to democracy in July 1974 and the abolition of the monarchy via referendum in December of the same year. It was the leading party in six parliamentary elections (Figure 12.1) and ruled as a single-party government for 22 years between 1981 and 2012. PASOK without any doubt is the party most affected by the economic crisis that turned it from a dominant party to a party with a minor parliamentary presence.1 The other major mainstream party in the Greek party system is the centreright party of Nea Dimokratia (ND –New Democracy). It was founded in 1974 by Constantine Karamanlis, the main figure of the post-war Right and founder also of the Ethniki Rizospastiki Enosis (ERE – National Radical Union), the predecessor

FIGURE 12.1

Electoral performance of political parties in Greece in national elections,

2000–2019 Source: Hellenic Ministry of the Interior.

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of ND. Despite Karamanlis’ attempt to create a moderate, pro-European centreright party (Pappas 2001, 241) that would leave behind the semi-authoritarianism and royalism of ERE, there was some continuity between ND and the preauthoritarian Right. The decision taken in 1980 by Karamanlis to welcome into ND several politicians from the Ethniki Parataxis (EP – National Alignment) – an extreme nationalist, royalist, and fiercely anti-communist party – was testimony to this. Even though the move was clearly intended to neutralize electoral challenges from the extreme right, it raised questions about the supposed centrist and moderate profile of his party. Following the rise of PASOK in the national elections of 1981, ND started to emulate the socialist party in certain regards. It developed a mass-party type of organizational structure of its own, also following PASOK in transforming traditional clientelistic linkages, already embedded in the fabric of Greek politics, into machine politics. The crucial difference between this new type of clientelism and traditional patron-client relationships is that the ‘patron’ is not an individual politician but an impersonal party bureaucracy. The relationship still involves individualized inducements towards voters but political loyalty benefits the party as a whole and not individual politicians (Mavrogordatos 1997, 2). In the ideational realm as well, ND was not able to resist cultivating its own brand of populism. During the 1990s  – around the same time when PASOK had started to abandon its people-centric discourse following the election of Kostas Simitis to the leadership of the party  – ND sought to recast itself as a ‘people’s party’ under the leadership of Miltiadis Evert. It abandoned the reformminded agenda of the party, particularly in the areas of macroeconomic policy and public administration, and set out to replace PASOK as the party of ‘ordinary Greeks’ (and of excessive promises) (Pappas and Aslanidis 2015) during a time when the PASOK government embarked on a trajectory of rapid modernization and Europeanization, as the creation of the monetary union was just around the corner. In that period, the country experienced some of the most successful mobilization campaigns in the years of the Third Republic over issues such as the demand for Greek exclusivity to the name ‘Macedonia’ (which came under question after the former Yugoslav republic of the same name acquired independence), support for Serbia during the Bosnia and Kosovo wars, and opposition to the decision to adhere to the EU’s legal standards and remove the registration of religious affiliation from state identity cards (Tsatsanis 2011, 16). Politicians from ND, acting with or without the support of the party’s leader, were key figures in each mobilization event. In a nutshell, before the start of the Eurozone crisis, populism had remained a rather diffuse phenomenon cross-cutting the dominant left/right cleavage in Greek politics. Especially taking into account the two major parties of this period – PASOK and ND – the phenomenon was expressed more frequently in terms of intra-party rather than inter-party dynamics (Tsatsanis, Andreadis, and Teperoglou 2018, 434–435) in the sense that the antagonism of populist vs. liberal worldviews did not translate into stable party competition, but was typically exhausted within internal party politics between loose, informal factions.

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Like PASOK, ND has been divided throughout its history between a reformist and a populist wing. Therefore, attaching the label of ‘mainstream’ to the major centre-right party of Greece does not mean that it is, or was, devoid of populist tendencies; that would be, at best, a simplification which usually serves a particular partisan narrative. It is no accident that both political parties in Greece belonging to the new populist radical right party family in Europe (Mudde 2007) were offshoots of ND. The first, the Laikos Orthodoxos Synagermos (LAOS – Popular Orthodox Rally), was in many ways the by-product of the intense populist mobilizations of the 1990s. It was created by Giorgos Karatzaferis, a renegade MP from ND, and developed throughout the 2000s a typical right-wing populist rhetoric: anti-immigrant, antisemitic, and anti-Western (which translated into a pro-Russian discourse in international affairs due to the religious ties between the two countries). This rhetoric followed a conspiratorial logic, according to which Greece was threatened by foreign elites (ranging from EU high-ranking bureaucrats based in Brussels to billionaire philanthropists like George Soros) and their domestic allies, who sought to ‘dehellenize’ (i.e. de-nationalize) the Greek nation (Tsatsanis 2011, 24–26). The second ND populist offshoot was ANEL. It was founded in February 2012 by Panos Kammenos, a former ND MP, who was expelled after breaking with the party line and voting against the Papademos coalition government (October 2011–May 2012). Ten former ND MPs followed Kammenos, as well as one from PASOK. ANEL filled a gap in the party system after LAOS entered the technocratic coalition government under Papademos, which was tasked with the negotiation of the second bailout agreement. Following this development, the new party by Kammenos remained virtually the only party of the (democratic) Right opposed to the widely unpopular bailout deals. In ideological terms, ANEL is a conservative party, with strong nationalistic and Eurosceptic elements. Like LAOS, it emphasizes traditionalist themes, a return to Christian Orthodox values and education, and has adopted a staunch anti-immigrant agenda. Despite its ties to ND and the long tenure of its president in Greek parliamentary politics, ANEL managed to present itself as a challenge to the ‘old political establishment’, which paved the way for the collaboration with the radical left. The attacks on the Greek ‘oligarchy’ and the ‘corrupt political elite’ that embezzled public funds and ballooned the Greek state’s debt were a common theme for ANEL and its leader (Aslanidis and Rovira Kaltwasser 2016, 1083; Tsatsanis and Teperoglou 2016, 433). Undoubtedly, in the post-crisis landscape, SYRIZA has become the most important populist political actor in Greece. There is widespread agreement in the relevant literature, extending to both mainstream (e.g. Mudde 2015) and critical theory accounts of populism (e.g. Stavrakakis and Katsambekis 2014), that SYRIZA constitutes a populist party, particularly so since the onset of the economic crisis in Greece. SYRIZA constitutes one of the most paradigmatic cases of leftinclusionary populism in Europe (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2013) and is arguably the most successful left-populist party on the continent given that it managed to control the government of an EU country from 2015 to 2019. SYRIZA is a left-populist party in the sense that its recent ideological discourse embraces the

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anti-elitist and people-centric aspects of populist ideology, coupled with themes of social inequality and anti-neoliberal economics, instead of the nativist themes of right-wing populism. The organizational and ideological evolution of SYRIZA is full of discontinuities. Even though the party has been in existence for a mere 15 years (as of 2019), and for just seven years as a unified party, its actual history overlaps with a significant part of the post-war history of ‘the Left’ in Greece. In terms of its origins, SYRIZA should be seen, partly at least, as the successor of one of the two parties that represented the communist left in Greece ever since the split of the Kommounistiko Komma Ellados (KKE – Communist Party of Greece) in 1968. The cadres that were in Greece and not in exile during that period founded the Kommounistiko Komma Ellados Esoterikou (KKE-es – Greek Communist Party of the Interior), which progressively assumed a more critical stance towards Moscow and eventually adopted a Eurocommunist ideological profile. The entanglement of the PASOK government in corruption scandals at the end of the 1980s and its expected electoral decline, coupled with the softening of KKE’s stance towards the European Community (a point of contention between the KKE and KKE-es), meant new opportunities for a stronger and united Left (Verney 1989, 201). In 1989 KKE and Elliniki Aristera (EAR – Greek Left; successor to KKE-es) joined forces and created the left-wing coalition Synaspismos tis Aristeras kai tis Proodou (Synaspismos  – Coalition of the Left and Progress), which broke apart in 1991, when the hardline part of KKE, representing the ‘orthodox’ Marxist-Leninist wing of the party, exited the coalition. SYRIZA itself was initially founded in 2004 as a coalition of the SYN party, other very small radical left parties and assorted extra-parliamentary organizations of the left associated with the anti-globalization social movement. Traces of populism in Synaspismos may be detected already in the mid-2000s in the formal ‘Left Platform’ faction, which pursued the radicalization of the party and its alignment with activist groups within Greek civil society. However, the decisive moment arguably took place a few months later during the 4th Congress of Synaspismos in December 2004, when the party’s so-called ‘left turn’ was completed following the election of Alekos Alavanos as party leader and the defeat of Michalis Papagiannakis, the representative of the pro-European, modernizing and moderate ‘Renewal Wing’ within the party. Alexis Tsipras (who would become Greece’s Prime Minister in 2015–2019), a young protégé of Alavanos, was elected leader of Synaspismos in 2008 and was re-elected in 2010. Βetween 2005 and 2009 SYRIZA’s discourse developed some initial populist features, pursuing a confrontational strategy against the representatives of ‘neoliberal globalization’ in Greece (i.e. PASOK and ND). Other targets that were singled out by Alavanos and, later, by Tsipras, were ‘the banks’, ‘economic cartels’ and ‘big corporate capital’ along with the ‘two-party political establishment’. Appeals to ‘the people’ are not yet central to SYRIZA’s discourse during this period (as they would become after the onset of the crisis in 2010), preferring instead the concept of the ‘social movement front’ as the main antagonist to the ‘establishment’ (Katsambekis 2019, 106). On the eve of the June 2012 national elections, SYRIZA was transformed into a unified party and in July 2013 (when

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the party’s 1st Congress took place), Tsipras became its first leader. In the space of a few short years, thanks to the political opportunities created by the economic crisis and, some would argue, Tsipras’ adept leadership, SYRIZA was transformed from a marginal political coalition of left intellectuals, veterans of left-wing politics and civil society activists to a party vying for actual governmental power.

A party system in flux: changing patterns of competition and cooperation The rise of populist parties in Greece does not really constitute a particularly difficult puzzle in social-scientific terms.The depth, length, and impact of the economic crisis that Greece experienced since 2008 – but especially after 2010 – have been well documented (e.g. Katsikas, Sotiropoulos, and Zafiropoulou 2018; Karyotis and Gerodimos 2015). The story of the outbreak of the sovereign debt crisis in Greece is now very familiar. Therefore, not much space will be devoted to recounting this sequence of events. Following the economic crisis of 2008 and the global economic crunch that ensued, investors started to become more reluctant to buy Greek debt given the rising budget deficit of the Greek government. When the new PASOK government (elected with 44 per cent of the vote in October 2009) claimed in early 2010 that the estimated deficit reported by the outgoing ND government (initially projected to be 3.7 per cent, then revised upwards to 6 to 8 per cent of GDP) had to be revised again to almost 12.7 per cent of GDP, reluctance turned into panic. The final revision was at 15.2 per cent of GDP but by that time borrowing costs had risen to forbidding levels. This meant that Greece had to seek alternative sources to finance its debt obligations if it wanted to avoid a default. The solution was provided by a joint collaboration between the European Union and the IMF: they agreed to provide Greece with a loan of 110 billion euros, conditional on the implementation of a series of structural reforms and austerity measures which were stipulated in a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). The huge loans in combination with austerity policies, which included salary and pension cuts, reduced social expenditures, privatizations, labour market deregulation, hiring freezes and dismissals in the public sector, created a downward spiral of lower demand, depressed economic activity, rising unemployment, further drops in income, an ever-shrinking tax base, sustained deficits, GDP contraction and worsening of the debt to GDP ratio (Tsatsanis 2018, 119–120). The political consequences of the crisis became felt soon after the first bailout package was agreed in May 2010. Huge street mobilizations against the austerity packages were immediately organized. During one such protest event, three bank employees lost their lives as a result of an arson attack against an Athens branch of the bank by protesters. Trust in political institutions, already low, took a further plunge to reach historical lows (Teixeira, Tsatsanis, and Belchior 2014). Even more consequentially for party system change, the comparatively high levels of party identification among the Greek electorate (mostly translated into identification with the two major parties of PASOK and ND) began to rapidly decrease

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FIGURE 12.2

Party identification in Greece, 1985–2011

Source: Teperoglou and Tsatsanis (2014a).

(Figure 12.2; Teperoglou and Tsatsanis 2014a, 230; Teperoglou and Tsatsanis 2014b, 44–45). The decline of partisanship created for the first time in decades a fluid political landscape and an opportunity for new or previously marginal political parties to capitalize on the disenchantment of the electorate with the political system and the old ‘parties of the establishment’ in particular.

The impact of austerity on the Greek party system The onset of the economic crisis and the effects of the austerity measures that were first adopted in May 2010 overshadowed every other issue for the first half of the decade. The interpretation of events and blame attribution for the economic depression that hit Greece has dominated political discourse from the spring of 2010 onwards, giving rise to the neologisms mnemoniakoi (pro-memorandum) and antimnemoniakoi (anti-memorandum) to distinguish between those who saw the ‘bailout’ and the MoU (mnemonio in Greek) as a necessary evil, and those who viewed them as the main reason behind the severity of the economic crisis (Teperoglou, Tsatsanis, and Nicolacopoulos 2015, 336). This memorandum/antimemorandum divide created a new dominant political fault line which cut across the old left/right cleavage. It would be difficult to overstate the significance of the memorandum and of the opposition to austerity in terms of their impact on the restructuration of Greek political space at the time. Unlike Portugal, where both centre-right parties were in support of the bailout deal and the attached list of reforms, in Greece the bailout deals led to the fragmentation of the Right. Initially, ND under the leadership of Antonis Samaras criticized the bailout deal.This criticism was not informed by an ideologically driven critique of austerity but should be understood as part of the usual blame game between PASOK and ND.While PASOK blamed the previous ND government for running

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exorbitant deficits that brought the country to the verge of bankruptcy, ND criticized PASOK for accelerating investor panic with its handling of the crisis and for the onerous terms of the memorandum. When Prime Minister George Papandreou (son of Andreas and leader of PASOK since 2004) had to agree to a second bailout in October 2011, he decided to put the agreement to a referendum. Papandreou realized that the imposition of further austerity measures without a fresh democratic mandate would be tantamount to political suicide, but his initiative backfired. It was strongly criticized by the European Union and European leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, as well as leading politicians from within his own party. Intense international and intra-party pressure forced Papandreou to scrap his referendum plan and to step down as prime minister. Following negotiations, Antonis Samaras accepted to support, along with PASOK and LAOS, a technocratic government headed by Lukas Papademos, a former Vice President of the European Central Bank. In early 2012 Samaras expelled a dozen ND parliamentarians that voted against a new austerity package and LAOS withdrew its support for the Papademos government. By the time of the elections of May 2012, ND’s equivocation towards austerity and the bailout deals had completed the fragmentation of the Right. Panos Kammenos, expelled from ND by Samaras, formed ANEL with ten parliamentarians expelled from ND and one expelled from PASOK. Meanwhile support for neo-Nazi Chrysi Avgi (GD – Golden Dawn), which in the 2009 parliamentary election had gained just 0.3 per cent of the vote, was steadily growing in public opinion polls, as was the extremist group’s visibility in the national media. Even though the party had existed since the 1980s, relatively few Greeks were aware of its existence prior to the economic crisis.The party combined its condemnation of the bailout deals with attacks on immigrants and the corrupt political establishment, implicitly blaming parliamentary politics for the decline and humiliation of the nation.2 After some initial electoral success in the 2010 Athens municipal election, GD managed to capture 21 seats in the Greek parliament in the May 2012 earthquake election (Figure 12.1). Its electoral breakthrough was a combination of attracting voters with extreme-right views – most of whom used to be habitual ND voters – and young voters who harboured strong negative sentiments towards the establishment and politicians in general. ND won more votes than any other party, but obtained a paltry 18.9 per cent, which was a historic low. The fact that in the previous election in 2009 ND had suffered its worst defeat ever by obtaining 33.5 per cent of the vote and less than three years later it managed to top the polls with less than 20 per cent was a testament to the degree of transformation and fragmentation of the Greek party system following the onset of the economic crisis. ANEL was the surprise of the elections, coming in fourth with 10.6 per cent of the vote. The failure to form a stable parliamentary majority in May, led to a second election six weeks later in June 2012. The fragmentation of the party system was confirmed, even though the first two parties of the May election (ND and SYRIZA) managed to significantly improve their results, pointing towards the formation of a nascent two-party system. However, there were two main differences

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with the old two-party system. First, the collective share of the two biggest parties were much lower compared to the previous two-party system, so this would be an ‘imperfect’ type of two-partyism (from 79.9 per cent in 2007 and 77.4 per cent in 2009 to 35.6 per cent and 56.6 per cent in May and June 2012, respectively). Second, even though ND had managed to remain the largest party on the right of the political spectrum despite its significant electoral decline, on the left PASOK lost its once dominant position to SYRIZA. The rise of SYRIZA to the position of second largest party in the country in combination with the inability to maintain the long tradition of single-party governments in the newly fragmented party system had a direct impact on patterns of interaction between parties. As we will see, the transformation of the Greek party system did not limit itself to an increase in the effective number of parties, but also reconstructed the logic and patterns of competition and cooperation between them.

Old and new patterns of party competition Before the economic crisis, PASOK and ND alternated in office forming singleparty governments, with a brief interlude of two short-lived coalition governments between June 1989 and April 1990. It is instructive to note, however, that even the introduction (for a brief period) of a purer form of proportional representation at that time did not really lead to a fragmentation of the party system or the weakening of the two major parties. The aggregate vote share of New Democracy and PASOK in the three consecutive elections under that electoral system ranged between 83.4 and 86.9 per cent, a testament to the resilience of party identifications during this period of Greek politics (Tsatsanis and Teperoglou 2020). The logic of majoritarianism embedded in the two-party system dictated patterns of competition and (non-)cooperation up to the onset of the crisis, the two brief coalition governments of 1989–1990 notwithstanding. The coalition between ND and Synaspismos in June 1989 (which then included KKE) was important in symbolic terms due to the fact that it fully legitimized the communist Left (Pridham and Verney 1991, 56). Not only did it allow the once outlawed communists to enter government – albeit one with the specific mandate to legally investigate scandals which implicated members of the outgoing PASOK government and hold new elections  – but it meant that they were now collaborating with the Greek conservatives, namely their historic adversaries and former political persecutors. However, that coalition constituted an exception to the pattern of single-party majority governments, where parties outside of the PASOK-ND duopoly were doomed to exist in a state of political irrelevancy. As a result, the two political organizations evolved into typical cartel parties (Katz and Mair 2009) that employed a mixture of ‘dismissive’ and ‘accommodative’ strategies (see Chapter 3 of this volume) towards aspiring challenger parties (for example, on immigration and environmental issues, respectively) while, at the same time, engaging in inter-party collusion with the goal of keeping smaller and new entrants (many of which have been short-lived splinter parties from PASOK and ND) at the margins of politics.

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During the initial stages of the economic crisis, in spite of the fact that by 2011 polling data showed that the combined voting intention shares for the two major parties were in freefall, while smaller and new parties were gaining ground,3 PASOK and ND continued to behave as if little had changed and if political competition continued to be essentially limited between the two of them. The manner in which mainstream parties dealt with the rise of SYRIZA changed several times, particularly in the case of PASOK, which was the party most affected by the rapid electoral ascent of the radical left. Historically, SYRIZA (particularly in its previous incarnation as Synaspismos) was perceived as the most ideologically proximate party by the PASOK leadership during much of the Greek ‘Third Republic’. Synaspismos and PASOK were located on the same side of the right/anti-right4 cleavage that dominated Greek politics since the 1960s. Being the hegemonic party on the left side of the political spectrum since the late 1970s, PASOK often courted the two Communist parties and, after 1991, Synaspismos/ SYRIZA from a position of relative power. During the 1980s, the socialist party’s extensive clientelistic networks and the electoral system of ‘reinforced proportional representation’ that penalized smaller parties allowed PASOK to plunder the electoral reservoir of the two communist parties. Andreas Papandreou was able to reap the benefits of strategic voting among left-leaning voters due to his ability to ‘raise the spectre of a return of the Right to power’, painted with the appropriate references to the civil war and the dictatorship (Kalyvas and Marantzidis 2005, 85). Furthermore, PASOK courted Synaspismos in the 1990s through collaborations at the level of local politics while co-opting its agenda on environmental and other post-material issues that were appealing to younger voters. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s it often recruited from Synaspismos party personnel that looked to make the jump from a niche party to a party of government. For example, following the 2000 national elections, Synaspismos split for a second time when 20 members of its Central Committee exited the party and became affiliated with PASOK (Kalyvas and Marantzidis 2005, 94). The ideological proximity between PASOK and SYRIZA started to work in favour of SYRIZA during 2011–2012. The largest percentage of voters who were fleeing PASOK following the bailout deals and the imposition of harsh austerity shifted their support to SYRIZA, a party that was from the outset a harsh critic of the deal struck between the PASOK government and the country’s international creditors. There are estimates that by the June 2012 election SYRIZA had absorbed 35 per cent of the 2009 PASOK vote, a figure that had reached 49 per cent by January 2015 (Koustenis 2019, 72). This reversal of fortunes was reproduced at the level of political elites, with many former prominent PASOK MPs and/or cabinet members of previous PASOK governments making the jump from the ailing socialist party to the rising radical left opposition. The dwindling of PASOK’s parliamentary majority due to defections and expulsions coupled with the surge of SYRIZA (and other smaller parties) in voting intention polls forced PASOK to reconsider its strategy and to turn challenger

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parties (including SYRIZA) into partners (or one could say accomplices) in the process of administering the painful fiscal and administrative reforms prescribed in the MoU. This strategy became most evident following the 2012 May and June elections when both Antonis Samaras and Evangelos Venizelos (new leader of PASOK by that time) extended invitations to SYRIZA to participate in a coalition government, which Alexis Tsipras unceremoniously rejected. The reaction of PASOK and ND would be to adopt a more confrontational approach towards challenger parties (a ‘clashing’ strategy, according to the typology adopted in this book). This was particularly true of their relationship with SYRIZA. One could argue that PASOK and ND positioned themselves as the ‘anti-populist’ parties versus the alleged ‘populism’ of SYRIZA, ANEL and other challenger parties that attacked their entire political legacy under the pretext of the economic crisis. The result of this tumultuous period was the crystallization of a new fault line in the Greek party system. On one side, ND and PASOK, the former ‘duopoly cartel’ members (temporarily joined by the new party of Dimokratiki Aristera; DIMARDemocratic Left), cast themselves as responsible and experienced stewards of the country’s affairs, battling against irresponsible populism and anti-European hysteria. The two major parties of the centre-left and centre-right were allegedly setting their differences aside to save Greece from bankruptcy, but also from the looming danger of populist challengers. On the other side there was the so-called anti-memorandum camp, inhabited by a hodgepodge of old and new political forces hailing from very different political backgrounds and traditions. This camp included parties such as ANEL, GD, KKE as well as many other smaller political parties that failed to gain entry into parliament, and, of course, SYRIZA, which quickly became the most influential party within this heterogeneous front. What united these forces was an opposition to the MoU and the two parties of the former duopoly, the so-called ‘old establishment’, but not much else. Following Peter Mair’s influential distinction (2009), one could say that the former side emphasized the need for responsible government and the latter criticized the lack of governmental responsiveness to democratic demands, reflecting the growing disconnect between the functions of ‘responsibility’ and ‘responsiveness’ in an increasingly internationalized and Europeanized political environment. However, this new fault line caused by the economic crisis, paved the way for a process of ‘populist convergence’, namely the collaboration of populist actors with radically different – one could say elementally opposed – ideological and historical legacies. Indeed, the collaboration between the two most successful populist parties in the period of the crisis, SYRIZA and ANEL, became conceivable only in the particular context created by the economic catastrophe experienced in Greece between 2010 and 2013.

Populist convergence in the context of the economic crisis SYRIZA and ANEL had stark ideological differences on economic and, particularly, socio-cultural issues, and hailed from opposite sides of the political spectrum.

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However, their shared rejection of the bailout agreements and critique of elite-level corruption and of vested interests connected to the two former major parties had made them behave as potential coalition partners well before the January 2015 election. After coming first in the 2014 European election, SYRIZA won again in the January election even more comfortably, by a margin of 8.5 per cent over ND (capturing over 36 per cent of the vote). However, SYRIZA was two seats short of a majority in parliament and had to look for a coalition partner. The formation of the first coalition SYRIZA-ANEL in January 2015 was not very typical in procedural terms, demonstrating the lack of experience associated with the formation of coalition governments. As explained in the previous section, this lack of experience was not limited to the actors involved but to the Greek political elite at large. The announcement of the coalition between the two parties took place just hours after the announcement of the result, without any formal negotiation talks taking place. As a result, the coalition seemingly rested on a personal agreement between the two party leaders without any detailed programmatic agreement similar to ones that coalition partners reach in other countries that have a more established tradition of coalition politics. However, Alexis Tsipras and Panos Kammenos, the leader of ANEL, agreed upon the most important issue of the day. They shared the goal to scrap the previous bailout deal with the hated Troika and renegotiate the terms of the agreement, which had trapped the Greek economy in a debt-deflationary spiral. As Panos Kammenos stated, the partnership between the two parties was founded on an agreement concerning ‘specific and prioritized goals’: the end of the ‘memorandum regime’ and the ‘crushing of practices of collusion and corruption’ among members of the Greek economic and political elite (Lambrinou 2019, 339). Even though the coalition between SYRIZA and ANEL took people by surprise when they were not familiar with Greek politics, the collaboration between the two parties had been predicted by expert observers of Greek political life during the crisis. The fact that the SYRIZA leadership saw no other possible alternatives during 2014  – when the party essentially became a government-inwaiting – paved the way for the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition. To begin with, KKE repeatedly rejected invitations to collaborate. The Communist party was perceived as a natural ally by the SYRIZA leadership but its overtures were not, and had never been, well-received by the intransigent KKE leadership. On the other hand, PASOK and the new liberal party ‘To Potami’ (literally translated as ‘The River’ and formed by a well-known journalist in 2014)  were not truly seen as potential coalition partners by the SYRIZA leadership, in spite of their proximity on the left/right dimension (to the right, instead of the left, of SYRIZA). This was mainly because they were perceived as parties that considered the previous bailout deals inevitable and precluded the possibility of a clash with the country’s creditors. The latter fact made them unreliable partners in renegotiation efforts in the eyes of Alexis Tsipras. PASOK, in particular, was seen as part of the old order that SYRIZA had pledged to overturn (Tsatsanis and Teperoglou 2016, 433). In this case, SYRIZA’s anti-establishment stance trumped its location on the left/right

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spectrum, impacting negatively the coalition potential of mainstream parties in a SYRIZA-led government. Under the coalition government of SYRIZA-ANEL, the country entered a phase of protracted economic instability, which reached its peak with the decision to hold a referendum in July 2015, calling for the acceptance or rejection of a proposal to resolve Greece’s situation by the EU/IMF lenders.The referendum deepened the rift along the ‘memorandum’ divide even further, pitting the SYRIZA-ANEL government coalition on one side and the pro-European parties (i.e. ND, PASOK, and To Potami) on the other in a short but highly polarizing period. In the meantime, the coffers of the Greek state were nearly completely empty and the country’s creditors were denying Greece fresh funds without total capitulation and acceptance of their terms. Following the announcement of the referendum, the European Central Bank (ECB) cut off the already limited liquidity to the Greek banks completely. In order to prevent a full scale bank run on top of the steady pace of withdrawals from Greek banks during the previous months, the Greek government decided to declare a bank holiday and to introduce strict capital controls a week before the referendum. Surprising pundits and pollsters, Greek voters voted, on the recommendation of the government, against the proposal of the creditors by a considerable margin. 61.3 per cent of the voters sided with Alexis Tsipras and just 38.7 per cent with the centrist/centre-right opposition, which campaigned for a ‘Yes’ vote. The referendum event constituted both the high-water mark and the beginning of the end of the ‘memorandum divide’. Even though Greeks rejected the creditor’s terms in the referendum, the result did not change the position of weakness of the SYRIZA-led government. Under asphyxiating pressures, Alexis Tsipras failed to renegotiate better terms from Greece’s lenders and, like his predecessors, he had to swallow the bitter pill of austerity in order for funds to be released to the Greek government to avoid the country’s formal bankruptcy and its exit from the Eurozone. Despite the capitulation of the once defiant populist government and the departure in protest of many top party members5, SYRIZA won again the September 2015 snap election and was able to form a new coalition government with ANEL. The coalition formally ended in February 2019 following a rift between the two parties over the Macedonia name dispute. As the bailout deal was no longer a politicized issue and the old left/right divide had regained much of its lost relevance, the more conventional (or substantive, one could say) ideological differences between the two parties finally resurfaced.

Bringing out the neckties: the moderation effect of government There is a debate concerning the effects of the experience of government between 2015 and 2019 on SYRIZA’s populism and more generally the extent to which their time in office resulted in the ‘mainstreaming’ of SYRIZA and ANEL.The four year period of coalition governance between SYRIZA and ANEL and the halfyear single government of SYRIZA had clear moderating effects on both parties. Perhaps, in the case of ANEL, the question has become moot following the demise

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of the party. In January 2019, Panos Kammenos decided to withdraw his party from government due to his opposition to the ‘Prespes Agreement’ between Greece and North Macedonia, arguably in a last-ditch (unsuccessful) effort to prevent its looming electoral annihilation. However, throughout the four-year period, the realities of government forced the populist coalition to often opt for capitulation or compromise instead of conflict, and abandon several pledges that were made when the two parties where in opposition. The most consequential capitulation took place in the context of the clash with Greece’s foreign creditors over the renegotiation of the bailout program(s) that previous mainstream governments had been forced to sign and implement. Alexis Tsipras called the agreement of yet another bailout program an ‘honourable compromise’, yet the truth is that SYRIZA and ANEL had spectacularly failed to fulfil the pledge of reversing the crippling austerity policies that had been pursued since 2010 in exchange for loans from the European Union and the IMF.6 The defeat of SYRIZA abroad and the decision to make a U-turn instead of pursuing the confrontation with European institutions and governments to the bitter end, alienated the more radically left-wing faction of the party (aptly named ‘Left Platform’). At the same time, SYRIZA’s victory in the snap election of September 2015 (the second in the same year) which was called immediately after the agreement of a new bailout deal, bolstered Alexis Tsipras’ status within SYRIZA and allowed the selective de-radicalization of the party’s rhetoric and policy-goals, especially in regard to economic and foreign policy. Maximalist goals of mounting an offense against ‘neoliberal hegemony’ at the European level were downplayed. Instead, Tsipras started to put more emphasis on valence issues of performance. Tsipras’ and SYRIZA’s transformation was complete even at the symbolic level when in June 2018 he decided for the first (and hitherto last) time to sport a red necktie in a public appearance. The tieless dress code of politicians hailing from SYRIZA, including the former prime minister, visually signals the anti-conformism and anti-establishment mentality of SYRIZA politics. However, one could argue that the radical left party had already opted to enter the realm of ‘necktie politics’ long before the then prime-minister’s public appearance. Nevertheless, even though the memorandum/anti-memorandum conflict dimension largely lost its meaning and its salience after July 2015, Tsipras and SYRIZA pushed to the forefront other themes with clear populist overtones that were already present in the party’s discursive repertoire.Thus, at a time when Alexis Tsipras and key ministers coming from SYRIZA (most notably, Euclid Tsakalotos, Nikos Kotzias, Yannis Dragasakis, and Nikos Pappas) had adopted a much more conciliatory tone when dealing with the EU-ECB-IMF ‘Troika’, or with other European governments during the second term of the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition, in domestic politics both the government and the opposition maintained their clashing strategies and polarizing rhetoric.The government continued to attack the ‘oligarchy’ and the ‘old establishment’ for the economic crisis, but this time mostly as a response to continuing accusations by the mainstream opposition parties that

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the SYRIZA-ANEL government was the worst and most ‘disastrous’ government in the country’s recent history. Furthermore, mainstream parties often accused the SYRIZA-ANEL government of criminalizing political life, for manipulating the justice system into prosecuting prominent opposition members that served in previous governments, and for undermining the institutional foundations of democratic governance in Greece. However, with the benefit of hindsight, one could argue that the fears of Greece sinking into a Venezuelan-type mix of economic ruin and increasing authoritarianism (e.g. Newsbeast 2015) were never realized during the four-and-a-half years of ‘populist governance’. Greece came close to being evicted from the Eurozone following gross miscalculations concerning the balance of power in Europe by finance minister Yanis Varoufakis and the SYRIZA leadership but, in the end, the country stayed inside the common currency zone. For all the moral panic and accusations from its centrist detractors, in reality SYRIZA did no more to undermine democratic institutions in the country than its predecessors. In fact, in areas such as the rights of the LGBT community or of second-generation immigrants, in spite of ND’s continuing opposition (which was always in line with the preferences of its conservative and nativist electoral base) the situation was considerably improved, ANEL’s tepid right-wing protestations notwithstanding. ANEL proved to be a mainly office-seeking party, content to control a few ministries but with no overall or lasting impact on the policy-making agenda of the government. Even in the domain of foreign policy and, in particular, on the lingering issue of the Macedonia name dispute, SYRIZA proved in the end to act more responsibly than the centrist ‘anti-populist’ opposition. The supposedly liberal leadership of PASOK and ND did not hesitate to ride, and at times actively encourage, the wave of nationalpopulist hysteria that swept the country against the so-called ‘Prespes Agreement’ that finally settled the lingering dispute between Greece and North Macedonia. Such episodes demonstrated the limits of the populist/anti-populist dimension as a conceptual tool that can help us to understand changing political realities in the twenty-first century. The fading relevance of the ‘memorandum’ issue has restored to a significant extent the salience of the left/right axis in Greek politics in the second half of the 2010s. The high combined share of the two largest parties in the July 2019 national election (71.4 per cent) points to a partial reconstitution of the old two-party system (with SYRIZA in the place of PASOK) along with its logic of competition. However, the legacy of polarization and populist politics of the first half of the decade can still be felt. The ‘mainstreaming’ of SYRIZA remains an incomplete and fragile process, especially after the creation and electoral success of Yanis Varoufakis’ MeRA25 (unlike LAE in 2015, the new party managed to surpass the three per cent electoral threshold in the July 2019 election). PASOK, despite the party’s socialist pedigree, continues to appear much closer to ND, particularly on issues related to economic reforms, Europe, foreign affairs and higher education, while the collaboration between SYRIZA and ND on any level at present appears unlikely, if not unthinkable.

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Conclusion The economic crisis that erupted in 2007 in the United States and morphed into the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis by 2010 had profound political consequences for many European countries. Perhaps no nation was affected more than Greece, the country that constituted the epicentre of the Eurozone crisis and that struggled (and is still struggling) more than any other to put the crisis in the rear-view mirror. The events at the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century created political opportunity structures for the emergence of parties that challenged the long dominance of PASOK and ND in Greek post-authoritarian politics. Party system change was not only quantitative but also qualitative; party system fragmentation was accompanied, or one could say caused, by the emergence of a new divide that cut across the traditional left/right axis that had structured Greek political competition for decades. This new dimension of political competition aligned and condensed different definitions or understandings of political conflict that quickly obtained primary salience in the country’s political life:  Europeanism versus Euroscepticism, responsibility versus responsiveness, old versus new, establishment versus anti-establishment, populism versus anti-populism. At the sociological level, one could say that the economic crisis activated political potentials existing at the level of the underlying new structural conflict produced by globalization in most Western societies, expressed ideologically in a new populist-anti-populist divide. Inevitably, this new divide upended decades of inter-party relations. It forced former mainstream antagonists of the old Greek political duopoly to band together in the face of rising challengers; it brought together in a marriage of convenience left-wing and right-wing populist challengers in spite of their incompatible political legacies and identities; and all this occurred in a political system accustomed to single-party governments and a majoritarian culture of governance. When the initial dismissive and/or co-optation strategies of mainstream actors failed to contain the rise of challengers (SYRIZA, in particular), mainstream parties decided to fight fire with fire, adopting a ‘clashing’ strategy towards populism, which further polarized the already divided Greek electorate. In the end, the most effective tool against populism in Greece proved to be its own (electoral) success.The experience of government first exposed the mismatch between the maximalist promises of the SYRIZA and ANEL populists and the tough realities of international politics, delegitimizing their advertised solutions to bring an end to austerity more than the fear-inducing rhetoric of mainstream actors ever could. The poor electoral performance of newly formed LAE (see footnote 5) – which continued to promise an end to austerity via confrontation with the country’s creditors – demonstrated that the voters of (mainly) SYRIZA and ANEL had gone through a similar learning curve as the leaders they had elected, but also that they were not willing to reward mainstream parties. The bond between PASOK (especially) and its former voters appeared to have been irreparably damaged during the first phase of the economic crisis. Conversely, ND was not equally discredited among right-of-centre voters, a fact which contributed to ANEL’s eventual electoral demise. At the same time,

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the Greek case showed that the experience of the demands and complexities of governance can also have a moderating effect on inexperienced populist actors. SYRIZA was eventually defeated due to inexperience and poor performance but in the process managed to successfully supplant the most successful political party of the post-authoritarian era in Greece (PASOK) by abandoning many of its populist affectations and trying to strike a balance between ‘responsiveness’ and ‘responsibility’, much like early PASOK itself. Finally, in terms of the dynamics between populist parties themselves, the Greek case demonstrated how strongly issue salience can impact their logic of competition and cooperation. The ‘populist convergence’ between SYRIZA and ANEL was made possible at a time when political discourse was dominated by the economic crisis, the imposition of austerity measures and the relations between Greece and its international creditors. The two parties’ overlapping populism, combined with the low salience of economic ideology for ANEL (which allowed flexibility on this dimension), permitted the emergence of compatible conceptualizations of the crisis, which included shared enemies: namely, the ‘old political establishment’ and the forces of ‘global neoliberalism’, which apparently held captive the European Union and international organizations such as the IMF. In other countries or cases where political discourse is dominated by issues such as terrorism, immigration, the threat of Islamic culture and other threats to national or cultural identity, a similar process of ‘populist convergence’ between left-populist and right-populist parties would be very improbable, due to contradictory constructions of ‘the people’ and/ or of ‘the elites’ (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2013). In other words, perhaps a more general lesson that can be taken from the Greek case is that the politicization of cultural/symbolic issues over economic or political ones can produce a silver lining: the fragmentation of populist forces in the party system.

Notes 1 Back in July 2017, PASOK leader Fofi Gennimata announced the formation of a new unified centre-left party in Greece. Founded in March 2018, this coalition was named ‘The Movement for Change’ (KINAL) and included PASOK, the centrist party The River and Democratic Left (DIMAR, a splinter pro-European party from SYRIZA) and some minor centre-left groups. However, as of July 2019, PASOK is the only parliamentary party remaining in the coalition. 2 Despite the fact that the rhetoric of GD and KKE often acquired the characteristics of typical populist discourse, the parties are not classified as populist due to their core ideological features. Golden Dawn never abandoned its anti-democratic and anti-parliamentary extremist identity, while KKE has also maintained its Marxist-Leninist ideology and rhetoric, despite occasional populist flourishes. 3 For example, a Metron Analysis poll conducted in early December 2011 had the combined share of PASOK and ND at 29.9 per cent (Metron Analysis 2011). 4 During the early and mid 1960s, the main dividing line in Greek politics shifted from the left/anti-left division (conservatives and centrists against communists) of the civil war period (1946–1949) to a right/anti-right cleavage due to the opposition of both centrists

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and leftists to perceived abuses of power by conservatives in government and later by the meddling of the ‘Palace’ in Greek politics (i.e. the young King Constantine II and his circle). 5 Most of the departing party members were members of the radical ‘Left Platform’, a formal faction of SYRIZA, and went on to create a new party named Laiki Enotita (LAEPopular Unity). This failed to surpass the 3 per cent threshold in the September 2015 election and did not enter parliament. 6 The terms of the memorandum that the SYRIZA-led government signed were arguably harsher than those that were offered to the Greek government prior to the referendum of July 2015. The most controversial aspects of the third agreement included further pension cuts in an attempt to make the Greek social security system viable, new tax hikes and the privatization of €50 billion of state assets (Tsatsanis and Teperoglou 2016, 437, endnote 5).

References Aslanidis, Paris, and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser. 2016. ‘Dealing with Populists in Government:  The SYRIZA-ANEL Coalition in Greece.’ Democratization 23, no. 6: 1077–1091. Clogg, Richard, ed. 1993. Greece, 1981–89: The Populist Decade. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Kalyvas, Stathis, and Nikos Marantzidis. 2005.‘Communism Dualism: The Greek Communist Parties after the Collapse of Communism.’ In Trajectories of the Left. Social Democratic and (ex-) Communist Parties in Contemporary Europe: Between Past and Future, edited by Lubomir Kopeček, 81–106. Brno: Democracy and Cultural Studies Center. Karyotis, Georgios, and Roman Gerodimos, eds. 2015. The Politics of Extreme Austerity: Greece in the Eurozone Crisis. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Katsambekis, Giorgos. 2019. ‘Αριστερός λαϊκισμός στην αντιπολίτευση και στην εξουσία. Η περίπτωση ΣΥΡΙΖΑ / Left Populism in Opposition and Government.The Case of SYRIZA.’ In ΣΥΡΙΖΑ, Ένα Κόμμα Εν Κινήσει [SYRIZA, A Party In Motion], edited by Yannis Balabanidis, 97–141. Athens: Themelio. Katsikas, Dimitris, Dimitri A. Sotiropoulos, and Maria Zafiropoulou, eds. 2018. Socioeconomic Fragmentation and Exclusion in Greece under the Crisis. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Katz, Richard, and Peter Mair. 2009. ‘The Cartel Party Thesis: A Restatement.’ Perspectives on Politics 7, no. 4: 753–766. Koustenis, Panagiotis. 2019. ‘Η εκλογική αναστοίχιση 2012–2015:  Από το ΠΑΣΟΚ στον ΣΥΡΙΖΑ/Electoral realignment 2012–2015:  From PASOK to SYRIZA.’ In ΣΥΡΙΖΑ, Ένα Κόμμα Εν Κινήσει [SYRIZA, A  Party In Motion], edited by Yannis Balabanidis, 41–75. Athens: Themelio. Lambrinou, Katerina. 2019. ‘Συνεπείς εταίροι και «νέοι Γοργοπόταμοι»: Μια (όχι και τόσο) παράδοξη συγκυβέρνηση / Dependable Partners and “New Gorgopotami”: A (Not All That) Paradoxical Coalition Government.’ In ΣΥΡΙΖΑ, Ένα Κόμμα Εν Κινήσει [SYRIZA, A Party In Motion], edited by Yannis Balabanidis, 331–353. Athens: Themelio. Mair, Peter. 2009. ‘Representative versus Responsible Government.’ Max Planck Institute for the Study of Society, Working Paper 09/8. Mavrogordatos, George Th. 1997. ‘From Traditional Clientelism to Machine Politics: The Impact of PASOK Populism in Greece.’ South European Society and Politics 2, no. 3: 1–26. Metron Analysis. 2011. Metron Forum, December 2011. Available at: , last accessed on 30 October 2019. Mudde, Cas. 2007. Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Mudde, Cas. 2015. ΣΥΡΙΖΑ: Η ∆ιάψευση της Λαϊκιστικής Υπόσχεσης [SYRIZA: The Failure of the Populist Promise]. Thessaloniki: Epikentro. Mudde, Cas, and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser. 2013. ‘Exclusionary vs. Inclusionary Populism: Comparing Contemporary Europe and Latin America.’ Government & Opposition 48, no. 2: 147–174. Newsbeast. 2015. ‘Ν∆:  Ο Σύριζα θέλει να κάνει την Ελλάδα, Βενεζουέλα/ ND:  SYRIZA Wants to Turn Greece into Venezuela’ 12 January 2015, https://www. newsbeast.gr/politiki/arthro/776656/o-suriza-thelei-na-kanei-tin-ellada-venezouela, last accessed 5 October 2020. Pappas, Takis. 2001. ‘In Search of the Center: Conservative Parties, Electoral Competition and Political Legitimacy in Southern Europe’s New Democracies.’ In Parties, Politics, and Democracy in the New Southern Europe, edited by P. Nikiforos Diamandouros and Richard Gunther, 224–267. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Pappas, Takis, and Paris Aslanidis. 2015. ‘Greek Populism: A Political Drama in Five Acts.’ In Populism in the Shadow of the Great Recession, edited by Hanspeter Kriesi and Takis Pappas, 181–196. Colchester: ECPR Press. Pridham, Geoffrey, and Susannah Verney. 1991. ‘The Coalitions of 1989–90 in Greece: Interparty Relations and Democratic Consolidation.’ West European Politics 14, no. 4: 42–69. Stavrakakis, Yannis, and Giorgos Katsambekis. 2014. ‘Left-wing Populism in the European Periphery: The Case of SYRIZA.’ Journal of Political Ideologies 19, no. 2: 119–142. Teixeira, Conceição Pequito, Emmanouil Tsatsanis, and Ana Maria Belchior. 2014. ‘Support for Democracy in Times of Crisis: Diffuse and Specific Regime Support in Portugal and Greece.’ South European Society and Politics 19, no. 4: 501–518. Teperoglou, Eftichia, and Emmanouil Tsatsanis. 2014a. ‘Dealignment, De-Legitimation and the Implosion of the Two-Party System in Greece: The Earthquake Election of 6 May 2012.’ Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties 24, no. 2: 222–242. Teperoglou, Eftichia, and Emmanouil Tsatsanis. 2014b. ‘Η Επίσπευση ενός Αργού Θανάτου:  Κομματικές Ταυτίσεις και το Τέλος του ∆ικομματισμού / The Hastening of a Slow Death: Party Identification and the End of the Two-Party System.’ In 2012: Ο ∆ιπλός Εκλογικός Σεισμός [2012: The Double Electoral Earthquake], edited by Yannis Voulgaris and Ilias Nicolacopoulos, 33–60. Athens: Themelio. Teperoglou, Eftichia, Emmanouil Tsatsanis, and Ilias Nicolacopoulos. 2015. ‘Habituating to the New Normal in a Post-earthquake Party System: The 2014 European Election in Greece.’ South European Society and Politics 20, no. 3: 333–355. Tsatsanis, Emmanouil. 2011. ‘Hellenism under Siege:  The National-populist Logic of Antiglobalization Rhetoric in Greece.’ Journal of Political Ideologies 16, no. 1: 11–31. Tsatsanis, Emmanouil. 2018. ‘The Swift Unravelling:  Party System Change and Deinstitutionalization in Greece during the Crisis.’ In Party System Change, the European Crisis and the State of Democracy, edited by Marco Lisi, 115–136. London and New York: Routledge. Tsatsanis, Emmanouil, and Eftichia Teperoglou. 2016. ‘Realignment under Stress: The July 2015 Referendum and the September Parliamentary Election in Greece.’ South European Society and Politics 21, no. 4: 427–450. Tsatsanis, Emmanouil, and EftichiaTeperoglou. 2020.‘Greece’s Coalition Governments: Power Sharing in a Majoritarian Democracy.’ In Coalition Government as a Reflection of a Nation’s Politics and Society: A Comparative Study of Parliamentary Parties and Cabinets in 12 Countries, edited by Matt Evans. London and New York: Routledge (forthcoming). Verney, Susannah. 1989. ‘“Compromesso storico”:  Reunion and Renewal on the Greek Left.’ Journal of Communist Studies 5, no. 4: 200–206.

13 ITALY Caterina Froio

Introduction Italy is a fascinating case to study for those interested in the interactions between mainstream and populist parties. In the aftermath of the Great Recession, there are only few other European countries where mainstream parties have been challenged by multiple populist opponents to such an extent. In this chapter, I shall look at how populist opponents shaped the strategies of the Partito Democratico (PD  – Democratic Party), namely the mainstream centre-left party. Founded as a ‘government party’ in 2007, between November 2011 and June 2018 the PD has either been part of national government majorities or has supported executives without any interruptions.1 As the main incumbent party during this period, the PD is perhaps the one that suffered the most from the competition of populist actors such as the Lega (League – formerly Northern League), Berlusconi’s Forza Italia (FI – Come on, Italy!), and, later, the Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S – Five Star Movement).2 Table 13.1 illustrates the changing electoral support of the PD and its opponents over this period. When it first ran for general elections in 2008, the PD obtained over 33 per cent of the votes. Some years later, in 2013, its score fell to 25 per cent, to eventually shrink below 20 per cent in 2018. Over the same years, moreover, the party experienced eight changes of leadership, much infighting, a major split and the shrinking of its parliamentary groups. The PD’s recent electoral debacle cannot be imputed entirely to the competition of other parties in the system (see Chiaramonte et al. 2018).Yet, we still know little about how the PD reacted to the main developments in the party system, such as growing support for the League and the M5S, as well as fading support for FI. Based on qualitative and quantitative data from party manifestoes at general and EP elections, as well as discussion of social media content and public speeches, the next sections trace the main developments taking place in Italy

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TABLE 13.1 Electoral results and government participation of major Italian parties

Year

PD

FI

League

M5S

2008 (General)

33.2

2009 (EP)

26.1

37.4

8.3

-

35.3

10.2

-

2013 (General)

25.4

21.7

4.1

25.6

2014 (EP)

40.9

16.9

6.1

21.2

2018 (General)

18.8

14.0

17.3

32.7

2019 (EP)

22.7

8.8

34.3

17.6

Source: Electoral results (% of votes share) from https://elezionistorico.interno.gov.it; government participation from: www.governo.it. Note: The table shows vote shares at general and EP elections for PD, FI, League and M5S. General election results refer to the Chamber of Deputies. Grey areas signal government participation.

during the national and European electoral campaigns of the last decade. The analysis focuses on the competition between the mainstream PD and its populist opponents, by comparing the supply-side of the four parties on issues that have played a crucial role in Italian politics since 2007:  the economy and immigration (Ignazi 2015). The breakdown of Lehman brothers in the autumn of 2008 and the refugee policy crisis in 2014 will be remembered as major turning points in contemporary Italian politics. I argue that these two crises and their consequences have exacerbated the tensions between responsibility and demands for representation in the competition between mainstream and populist parties, ultimately reducing support for the PD and FI and boosting it for the League and M5S. During this period, the PD has been subject to increasing external and internal pressures that are likely to have influenced its interactions with populist parties on economic and immigration issues. These demands emerged from principals outside the formal chain of delegation, notably external lenders, bondholders and supranational authorities (Froio and Little 2015; Mair 2011, 2), but also from the PD’s internal factions. More specifically, external pressures emerged from the unfolding and management of the Euro and refugee policy crises, while internal pressures from within-party divisions between social democratic and centristliberal factions. In this context, the party interacted with its populist opponents in various ways that we shall consider below. This chapter is structured as follows.The first section discusses the background of the four parties mentioned above and illustrates how their strength has varied over time. The second and third sections compare the policy positions of these parties and unveil interactions between them on economic and immigration issues, by also looking at their manifestoes. Finally, the conclusion discusses the implications of our case study for future research on party competition between mainstream and populist parties.

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Mainstream and populist parties in Italy: historical background and recent developments To understand the interactions between mainstream and populist parties in Italy, this section summarizes the electoral performances, core issues, and role in government of the PD, FI, League and M5S, and discusses the evolution of their respective electoral strength in the last ten years. As noted earlier, the PD is widely considered mainstream left in Italian politics (see Pasquino 2009), and it is a party of government, having been in office for most of the years 2008–2018. Its main opponent throughout recent years has been Berlusconi’s ‘neo-liberal populist’ (Mudde 2007) party, which never dismissed its anti-establishment rhetoric despite being in office for several years since 1994, and most recently between 2008 and 2011. In addition, the PD had to face the competition of the M5S and the League, which differ substantially from one another, but can both be defined as populist (see Chapter 1 of this volume). While the League has repeatedly been part of coalition governments (including from 2008 to 2011, and more recently between 2018 and 2019), the M5S entered government for the first time in 2018 and it is still in office at the time of writing (December 2019), this time alongside the PD. The PD was founded in October 2007 from a merger of the centrist party Democrazia e Libertà – La Margherita (Margherita – The Daisy) and the social democratic Democratici di Sinistra (DS – Democrats of the Left), the heirs, respectively, of the Christian Democratic and Communist parties that dominated Italian politics in the post-war years. Accordingly, the founding chart of the PD (PD 2008a) defines it as social democratic and centrist, a party that embraces the free market and supports third way positions on the economy and social policy (Seddone andVenturino 2015). The PD is also a member of the European Socialist Party group. However, while ideologically the party is broadly centre-left, it has continued to host conflicting tendencies since its foundation, due to the continuing presence of representatives from both the centrist and social democratic traditions within it (Bordignon 2014). Furthermore, the party presented important innovative organizational features in the Italian political scenario, notably due to the adoption of primaries for the election of its party leader (Bernardi et  al. 2017; Pasquino and Valbruzzi 2016). This, however, also contributed to exacerbating internal tensions, as exemplified by the changes of leadership between people belonging to different factions.3 Most notably, in February 2017, due to internal tensions between left wingers and the centrist party leader, Matteo Renzi, several left-leaning representatives left the party and formed a splinter group in Parliament, which, however, was short-lived. While the PD is the party that stayed in office the longest, its electoral support has been sharply declining in recent years, with an overall loss of over 14 per cent of the vote between 2008 and 2018 (see Table 13.1). If there are few doubts concerning the classification of the PD as a mainstream centre-left party, the definition of FI as ‘populist’ calls for further clarification. FI was founded in 1993 by media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi and dominated Italian

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politics for over two decades. The party’s Carta dei valori (Charter of Values) (FI 1993) defines it as a liberal-conservative party, endorsing the free market economy and conservative values. Even if the platforms of Berlusconi’s party have resembled those of ‘the European centre right’ (see Ruzza and Fella 2011), Berlusconi’s style of leadership has been populist, while he established FI as the major competitor of the centre left (until 2013).4 However, some scholars (Albertazzi and McDonnell 2015; Tarchi 2016) consider FI as a full-blown populist party, not just one that borrows from the populist box of tricks. We follow the same approach here. Over the years, FI managed to set the agenda of successive elections through the support of Berlusconi’s personal business and television group, intensive campaigning and effective electoral marketing. While FI can count on its long experience as a party of government, its electoral support started declining in 2011, when, in the middle of the Great Recession and with the financial markets turning against Italy, the President of the Republic Giorgio Napolitano urged Berlusconi to resign. Berlusconi was replaced by Mario Monti, whose technocratic cabinet fulfilled EU austerity requirements to tackle the crisis. Between 2008 and 2018, FI lost 20 per cent of the votes. The definition of the M5S and the League as populist parties also calls for some discussion (e.g. Rooduijn et  al. 2019). The origins of the League date back to 1991. Since then, the party has survived the alternation in power of three leaders (Umberto Bossi, Roberto Maroni and, since 2013, Matteo Salvini), and underwent major ideological and organizational changes (McDonnell and Vampa 2016). As for its ideology, the party progressively transitioned from ethno-regionalism to state-wide nationalism (Albertazzi, Giovannini, and Seddone 2018). During this process, the League’s Manichean vision of society developed, as external enemies – namely migrants and the ‘corrupt’ elite in Brussels  – replaced the party’s ‘traditional’ internal enemies: Southern Italians and the equally ‘corrupt’ elite of Rome (Albertazzi et  al. 2018). In short, while the targets of the party’s nativism have changed, the League’s typically populist (Manichaean) traits have remained. These transformations went hand in hand with major changes in its support. Indeed, in recent years the League has gained one of its worst electoral performances ever at a national election, namely 4 per cent in 2013, and its best score so far – 17 per cent in 2018, which is when it became the leading party on the right, by overtaking Silvio Berlusconi’s FI. The M5S is a considerably more recent phenomenon. It originated in the late 2000s from digital grassroots activism and subsequently engaged in electoral politics (Bordignon and Ceccarini 2013; Mosca and Quaranta 2017; Mosca and Vaccari 2011). Because of its peculiar ideological profile, the party’s ideology has been defined ‘polyvalent (radical) populism’ (Pirro 2018), which is said to defy the traditional left-right divide. Accordingly, one important feature of the M5S is said to be its ability to ‘attach itself to diverging but coexisting ideologies’ (Pirro 2018, 3). The party draws simultaneously on anti-establishment claims, post-materialist values linked to environmental issues, but also criticism of consumerism, migration and the EU. The M5S, which entered Parliament in 2013 with 25 per cent of the

254 Caterina Froio

FIGURE 13.1

Right-left positions (RILE) of the PD, FI, League and M5S

Source:  Manifesto data. MARPOR, standardized RILE scores. Range -100 (left) to +100 (right).

vote as the largest party in the country, further increased its support in 2018 to well above 30 per cent. Figure 13.1 reports the right-left position scores of the parties cited above over time by using the RILE index of party manifestos (Budge and Laver 1992). It confirms the centre-left and centre-right general orientations of the PD and FI, the progressive shift to the right of the League, and the lack of consistency of the M5S. In terms of general left-right positions, Italian parties have remained relatively stable, with the PD on the left, and FI and the League on the right and radical right, respectively. The left-wing programmatic profile of the PD builds on an interpretation of the role of the state in the economy that reminds one of the ‘Third Way’  – hence favouring moderate state intervention and an ‘affordable’ welfare state. Furthermore, the PD’s position on immigration is inspired by progressive ideals oriented towards integration and multiculturalism. On the right, FI endorses a neo-liberal view of the role of the state in the economy and restrictive immigration policies, while the League combines blurred positions on the economy with a strong preference for nativist and law-and-order policies. The profile of the M5S is instead eclectic, shifting from far right to far left positions. Figure 13.1 also shows that the 2013 elections represented a sort of ‘juncture’ in the Italian party system. In fact, these elections took place at the peak of the economic crisis, in a context characterized by an outgoing technocratic executive, heavy austerity measures, widespread popular discontent and the breakthrough

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255

of the M5S. Rather than upsetting the whole structure of the party system, the appearance of the M5S in the Italian scenario forced the other parties to slightly move to the right, even though the M5S itself still struggles to find its precise location on the political chessboard. These four parties have dominated Italian politics over the last decade. While it is impossible to provide a detailed summary of all the developments that have taken place during these years, a few key dates should be mentioned before moving on to the discussion of how they have interacted with each other. I should mention first that, in 2008, Silvio Berlusconi’s personal party (Calise 2000) was still the dominant force of the governing centre-right coalition, which also included the League. The following years, however, radically changed the balance of power within the centre-right. In 2011 Berlusconi was in fact replaced as Prime Minister by Mario Monti leading a technocratic executive supported by the PD, most centrist parties, and also, initially at least, Berlusconi’s party itself. The 2013 elections marked the breakthrough of the M5S, and the beginning of a progressive decline for Berlusconi’s FI (see Table  13.1). These elections were followed by a series of weak coalition governments supported by the PD and minor parliamentary groups. Meanwhile, Matteo Salvini had started its reform of the League, which would culminate in it overtaking FI on the right at the 2018 elections and the formation of the League-M5S government afterwards (2018–2019). In other words, the decline of Berlusconi’s party has proceeded in parallel with the rise of the League and the M5S.

Clashing on the economy in times of austerity In the aftermath of the Great Recession, the economy (and, more precisely, the question of balanced budgets) has been at the core of electoral campaigns for national and EU elections. As the third largest economy in the Eurozone, Italy was considered ‘too big to fail and too big to bail’ (The Economist 2011). The possibility of Italy requesting an emergency loan to avoid a sovereign debt crisis was seen as a point of no return for the stability of the Eurozone as a whole, as it would have badly affected the confidence of the financial markets. Hence discussions of the country’s budget deficit became polarized between pro- and anti-austerity parties (namely the PD vs its populist competitors). While the PD eventually endorsed the idea that there was a need for rapid and sharp fiscal consolidation by the Italian government, the League and the M5S refused to buy it. (FI maintained a more ambiguous position, by voting for austerity policies in parliament while at the same time voicing dissent.) During these years, the PD adopted a clashing strategy (see Chapter 3 of this volume) versus the League and the M5S over the management of Italy’s fragile economy. This may be partially explained by the fact that the party had to cope with what I refer to as internal and external pressures. Perhaps the most obvious source of external pressure on the PD was having to comply with what was required to prevent Italy having to ask for international rescue loans, notably the achievement of a balanced budget in 2013. The

256 Caterina Froio

expectations of the European Commission to achieve a balanced budget included introducing structural reforms aimed at growth, jobs, pensions, and competitiveness, a fiscal consolidation strategy and financial sector reforms (see, for example, European Commission 2011). External pressure was also exercised by the actors that had offered assistance outside of the terms of non-market loans, such as the European Central Bank through its bond-buying activities. During this period, Italy adopted the European Fiscal Compact, which binds the signatories to keep a balanced budget and commits them to introduce legal dispositions that automatically activate measures of financial correction in case such objective is not achieved. In this context of growing policy conditionality, for the PD to achieve a balanced budget became a matter of ‘political responsibility’ (Froio and Little 2015, 255). After months of growing anxiety about the possibility that international investors could refuse to buy Italian bonds, Silvio Berlusconi resigned the premiership in November 2011, thus ending the IV Berlusconi Cabinet. Hence the Head of State, Giorgio Napolitano, appointed the former EU-commissioner and technocrat Mario Monti as PM, so that he could steer Italy through the crisis. Mario Monti also served as Minister of the Economy for a period, and his cabinet included only individuals that were not affiliated to any political parties. Despite being technocratic in nature, the Monti government enjoyed large support in the Italian parliament. The PD (but also, initially, FI) agreed to support it ‘without any time limit other than the natural end of the legislature’(Il Sole 24 Ore 2016) because, as explained by the then PD leader Bersani, ‘Italy will not sink Europe’(Il Fatto Quotidiano 2016). Meanwhile, the League moved into opposition. Tensions increased during the discussion that preceded the approval of what Monti emphatically called the ‘Decree to Save Italy’ (Decreto Salva Italia) – a package of austerity measures aimed at reaching a balanced budget that was welcomed by the high profile PD representative, Massimo D’Alema, as ‘a bitter yet necessary medicine’ (La Repubblica 2011). In April 2012, article 81 of the Constitution was changed, introducing a norm requiring parity in the state budget between revenues and expenditures. This rule, approved in accordance with the suggestions of the European Commission, was supported by the pro-government parties, including the PD. However, these events triggered infighting inside the PD. Hence, since 2013, the party had to cope with major internal constraints, too, caused by internal factionalism. Internally, the PD has always been a very heterogeneous political party, as mentioned above, thus its official policy positions, especially on the economy, often resulted from a compromise between different factions. In 2012, the PD held primary elections to select the prime-ministerial candidate of the centre-left for the forthcoming general election of 2013. The ambitious mayor of Florence, Matteo Renzi, and the outgoing party leader, Pier Luigi Bersani, were the major contenders for this position. The two faced each other throughout the autumn and this contributed to the creation of deep fissures within the party (Ignazi 2014). Although Renzi lost this context, he managed to become party leader just a few months later. The party was now split into two main factions: the centrist-liberal group, represented by the newly-elected leader, and the social democratic one, led

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by his old foe for the job of Prime Minister, Pier Luigi Bersani. The former faction included ex-Christian Democrats and pro-market representatives who favoured the balancing of the budget, while the latter brought together the labour wing of the party – namely those who accepted the need to balance the budget, but also called for more robust social policies. In the context of growing external and internal pressure, the PD took opposite positions on the economy and the need to balance the budget vis-à-vis populist parties. All PD party manifestoes dedicate much attention to economic issues. Across elections, the policy platforms of the PD show a high degree of support for EU-inspired recipes to fix the economy, consistently calling for a balanced budget. Already in 2008 the party had campaigned for ‘the outmost rigour in the management of public expenditure [and] for the expansion of EU competences in the system of economic governance and social policies’ (PD 2009, 6). In more recent party manifestoes the PD was slightly more critical, calling for a reform of the Fiscal Compact, however maintaining a ‘resolute’ commitment to a balanced budget and to containing public spending (PD 2013, 3; PD 2018, 25). While the PD never called for cutting social expenditure, the party manifestoes mentioned the need to ‘rationalize it’ by reducing taxes (PD 2018, 25–26). In sum, during these years, the PD mixed calls for the budget to be balanced with a mild ‘third way’ approach to economic matters. The positions of populist parties on the economy very much diverged from those of the PD, and this became even clearer as the Great Recession unfolded. In fact, until 2008 and 2009 the joint party manifestoes of the League and FI also mentioned a commitment to a ‘balanced budget’ and to a ‘reduction in public spending’ (e.g. People of Freedom 2008, 10–11) that were judged crucial to fostering Italy’s economic growth, in line with the economic-liberal orientation of the two parties. In 2009, the League also published a single programmatic document for the EP elections and for the administrative elections. In one section of this document the party criticized the idea of transferring political and economic powers to supranational bodies, but it did not (yet) oppose cuts to public spending and to the welfare state (League 2009, 60–61). Things changed abruptly in 2013, when both FI and the League wrote against the idea that the EU should only promote austerity and urged the Italian government to reject the imposition of budgetary cuts and contain poverty in the country (FI 2013, 9; League 2013, 35). This position became even more explicit in the manifestoes of 2014 and 2018. Hence the League wrote that the party was ‘against austerity’, in favour of ‘national economic sovereignty’ (League 2014, 17) and that it campaigned for ‘the immediate exit from the euro-zone that ties Italy’s hands!’ (League 2014, 15).The party openly criticized budgetary policies inspired by the belief that cuts in wages and public services were ‘the only way to contain labour costs in the vain and illusory hope of maintaining competitiveness in the markets’ (League 2014, 13–14). In the same year, FI clarified its position by suggesting that ‘we [Italy] need to abolish the Fiscal compact’ (FI 2014). The 2018 manifestoes confirmed these trends. Now FI referred to the Monti’s government (that it had supported) and its economic policies as a ‘putsch’

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(FI 2018, 40), while the League wrote that: ‘We want to remain in the EU only on condition to revise all treaties that impose constraints on the exercise of our full and legitimate sovereignty […] we propose to regain our economic and monetary sovereignty’ (League 2018, 9). In short, there was a growing chasm between the position of the League/FI on the economy and that of the PD. In short, if, before 2011, the main difference between them had been the League/FI’s radical neoliberalism in the economy, the Fiscal Compact, austerity, and – in the case of League – even monetary issues eventually became paramount. The views of the M5S on the economy and on the EU’s requirement that budgets should be balanced were vaguely specified, but nevertheless clearly at odds with those of the PD, too. Since its first electoral campaign in 2013, the M5S opposed restrictive measures to balance the budget, asking for public spending to be boosted in health, education, and family allowances (especially for young Italians) (M5S 2013). Moreover, the party flagship proposal became the introduction of a ‘citizens’ income’ (M5S 2013). During these years, Beppe Grillo ironically referred to Monti’s economic policies as ‘Rigor Monti’, a pun on ‘rigor mortis’, suggesting that these economic policies were turning Italy into a corpse (Mackenzie 2012). Similar proposals appeared in the 2018 manifesto, as the M5S campaigned to ‘radically change the structure of European economic governance (the Stability and Growth Pact – the Fiscal compact – the ESM and other supervisory rules on public budgets) which are based on market dominance and compliance with stringent, unfounded and economically and socially unsustainable demands’ (M5S 2018b: 3). After all, the M5S was born after 2011 in the context of the growing unpopularity of the austerity measures introduced by technocratic and/or PD-led governments. This helps understand why the positions of these parties on the economy and the issues of balanced budgets remained at odds. After the Great Recession the PD’s electoral support dropped fast and its populist competitors experienced varying degrees of success. While voters did not reward FI’s ambiguous stances on the economy, the League and the M5S stressed their opposition to the PD’s pro-austerity agenda on balanced budgets and were rewarded by the electorate. In time, the two populist parties built a consensus on these matters that ultimately led them to govern together for about a year as the ‘Yellow-Green’ alliance of 2018–2019. In their ‘Contract for Government’ they wrote that ‘our government action will target public debt reduction not by means of those austerity policies that have failed to achieve their objective, but through GDP growth’ (League and M5S 2018, 17). At the same time the two parties called for an increase in public spending to fund public education (2018, 17)  and the ‘citizen’s income’ (2018, 34).The emphasis on anti-austerity measures which can be found in the government deal of 2018 demonstrates that the two parties agreed on adopting a clashing strategy with the PD to ultimately take it down. In sum, during the Great Recession, competition between mainstream and populist parties polarized around the question of balanced budgets and, despite internal tensions, the PD ultimately endorsed a pro-austerity line.The PD presented

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its choice as that of a responsible party that needed to govern with moderate allies (never having enjoyed a parliamentary majority on its own since 2011). On the contrary, populist parties opposed austerity, justifying their choice by referring to the need to represent (the Italian) people’s will.

Co-opting ideas on immigration from the populist right This section focuses on immigration issues in order to contribute to the analysis of how the PD reacted to its populist competitors. Here we will see that a certain amount of co-optation of the League’s ideas by the PD took place during this period, specifically on border management. The so-called ‘European migration crisis’ of 2015, resulting from the failure of EU countries to cooperate on relocation programmes for asylum seekers coming from war-torn countries, produced a sort of moral panic in Italy around the question of border security (Castelli Gattinara 2017). Once again, I shall look at both external and internal pressures to account for the positions of the PD. In this context, border controls became another issue framed by the PD in terms of ‘responsibility’, as it co-opted some of the restrictive positions of populist parties. One of the most prominent external pressures on the PD as a party of government was to comply with the EU law known as the Dublin regulations, which determines which member state is responsible for processing asylum demands. Since this system tends to increase pressure on the external border regions, where the majority of asylum seekers enter the EU, it triggered overwhelming attention to issues of border control, especially in Southern Italy and at the internal frontiers with France and Austria.The conditions set to comply with the Dublin regulations, in fact, include a restrictive management of the border and increasing cooperation with countries of origin and transit of asylum seekers (see, for example, European Parliament 2019). Policy conditionality on immigration became particularly evident as President Giorgio Napolitano invited the PD member Enrico Letta to form a Grand coalition government after weeks of political deadlock, following the inconclusive 2013 general elections. During that period, the Letta government had to face a steady increase in the inflow of migrants (UNHCR 2015), some coming by sea, and a major humanitarian disaster:  the mass drowning of hundreds of people near the island of Lampedusa on 3 October 2013. This tragedy brought two major changes of direction to Italy’s migration policy: the beginning of the operation Mare nostrum and the abolition of the ‘crime of illegal immigration’ (reato di clandestinità). Mare nostrum was a military and humanitarian operation that employed the Italian Military Marine to rescue and provide assistance at sea to migrants that had left North Africa to reach Europe, while trying to catch human traffickers and migrants’ smugglers. Under Mare nostrum’s rules of engagement, Italian ships could get near the Northern Africa coast. In the same period, the Letta government abolished the ‘crime of illegal immigration’ introduced a few years earlier under the IV Berlusconi government, and sponsored by the League.

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The PD also had to cope with major internal constraints, as positions on border management varied within the party. In 2014, the then newly appointed PD leader Matteo Renzi forced Enrico Letta to resign. This happened through a sort of ‘internal coup’ whereby a meeting of the PD executive called by Renzi passed a motion of censure against Letta, provoking his immediate resignation. This contributed to increasing tensions within the PD (Ventura 2018) and reshaping the party’s positions on border management. In fact, the two men had different views on immigration and border security. In that period, Renzi had been active on Facebook, distancing himself from narratives of humanitarianism. He wrote, in bold: ‘We have no moral duty to welcome everyone who is less fortunate than us in the world’, adding, in large capital bold font: ‘We do not have the moral duty to welcome them, let’s repeat that to ourselves. And really, the moral duty is to help them where they come from’ (Saviano 2017). Letta immediately distanced himself from Renzi by saying: ‘Those are wrong words which I do not agree with and that do not help us face such a complex problem’ (2017). In time, external pressure in favour of a stricter position on border management kept growing. The Italian government started expressing frustration over the EU’s paralysis on migration, and what it saw as a lack of solidarity and an unwillingness by member states to share the burden with Italy. This reached a tipping point in February 2017, when the PD representative Paolo Gentiloni was appointed as Prime Minister. As part of the Gentiloni cabinet, the new Interior minister Marco Minniti introduced more restrictive border management policies, notably through the implementation of the ‘Minniti-Orlando Decree’ and the ‘Code of conduct for NGOs’. The Minniti-Orlando decree (Law Decree no. 13, later converted into Law no.  46)  aimed to ‘curtail illegal immigration’. Hence it introduced bilateral agreements with Libya’s president, Fayez al-Sarraj, to prevent migrants’ departures from Libya, ease repatriations and contain arrivals, further criminalizing immigration to Italy in the process (Castelli Gattinara 2017). The decree also allowed Italy to systematically hand over coordination of rescue operations in the Mediterranean to the Libyan Coast Guards, despite concerns over their ability to do the job and also about the fate of individuals returned to Libya after an attempted crossing. The controversial ‘code of conduct for NGOs’ meant that the latter had to allow an armed officer on board their ships when organizing search and rescue missions in the Mediterranean (La Repubblica 2011). In this context, while until 2014 the PD had combined securitarian policies on border control with a humanitarian position on sea rescue operations, since 2014 it adopted a more restrictive securitarian line, by limiting Italy’s direct involvement in rescue operations and de facto coopting populist parties’ positions on the matter (Terlizzi 2019). During the same period, Minister Minniti also gave credence to campaigns initiated by the far right, by accusing NGOs of speculating on migrants for profit. For instance, he stressed that ‘Over 40 per cent of rescued migrants arrive in Italy on ships operated by NGOs’ (Longo 2017), adding that they had to accept the new ‘Code of Conduct’. In a context in which Italian authorities had largely outsourced to charities and

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private companies the job of taking care of migrants arriving in Italy, there were frequent allegations that NGOs were operating rescue ships in the Mediterranean and working in tandem with smugglers to profit from migration (see Castelli Gattinara 2019). According to widespread popular opinion, in fact, immigration had become a business over time, and migrants’ inflows resulted from an alleged business dell’accoglienza (the hospitality business). The above combination of external and internal constraints on the PD ultimately resulted in the mainstream party progressively co-opting populist parties’ positions on border management. The content of party manifestoes helps illustrate this claim. In 2008, 2009, 2013, and 2014 the party programmes of the PD endorsed pro-immigration positions that were arguably ‘soft’ on borders controls. In its platforms, the party opposed the securitization of border management and immigration caused by the Bossi-Fini law passed by a previous Berlusconi government (decree Law No. 177, 11 July 2002). This linked immigration permits to the possession of employment contracts and introduced criminal sanctions for people caught entering the country illegally (or those who returned after being expelled). In 2008, the PD therefore proposed a: ‘Sponsored entry procedure […] which allows job searches within pre-set time limits’ (PD 2008b, 22–23). In the other sections of the programme dedicated to immigration, it also called for ‘The extension of the duration of residence permits, the simplification of the modalities of renewals’ (PD 2008b, 23) and the promotion of the procedures for legal access into the country, so as to counter human smuggling (PD 2008b, 22; PD 2013, 4). Similarly, during the 2009 EP election campaign the PD emphasized the importance of having a common European asylum policy to promote integration (PD 2009, 3; PD 2013, 4) and the need to account ‘for human rights and not only labour market’s needs when regulating migration permits’ (PD 2009, 7). Moreover, it spoke in favour of introducing the principle of Jus Soli across the EU, whereby children born or raised in European countries would be able to acquire EU citizenship (PD 2014, 7). However, things changed considerably later on and by 2018 the PD was endorsing the Minniti decree and asking for the strengthening of the competences of the EU agency Frontex, which was tasked with EU border control in the Schengen area (PD 2018, 26). Distinguishing between economic migrants and refugees, the party also called for harsher restrictions to be imposed on the former, while still offering humanitarian protection to the latter (PD 2018, 27). In the meantime, the PD’s populist competitors radicalized their positions on immigration and border management, too. Hence the League kept calling for tight controls on immigration and proposed the introduction of a test to provide evidence of knowledge of the national language, culture and traditions as a precondition for the attainment of Italian citizenship (League 2008, 6; League 2013, 10). These measures have been implemented via decree in 2010, during the IV Berlusconi government. Among the measures proposed by the League in this period there were the following: harsher controls at the border; the introduction of health checks for foreigners; and allowing applications for reunification to proceed

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only subject to DNA testing. Similar restrictive and securitarian positions were advocated in the 2009 and 2014 manifestoes for EP elections, calling for harsher controls at the EU border. During these years, the then League leader Umberto Bossi summarized the League’s position on immigration with the (in)famous sentence ‘immigrati föra di ball!’ (‘immigrants piss off!’). In 2013, the League covered the issue in one of the last sections of that year’s manifesto dedicated to security and crime prevention. Here the party called for tougher measures to stop illegal immigration and implement repatriations, proposing to sign bilateral agreements at national and EU levels so that foreigners could serve their sentences in the countries of origin (League 2013, 10–11).The League radicalized its positions on immigration and border management even further after the election of Matteo Salvini at the head of the party in 2013. As Vampa (2017) has discussed, between 2012 and 2014 the League experienced a major organizational reshuffle and electoral losses. In 2012, a corruption scandal very much affected the party, as its treasurer was put on trial, notably for distributing public money to party officials. One of the most disruptive developments for the party was the fact that the son of the leader, Umberto Bossi, was implicated in the scandal. After almost 30 years leading the Lombard League first, and then the Northern League (which originated from it), Bossi finally resigned the leadership and was replaced by Roberto Maroni. The League was also a divided in this period, a bit like the PD.There were three main factions, led respectively by Umberto Bossi, Roberto Maroni and Matteo Salvini. While Bossi and Maroni promoted a resolute focus on Lombardy and the North, putting less emphasis on immigration, when Salvini was appointed leader he moved away from regionalism and promoted further restrictions on immigration and border management (Albertazzi et al. 2018). In 2017, writing on Facebook about the continuing flow of migrants heading for Italy by boat from Africa, he said: ‘This is a no-brainer: we need an immediate naval blockade or things will end badly… stop this invasion.’ Salvini also chose ‘stop the invasion’ as one of the core slogans of his 2018 campaign and declared: ‘In Italy there are too many immigrants. I look forward to winning the elections to fill up the planes and send them back’ (Gabanelli and Ravizza 2019). As for FI, its programmes displayed mild securitarian positions on border management and remained coherent over the entire period. In 2018, for instance, FI wrote that the Gentiloni government (and, specifically, the Minniti decree) ‘went in the right direction but did not achieve lasting results’ (FI 2018, 14–15). Migration is not a primary concern for the M5S, hence the manifestoes for the 2013 and 2014 elections did not even feature a section dedicated to it. This was instead added to the ‘long version’ of the 2018 manifesto (M5S 2018b) which called for restrictive measures to be introduced, such as citizenship tests on language and culture for would-be Italians (albeit, unlike the League, by offering free language classes) (M5S 2018b).The party also wrote that that it wanted to ‘re-establish border controls and the regulation of migratory flows’, by delegating the role of ‘filtering’ migrants to the countries of origins in order to stop human smuggling

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(M5S 2018b). The convergence between League and M5S was eventually achieved with the 2018 joint government platform, which promised a restrictive line on immigration by questioning the Schengen agreement ‘for its inefficiency in guaranteeing border security’ (League & M5S 2018, 26). The two also promised to monitor ONGs active in rescue operations in the Mediterranean more closely to ‘stop the business of hospitality’ (League & M5S 2018, 26). This restrictive line on immigration became clearer when the two governing partners repeatedly refused to allow NGO ships carrying people saved at sea to dock in Italian ports – notably the Aquarius and the Sea Watch. In this period (2008) Salvini also adopted the hashtag #primagliitaliani (#Italiansfirst) on Twitter. We can say, therefore, that the two parties adopted a strategy of ‘co-operation’ on migration (see Chapter 3 of this volume). In sum, over the years PD leaders and Ministers sent contradicting messages on migration. While, at first, the party tried to challenge its populist competitors through humanitarian initiatives like Mare Nostrum, it then started to co-opt their ideas (e.g. Renzi’s ‘let’s help them at home’ Facebook post), and also supported proposals to introduce heavier sanctions for crimes committed by migrants residing in Italy. Most notably, the PD-led government tried to put a halt to the growing support of the League by co-opting its restrictive securitarian positions on border management, notably by echoing its vociferous political campaign against NGOs that were operating in the Mediterranean.

Conclusion This chapter covers the interaction between mainstream and populist parties in Italy, shedding light on how the PD adapted to its populist opponents. On the basis of the evidence presented here we can draw at least two broad conclusions. First, there is no single way through which the PD tried (and failed) to contain the growth of populist parties. Hence strategies changed depending on the issue at stake, as we have seen (either balancing the budget or migration). Second, the way in which this mainstream party reacted depended not only on strategic calculations, but also on external and internal pressures which produced tensions over responsible government of the economy and strict border and migration controls. To begin with, our analysis suggests that external pressure about the need to balance the budget and internal tensions between the centrist and social democratic wings of the PD ultimately led it to adopt a clashing strategy on the economy, by neatly diversifying its positions from its populist opponents. In the context of the sovereign-debt crisis and its support for the technocratic government led by Mario Monti, the PD faced increasing external constraints and welcomed the opportunity to balance the budget and introduce liberal reforms of the market. A major internal reshuffle inside the party, and notably the alternation in power between the leader of its social democratic faction (Bersani) and that of the more centrist and liberal oriented faction (Renzi), was also a likely factor that shaped the party’s positions on the economy. During this whole period, the PD accepted the EU-inspired

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narrative about the ‘need for austerity’, with populist competitors campaigning in favour of economic ‘sovereignty’. Opposition between mainstream and populist parties was therefore articulated around the notion of ‘political responsibility’, which was endorsed by the PD due to its role as the main government party, while being criticized by its competitors who claimed to voice the discontent of unrepresented citizens. Furthermore, growing external pressure on border management and internal conflict between humanitarian and securitarian positions on immigration led the PD to co-opt populist parties’ positions on this issue, by progressively endorsing a tougher line on border control. In the wake of the EU asylum policy crisis, the lack of solidarity within the Union and EU calls for the externalization of border controls, the PD progressively adopted a more securitarian line on immigration. I  have discussed here how the PD’s strategy to co-opt populist positions on immigration had to do with the combined effect of increasing EUdemands for border security, the challenge by populist actors demanding a stop to immigration, and divergences between Renzi and Letta in a context of increasing importance of the issue of security in public debates. The co-optation of populist parties’ securitarian positions on border management was also presented by the PD as having to do with being a ‘responsible’ party, even though this choice implied a more or less open endorsement of conspiracy theories about NGOs in the Mediterranean. Indeed, the insinuation that humanitarian organizations were part of a global human smuggling network became one of the justifications for the decision to ‘close the ports’ taken by new Interior Minister Matteo Salvini in 2018. In sum, Italy is a good case to study for those interested in the interactions between mainstream and populist parties. First, mainstream parties have clashed with populists on the economy but have co-opted their approach when dealing with immigration. And, second, the two main populist parties were able to co-operate with each other and form a joint government (the 1st Conte government, 2018– 2019), with the M5S converging with the League on a tough anti-immigration approach. The impact of demands for ‘responsible government’ on the competition between mainstream and populist parties are likely to last well beyond the recent Great Recession and ‘refugee crisis’, and also concern Western Europe more broadly, as tensions between responsibility and demands for representation continue to characterize the competition between mainstream and populist parties. Future comparisons may want to cover countries less affected by the two crises (the financial and migration ones), hence also looking at issues that may be less salient in public debate. Indeed, this tension between political ‘responsibility’ and the need for ‘representation’ opens up a new territory in the comparative study of party competition.

Notes 1 ‘Government party’ was an expression used by the first PD leader, Walter Veltroni, during the party’s founding convention of March 2007 (La 7 2007).

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2 Berlusconi’s party changed its name to Popolo della Libertà (PDL – People of Freedom) between 2008 and 2013, to then swap back to its previous name again. In the text the party is consistently referred to as Forza Italia (FI). 3 Four of the party leaders (or ‘party secretaries’) had been prominent members of the Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI – Italian Communist party), from which the DS had originated, or else the left-wing union CGIL. These were the party founder Walter Veltroni (2007– 2009), Pierluigi Bersani (2009–2013), Guglielmo Epifani (2013) and Nicola Zingaretti (2019–ongoing). As for the others, while interim leaders Matteo Orfini (2017) and Maurizio Martina (2018) were members of the social-democratic wing of the party, Dario Franceschini (2009) and Matteo Renzi (2013–2018) were both representatives of its centrist wing. 4 In order to cope with the highly volatile electoral context of the early 1990s, Berlusconi built an asymmetrical electoral coalition comprising the League in the North of Italy and Alleanza Nazionale (AN – National Alliance) in the south. Ultimately, AN merged with FI in 2009 to create the already mentioned PDL, which later adopted the name ‘Forza Italia’ again.

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McDonnell, Duncan, and Davide Vampa. 2016. ‘The Italian Lega Nord.’ In Understanding Populist Party Organisation:  The Radical Right in Western Europe, edited by Reinhard Heinisch and Oscar Mazzoleni, 105–129. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Mosca, Lorenzo, and Mario Quaranta. 2017. ‘Voting for Movement Parties in Southern Europe: The Role of Protest and Digital Information.’ South European Society and Politics 22, no. 4: 427–446. https://doi.org/10.1080/13608746.2017.1411980. Mosca, Lorenzo, and Christian Vaccari. 2011. Nuovi media, nuova politica? Partecipazione e mobilitazione online da MoveOn al Movimento 5 stelle. Milan: Franco Angeli. Mudde, Cas. 2007. Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe. Cambridge and New  York: Cambridge University Press. M5S. 2013. Il programma del M5S in 20 punti. (The M5S programme in 20 points). M5S. 2014. Europa in 7 punti. (Europe in 7 points). M5S. 2018a. 20 punti. (20 points). M5S. 2018b. Temi del programma nazionale del M5S. (Themes of the national programme of the M5S). Pasquino, Gianfranco. 2009. ‘The Democratic Party and the Restructuring of the Italian Party System.’ Journal of Modern Italian Studies 14, no. 1: 21–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 13545710802642834. Pasquino, Gianfranco, and Marco Valbruzzi. 2016. ‘Primary Elections between fortuna and virtù.’ Contemporary Italian Politics 8, no. 1:  3–11. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 23248823.2016.1147157. People of Freedom. 2008. Programma del Popolo delle Libertà per le Elezioni della Camera dei Deputati 2008. (Programme of the People of Freedom for the elections to the Chamber of Deputies 2008). Pirro,Andrea. 2018.‘The Polyvalent Populism of the 5 Star Movement.’ Journal of Contemporary European Studies 26, no. 4: 443–458. https://doi.org/10.1080/14782804.2018.1519484. PD. 2008. L’Italia nel mondo che cambia. (Italy in a changing world). PD. 2009. L’Europa che convince. (A Europe that persuades). PD. 2013. L’Italia giusta. (The right Italy). PD. 2014. L’Europa cambia verso. (Europe changes direction). PD. 2018. Più forte, più giusta. L’Italia. (Stronger, fairer. Italy). Rooduijn, Matthijs, Stijn van Kessel, Caterina Froio,Andrea Pirro, L. Sarah De Lange, Daphne Halikiopoulou, Paul Lewis, Cas Mudde, and Paul Taggart. 2019. ‘The PopuList:  An Overview of Populist, Far Right, Far Left and Eurosceptic Parties in Europe.’ www. popu-list.org, last accessed 1 November 2019. Ruzza, Carlo, and Stefano Fella. 2011. ‘Populism and the Italian Right.’ Acta Politica 46, no. 2: 158–179. https://doi.org/10.1057/ap.2011.5. Saviano, Carmine. 2017. ‘Aiutiamo i migranti a Casa Loro.’ La Repubblica, 7 July 2017. www. repubblica.it/politica/2017/07/07/news/_aiutiamo_i_migranti_a_casa_loro_il_post_ del_pd_poi_cancellato_che-170225416/, last accessed 12 October 2019. Seddone, Antonella, and Fulvio Venturino. 2015. ‘The Partito Democratico After the 2013 Elections: All Change?.’ Journal of Modern Italian Studies 20, no. 4:  474–490. https://doi. org/10.1080/1354571X.2015.1066129. Tarchi, Marco. 2016. ‘Populism: Ideology, Political Style, Mentality.’ Politologicky Casopis. 23, no. 2: 95–109. doi: 10.5817/PC2016-2–95. Terlizzi, Andrea. 2019. ‘The Italian Border Management and Control Regime between 2011 and 2017’. 24 May 2019. www.respondmigration.com/blog-1/italian-bordermanagement-control-regime, last accessed 17 September 2019.

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The Economist. 2011. ‘Exposed Italian Banks’. 7 July 2011. www.economist.com/freeexchange/2011/07/12/exposed-italian-banks, last accessed 3 September 2019. UNHCR. 2015. ‘Asylum Trends.’ 25 March 2015. www.unhcr.org/551128679.pdf, last accessed 3 September 2019. Vampa, Davide. 2017. ‘La Lega Nord di Matteo Salvini. Tra stasi e opportunità.’ In Politica in Italia, edited by Alessandro Chiaramonte and Alex Wilson, 41–59. Bologna: Il Mulino. Ventura, Sofia. 2018. ‘The Italian Democratic Party from Merger to Personalism.’ South European Society and Politics 23, no. 1:  181–196. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 13608746.2018.1440483.

14 CONCLUSION Davide Vampa and Daniele Albertazzi

Introduction This book has answered a series of interrelated questions that have rarely, if ever, been addressed in the literature, with reference to Western European countries: a)

How do non-populist parties compete with populist opponents? Do they adopt dismissive, adversarial or accommodative strategies, and in what contexts do they choose one over the other? b) What patterns of interaction exist between populist parties operating within the same political system? With the help of our authors, we have built on previous research (Albertazzi and McDonnell 2015; Zulianello 2019a) to show that claims made at the beginning of the twenty-first century about the episodic and short-lived nature of populism (e.g. Taggart 2000, 2004; Mény and Surel 2000) were no longer supported by the available evidence. Indeed, as we have seen in chapter after chapter of this book, a certain tendency in academia to regard populists as new challengers can no longer be justified, as these increasingly share government responsibilities and may have been relevant actors within their political systems for decades. Following two introductory chapters which, respectively, assess whether populists necessarily pose a threat to the quality of democracy in Europe today (Chapter 2) and put forward a new typology of party competition that has guided our contributors in the analysis of specific case studies (Chapter 3), the remaining chapters in this volume have focused on a series of specific case studies, albeit by considering the role of the same factors. These are as follows:

270 Davide Vampa and Daniele Albertazzi

a)

The contextual factors that can be said to have facilitated the growth and strength of populism across the continent – such as, for instance, immigration, terrorism, the economic crash of 2008 and the shrinking of the welfare state; b) The strategies parties have adopted to deal with the threat posed by their competitors. Here contributors have addressed the question of whether the behaviour and policies of non-populist political parties have changed due to the existence of populist actors in the system. In some cases, contributors have also analysed interactions between different populist parties competing in the same country. In this concluding chapter we aim to bring together the various threads that have emerged from the analysis of specific country case studies, by highlighting our main findings and suggesting avenues for further research.We start from a systematic analysis of the strategies adopted by non-populist parties responding to populist competition. We make a distinction between right-wing and left-wing non-populists and we show that the left-right divide, which may denote positions linked to both socio-economic and socio-cultural cleavages, remains a fundamental factor that facilitates (or impedes) the adoption of accommodative strategies between parties. Thus, for instance, rightwing non-populists are much more likely than left-wing non-populists to collaborate with right-wing populists. At the same time, we see that cooperation between populist parties has been a rare phenomenon in Western Europe. Interestingly, this is particularly true among populist parties which have very similar ideological positions and could potentially work together. We provide some explanations for this. In the concluding part of the chapter we reflect on the meaning of ‘challenger’ and ‘established’ (or ‘mainstream’) and we suggest that future studies should keep this distinction separate from the dimension dividing populist and non-populist parties.We also develop general insights into the political effects of different strategic interactions.

Non-populist responses to populists: does the left-right divide matter? In Chapter  2, Davide Vittori and Leonardo Morlino show that the threat posed to the quality of democracy by populists varies according to whatever area of the continent they operate in and whether they adopt an exclusionary or inclusionary approach – the former invariably advocated by (radical) right-wing populists, the latter by (radical) left-wing ones. Hence the Visegrad countries is where these authors find evidence of democratic backsliding caused by populists, and argue that it is specifically exclusionary populists that potentially pose a threat. Interestingly, the rest of the volume, which focuses on Western Europe, also provides evidence of how much left-right orientations continue to affect the way parties operate, and, importantly for us here, relate to each other. In particular, we show that there is a clear difference between non-populist right-wing and left-wing parties in their responses to populism, although this does not mean that there is perfect homogeneity within the two groups, as we also highlight below.

Conclusion 271

Before moving to the details of the analysis, a terminological clarification is needed. Most of our contributors still adopt the traditional academic terminology that sees ‘mainstream’ parties battling ‘populist’ ones. Yet, as we discuss towards the end of the chapter, another important finding of this book is that in some countries populism and mainstream are not clearly distinct categories and indeed some populist parties have become the new ‘mainstream’ (or are ‘more established’ than newer populist ones). For this reason here we refer to competition between ‘nonpopulists’ and ‘populists’.

Non-populist right-wing parties’ responses to populists Table  14.1 summarizes the main strategies identified by our contributors when discussing non-populist right-wing parties’ responses to populist parties of different ideological orientation.1 In total 37 main strategic responses were identified in the period from 2007 to 2018. These are shown in the last column of the table. As we argued in Chapter 3, different strategies can be relied upon depending on whether the focus is on ‘policies’ or ‘actors’ (Chapter 3). Strategies can also change over time, or at different levels of competition (e.g. national vs local). Hence, it is not surprising that in some cases our contributors referred to more than one of the categories presented in our typology. We can see that there are only two clear instances of clashing with a populist party and in both cases, Germany and Greece, the populist party is a left-wing one – Die Linke (The Left) and Synaspismós Rizospastikís Aristerás (SYRIZA – The Coalition of the Radical Left). In most cases, the two preferred ‘adversarial’ strategies are co-optation and marginalization. This is even more clearly shown in Figure 14.1, which displays the frequency of each type of strategic response among the ones (37 in total) listed in the last column of Table 14.1. Of course, this is just a graphic representation of the qualitative evidence provided by the country-specific chapters and has clear limitations, since, for instance, it does not take into account the ‘temporal’ dimension, that is, for how long each strategy was in place.Yet, while it has little statistical meaning, it allows us to identify some general patterns and, more importantly, compare them with what we find in the next section, when we focus on non-populist left-wing parties. It emerges that co-optation was adopted in 12 cases (32.4% of a total of 37 instances considered) by right-wing non-populists in the ten countries analysed in this volume. Although, like clashing, we defined this as an ‘adversarial strategy’ in Chapter  3, co-optation obviously implies a level of stylistic or programmatic convergence with the populist competitor aimed at reducing its electoral strength. Examples of this can be found in the UK and France, where the two main conservative parties have not formally collaborated with populist radical right parties (PRRPs) but have nevertheless ‘stolen’ important policy stances from them, particularly in the area of immigration and integration (and European integration in the case of the UK).

272 Davide Vampa and Daniele Albertazzi TABLE 14.1 Right-wing non-populists’ responses to populists (2007–2018)

Country

Non-populist

Populist*

Main strategies adopted

Austria

ÖVP

FPÖ (right-wing)

Austria France

ÖVP Republicans

BZÖ (right-wing) FN/RN (right-wing)

Germany

CDU/CSU

AFD (right-wing)

Germany

CDU/CSU

Die Linke (left-wing)

The Netherlands

CDA

PVV (right-wing)

The Netherlands

VVD

PVV (right-wing)

Switzerland

CVP

SVP (right-wing)

Switzerland

FDP

SVP (right-wing)

Denmark

K

DF (right-wing)

Denmark

L

DF (right-wing)

Finland

KESK

PS (right-wing)

Finland

KOK

PS (right-wing)

Finland Finland UK

KESK KOK Tories

SIN (right-wing) SIN (right-wing) UKIP (right-wing)

Greece

ND

SYRIZA (left-wing)

Co-optation Cooperation Dismissive Cooperation Dismissive Co-optation Dismissive Marginalization Co-optation Dismissive Marginalization Clashing Marginalization Co-optation Cooperation Marginalization Co-optation Cooperation Co-optation Cooperation Co-optation Cooperation Co-optation Cooperation Co-optation Cooperation Co-optation Cooperation Marginalization Co-optation Cooperation Marginalization Cooperation Cooperation Dismissive Co-optation Clashing

* Ideological orientation of populist party in brackets

Conclusion 273

FIGURE 14.1 Summary of strategies (% of the total) adopted by non-populist rightwing parties to respond to populists in ten European countries

Co-optation can be the first step towards an even closer relationship with the competitor and indeed we see that interactions analysed by our contributors often combine co-optation with full-fledged cooperation between right-wing nonpopulists and populists. In Chapter 3 we defined the latter as an ‘accommodative’ strategy, since it reduces formal barriers existing between different parties. Rather than just ‘stealing’ policies from each other, by cooperating two (or more) parties may join forces to achieve common goals. Denmark and Finland, the Nordic countries included in our sample, provide two different examples of cooperation. In the first case, the non-populist right – represented by the Venstre (V – Liberal Party) and the Konservative Folkeparti (K  – Conservative Party)  – has collaborated with the PRRP Dansk Folkeparti (DF  – Danish People’s Party), by securing the DF’s external backing to right-wing governments. Hence in the end, the populist radical right ended up having considerable influence on issues concerning citizenship and migration, as governing parties introduced tougher legislation to gain the DF’s support on other matters. In Finland, centre-right parties converged with the rightwing populist Perussuomalaiset (PS – Finns party) on the ‘libertarian-authoritarian dimension’ and did not wait long to include the party in the national executive (Chapter  10). Thus the PS managed to directly occupy important ministerial positions  – its leader, Timo Soini, became Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister. It is interesting to note that none of the right-wing non-populist parties analysed in this book was involved in systematic clashing with PRRPs. Rather, when trying to reduce the influence of their populist competitors, these parties have preferred to resort to marginalization, a different form of confrontation. For instance, this

274 Davide Vampa and Daniele Albertazzi

happened in Finland after the PS changed its leadership and became more radical. In Germany, the Christlich Demokratische Union (CDU  – Christian Democratic Union) has also tried to marginalize the populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD – Alternative for Germany), although its sister party, the Bavarian Christlich-Soziale Union (CSU  – Christian Social Union) attempted to resort to co-optation by taking a harder stance on immigration and integration policies. In the end, the CDU/CSU coalition seems to have found an internal compromise by adopting a dismissive strategy towards the AfD. Generally, in some cases, engaging directly with PRRPs and their ideas, by relying on adversarial or accommodative strategies, might end up altering established political equilibria on which traditional conservative forces tend to build their success.Therefore, ignoring (dismissing) right-wing populist competitors may be seen as another viable option by non-populist rightwing parties (fourth most frequent strategy in Figure 14.1).

Non-populist left-wing and liberal parties’ responses to populists We now consider another group of non-populist parties, those that are located on the left of the socio-economic dimension and/or on the more libertarian side of identity politics.This group includes all main European social democratic parties, which (attempt to) represent aspirations for economic and social equality.We also consider a number of centrist/liberal parties in this group, such as the Liberal Democrats (Lib Dems) in the UK, La République En Marche (LREM – The Republic on the Move) in France and the Radikale Venstre (RV – Social Liberals) in Denmark. These parties might not be consistently located on the left of the socio-economic divide but, like social democrats, they have a clear libertarian stance on the socio-cultural dimension. The latter is particularly important when assessing responses to populism in Europe, which, particularly in its more ‘exclusionary’ forms, tends to focus more on identity than socio-economic issues (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2013). Table 14.2 includes a full list of the main strategies identified in the countryspecific chapters. Again, as in the case of right-wing non-populists, also left-wing and liberal ones may have adopted more than one response during the period considered. The most striking finding is that the only instance of formal cooperation between left-wing non-populists and populists of any ideological orientation is the Italian ‘grand coalition’ between centre-left Partito Democratico (PD  – Democratic Party) and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia (FI – Forward Italy), which first supported the technocratic Monti government (2011–2013) and then the ‘political’ Letta executive (2013–2014).This happened after years of rather intense clashing between the two parties.2 Yet Forza Italia is a rather peculiar case of populist party. In Chapter  13, Caterina Froio stressed the fact that there is a tension existing between how the party defines itself  – ‘a liberal-conservative party’ – and the style and discourse of its leader, which are clearly populist. In Chapter 1 we did not include this party among the populists of the radical right and instead defined it as ‘centre-right’, stressing the fact that Berlusconi gradually

Conclusion 275 TABLE 14.2 Left-wing and liberal non-populists’ responses to populists (2007–2018)

Country

Non-populist

Populist*

Main Strategies

Austria France France

SPÖ PS PS

FPÖ (right-wing) LFI (left-wing) FN/RN (right-wing)

France

LREM

LFI (left-wing)

France

LREM

FN/RN (right-wing)

Germany Germany Germany The Netherlands

SPD SPD Greens PvdA

AfD (right-wing) Die Linke (left-wing) AfD (right-wing) PVV (right-wing)

Switzerland Denmark

SP SD

SVP (right-wing) DF (right-wing)

Denmark Finland UK

RV SDP Labour

DF (right-wing) PS (right-wing) UKIP (right-wing)

UK Greece

Lib-Dems PASOK

UKIP (right-wing) SYRIZA (left-wing)

Italy

PD

League (right-wing)

Italy

PD

M5S (valence)

Italy

PD

Forza Italia (centre-right)

Marginalization Dismissive Marginalization Clashing Clashing Co-optation Clashing Co-optation Marginalization Dismissive Clashing Clashing Marginalization Clashing Dismissive Co-optation Clashing Unclear Clashing Co-optation Clashing Dismissive Clashing Clashing Co-optation Clashing Co-optation Clashing Cooperation

* Ideological orientation of populist party in brackets

abandoned its initial ‘neo-liberal’ approach.3 Ultimately, despite being a populist party, Forza Italia has acted as a ‘functional equivalent’ of traditional centre-right parties in other European countries. It did so by occupying most of the space left free by the Christian Democrats after their collapse in the early 1990s. Therefore, the coalition between PD and FI is less exceptional than it might seem at first, since it replicates dynamics of cooperation between centre-left and centre-right parties existing in other countries, such as Germany, Greece and Austria, and at the EU level. No other cases of cooperation with populists of any ideological orientation can be found in the period from 2007 to 2018. Of course, this is true only if

276 Davide Vampa and Daniele Albertazzi

one focuses on the national dimension of politics, as we do in this overview. In Chapter 6, Hartwig Pautz mentioned that in Germany, the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD –Social Democratic Party of Germany) has adopted an adversarial approach towards both right-wing and left-wing forms of populism at the national level, while cooperating with Die Linke at the sub-national (Land) level (particularly in the East where the populist left is more ‘pragmatic’). There are also instances of sub-national cooperation between left-wing non-populists and rightwing populists, as highlighted by Reinhard Heinisch, Fabian Habersack, and Franz Fallend in the chapter on Austria (Chapter 4). There the Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs (SPÖ – Social Democratic Party of Austria) agreed to form a coalition with the PRRP Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ – Austrian Freedom Party) in the state of Burgenland, despite adopting a marginalization strategy towards the FPÖ at the national level. Overall, as also shown by Figure 14.2, which graphically illustrates the frequency of the various strategies listed in Table 14.2 (with the limitations highlighted above), clashing is clearly the preferred strategy in this group of parties, quite the opposite of what we observed in the case of right-wing non-populists. Particularly when it comes to identity-related matters having to do with belonging, community and immigration, the parties considered in this section have often openly opposed radical right populist ideas. Yet this approach is not devoid of contradictions and ambiguities, as indicated by the fact that co-optation is the second most preferred strategy in this group. Indeed, most social democratic parties rely on the support of constituencies with conflicting political views and preferences. Centre-left leaders face similar dilemmas across

FIGURE 14.2 Summary of strategies (% of the total) adopted by non-populist leftwing parties to respond to populists in ten European countries

Conclusion 277

the whole of Europe: should they try to hold on to urban, liberal/cosmopolitan voters (which are, however, targeted by left-wing populists, too, in some contexts), or should they try to test whether working-class voters, who are supposed to be more socially conservative, would like them to co-opt some ideas from the populist right? After all, some of these voters have been successfully targeted by PRRPs at times, for instance in France, Italy, the UK, and Germany. Therefore, some nonpopulist left-wing parties have wavered between clashing strategies and clumsy attempts to co-opt some right-wing populists’ proposals. We saw this in the case of the Labour Party in the UK and the PD in Italy. Also in the case of Denmark, the Socialdemokratiet (SD – Social Democrats), after attempts to dismiss the populist radical right and its ‘socio-cultural’ issues, started co-opting some of its ideas. In some cases rather than programmatic co-optation, we have detected stylistic co-optation. Again, Labour and the PD are examples of this. Their leaders relied, in very different ways, on a people-centric, anti-establishment rhetoric, which, to a certain extent, echoed that of their populist challengers (Chapters 11 and 13). This is also true in the case of the centrist LREM, with Emmanuel Macron blending populist and anti-populist elements, as suggested by James Shields in Chapter 5. In particular, the French leader co-opted a favoured populist argument (on both left and right) in denouncing ‘a caste’ of elected officials and technocrats accused of focusing too much on protecting their privileges. Yet, in terms of policies, ‘liberaldemocratic’ parties like LREM seem less tempted by co-optation strategies than social-democratic ones. Indeed, they seem to be more consistently focused on defending the libertarian and cosmopolitan side of the political dimension centred on ‘identity’ and do not have to mediate between the authoritarian tendencies of working-class constituencies and the cosmopolitan values of urban voters. The Lib Dems in the UK and RV in Denmark are clear examples of socially progressive liberal parties that could afford to adopt an openly clashing strategy when dealing with right-wing populists, without risking a loss of support from their core constituencies. Of course, if we had extended our empirical analysis to 2019 and 2020 we would have had to add an instance of full cooperation in our list of strategies. Indeed, in Italy a new government was formed by the PD and the Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S – Five Star Movement) in the summer of 2019. This convergence was probably facilitated by the fact that the M5S is not clearly positioned on the leftright, inclusionary-exclusionary, spectrum and has generally been defined as an example of ‘polyvalent’ or ‘valence’ populism (Pirro 2018; Zulianello 2019a). To date there are no cases of open cooperation between left-wing non-populists and radical right populists at the national level. Interestingly, there are no cases of cooperation with left-wing populists either. Hence, it appears that social democratic and centre-left parties have been more cautious than right-wing non-populists in establishing formal alliances with populist parties, even when they are ideologically close to them. This might change in the future. Spain, a case that is not included in our analysis, may have paved the way for the adoption of more accommodative strategies towards populist left-wing parties. As we were closing this book, the

278 Davide Vampa and Daniele Albertazzi

Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE – Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party) created a governing coalition with Podemos (We Can!). A  formal alliance at the national level could be established only after a lengthy bargaining process and two general elections. Additionally, the two parties started collaborating at the regional level (Rodríguez-Teruel, Barrio, and Barberà 2016) and this prepared the ground for national collaboration. A similar phenomenon may occur in Germany, where the SPD and Die Linke have governed together in an increasing number of Länder. At the same time, it should be highlighted that in an increasing number of European countries the main electoral challenge to traditional social democracy seems to come from a non-populist sector of the political space: that occupied by environmentalist and green parties. In Germany, since the 2019 European election, Die Grünen (the Greens) have replaced the SPD as the largest political force on the centre-left, although this might be a temporary phenomenon. This is why Chapter 6 has also considered the strategic choices made by the Greens. As shown in Table 14.2, they have decisively clashed with AfD. Green parties tend to place more emphasis on post-materialist values and identity issues and, as the progressive liberals mentioned above, have appealed to a growing constituency of relatively young, urban, secular and highly educated voters (Grant and Tilley 2019).Therefore, they might be better placed than social democrats in the political struggle against PRRPs. Generally, unambiguous clashing might be more electorally rewarding for those centre-left parties that have no special connections with working-class constituencies and, as a consequence, do not have to bridge the growing gap in sociocultural values between old and new voters.

Interactions between populists: fighting neighbours and creating odd coalitions An innovative aspect of this volume is its additional focus on relations between populists, which, so far, has been mostly neglected by the literature. The electoral growth of populist parties has been accompanied by an increase in their number, so that it is not infrequent to find two or more populist actors coexisting in the same political space today. For this reason, we asked our contributors to provide an assessment of populists’ strategic responses to their populist competitors. Table 14.3 shows an overview of the ways they related to each other. Clashing is by far the most frequent type of interaction existing between populists in the countries we analysed. At first, this finding might seem surprising since there are a number of cases in which populists belonging to the same party system are ideologically very similar. Yet this apparent contradiction may be explained by the fact that often the proliferation of populist actors is the result of splits between factions that used to coexist within the same party. In Austria and Finland, conflicting strategies on the thorny issues of government participation and collaboration with non-populist parties have provided the sparks igniting the breakdown of existing PRRPs, which led to different rumps of these parties competing with each other. The fracture within the FPÖ that led to the creation of the

Conclusion 279 TABLE 14.3 Interactions between populists (2007–2018)

Country

Populist 1*

Populist 2*

Main Strategies

Austria Austria France

FPÖ (right-wing) FPÖ (right-wing) LFI (left-wing)

BZÖ (right-wing) TS (right-wing) FN/RN (right-wing)

Germany

Die Linke (left-wing)

AfD (right-wing)

The Netherlands** Finland UK

SP (left-wing) PS (right-wing) UKIP (right-wing)

PVV (right-wing) SIN (right-wing) BNP (right-wing)

Greece Italy

SYRIZA (left-wing) League (right-wing)

Italy

League (right-wing)

ANEL (right-wing) Forza Italia (centre-right) M5S (valence)

Clashing Dismissive Clashing Co-optation Clashing Co-optation Clashing Clashing Dismissive Co-optation Cooperation Cooperation

Italy

Forza Italia (centre-right) M5S (valence)

Clashing Co-optation Cooperation Clashing

* Ideological orientation of populist party in brackets. ** Even though the populist right-wing Forum voor Democratie (Forum for Democracy – FvD) is mentioned in the discussion of the Dutch case (Chapter 7), its recent foundation (September 2016) did not allow us to provide a systematic assessment of its interactions with populist and non-populist competitors within the 2007–2018 timeframe.

Bündnis Zukunft Österreich (BZÖ – Alliance for the Future of Austria) was caused by internal clashes concerning how to behave in government and relate to governing partners (Chapter  4). Finland experienced similar developments, as the Sininen tulevaisuus (SIN – Blue Reform) was created by splitting the PS again over the same issues. Chapter 8 on Switzerland also showed the turmoil within the SVP that led to the creation of a ‘governmental’ splinter party, the Bürgerlich-Demokratische Partei (BDP – Conservative Democratic Party).The BDP has not been classified as ‘populist’ and, therefore, is not included in Table 14.3. Yet, again, the clash was provoked by personal struggles and disagreements about how to deal with the ejection of the most prominent SVP leader of recent times, Christoph Blocher, from the country’s executive. In other words, a clear pattern has been picked up by our contributors, whereby the increasing opportunities for PRRPs to be included in government have sometimes led to disagreements within these parties that were hardly ever caused by irreconcilable ideological differences. Rather, the issue appears to have been what kind of strategies parties should have deployed to stay in power, at what cost, and via what kind of agreements with non-populist partners, all issues that have already been identified in the literature as being particularly challenging for populists,

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despite the fact that some of them have in fact been able to address them successfully (Albertazzi and McDonnell 2015, 1–13). Therefore, ‘actor-based’ clashing – rather than ‘ideology-based’ clashing – seems to dominate interactions between populist parties that have similar policy stances. This makes sense since populists portray themselves as ‘true’ representatives of a homogeneous community and look with suspicion at any other political force that aims to appeal to the same community, using a similar language. In general terms, competition over the same pool of votes incentivizes these parties to accuse each other of betraying core principles and lacking anti-elitist credentials. In some cases, rather than clashing, dismissive strategies are adopted towards populists on the same side of the political spectrum. For instance, this is how UKIP responded to the BNP. It dismissed the competitor ‘as an actor’, while co-opting its policy stances (Chapter 11). At the same time, the only cases of cooperation that we found in this volume involve populists with different ideological positions.4 Thus a very different logic than the one driving non-populists’ responses to populists applies to interactions between populists: ideological distance – and representation of different (ideas of) ‘communities’ – may even facilitate collaboration between them. In Italy, the League and the M5S agreed to share power by setting up a ‘Government of Change’, despite their different ideological orientations and the very different electoral geography of their support. While the League is a populist radical right party (Albertazzi, Giovannini, and Seddone 2018) that has promised deep tax cuts in recent years, the M5S has been defined as a case of ‘valence populism’ (Zulianello 2019b, 3–6) due to its eclecticism in borrowing from both right and left, and has based its appeal on the promise of a strong welfare state. As for the geography of their vote, the League still represents the interests of the richest regions of Italy’s North (and has grown disproportionally in these areas at the last national election), while the M5S grew rapidly and dramatically in the South. Additionally, the League is clearly an ‘established’ populist party (in fact, it is the oldest party existing in Italy), while the M5S is a much younger political force and could still be considered as a ‘challenger’ in 2018 (see next section). For a few months, anti-establishment and anti-EU rhetoric worked well as the glue binding the League and the M5S together, and, in a coalition de facto dominated by the League, the M5S ended up going along with the ideas of its unlikely partner (for instance by adopting a very tough approach to immigration matters, to the extent of stopping ships carrying migrants saved at sea from docking in Italian ports – an unprecedented step in the country’s history). The alliance between two Greek populist parties, Anexartitoi Ellines (ANEL – Independent Greeks) and SYRIZA, can also be defined as a marriage of convenience between very different and distant partners, as discussed in Chapter 12. Here a radical left party (SYRIZA) came together with a right-wing nationalist one (ANEL), despite their ideological differences on economic and, particularly, socio-cultural issues. In fact, the two did share some ideas that provided the glue binding them together for a while: a profound dislike for the bailout agreements

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the established parties had reached with the EU and other creditors, and the relentless criticism of elite-level corruption and vested interests. Collaboration between populists in Greece and Italy may be explained by the existence of an additional political cleavage. Already in the pre-crisis period, Kriesi et al. (2006, 922) highlighted the existence of an increasing ‘antagonism between winners and losers of globalization as a conflict between integration and demarcation’, hence suggesting that it was necessary to go ‘beyond a simple description of the political space in terms of a one-dimensional left-right divide’. If anything, the Great Recession has magnified political divisions about globalization and the process of European integration. This, in turn, appears to have affected interactions between parties. What we gain from the analyses presented in this book is that, while left-right divisions still hold sway on European parties’ strategic thinking, a ‘transnational cleavage’ (Hooghe and Marks 2018) has also started to matter in the post-2008 environment. It facilitated collaboration between actors that share hostility to European integration (at least, in its current form), even though the dominant reasons for such hostility might be different (i.e. socio-economic for left-wing populists, socio-cultural for right-wing ones). Additionally, in the case of Greece and Italy, collaboration between different types of populism seems to have been facilitated by struggles centring on domestic corruption and bad governance. These, as highlighted by Hutter and Kriesi (2019), are more relevant in Southern Europe than Northern/Core continental Europe. At the same time, it should be noted that these ‘odd’ alliances may be quite unstable and ideological differences may resurface once the fight against the ‘common’ enemy loses salience.The end of cooperation between populists in Greece and Italy – which occurred immediately after the 2007–2018 time frame of this study – clearly shows this. To be sure, clashing is not completely absent between populists with different inclusionary/exclusionary orientations. In France, Germany and the Netherlands the populist radical left has clearly opposed the populist radical right, and vice versa. At the same time, however, our contributors highlighted the existence of elements of co-optation between them (second most frequent category in Figure 14.3). So, for instance, Chapter 5 shows that Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the populist left-wing La France Insoumise (LFI – France Unbowed) did not hesitate to cast Marine le Pen, leader of the populist right-wing Front National/Rassemblement National (FN/RN – National Front/National Rally), as his number-one adversary. Yet the chapter also highlights the two parties’ combined attacks on ‘le système’ and points to Le Pen’s increasing adoption of social welfarist and redistributive policies, accompanied by Mélenchon’s move from left-wing universalism to the patriotic idiom of tricolour, national anthem, and the defence of national interests. Some elements of convergence and direct competition can also be observed between Die Linke and the AfD in Germany. In this case, as Chapter  6 shows, the PRR AfD, initially in favour of the small state, softened its positions on the welfare state and social protection due to Die Linke’s competition in the Eastern parts of Germany. An ‘established’ vs ‘challenger’ populist dynamic is also in place in Germany, since Die Linke has been a governing force in most Eastern German

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FIGURE 14.3 Summary of interactions between populists (% of the total) in ten European countries

Länder, while the AfD is a much newer party and, so far, has been excluded from coalition building at both national and sub-national levels. Therefore, in the East the latter can play the ‘anti-establishment’ card and erode support for Die Linke.5 Of course, we should highlight that the analysis presented here is limited to the ten countries included in this volume. Additionally, we focused on the period from 2007 to 2018, while the political situation in Europe is in continuous evolution. So, for instance, we can observe a more recent case of cooperation between two very similar PRRPs in Italy, the League and Fratelli d’Italia (FdI – Brothers of Italy), which has intensified after the former abandoned the coalition with the M5S in 2019. It is too early to say if, once again, Italy could become a political ‘laboratory’ in Western Europe and see the formation of the first governmental coalition dominated by two PRRPs, thus defying the general pattern of clashing (or dismissing) between ideologically similar populists. So far, collaboration between the two parties may have been facilitated by the fact that their electoral support has been rather complementary in geographical terms, the League being very strong in the North of the country, while FdI winning most of its votes in the South.Yet the League has experienced a territorial expansion in its constituencies, thus becoming a full-fledged ‘state-wide party’. At the same time, FdI’s popularity (and that of its leader, Giorgia Meloni) is growing. Consequently, the two parties are increasingly competing for the same pool of votes and this, in turn, could have a negative impact on their future relations. Alternatively, their ideological and electoral overlaps could lead to fusion, an accommodative strategy (see Chapter 3) that has not been detected in any of the chapters included in this volume.

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Populism: the new mainstream? Before moving to the concluding remarks of this final chapter we would like to reflect on a terminological issue that has emerged in the analysis of our case studies and, in our view, should be addressed in a more systematic way by research on populism. Here we just propose a framework that we hope could guide future assessments of party interactions. As shown in the country-specific analyses offered in this book, not only have populists been successful in electoral terms in different European contexts, but it is now common for them to be invited to join government coalitions, too (Albertazzi and McDonnell 2015). In addition to this, in many countries populists have had a substantial media presence for some time now and very much influence the public agenda (Mazzoleni 2008), which has contributed to triggering processes of co-optation of their ideas by their non-populist competitors. On this basis, if mainstream parties must be understood as ‘typically governing actors’ (Meguid 2010, 46)  that occupy an ‘overall advantageous position in the system’ (de Vries and Hobolt 2012, 250), it is apparent that many populist parties should now be considered part of this mainstream, too. Most of our contributors still adopt the traditional academic terminology that sees ‘mainstream’ parties battling ‘populist’ ones. In our final overview we avoided using this dichotomy and, instead, we focused on non-populists versus populists. However, in order to better reflect what we see as the dynamics at play in Western Europe today, and which are confirmed by the analyses presented in this volume, in this section we propose to add a separate dimension, which makes a distinction between ‘established’ and ‘challenger’ parties. This dimension can be defined purely on the basis of whether parties have been in government or not  – rather than ideology. According to this approach, established parties would simply be those that routinely alternate in government (Van de Wardt, De Vries, and Hobolt 2014), are perceived as viable partners by other parties and show willingness to cooperate (Sartori 1976). On the contrary, challenger parties would be those with no prior experience of political office (De Vries and Hobolt 2012) or that do not ordinarily participate in government (Van de Wardt et al. 2014; Hobolt and Tilley 2016). It is clear that this dimension should be kept analytically distinct from the one we adopted in our overview focusing on non-populists’ responses to populists. The latter are not always ‘challengers’. The Swiss, Austrian, and Italian cases clearly show how problematic the concept of ‘challenger’ may be when it is applied to parties, such as the SVP, FPÖ, and the League (not to mention Forza Italia), which had their first governmental experiences well before the financial crisis and Great Recession of the late 2000s. The two-dimensional framework reproduced in Table  14.4 captures these definitions, by positing the existence of four broad categories that define political parties better than the outdated distinction between ‘mainstream’ and ‘populist’ ones. These categories are: ‘established/non-populist’; ‘established/populist’; ‘challenger/non-populist’; and ‘challenger/populist.

284 Davide Vampa and Daniele Albertazzi TABLE 14.4 A two-dimensional framework to define political parties

Established Challenger

Non-populist

Populist

Established/ Non-populist/ Challenger/ Non-populist

Established/ Populist Challenger/ Populist

This adds an element of differentiation among the populist parties considered here and also a more ‘dynamic’ picture of their evolution. Thus, while the abovementioned SVP, FPÖ, and League (but also the centre-right populist FI) were already ‘established populists’ before the crisis, SYRIZA, M5S, and PS moved from the status of ‘challenger’ to that of ‘established’ by entering governments after the crisis. The splinter parties SIN and BZÖ can also be considered as ‘established’ if we use governmental participation as a defining criterion for classification. The Dutch Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV – Party for Freedom) and the DF moved towards the ‘established/populist’ quadrant of Table 14.4 thanks to their direct involvement in government negotiations and their backing of minority governments. On the other hand, UKIP, AfD, and LFI have remained challenger parties throughout the period considered. The status of Die Linke depends on which territorial level is considered. At the national level, the party is clearly a challenger, since it has been systematically excluded from major policy negotiations and coalition politics.Yet at the sub-national level, this party has become established, since it plays a key role in some regional governments, particularly in Eastern Germany. In one, Thuringia, it is the leading ruling party. The FN/RN is probably the most difficult case to classify here.This party clearly cannot qualify as ‘established’ following the definition that we have adopted above, given its consistent exclusion from national government and high-level political negotiations. Yet, in the last two decades, its leaders have managed to reach the final rounds of presidential elections on two occasions: in 2002 and in 2017, thus confirming their impact on French politics at the highest levels. Additionally, despite its change of name, the FN/RN is one of the oldest, still existing, parties in France (and among the oldest populist parties in Europe). Would it be correct to include it in the same group of much more recent and/or less politically impactful parties? At this stage, we do not have a definitive answer to this question. Clearly, this issue is not only terminological, as we stated at the beginning of this section, but also definitional. We hope that future debates could lead to the development of a more precise conceptualization and operationalization of important party characteristics such as ‘established’/‘mainstream’ or ‘challenger’. This is an aspect that this volume has only started to uncover and no doubt will become increasingly relevant, as populists become more embedded in democratic systems.

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Concluding remarks The contributions included in this book have covered how party competition has adjusted to the success of populism in Western Europe, whether it is non-populists learning to deal with their populist competitors, or populist parties interacting with each other. Indeed, today it is not uncommon to find European countries where populist parties of different age and/or different ideological orientation coexist. This book has accounted for this, thus filling a gap that still exists in the literature. Our typology (Chapter 3), which defines the full range of possible competition strategies adopted by different parties, has allowed us to systematically assess and compare the case studies included in this volume. We have noted that interactions between populists and non-populists are mainly affected by the left-right divide. Our case studies show that non-populist right-wing parties are more inclined to rely on cooperation or co-optation when dealing with populist radical right parties. Non-populist left-wing parties, on the other hand, tend to adopt clashing strategies towards their right-wing populist competitors, although some cases also point to instances of (mainly stylistic and rather inconsistent) co-optation. The scenario is less clear when non-populists face competition from left-wing populists.This is also due to the fact that left-wing populism is less frequent in Europe, hence fewer cases can be observed and generalizations are harder to reach. We have also shown that different populist actors with similar ideological positions tend to clash with (or dismiss) each other, since they are often divided by personal struggles (particularly following party splits) and compete for the same electorate. At the same time, we also identified some instances of cooperation between populists with very different ideological orientations. We explained this by referring to another dimension of competition which focuses on globalization, and, in the specific case of Europe, is centred on the contested nature of policy recommendations coming from supra-national institutions. The cases of Italy and Greece show that populists who are very critical of EU governance structures can cooperate and even form governments together when their respective countries are perceived as having ceded too much power in times of crisis. Throughout the book we have usually considered the adoption of this or that strategy by a non-populist party as a direct response to what the populists themselves did. Yet it should be pointed out that non-populists’ strategic responses might also be indirect, since these can also depend on the choices made by other non-populist actors. The British case provides a clear example of this. After the EU referendum, once the Conservatives co-opted and replaced UKIP as the party of Brexit, and Labour struggled to take a clear position on this issue, there was in fact little choice for the Liberal Democrats (but also for the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru) but to adopt a radically clashing strategy towards pro-Brexit populism, as there was a huge anti-Brexit space in the country that credible actors could try and fill. We are also aware that the overview presented in this chapter has only dealt with a selected range of issues and interpretations emerging from the country-specific

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empirical analyses. For instance, we have not sufficiently considered the role played by institutional factors in explaining strategic responses to populists. In systems characterized by proportional representation, a long tradition of coalition governments and consensualism (Lijphart 2012), the adoption by non-populists of accommodative strategies may be less problematic. Finland is probably the most ‘extreme’ case in this respect, given its highly fragmented political system and its history of heterogeneous coalition building. In this context, it was not difficult (and relatively uncontroversial) to integrate the populist PS into the government camp. On the opposite side we have France and the UK, where majoritarian institutions do not facilitate collaboration with populists, although the electoral success of the FN/RN and UKIP/Brexit Party has opened a debate on the nonpopulist right about the opportunity to reach some (more or less formal) deals with these parties. Ultimately, in this book we have sought to consider and discuss the competition strategies that have been adopted by parties. However, we have not systematically analysed the impact of party choices on (1)  the success/decline of populist parties and (2) policy outcomes and democratic processes.Yet our country chapters have provided some evidence of the electoral and policy consequences of party strategic responses to competitors. For instance, there is some evidence showing that cooperation and co-optation might weaken populist parties. The Austrian, Finnish and Danish cases show that ‘containment by inclusion’ (see, for instance, Chapter 4) can help non-populist parties constrain populists and exploit their internal contradictions to their benefit (in Austria and Finland cooperation has even resulted in splits within the right-wing populist camp). In the UK, the Conservative Party neutralized the challenge posed by UKIP by relying on heavy co-optation of its positions. Dismissive, clashing and marginalization strategies, on the other hand, seem less effective in containing the electoral growth of populists. In France, as pointed out in Chapter 5, Emmanuel Macron’s aim ‘to destroy populism as his adversary of choice and to advance the case for European integration over nationalist isolationism’ has actually contributed to strengthening the FN/ RN and weakening other moderate parties. In Germany, the cordon sanitaire around the AfD does not appear to have had a negative impact on its support, quite the opposite. Understanding how different strategies impact on the electoral fortunes of populist parties is certainly important but only tells us part of the story. It can be argued that, ultimately, what really matters is the impact of party interactions on policy outcomes and democratic processes, a topic addressed by Chapter  2 of this book. To be sure, the Tories have been very effective in neutralizing the populist challenge posed first by UKIP and then by the Brexit Party. Yet this has been achieved by taking political decisions and implementing actual policies (i.e. Brexit), which would have been unthinkable within the political ‘mainstream’ only a few years ago. Policy shifts (particularly in the area of immigration and integration) may have been less radical than in the UK, but were still significant in many other countries where non-populist parties have resorted to accommodative and co-optation

Conclusion 287

strategies, as illustrated in this book. In the end, one may wonder whether, for instance, the fact that some policies typically put forward by right-wing populist parties are also promoted and implemented by non-populists really changes their substance and their impact on people’s everyday lives. Any comprehensive assessment of the effectiveness of non-populist responses to populist challenges should not ignore this question. Ultimately, we offer the analysis provided in this volume as our contribution (and that of our authors) to this debate, by placing our typology at the centre of a causal chain linking causes of party strategic choices to their effects.

Notes 1 Here, and in the following sections, we include interactions that are mentioned in the chapters. Of course, we are aware that these do not cover the full range of possible combinations. Still, the results presented here can provide a valuable overview of parties’ strategic choices. 2 Opposition and support for Berlusconi (antiberlusconismo and berlusconismo) became two sides of an important dimension of political conflict in Italy since the creation of Forza Italia in 1994. 3 Nonetheless, some scholars have defined FI as a ‘neo-liberal’ populist party (see Mudde 2007, 47 and Chapter 2 of this volume). 4 The coalition between the League and Forza Italia provides a partial exception to this rule, although the League has always been considerably more radical than its larger partner. 5 Post-election polls suggest that in recent elections in most Eastern German states – Berlin, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Saxony Anhalt in 2016, Thuringia and Saxony in 2019 – a relative majority of those who have stopped voting for Die Linke have chosen AfD. Only Brandenburg does not seem to follow this pattern, probably due to state-specific dynamics. See: https://wahl.tagesschau.de/landtag.shtml, last accessed 6 October 2020.

References Albertazzi, Daniele, and Duncan McDonnell. 2015. Populists in Power. London: Routledge. Albertazzi, Daniele, Arianna Giovannini, and Antonella Seddone. 2018. ‘“No Regionalism Please, We Are Leghisti!” The Transformation of the Italian Lega Nord Under the Leadership of Matteo Salvini.’ Regional and Federal Studies 28, no. 5: 645–671. De Vries, Catherine E., and Sara B. Hobolt. 2012. ‘When Dimensions Collide: The Electoral Success of Issue Entrepreneurs.’ European Union Politics 13, no. 2: 246–268. Grant, Zack P., and James Tilley. 2019. ‘Fertile Soil: Explaining Variation in the Success of Green Parties.’ West European Politics 42, no. 3, 495–516. Hobolt, Sara B., and James Tilley. 2016. ‘Fleeing the Centre: the Rise of Challenger Parties in the Aftermath of the Euro Crisis.’ West European Politics 39, no. 5: 971–991. Hooghe, Liesbet, and Gary Marks. 2018. ‘Cleavage Theory Meets Europe’s Crises:  Lipset, Rokkan, and the Transnational Cleavage.’ Journal of European Public Policy 25, no. 1: 109–135. Hutter, Swen, and Hanspeter Kriesi. 2019. European Party Politics in Times of Crisis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kriesi, Hanspeter, Edgar Grande, Romain Lachat, Martin Dolezal, Simon Bornchier, and Timotheos Frey. 2006. ‘Globalization and the Transformation of the National Political

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Space: Six European Countries Compared.’ European Journal of Political Research 45, no. 5: 921–956. Lijphart, Arend. 2012. Patterns of Democracy. London: Harvard University Press, 2nd edition. Mazzoleni, Gianpietro. 2008. ‘Populism and the Media.’ In Twenty-First Century Populism – The Spectre of Western European Democracy, edited by Daniele Albertazzi and Duncan McDonnell, 49–64. Houndmills and New York: Palgrave. Meguid, Bonnie. 2010. Party Competition Between Unequals. Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press. Mény, Yves, and Yves Surel. 2000. Par le peuple, pour le peuple. Paris:  Librairie Arthème Fayard. Mudde, Cas. 2007. Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mudde, Cas, and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser. 2013a.‘Exclusionary vs. Inclusionary Populism: Comparing Contemporary Europe and Latin America.’ Government and Opposition 48, no. 2: 147–174. Pirro,Andrea. 2018.‘The Polyvalent Populism of the 5 Star Movement.’ Journal of Contemporary European Studies 26, no. 4: 443–458. Rodríguez-Teruel, Juan, Astrid Barrio, and Oscar Barberà. 2016. ‘Fast and Furious: Podemos’ Quest for Power in Multi-level Spain.’ South European Society and Politics 21, no. 4: 561–585. Sartori, Giovanni. 1976. Parties and Party Systems, a Framework for Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taggart, Paul. 2000. Populism. Buckingham: Open University Press. Taggart, Paul. 2004. ‘Populism and Representative Politics in Contemporary Europe.’ Journal of Political Ideologies 9, no. 3: 269–288. Van de Wardt, Marc, Catherine E. De Vries, and Sara B. Hobolt. 2014. ‘Exploiting the Cracks: Wedge Issues in Multiparty Competition.” The Journal of Politics 76, no. 4: 986–999. Zulianello, Mattia. 2019a. Anti-System Parties From Parliamentary Breakthrough to Government. London and New York: Routledge. Zulianello, Mattia. 2019b. ‘Varieties of Populist Parties and Party Systems in Europe: From State-of-the-Art to the Application of a Novel Classification Scheme to 66 Parties in 33 Countries.’ Government and Opposition, 1–21, published online 24 July.

INDEX

Note: Page numbers in italics indicate figures and in bold indicate tables on the corresponding pages. accommodative strategy 6, 12, 52–3, 59–62, 64–5, 76, 81–2, 94, 102, 106, 124, 134–5, 178, 182, 187, 195, 216, 239, 270; cooperation 60, 81, 124, 135, 178, 187, 202, 263–4; fusion 6, 60–1, 282 adversarial strategy 12, 52–3, 56–9, 106, 120, 123, 163, 182, 187; clashing 56, 141, 149, 157, 162–3, 183, 195, 224–5, 241, 247, 258; co-optation 58–9, 81, 119–20, 126, 149, 157, 159, 163, 178, 182, 207, 212, 217, 219–20, 225–6, 259, 263–4; marginalization 58, 66, 76, 79, 81–2, 87, 105 118–9, 121, 125, 140, 142, 195, 197, 202, 271 Akkerman, Tjitske 131–44 Albertazzi, Daniele (co-editor) 1–13, 50–67, 150, 253, 269–87 Alleanza Nazionale, Italy (National Alliance) 61 Alternative für Deutschland, Germany (Alternative for Germany) 105, 112–3, 116–26, 272, 275, 279, 281–2, 286 Anexartitoi Ellines, Greece (Independent Greeks) 24, 28, 60, 64, 231, 234, 238, 241–7, 279, 280 anti-establishment 22–3, 170, 188, 218, 221, 238 ‘anti-system parties’ 113 Asylpaket II legislation 121 asylum 76, 79, 83, 120–6, 137, 152, 155–9, 163, 178, 259

Aufstehen, Germany (Rise) 124–6 Austria 35, 61, 65, 73–89 authoritarianism 11, 22, 64, 98, 193–4, 201, 207, 213, 233, 245–7 Balkenende cabinet 134, 140 Berlusconi, Silvio 10, 37, 62, 65, 252–3, 255–6 Bernhard, Laurent 148–64 Bersani, Pierluigi 56, 256 Betz, Hans-Georg 22 Biancalana, Cecilia 148–64 Bild 65 Blair, Tony 208, 211, 218 Blocher, Christoph 152–4, 158, 160, 162–3, 279 Bonansinga, Donatella 1–13, 50–67 border management (Frontex) 260–1, 263 Bossi, Umberto 65, 262 Brexit 19, 55, 63, 65, 95, 141, 206–7, 211, 220–5, 285–6 British National Party, United Kingdom 207, 210, 212–4, 279 Brown, Gordon 208, 218–9 Buma, Sybrand 141–3 Bündnis Zukunft Österreich, Austria (Alliance for the Future of Austria) 73, 86–7, 272, 279, 284 Cameron, David 59, 213–7, 219–20, 222 Canovan, Margaret 20 Capoccia, Giovanni 113

290 Index

Central and Eastern Europe 7 challenger parties 51, 55–6, 73, 75, 94, 112, 125, 190, 195, 210–1, 226, 231, 239–41, 283–4 charismatic leader 87, 102, 189, 195, 213 Chirac, Jacques 97–8 Christen-Democratisch Appèl, Netherlands (Christian Democratic Appeal) 132, 134, 136–43, 272 Christian fundamentalists 116 Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands, Germany (Christian Democratic Union of Germany) 58, 64, 112–22, 124–6, 272 Christlichdemokratische Volkspartei der Schweiz, Switzerland (Christian Democratic People’s Party of Switzerland) 149–63, 272 Christlich-Soziale Union in Bayern, Germany (Christian Social Union of Bavaria) 64, 112–24, 272 Chrysi Avgi, Greece (Golden Dawn) 238, 241 class politics/identities 173, 210 climate policy 89, 188 coalitions 19, 75, 78, 86, 113–6, 118, 120, 136, 140–3, 153–5, 162, 170, 212, 239, 242–4, 259, 187, 284 collaborative strategies 149 ‘collegiality rule’ 151–5 communication strategy 63 competition dynamics 6, 51 consensus 133 Conservative Party, United Kingdom 55, 59, 206–27, 272 convergence 100, 124–5, 153–4, 195, 212, 247, 263, 281 Cooper,Yvette 219 Corbyn, Jeremy 220–1 cordon sanitaire 77, 94, 97, 106, 134, 136, 151, 198, 201–2, 286 corruption 23, 32, 85, 97, 191, 234–5, 242, 262, 281 cosmopolitan 136–7, 140 Crépon, Sylvain 96, 100 crime 95, 98–9, 159–60, 175–6, 236, 259, 262 Dansk Folkeparti, Denmark (Danish People’s Party) 60, 168–83, 273, 272, 275 Das Neue Ősterreich und Liberales Forum, Austria (New Austria and Liberal Forum) 61 deficit 87, 193, 236–8, 255 definitions 2–3, 20–22, 51, 93, 246 de Gaulle, Charles 102

Democratici di Sinistra, Italy (Democrats of the Left) 61, 252 Democratic Unionist Party, United Kingdom 223 Denmark 60, 168–83 deportation 99, 121–2, 156–7, 159, 163, 180 dichotomous concepts 4–5, 11 Die Grünen, Germany (Greens) 75, 113, 115, 123, 126, 275, 278 Die Linke, Germany (The Left) 112–26, 271, 272, 278, 279, 281–2, 284 Di Maio, Luigi 2 Dimokratikí Aristerá, Greece (Democratic Left) 57, 241 direct democracy 30, 148–9, 155–6, 159, 161–3 dismissive strategy 6, 52–6, 75, 81, 87, 94, 105–6, 120, 124, 137, 149, 195–6, 202, 213, 223, 239, 246, 274, 280, 286 Eastern Germany 116, 284 Eatwell, Roger 64 economy 85, 100, 102, 104, 114, 119, 123, 176, 210–12, 242, 251–8 electoral arenas 62, 66 ‘enforcement initiative’ 160 Enhedslisten, Denmark (The Unity List) 168, 174 Ethniki Parataxis, Greece (National Alignment) 233 Ethniki Rizospastiki Enosis, Greece (National Radical Union) 232–3 ethnonationalism 22 European Central Bank 238, 243, 256 European Commission 256 European Parliament 61, 114, 116, 121, 126, 191, 259 European Union 55, 62, 66, 100, 112, 116–8, 153, 160–3, 199, 206, 210, 214–5, 220, 223, 233, 236, 238, 257, 259–60 Euroscepticism 23, 119, 207, 211–2, 214–5, 217–9, 246 Eurozone crisis 116–20, 124, 150, 191–2, 196, 233, 246 exclusionary populism 20, 22, 30, 64, 270 explanandum/explanans 63, 65–6 extreme right 195 fake news 19 Fallend, Franz 73–89, 276 Farage, Nigel 207, 212–5, 217–8, 225 FDP Die Liberalen, Switzerland (The Liberals) 149–50, 154–5, 157–63, 272 Fillon, François 101

Index

financial crisis 11, 13, 79, 85, 117, 150, 183, 283 see also Eurozone crisis Finland 187–203 Fogh Rasmussen, Anders 175–8 Forum voor Democratie, Netherlands (Forum for Democracy) 131, 279 Forza Italia, Italy (Come on, Italy!) 10–1, 20, 61, 250–65, 274–5, 275, 279 fragmentation 133, 190, 238–9 France 56–7, 59, 92–107 freedom of movement 161–2 Freie Demokratische Partei, Germany (Free Democratic Party) 113–8 Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, Austria (Austrian Freedom Party) 11, 24, 51, 65, 73–89, 105–6, 202, 272, 275–6, 278, 279, 284 Fremskridstpartiet, Denmark (Progress Party) 170 Fremskrittspartiet, Norway (Progress Party) 51, 170–1, 182 French Revolution 93 Froio, Caterina 250–65 Front National now Rassemblement National, France (National Front/National Rally) 55–9, 92, 94–7, 106, 272, 275, 279, 281 Gabriel, Sigmar 122 Germany 58, 64, 112–26 German Federal Republic 113 ghettos 180 ‘gilets jaunes’ 103–4 globalization 100, 150, 210, 285 Goodwin, Matthew 52, 64 Great Recession (2007–8) 1, 20, 23, 29, 31–2, 64, 79, 117, 135, 150, 176, 191, 207, 210, 231, 236–7, 246–7, 250–1, 255–8 Greece 57, 60, 64, 231–48 Grillo, Beppe 10, 56, 258 Gross Domestic Product 236, 238 Habersack, Fabian 73–89, 276 Halla-aho, Jussi 197–8 Hamon, Benoît 101 Heinisch, Reinhard 73–89, 276 Hobolt, Sara 50 Hollande, François 96, 99–102 homogeneity 37, 148, 175, 271 horizontal paradigm 105 ‘Ibiza affair’ 82, 86 ideological barriers 113 immigration 76, 79–80, 95, 98–9, 122–4, 131, 135–8, 155, 157, 161–3, 169–74,

291

178–9, 191–2, 197, 207, 210, 214, 218–9, 225, 234, 238, 251, 259–263 inclusionary populism 30–1, 39 inequality 96, 104, 235 International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) dataset 30–2 Islam 95, 116, 131, 133–4, 136–7, 169–70, 178–9, 225 Italy 55, 57, 61–2, 64–5, 250–65 ‘jewellery law’ 180 Johnson, Boris 63, 220, 222, 225 Jungar, Ann-Cathrine 187–203 Kokoomus, Finland (Conservative Party) 189, 192–3, 195, 197–8, 200–2, 272 Karatzaferis, Giorgos 234 Kekkonen, Urho 189 Keskusta, Finland (Centre Party) 189, 192–4, 197–8, 200–2, 272 Kjærsgaard, Pia 170–1 Konservative Folkeparti, Denmark (Conservative Party) 169, 174, 176, 272 Kristillisdemokraatit, Finland (Christian Democrats) 189, 192–4, 200–2 Kronen Zeitung 65, 82 Kurz, Sebastian 79–82, 86, 88 Labour Party, United Kingdom 206–27, 275 Laclau, Ernesto 23 La France Insoumise, France (France Unbowed) 11, 23, 92, 95–7, 99–100, 105, 107, 275, 279, 281, 284 Laikos Orthodoxos Synagermos, Greece (Popular Orthodox Rally) 24, 28, 234, 238 La Margherita- Democrazia è Libertà, Italy (Daisy – Democracy is Freedom) 61, 252 Lampedusa 259 La République En Marche, France (The Republic on the Move) 92, 96, 104, 275 left populist parties 4, 10, 22–3, 28, 37, 131–2, 143, 231, 235, 240, 244, 271, 280–1 Lega Nord now Lega, Italy (Northern League now League) 2, 23 51, 55, 57, 62, 64, 105, 250–265, 275, 279 Le Pen, Jean-Marie 94, 97–8 Le Pen, Marine 1–2, 56–7, 59, 92–7, 99–107, 281 Les Républicains, France (The Republicans) 92, 106–7, 272 Letta, Enrico 259–60, 264, 274 liberal democracy 30, 37; ‘ordo-liberals’ 116–8 Liberal Democrats, United Kingdom 61, 209, 275

292 Index

Liberales Forum, Austria (Liberals) 75 Lisbon Treaty 96, 98, 222 Løkke Rasmussen, Lars 175–6 Macedonia 233, 243–5 Macron, Emmanuel 2, 57, 63, 66, 92, 101–3, 106–7 ‘mainstream’ parties 19, 50, 88, 105, 118, 120, 132, 135, 138, 143, 149, 162, 169, 178, 181–2, 187, 190, 201, 207, 213, 226, 234, 243, 246, 251–3, 271, 283–4 Manifesto Research on Political Representation (MARPOR) data 78, 80, 83, 254 Maurer, Ueli 153 May, Theresa 59, 63, 217, 222–3 Mazzoleni, Oscar 148–64 Mégret, Bruno 56 Meguid, Bonnie 6, 50, 52–4, 56, 59–60, 66 Mélenchon, Jean-Luc 2, 59, 92–6, 99–100, 106–7 memorandum/anti-memorandum divide 237, 241, 243 Meret, Susi 168–83 merger 61, 168, 252 Merkel, Angela 117–8, 238 Miliband, Ed 220, 213, 215, 218, 220 Moffitt, Benjamin 2–3 Monti, Mario 253, 255–8, 263 Morlino, Leonardo 19–40, 270 Mouffe, Chantal 23, 94 Mouvement Démocrate, France (Democratic Movement) 103 Mouvement Nationale Républicain, France (National Republican Movement) 56, 95 Movimento 5 Stelle, Italy (Five Star Movement) 2, 20, 51, 56–7, 61, 64, 250–65, 275, 279 Mudde, Cas 3–4, 20–2, 62, 93, 112, 210–1, 234 multiculturalism 76, 79, 138, 173, 183, 254 Napolitano, Giorgio 253, 256, 259 national identity 98, 150, 174 nationalism 116–7, 136–7, 169, 171, 188, 192, 201, 210, 253 nativist approach 116, 122, 169, 171, 181, 183, 207, 235, 245, 254 Nativist Immigration and Integration Policy (NIIP) index 136 Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands, Germany (National Democratic Party) 58, 105 Nazism 74, 121–2, 134, 238 Nea Dimokratia, Greece (New Democracy) 57, 232–48, 272

neo-liberalism 10, 28, 98, 125, 209, 220, 247, 252, 254 Netherlands 11, 21, 28, 32, 35, 65, 131–44, 272, 275, 279, 281 niche parties 6, 52 Niinistö, Sauli 195, 197 normative bias 19 Nye Borgerlige, Denmark (New Right) 169, 181–2 Nyrup Rasmussen, Poul 171 opportunity structure 1, 12, 65, 67, 81, 101, 112, 117, 133–4, 171, 190, 211, 231, 246 Orpo, Petteri 197 Österreichische Volkspartei, Austria (Austrian People’s Party) 61, 73–89, 272 Panellinio Sosialistiko Kinima, Greece (Panhellenic Socialist Movement) 57, 60, 232–48, 275 Papandreou, Andreas 232, 240 Papandreou, George 238 Parmelin, Guy 153 Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus, Germany (Party of Democratic Socialism) 115, 119 Partido Socialista Obrero Español, Spain (Spanish Socialist Workers Party) 9, 62, 278 Partij van de Arbeid, Netherlands (Labour Party) 132, 137–43, 275 Partij voor de Vrijheid, Netherlands (Party for Freedom) 131–4, 136–43, 272, 275, 279, 284 Parti Socialiste, France (Socialist Party) 92, 96, 275 Partito Democratico, Italy (Democratic Party) 2, 28, 55–6, 61–2, 250–265, 275 partisan alignment/narrative 50, 210, 234 patronage 233 Pautz, Hartwig 112–26, 276 Perussuomalaiset, Finland (Finns Party) 187–203, 273, 272, 275, 279 Podemos, Spain (We Can!) 9, 23–4, 39, 62, 99, 278 polarization 74, 138, 148, 163, 194, 201, 245 ‘political crisis’ 64 Popolo della Libertà, Italy (People of Freedom) 61, 265n2 populist radical right parties (PRRPs) 21–3, 28, 39, 73, 134–5, 137, 141, 148–50, 187, 189, 193, 199, 201, 207–8, 210–1, 220, 234, 282 Portugal 37, 237 ‘prophet’ party 212

Index

quotas 161, 180–1 racism 134, 152, 198, 200, 210, 214–5 radical left parties (RLPs) 22–3 radical right parties see populist radical right parties Radikale Venstre, Denmark (Social Liberals) 168, 171, 174–5, 179–80, 183, 274, 275, 277 Rassemblement National see Front National Rees-Mogg, Jacob 216 referenda 148, 154–7, 159, 161, 163, 215, 220, 232, 243 refugee crisis 79, 81, 112, 116–7, 120–2, 124, 138, 141–3, 179–80, 251, 259 Renzi, Matteo 55, 63, 65, 102, 252, 256, 260, 263–4 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 93 Ruccia, Gisella 56 Rutte, Mark 141–3 Salvini, Matteo 2, 255, 262–4 Sarkozy, Nicolas 97–9, 101–2, 105–6, 238 Schengen Agreement/area 95, 161, 176, 261, 263 Schmid, Samuel 152–3 Schüssel, Wolfgang 77, 80–2, 87–8 Schweizerische Volkspartei, Switzerland (Swiss People’s Party) 148–64, 272, 275, 279, 283–4 Scottish National Party, United Kingdom 209 Shields, James 92–107 Simitis, Costas 233 Sininen tulevaisuus, Finland (Blue Reform) 198–203, 272, 279 Sipilä, Juha 196–7 Social Democratic Party, United Kingdom 61 Socialdemokratiet, Denmark (Social Democrats) 168, 178–81, 275, 277 Socialistische Partij Netherlands (Socialist Party) 22, 131–3, 139, 279 Socialistisk Folkeparti, Denmark (Socialist People’s Party) 168, 174–5 Soini, Timo 187, 189, 191–200 Soullier, Lucie 100, 103 sovereignty 3–4, 30, 79, 93, 95, 121, 148, 150, 156, 160–1, 163, 175, 192, 257–8, 264 Soviet Union 189, 195 Sozialdemokratische Partei der Schweiz, Switzerland (Social Democrats) 149–52, 154, 159, 275 Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, Germany (Social Democratic Party of Germany) 64, 112, 114–5, 118–26, 275, 276, 278

293

Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs, Austria (Social Democratic Party of Austria) 61, 73–89, 275, 276 Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, Germany (Socialist Unity Party) 115, 121 Spain 62, 65, 99, 191, 277 Støjberg, Inger 181 Storch, Beatrix 121 Strache, Heinz-Christian 78, 82, 84, 88 Stram Kurs, Denmark (Hard Line) 169, 181 strategic re-orientation 75 Stubb, Alexander 195 Suomen Keskusta, Finland (Centre Party of Finland) 189, 192–4, 197–8, 200–2, 272 Suomen maaseudun Puolue, Finland (Finnish Rural Party) 187–203 Suomen ruotsalainen kansanpuolue, Finland (People’s Party of Finland) 189, 192–5, 200–1 Suomen sosialidemokraattinen puolue, Finland (Social Democratic Party of Finland) 58, 189, 192–4, 200–2, 275 Sverigedemokraterna, Sweden (Sweden Democrats) 58 Swiss Confederation 148, 151 Switzerland 148–164 Synaspismós Rizospastikís Aristerás, Greece (Coalition of the Radical Left) 23–4, 28, 37, 39, 57–8, 60, 64, 231–48, 271, 272, 275, 279, 280, 284 Team Stronach, Austria 21, 73, 85, 87, 279 terrorism 95, 134–7, 172, 175, 247, 270 Thatcher, Margaret 209, 212, 217 ‘theft’ (electoral) 137–40 Thorning-Schmidt, Helle 179–81 Thulesen Dahl, Kristian 177 timeline of populist parties 11 trust in politicians/political parties 30, 85, 105, 118, 236 Tsatsanis, Emmanouil 231–48 typology of party competition 6, 12, 50–67, 269, 285, 287 typology map 54 Ulram, Peter 74 United Kingdom 55, 59, 61, 63, 65, 206–27 United Kingdom Independence Party, United Kingdom 55, 59–61, 206–27, 272, 275, 279 ‘values compass’ 86 Vampa, Davide (co-editor) 1–13, 50–67, 206–27, 269–87

294 Index

Van der Bellen, Alexander 61, 85 van Kessel, Stijn 21 Vasemmistolitto, Finland (Left Alliance) 189, 192–4, 200–1 Venstre, Denmark (Liberal Party) 169, 171, 176, 273 Venizelos, Evangelos 57, 241 vertical paradigm 105 Vihreä Liitto, Finland (Greens) 189–90, 192, 194, 200–1 Visegrad countries 20, 23, 26–7, 32, 35–7, 39, 270 Vittori, Davide 19–40, 270 Vlaams Block now Vlaams Belang, Belgium (Flemish Block) 58

Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie, Netherlands (People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy) 131–2, 134, 136–43, 272 volonté générale 3, 20, 93, 103 Wahlalternative Arbeit und Soziale Gerechtigkeit, Germany (Electoral Alternative Labour and Social Justice) 115 welfare reforms 119, 121, 123, 125–6 Wilders, Geert 131, 134, 137, 139–43 xenophobia 82, 174, 200 Zohlnhöfer, Reimut 119 Zulianello, Mattia 51, 280