Recapturing the Reluctant Radical: how to win back Europe’s populist vote by Catherine Fieschi Marley Morris and Lila Caballero Read online

  A different focus

  Our two further challenges to the prevailing narrative are intertwined and involve an exhortation to shift the focus of analysis slightly. The first challenge is about seeing beyond hard-core support for the RPPs; the second concerns taking on board the diversity of the electoral support for these parties as well as the diversity of the causes that trigger the support.

  Focus on soft support

  One of the reasons for the attention lavished on the young violent man is that this fits the profile of the committed supporter. Research by the think tank Demos has shown that those right-wing populists who are committed, unashamed and active enough to join a Facebook page (even if it is only one click) are largely disillusioned young men, many of whom are members and activists.15 Further research into right-wing populism in the UK by Matthew Goodwin and Jocelyn Evans for Chatham House indicates that ‘whereas the less strongly committed BNP voters appear generally ambivalent about preparing for future conflict between groups, among more committed members there is clear evidence that they are more likely to consider preparing for conflict as a justifiable course of action’.16

  The focus on committed supporters is largely down to the perception that they pose the greatest threat. And in security terms, it seems likely that they are the most dangerous.17

  But what concerns us are the long-term, non-security related threats: the gradual undermining of representative institutions, the impact on mainstream parties, the – related – disproportionate toll on policy-making, the increasing toxicity of political discourse and, finally, the legitimatisation of a set of political views through a slow but steady electoral success that takes its toll on a polity’s capacity to embrace diversity as well as other political challenges as a cohesive community. The sum of which provides further justification for mobilisation on the harder fringes of the party.

  These are the threats posed by the electoral bulk of these parties over time, and this bulk is not accounted for – far from it – by committed supporters.

  Studies have noted that right-wing populist supporters are a heterogeneous group. In France, the academics Nonna Mayer and Pascal Perrineau have explored different groups within the Front National electorate, differentiating regular supporters from occasional ones.18 Joel Gombin of the Univeristy of Picardie Jules Verne has gone as far as to argue that one cannot speak of a single Front National electorate.19

  Analysts, policy-makers and politicians must shift their focus onto different citizens. This focus should be on the ‘reluctant radicals’ – not the committed hard core but the wavering, uncertain, soft supporters of right-wing populism.20 These people are crucial for the simple reason that they are the supporters to aim for in order to stop the ascent of right-wing populism. They are right-wing populism’s Achilles heel. Not only are there many of them – as we will demonstrate – but their reluctance makes them the easiest group of voters to bring back into mainstream politics.

  RPPs might be right-wing populist but they are also parties – and like all parties they need to appeal beyond their core support base to win power. These parties need the reluctant radicals. Without them, they are consigned to the fringes. This is why RPPs have put so much effort into removing the stigma attached to them – to win over these voters. If RPPs take the time to court these voters, then so should mainstream parties.

  Why, though, should one aim to undermine RPPs, one might wonder? Rather than focusing on their electoral expression, isn’t the task to eradicate the toxic views, the xenophobia and racism? And shouldn’t mainstream policy-makers concentrate on right-wing populism’s most violent expressions, rather than its political manifestation? We think this would be a mistake. The electoral success of RPPs itself poses a threat. The threat is threefold. First, RPPs can increase the salience of topics such as immigration and Islam, thereby dragging prejudice and closed-mindedness into mainstream political debate and legitimising an aggressive discourse around them. Second, right-wing populists polarise the political system, encouraging simplistic grand-standing rather than nuanced policy-making. Third, RPPs threaten the legitimacy of political institutions by offering a systematically destructive account of any institutional failings or shortcomings. Europe (its politicians, policies and institutions) is a case in point: a complex set of institutions whose current troubles are held up by these parties as proof of the inherent fallibility of large-scale representativeness, cosmopolitanism and openness; as a lightning rod for grievances ranging from economic woes to joblessness to insecurity. And, finally, as a convenient elitist machine on which to hang conspiracy theories.

  RPPs themselves present a danger to liberal democracies, not just the attitudes and violent acts they are associated with. By ‘recapturing’ Europe’s reluctant radicals and returning them to mainstream politics, this danger can be reduced.

  If the mainstream wants to win back Europe’s reluctant radicals, it is no good treating them as pariahs. We must reach out to reluctant radicals by seeing them as co-citizens. Only by listening and understanding their concerns and grievances can mainstream activists and policy-makers hope to turn them away from right-wing populism. This means going beyond the convenient headlines and catch-phrases used by the RPPs and taken up by the media, and understanding how grievances and fears encapsulated in ‘anti-immigration’ or ‘anti-European’ views connect to a specific context (historical and cultural). How are the general pressures of global change, population flows, of which ‘Europe’, ‘immigration’, ‘crime’, ‘insecurity’ become the bogey-men, connected to specific national fears? And how can taking a measure of them allow us to elaborate better policy and a better offer for the reluctant radicals, without backtracking on tolerant, liberal principles? This is not just a vote-winning strategy for the mainstream – it is a moral appeal to not belittle the reluctant radicals and to give them a chance to return to the fold.

  Some politicians, researchers and commentators have made a similar point, but combined this with an approach that makes a point of challenging liberal thought. On the right, former French president Sarkozy’s recent election campaign sounded tough on immigration and Islamic extremism in an attempt to woo Front National voters in the second round of the election. On the left, commentators in the UK have hinted that a party with an economically left-wing but socially conservative and anti-immigration programme may capture a new political centre ground.21 We do not recommend this approach here. Instead, while we urge the mainstream to re-engage with the reluctant radicals, we believe that this should be combined with an acknowledgement of some of the hard-won gains that multicultural policies have delivered over recent years.

  Another important group of voters that we will discuss in this pamphlet are the potential radicals. These are the people who have not yet turned to RPPs themselves but are in the same pool from which these parties fish. If an RPP is to grow further, it will do so by capturing these voters. Just as it is vital to bring the reluctant radicals back into the mainstream, it is also essential for mainstream parties to keep the potential radicals from turning to RPPs. By reaching out to potential supporters of right-wing populism, the ascent of RPPs can be checked.

  Spot the difference

  But for effective policy on right-wing populism, a change in approach is needed. Policy-makers recognise that a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach is not appropriate for public services, which call for adaptability to individual needs and backgrounds. A one-size-fits-all approach would also be mistaken for right-wing populism. As we will explore in the coming chapters, right-wing populism appeals to a diverse array of people. A policy response for only one particular group will fail to deal effectively with this diversity.

  Moreover, our understanding of right-wing populism should include not only the full range of its electorate, but also the range of social, cultural and political factors that influence their behaviour. Social science research can often neglect the roles of emotion, culture, national symbols, and collective narratives and myths, f
or fear of their being intangible and unquantifiable. Yet we think they play a crucial role, particularly when it comes to right-wing populism. In this report we intend to incorporate such factors into our analysis.

  The voting process – which is what we have chosen to privilege in this phase of this three-part project – can also constitute an opportunity to express global or general fears and anxieties, filtered through the lens of a particular political culture and its formation at a given moment in time. A series of pieces by Le Monde journalists over the past year give a sense of the richness often encapsulated in the simple but privileged act of voting 22 – the sum of aspirations, impressions and frustrations that lie beneath the vote. For one single voter, one of the journalists notes:

  In an uninterrupted flow of words, as unexpected as it was moving, [this man] told us about everything he was about to slide into his ballot envelopes on the 22nd of April and the 6th of May: five years of his life, the hope and pride of setting up his own business, the problems with debt, the arguments with the bank, the illness, pain and finally, death of his wife, the subsequent shame of a failed business, his bitterness, but also the strength of his friendships, a new love interest, the possibility of a fresh start, and his conviction that things needed to change.

  All this is to say that strong emotions – both noble and less noble – irrigate and fuel voting patterns, channelled as they are by the institutions and culture within which they are shaped and exist. Acknowledging the emotional charge that goes into a vote and being discerning of this charge is a first step. The second is to interpret this charged behaviour in the context of a particular historical moment and politico-cultural context. This work will be done much more thoroughly in subsequent parts of the project. But it is useful and necessary for the purposes at hand to draw attention to some of the national specificities that emerge in our three key case studies and allow us to glimpse the specific silhouettes of our reluctant radicals in context.

  Reluctant radicals in France, the Netherlands and Finland exhibit some similarities, but for policy purposes, it’s worth our pointing to some of the specifics – these emerge when we apply a cultural and historical lens to the data.

  Three patterns emerge and are key for making sense of our reluctant radicals (and therefore for tackling right-wing populist support). We are not claiming that the key characteristics are exclusive to one type of reluctant radical or another, but rather that this is the dominant characteristic in a given context.

  1. In France, reluctant radicals are defined by their disconnection – geographical, political, social and emotional. They are placed under the sign of disconnection, in a political culture that has promised the very opposite: a close and direct relationship to the body politic. For us, this deep chasm between the founding promise of France and the lived political experience is a key factor in understanding the French reluctant radicals and one to keep in mind when attempting to formulate policy.

  2. In the Netherlands, the reluctant radicals emerge as deeply nostalgic. These are the people dealing with the rapid dislocation of a hitherto all-structuring party system (the symbol of social order and political efficiency) and the subsequent attempts to manage change and diversity in the absence of a framework that had privileged transparency and implicit rules (the famously open curtains of a society that prides itself on having nothing to hide). Against the backdrop of national trauma (the murders of Pim Fortuyn and Theo Van Gogh), this yields a reluctant radical who is both nostalgic of consensus and yet disdainful of current attempts to create a new one.

  3. Finland, the case study most marked by rapid transformation over the past few decades, produces a reluctant radical defined above all by the plight of a marginalised Finnish male. As Finnish society continues its re-invention, the image of a somewhat discarded male figure belonging to a traditional Finnish landscape (both so close to the present and yet so distant) and unable to redefine his place in this new Finland looms large.

  The Profiles

  Given this approach, we need to look again at the typical right-wing populist profile.

  In this pamphlet we will explore, using a wide range of datasets and expert opinion, the characteristics and attitudes of reluctant and potential radicals in France, the Netherlands, Finland, Germany, Denmark, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Sweden and the UK. We will test this profile, not just for accuracy’s sake, but because at its heart the profile contains a moral question. If the profile is wrong, then those who adopt it encourage an exaggerated cliché. If researchers and party politicians do not know who the reluctant radicals are – and if this ignorance is supplemented with stereotypes – then we all fail to treat the reluctant radicals as citizens. This will only alienate them further. The same applies to the potential radicals. Therefore, as a first step to bringing the reluctant radicals back into mainstream politics and keeping the potential radicals from leaving, it is imperative that we do our best to understand who they really are.

  Our study will focus on the socio-demographic characteristics and attitudes of RPP voters, as well as the macro-level cultural factors that trickle down to the individual level. ‘Supply-side’ factors such as the party system and the behaviour of RPPs themselves are also of course important in explaining the right-wing populist vote. In her book The Extreme Right in Western Europe, Elisabeth Carter argues that moderation of the centre-right party and greater convergence between the mainstream left and right can boost the support of extreme-right parties. She also suggests that party ideology and party organisation are important factors in explaining the variation in extreme-right success across Western Europe.23 While we will touch upon these supply-side explanations in our analysis, we focus primarily on the voters and not the parties. We do this because, while understanding the role of the party is important for explanations of extreme-right variation and useful for political strategy, our focus is crucial for policy-makers who want to engage with and confront the concerns of the voters themselves.

  In the next chapter, we take a broad cross-country approach, exploring through quantitative analysis the consistencies and the contradictions within the profiles of the reluctant and potential radicals across ten European countries. In the following three chapters, we examine in greater depth the profiles in France, the Netherlands and Finland, understanding right-wing populist support within three very different cultural contexts. For France, we find that the reluctant radicals are ‘disconnected radicals’, separated both practically and politically from the rest of French society. For the Netherlands, we look at the ‘nostalgic radical’, within the context of a traditionally open and orderly society faced with great upheaval. And for Finland, we interpret the True Finns’ success through the ‘alienated radical’, lost within a country having undergone a transformation from an agrarian to a technology-led economy in a short space of time. In the final chapter, we draw together our analyses through developing recommendations on how to respond to the reluctant radical challenge.

  2

  An initial sketch

  The method

  A reluctant radical, we have said, is a supporter of an RPP who is not a member of the committed hard core. For the purposes of this pamphlet we operationalise this using the traditional concept of party identification. We divide voters of RPPs into two groups, according to whether they claim to identify with the RPP or, more weakly, say that they are close to the RPP. Party identification is a somewhat controversial choice of variable. While in the US it has traditionally been seen as a crucial factor in explaining voter choice,24 in Europe many have argued that in the context of growing party de-alignment and multiple party systems it at best plays a minor role and at worse is no different from voter preference. Nevertheless, as Jocelyn Evans has noted,25 it is still a useful way of delimiting the core vote of a particular party, and this is how we use the concept here. Whether party identification is understood as a semi-permanent psychological attachment or as a flexible reflection of current political feelings, we suspect it shoul
d serve as a reliable guide to differentiating strength of party support. We think this supposition is borne out by our analysis.

  As for demarcating potential radicals, here we look at attitudes rather than voting patterns.26 Those who have attitudes in line with the populist right but do not vote for an RPP are defined as potential radicals. For this chapter, we focus on attitudes to immigration. For Western Europe this is the natural choice, since anti-immigration views are one of the defining attitudes of Western European RPP voters.27 In Central and Eastern Europe this is not the case, but anti-immigration views can still provide a reasonable proxy for broader ethnocentric outlooks and, despite the low levels, many still hold strongly negative views towards immigration.28

  As a first step towards outlining the profiles of the reluctant and potential radicals across different countries, we use data from the European Social Survey on Denmark, Germany, Finland, France, Hungary, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. We also compare these results with data from the British Election Study and ITANES with respect to Britain and Italy, bearing in mind that variation in survey methodology and question wording make any direct comparison difficult.29

  We define four categories within the electorate:

  Committed radicals: people who vote for an RPP and are close to an RPP

  Reluctant radicals: people who vote for an RPP but are not close to an RPP

  Potential radicals: people who do not vote for an RPP but who are anti-immigration

  Mainstream: the remainder of the electorate.

  Composition of the electorate by type of radical