How do stigmatized political preferences become normalized? I argue that the parliamentary representation of the radical right normalizes radical right support. Radical right politicians breach established social norms. Hence their supporters have an incentive to conceal that support. When the radical right enters parliament, however, its voters are likely to perceive that their views have been legitimized, becoming more likely to display their private preferences. I use three studies to test this argument. Study 1 employs a regression discontinuity comparing the underreport of voting for radical right parties (RRPs) above and below thresholds of parliamentary representation. Study 2 compares how much individuals report liking RRPs in post-electoral surveys depending on interview mode. Study 3 employs a difference-in-differences that looks into the underreport of UKIP vote before and after entering parliament. The results support the argument and highlight the role of political institutions in defining the acceptability of behaviors in society.

Political rhetoric has important effects on the quality of democracy, but we know very little about what causes variation in the tone of the political debate. We investigate how radical-right success affects the way the remaining politicians discuss political issues. Using an original dictionary, we measure different positive and negative emotions in a newly collected dataset of speeches in German state parliaments. Taking advantage of variation in the timing of elections when radical-right politicians enter these parliaments, we find that politicians of other parties respond to radical-right success by using more positive, instead of negative, emotions. The analyses suggest that this finding may be the result of a strategy by the remaining politicians to distance themselves from radical-right discourse. Our findings highlight how radical-right success can create incentives for other politicians to enforce democratic norms that radical-right politicians breach.

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