Between strategy and protest: how policy demand, political dissatisfaction and strategic incentives matter for far-right voting

Abstract

What attracts voters to far-right parties? Emphasizing the repercussions of far-right parties' past achievements on the mobilization of voters' electoral demand, this paper develops an argument of context-dependent strategic far-right voting. Far-right parties seek to mobilize on a combination of demand for nativist policies and anti-establishment protest sentiment. Their capacity of doing so, however, critically depends on the strategic incentives they supply. My findings from a comparative analysis based on six waves of the European Election Study show that far-right parties' past attainment of legislative strength boosts the credibility of their policy appeal and broadens the scope of their protest appeal whereas their participation in government jeopardizes their capacity to mobilize on popular discontent.

Arrived in Power, and Yet Still Disgruntled? How Government Inclusion Moderates ‘Protest Voting’ for Far-Right Populist Parties in Europe

“…Recent comparative studies also came to similar conclusions (Cohen 2019; Krause and Wagner 2019; Kriesi and Schulte-Cloos 2020). Cohen (2019) finds that, in contrast to far-right parties in the opposition, those that are in government fail to appeal to politically dissatisfied voters. His main analysis using data on European Parliament elections from the ESS (1989-2014) includes 10 Western European countriesin four of them the far right was included in the government coalition or supported a minority coalition (Austria, Denmark, Italy and the Netherlands).…”

“…The populist far right: pro-people, anti-elite, exclusionary Although discussing definitional matters in detail is beyond the scope of this article, the delineation of the kind of parties we study requires clarification: our study elaborates on three recent comparative studies, but each includes a differently labelled set of parties, namely far right (Cohen 2019), populist right (Krause and Wagner 2019) and radical right (Kriesi and Schulte-Cloos 2020). Despite these differences, they largely investigated the same set of parties.…”

Electoral participation, political disaffection, and the rise of the populist radical right

“…Comparative accounts show that even long-established populist right parties continue to benefit from voters’ dissatisfaction as long as they are excluded from government (Cohen, 2019; Kriesi and Schulte-Cloos, 2020). Thus, our findings might apply to a number of other Western European countries in which the populist radical right is not in government.…”

The role of economic and cultural changes in the rise of far‐right in Greece: A regional analysis

“…Recent years have witnessed the rise of right‐wing and far‐right populist parties across Europe. In the European elections of 2014, far‐right parties came first in several European countries (Cohen, 2019; Halikiopoulou & Vasilopoulou, 2014). In the UK, the Eurosceptic and anti‐migration UKIP, which had already raised its voting share, led the ideological race towards a Brexit referendum (Clarke et al, 2016).…”

“…Similarly, many of them are anti‐establishment, voicing anti‐political messages and thriving on the protest vote. However, it is not clear if the electoral performance of such parties is based on their anti‐establishment character, their policy appeal or both (Cohen, 2019). GD has a long history in Greece as indirectly it goes back to the period of the military junta in the early 1970s (Angouri & Wodak, 2014; Georgiadou, 2019).…”