Explaining the rise of racist and extreme right violence in Western Europe: Grievances or opportunities?

Abstract

This paper investigates the causes of the recent rise in extreme right and racist violence in Western Europe. In the first part, the available data on extreme right and racist violence in eight Western European countries ‐ Germany, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway ‐ are discussed. Contrary to the image presented in the media, Germany is no 'Sonderfall’ as regards the level of violence. Germany belongs to the countries with the highest levels of violence, but Switzerland and Great Britain are roughly comparable in this regard. The second part of the paper attempts to explain cross‐national differences by applying two theoretical perspectives from the social movement literature. The grievance model, which sees the causes of violence in grievances related to the main target groups of the extreme right (foreigners and asylum seekers) and more general feelings of anomie among the socially marginal, finds little support in the data. The opportunity model, which emphasizes the role of political elites in shaping mobilization opportunities for social movements, finds support in an analysis of the relation between the development of extreme right and racist violence and the political debate around asylum legislation in Germany. Moreover, cross‐national comparison shows that the amount of violence also depends on the prior strength of extreme right and racist parties. Contrary to common wisdom, but in line with the expectations derived from the opportunity model, the level of violence tends to be low where extreme right and racist parties are strong and vice versa.

Protest Politics in a Changing Political Context: Switzerland, 1975–2005

“…For example, Barranco and Wisler (1999) found that about half of the public demonstrations in Swiss cities took place either on Saturday or Sunday. Tests with continuous time data conducted by Koopmans (1995Koopmans ( , 1998 for Germany and Giugni (2004) for the United States provide similar results. For Germany, one can compare our selection bias with a more encompassing dataset called 'Prodat' (see, e.g., Rucht 2001Rucht , 2003.…”

“…They however overestimate its impact, insofar as (1) they compare events taking place on weekends and weekdays, and (2) stress regional biases resulting from the focus on Monday issues. results show that the national ebbs and flows of protest mobilization are traced accurately by our 'more restrictive' sampling strategy (results not shown; see also Koopmans 1998). …”

“…Even if movements of the left participate in party politics, they continue to rely on protest activities. In contrast, movements of the right are expected to reveal an inverse relationship between the two modes Koopmans 1996). Allies are, therefore, expected to be not only located on different sides of the political spectrum, but their effect might differ as well.…”

Migration and Social Movements

“…We should therefore not be too surprised to observe a low presence of radical rights actors in political claims-making on migration issues, a presence which has moreover remained quite stable over time. In addition Koopmans (1996) has shown that there is an inverse relationship between the electoral strength of the radical right and the level of extra-parliamentary mobilization by extreme right actors: the stronger the former, the weaker the latter and vice versa. If mobilization by "anti-immigrant" actors is less important than one might expect, that of their counterpart is not much higher.…”

Untitled

“…Under de senaste decennierna har den snabba och vittgående sociala moderniseringen, omdefinieringen av de nationella strukturerna och globaliseringen frambringat en diversifierad, varierad och motsägelsefull utveckling av högerextremismen och det våld som den för med sig (Heitmeyer 2002, s. 501). Särskilt i USA och i Europa har forskare observerat en ökande högerextrem mobilisering sedan det tidiga 1990-talet (Kitschelt & McGann 1995;Koopmans 1996;Minkenberg 1998).…”