Seeking an adversary: The radical right and the saliency of pro-immigration positions in green party speeches

Abstract

Western European politics has experienced considerable change since the 1980s, with the emergence of new parties and immigration’s politicisation. However, no studies have examined Green party discussions of immigration, or their interaction with radical right parties. We hypothesise that increases in the radical right’s vote share, and the saliency they attach to immigration, will incentivise Greens to discuss immigration more. We also examine an alternative explanation that how salient immigration is for left- and right-wing parties will affect immigration’s saliency for Greens. We test this by applying structural topic models to parliamentary speeches in the Dutch Tweede Kamer for 2002–2019. We find that Greens react to the radical right, as the latter’s vote share is positively associated with immigration’s saliency for Greens, although radical right immigration saliency’s effect is not robust. Furthermore, we do not find evidence that Greens react to immigration’s saliency in left- or right-wing party speeches.

Talking to the Populist Radical Right: A Comparative Analysis of Parliamentary Debates

“…I expect PRRPs to succeed in being at the center of the debate, especially on issues that are particularly salient to them and where they take a more extreme position. It is debates on immigration where PRRPs attract the attention of competing parties (Johnston and Sprong 2022) and add to a general increase in salience of the topic (Green‐Pedersen and Otjes 2019). Although other issues like European integration might show similar interaction patterns, immigration is topic‐wise considered the major selling point of PRRPs (Mudde 2009).…”