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Explaining the Rise of the LPF: Issues, Discontent, and the 2002 Dutch Election
Abstract
Scholarly accounts of the dramatic breakthrough of the List Pim Fortuyn (LPF) in the 2002 Dutch parliamentary election have emphasized two structural factors behind the success of that party. It has first been argued that the LPF brought a distinct issue profile to the electoral arena, which made it attractive for voters with similar policy views. The second hypothesis, that feelings of discontent with politics also fuelled support for the LPF, remains contested because of the possible endogeneity bias of cynicism attitudes. We re-examine these questions using survey data from the 1998 to 2002 panel of the Dutch Parliamentary Election Study. Our approach's novelty is to link respondents' 2002 vote choice to their issue priorities and cynical attitudes as measured in the 1998 wave of the panel. The findings suggest that policy preferences and, to a lesser extent, attitudes of political discontent both contributed to the LPF vote, thus providing support for both interpretations of the rise of this party. These results are consistent with most existing works on non-established party voting which show that new salient political issues and a lack of confidence towards government and politics are fertile ground for these party movements.
... First, the claims are so broadly postulated that they have little explanatory power. Second, there is little empirical basis for these claims: Dutch election research indicates that voters for the party of Pim Fortuyn did not deviate much from the rest of the electorate, either in terms of demographics or in terms of their (supposedly resentful) voting motivations ( van Praag 2001, van der Brug 2003, 2004, Bélanger & Aarts 2006. A third problem is of a more general nature: when using social characteristics (e.g. ...
... Diplomademocracy provides no explanation of why dissatisfaction suddenly erupted in 2002, given that in 1998, under exactly the same government and with almost identical policies, confidence was at an all-time high (Aarts 2005). 8 The only logical conclusion would seem to be that Fortuyn actively fuelled discontent (van der Brug 2003, 2004, Bélanger & Aarts 2006, but that of course contradicts the pluralist conception of reflective representation, where things need to happen first among the electorate, and only then have an impact in the political field. ...
... It is generally portrayed in the Netherlands as a consequence of a long-lasting popular dissatisfaction with politics, resulting from a lack of attention to popular concerns around migration, integration and a multicultural society (Koopmans et al. 2005). However, in 1998, voter satisfaction with politics was still at an all-time high (Bélanger & Aarts 2006). In four years, with a similar coalition and similar policies, this changed into almost general dissatisfaction. ...
Right-wing populist movements and related political parties are gaining ground in many EU member states. This unique, interdisciplinary book provides an overall picture of the dynamics and development of these parties across Europe and beyond. Combining theory with in-depth case studies, it offers a comparative analysis of the policies and rhetoric of existing and emerging parties including the British BNP, the Hungarian Jobbik and the Danish Folkeparti.
The case studies qualitatively and quantitatively analyse right-wing populist groups in the following countries: Austria, Germany, Britain, France, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Italy, Netherlands, Hungary, Belgium, Ukraine, Estonia, and Latvia, with one essay exclusively focused on the US.
This timely and socially relevant collection is essential reading for scholars, students and practitioners wanting to understand the recent rise of populist right wing parties at local, countrywide and regional levels.
... Or does PRRP vote express a genuine allegiance to these very actors? The debate about the protest or sincere (Oppenhuis et al., 1996;van der Eijk and Franklin, 2009: 135) character of vote for non-established challengersmost notably PRRPshas a long tradition in the research on anti-establishment party politics (van der Brug et al., 2000;Fennema, 2003, 2007;Swyngedouw, 2001;Bélanger and Aarts, 2006;Hobolt and Spoon, 2012;Passarelli and Tuorto, 2016). Not only the mood of multiple societal crises (Kriesi and Pappas, 2015); (Halikiopoulou and Vasilopoulou, 2016) and the increasing electoral support for PRRPs across Europe, but notably the diffusion of their issue positions and narratives into mainstream politics and public debates (van Spanje, 2010;Rooduijn, 2014;Pytlas, 2015;Akkerman et al., 2016) underscore the continuing empirical importance of this puzzle. ...
... Yet, despite advanced scholarship and empirical relevance, the related question about the effects of motors driving protest and sincere PRRP vote has still not been unilaterally answered. This is due to the fact that on theoretical level sincere and protest vote have become equated with ideological/policy vote on the one hand and a choice fuelled by political discontent/cynicism on the other (van der Fennema, 2003, 2007;Bélanger and Aarts, 2006;Hobolt and Spoon, 2012;Zhirkov, 2014;Passarelli and Tuorto, 2016). These conceptual "false friends" lost in operational translation make it challenging to pin-point the exact effects of particular motivations behind distinctive types of electoral behaviour. ...
... The two latter concepts rather describe distinct modes of electoral behaviour that pertain to the subjective perception of the representational role of the chosen party in the political process: either as an implemental protest note used to manifest a perceived grievance to other parties, or as an actor believed to be the only one able to bring about the desired change. What follows is that not only can PRRP protest vote be galvanized by both ideological considerations and dissatisfaction (Bélanger and Aarts, 2006). More importantlyand this, unlike previously argued (van der Brug and Fennema, 2007), is not a contradictiona sincere PRRP vote can be driven not only by ideology, but also by discontent. ...
In contrast to most extant approaches, this paper argues that protest and sincere populist radical right party vote cannot be seen as synonymous with a choice motivated respectively by dissatisfaction or ideological positioning. Not only can a vote perceived as a protest note to established parties be programmatic. Most especially, revisiting classical and newest literature, this article claims that high discontent can also drive sincere allegiance to the chosen actor, subjectively perceived as the only viable vehicle for a desired change. These unifying propositions are confirmed by a comparative quantitative analysis of electoral breakthrough by the Alternative for Germany in Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia Landtag Elections 2014. Subsequent qualitative analysis further suggests that the predominant protest or sincere vote character fuelled by particular motivations is congruent with the specific anti-establishment
framing of PRRP issue supply. The insights offer a deeper understanding of the mechanisms, patterns and consequences behind broadening voter mobilization and mainstreaming political agency by PRRPs
... It turns out that those who perceive that the welfare state is performing well are also more likely to be satisfied with the way the democratic system is functioning in their country. Meanwhile, other studies have shown a connection between dissatisfaction with democracy and support for populist parties (Lubbers et al., 2002;Belanger and Aarts, 2006;McLaren, 2012aMcLaren, , 2012bRooduijn, 2018). Logically, because of transitivity, we would also expect those who have negative views toward WSP to be more likely to vote for populist parties. ...
... Thus, they consider welfare performance to be a sign of good governance (Sirovátka et al., 2019). Meanwhile, other recent studies show that those who are dissatisfied with the functioning of their country's democracy are more likely to vote for populist parties (Lubbers et al., 2002;Belanger and Aarts, 2006;McLaren, 2012aMcLaren, , 2012bRooduijn, 2018). Even though such studies tend to focus on RWP, some studies have compared them and concluded that dissatisfaction with democracy is only important for RWP parties but not LWP ones (e.g., Akkerman et al., 2017). ...
In recent decades, populist parties and leaders have obtained great political success. Since populism plays on voter dissatisfaction with the political elite, we might expect that dissatisfaction with the welfare state should also play a role. In this study, we suggest measures to assess welfare state performance (WSP), and we examine how assessment of WSP helps to explain support for the populist political parties – both rightwing and leftwing. Our findings are based on the sixth round of European Social Survey data that has a special module on democracy, which includes questions that enables us to measure WSP. This article shows that WSP is a significant predictor in explaining support for populist parties, but the dynamics differ between how WSP influences support for leftwing populist (LWP) and rightwing populist (RWP) parties.
... The inclusion-moderation hypothesis: parties' political status influences protest voting The question remains why some citizens perceive a vote for far-right parties as a vote against the political establishment. The first obvious answer is that far-right parties tend to campaign on dissatisfaction with the political elite (Bélanger and Aarts 2006;Cohen 2019). Second, far-right parties have often been treated as 'outcasts' by political elites (Van der Brug and Fennema 2007). ...
... Political distrust and dissatisfaction are recurrent notions in research on support for far-right parties (Alvarez et al. 2018;Hooghe and Dassonneville 2018;Rooduijn et al. 2016). As these parties often portray established elites as unresponsive and corrupt, disaffected voters view far-right parties as potential agents for improving, or at least changing, the functioning of the political system (Bélanger and Aarts 2006). Since the scholarship on far-right voting is heavily Western-oriented, we asked whether the 'anti-elite hypothesis' to explain far-right voting travels well to post-communist democracies in Europe (Santana et al. 2020). ...
While debates about far-right populism often concentrate on Central and Eastern Europe, research on these parties predominantly focuses on Western countries. Addressing this remarkable gap, this article revisits the ‘protest voting’ explanation for electoral support for the far right. Using European Social Survey data (2002–16) from 22 countries, we show that political dissatisfaction is a stronger explanatory factor when far-right parties are in opposition, but is a less important determinant of electoral support when they are in government. Previous findings based on Western Europe – which similarly showed that the anti-elite hypothesis is less relevant when far-right parties join government coalitions – travel well to post-communist European countries. In Hungary and Poland, we even find that far-right voters have become less distrustful of national political institutions than the rest of the electorate. Our conclusion implies that anti-elite populism is context-dependent and has limited use for understanding successes of leaders such as Wilders, Salvini and Orbán.
... Since the emergence of RRPs during the 1980s in Europe, RRP constituencies have been examined mainly through two sets of explanations: the so-called 'globalization losers' and the 'protest vote' hypotheses. While the first explanation states that RRPs are supported fundamentally by the least-protected social sectors who have seen their statuses lowered due to capitalist globalization and global economic processes (Rodrik 2020;Swank and Betz 2003), the other suggests that support for RRPs is linked to political dissatisfaction and critical orientations towards the ways in which democracy and institutions work (Bélanger and Aarts 2006;Rydgren 2007). These two explanations are still dominant in the literature, even though empirical research has shown that their explanatory power is quite limited or at least not as conclusive as expected (Mudde 2007;van der Brug and Fennema 2009). ...
... On the other hand (and closely connected with the abovementioned 'globalization losers' thesis), there is an approach that links RRP support to discontent with politics. In this way, RRP voting is conceived as a 'protest vote' against the political status quo (Bélanger and Aarts 2006;Betz 1994). In supporting radical options like those espoused by RRPs, voters' main aims may be to punish the political establishment and the mainstream elites. ...
The aim of this research is to examine to what extent the electoral support for radical right parties (RRPs) is driven by ‘policy voting’ and to compare this support with that of centre-right parties. Using the European Election Study 2019, we focus on six party systems: Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Austria, and the United Kingdom. Our analyses reveal that party preferences for RRPs are better explained by policy considerations than by other alternative explanations (e.g. by ‘globalization losers’ or ‘protest voting’). Additionally, the results show that although preferences for both party families are mainly rooted in ‘policy voting’, notable differences emerge when looking at the role of specific policy dimensions. Overall, these findings suggest that the support for RRPs cannot be understood fundamentally as a mere reaction against economic pauperization or political dissatisfaction but instead as an ideological decision based on rational choice models.
... Edwards, 1990;Marcus, 2000;Van Kleef et al., 2015), and negative feelings are thought to make persons more open to changing their predispositions and (political) opinions (Valentino et al., 2008;Brader, 2011;Weber, 2013), as well as to have less optimistic views about others in society (Schwarz, 2011). By consequence, negative emotions are increasingly recognized as predictors of populist support (Demertzis, 2006;Flecker et al., 2007;Magni, 2017;Rico et al., 2017;von Scheve, 2018, 2017), and on the supply side, RPP:s aim to fuel negative emotions among the electorate in an attempt to increase their support (Belanger and Aarts, 2006;Rooduijn et al., 2016;Van der Brug, 2003). ...
... While reciprocal effects may very well exist between attitudes and party support, considering the longstanding theories of issue positions influencing vote choice (Carmines and Stimson, 1980;Rabinowitz and Macdonald, 1989;Mauerer et al., 2015;Lachat, 2014), we argue that prior attitudes and preferences remain key to understanding vote choice in general and RPP support in particular (e.g. Belanger and Aarts, 2006;Lucassen and Lubbers, 2012;Norris and Inglehart, 2019). Future studies should, however, explore the potential circular effects between life dissatisfaction, attitudes and populist voting whenever the research design allows for it. ...
This thesis sheds light on the relationship between subjective wellbeing and political behaviour and attitudes in contemporary European democracies. The profound societal changes of the last half a decade and the unanswered questions about why some citizens engage more politically while others do not, and how persons develop into politically efficacious citizens, as well as why a part of the electorate is attracted to right-wing populist parties and ideas, have paved the way for considering citizen’s subjective wellbeing as a powerful, yet so far overlooked, predictor of political attitudes and behaviour. Through four empirical studies, this research links several dimensions of subjective wellbeing, including its evaluative, emotional, eudemonic and social components, to a sense of political efficacy (Study 1), to political participation (Studies 2 and 3) and to a right-wing populist vote choice (Study 4). The empirical studies reveal how subjective wellbeing is a significant driver of citizen’s political orientations, their participation patterns, as well as their electoral choices, thereby being highly relevant at all stages of the development of the political citizen. The implications of this relationship are profound, both from a scholarly and a policy-making perspective, in order to better understand persisting political inequality in contemporary democracies, to identify the origins of democratic support or instability, as well as to shed light on the development of illiberal political ideas and threats to liberal democracy. In this way, subjective wellbeing emerges as a crucial research agenda for the future of political science.
... In response to this loss of national identity, people may turn to nationalism, popular xenophobia, racism, and ethno-pluralism (Rydgren, 2007, p. 251). A vast majority of research supports this reasoning (Ambrose & Mudde, 2015;Arzheimer, 2008;Arzheimer, 2018;Arzheimer & Berning, 2019;Bélanger & Aarts, 2006;Betz, 1994;Daigle et al., 2019;Davis et al., 2019;Gidron & Hall, 2019;Goerres et al., 2018;Halikiopoulou & Vlandas, 2019;Ignazi, 1992;Ivarsflaten, 2005;Ivarsflaten, 2008;Lubbers & Coenders, 2017;Lubbers et al., 2002;Minkenberg, 2000;Muis & Immerzeel, 2017;Nevitte et al., 1998;Rooduijn, 2015;Rovny & Polk, 2019;Rydgren, 2002;Rydgren, 2007;Rydgren, 2008;Van Der Brug et al., 2005;Zhirkov, 2014). A few studies find no link (Besco & Tolley, 2019;Kitschelt & McGann, 1995;Oesch, 2008;Turnbull-Dugarte, 2019), while Stockemer et al. (2018) finds mixed results. ...
... Those dissatisfied with and distrustful of the political system, and the society it operates in, should be more attracted to the populist message espoused by RRPs. A substantial number of studies support this explanation (Arzheimer, 2009;Bélanger & Aarts, 2006;Berning & Ziller, 2017;Betz, 1994;Ellinas, 2014;Gidengil, 2001;Gidron & Hall, 2019;Goerres et al., 2018;Ignazi, 1992;Ivarsflaten, 2005;Knigge, 1998;Kriesi et al., 2006;Lubbers & Coenders, 2017;Lubbers et al., 2002;Lubbers & Scheepers, 2000;Minkenberg, 2000;Nevitte et al., 1998;Rooduijn, 2015;Rydgren, 2002;Rydgren, 2007;Zhirkov, 2014). There are also a few studies that do not find a link between distrust/dissatisfaction and RRP support (Arzheimer, 2008;Ivarsflaten, 2008;Muis & Immerzeel, 2017;Oesch, 2008;Stockemer et al., 2018;Turnbull-Dugarte, 2019). ...
This article is a quantitative investigation into why Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada (PPC), a radical right-wing party (RRP), failed to succeed in the 2019 Canadian federal election. Canada has not witnessed the electoral breakthrough of such a party. I argue the failure of the PPC was the result of a mixture of the stabilization of immigrant inflows and the softening of anti-immigrant sentiment. More favourable conditions for the PPC, including extensive media coverage and increasing support for populist and mildly authoritarian sentiment, may have been necessary, but were not sufficient alone to allow for an RRP breakthrough. RRPs are unlikely to succeed in Canada as long as the immigration rate remains predictable and Canadians continue to hold favourable views towards immigrants.
... Pop-Eleches (2010) has explained the electoral breakthroughs of centrist anti-establishment parties (CAPs) within the framework of protest voting. The concept of protest voting has mainly been discussed in the literature on third-party votes in majoritarian systems, such as the U.S. or Canada (Bélanger, 2004;Bowler and Lanoue, 1992;Kang, 2004;Kselman and Niou, 2011), or to account for popular support for radical right parties in Western Europe (Bélanger and Aarts, 2006;Bergh, 2004;Oesch, 2008;van der Brug et al., 2000;. They all have in common that citizens' dissatisfaction with the political establishment and the major political parties is part of the definition. ...
... However, the literature also offers other interpretations that do not perceive protest voting and ideological voting as mutually exclusive. Bélanger and Aarts (2006), for instance, have shown that programmatic considerations and political discontent co-existed among voters of List Pim Fortuyn (LPF) in the Netherlands. Pytlas (2016) arrives at similar conclusions about the regional-level support for the Alternative for Germany (AfD). ...
New centrist anti-establishment parties (CAPs) are successful competitors in Central and Eastern Europe. Due to their emphasis on anti-establishment rhetoric and a moderate ideological platform, their breakthrough is usually explained by voters’ dissatisfaction with existing parties. However, little is known about the ideological component of their support. Expectations on the impact of ideology on vote choice in the protest voting literature range from ‘pure protest voting’, which denies any impact of ideology, to a more moderate approach, which combines protest and ideological considerations. Using survey data, I confirm that CAPs attract voters with lower levels of political trust, but ideology also matters. The degree of ideological sorting, however, varies. While some CAPs mainly attract voters from one side of the political spectrum, others attract voters from the left to the right more equally. The differences in the initial composition of their electorates have implications for the parties’ future.
... These expectations have been gradually confirmed by studies of single elections in specific countries (e.g., Austria, Denmark, Italy, Norway, the Netherlands), showing that lower levels of political satisfaction and trust are associated with voting for populist parties (see Bélanger and Aarts 2015;Bergh 2004;Hooghe et al. 2013;Lubbers et al. 2002;Schumacher and Rooduijn 2013). 1 If we look at more countries and elections, however, results are less consistent, raising doubts about whether populist voters are any different along levels of political support. For instance, using ESS data, and considering 18 European countries in two time periods (2002-2003 and 2008-2009) 1 That said, we are not arguing that political distrust and dissatisfaction are the only relevant factors. ...
Recent comparative and single-case studies have investigated the link between the electoral performance of populist parties and the political attitudes and behaviors of populist voters. However, they have not addressed what happens to populist voters' satisfaction with democracy and political trust when populist parties gain representation in parliament or join cabinets across countries and over time in Europe. This study argues that there are two possible expectations. According to a ‘winner-loser’ mechanism, populist voters' political trust and satisfaction might increase, thus bridging the gap with mainstream voters. Conversely, according to a ‘spiral of distrust’ mechanism, populist parties fuel discontent and populist voters' political trust and satisfaction might decrease. Analyses of nine rounds of the European Social Survey from 22 countries and LISS panel data from the Netherlands find that voters of populist parties have less satisfaction with democracy, trust in parliament, and politicians than voters of mainstream parties. However, these differences narrow over time when populist parties gain seats in parliament and enter the cabinet. This article shows that voters for populist parties might be ‘losers in disguise’ and that the performance of the parties they support serves as a corrective mechanism for their political dissatisfaction and distrust.
... Political cynicism can also be described as a lack of trust in politics and political institutions (Dennis & Webster, 1975;Lau & Erber, 1985;Bandura, 1986). Given its consequences, political cynicism is often considered potentially dangerous to democracy because it disrupts basic democratic processes by reducing voter turnout and political participation (Patterson, 2002), increasing support for extreme protest parties (Bélanger & Aarts, 2006), and discouraging democratic thinking (Ansolabehere & Iyengar, 1995). Easton (1965) notes that democratic political systems depend largely on the extent to which the electorate trusts the government to do the right thing, at least most of the time. ...
With the emergence of the marketing concept in politics, the focus, instead of the political party and candidates, comes the electorate and their desires. Political marketing activities are aimed at understanding voters and adapting marketing strategies to selected identified segments. To reach voters, it is necessary to know the influential factors that shape their final election decision. But the fact is that in today's democratic world, political participation is declining at all levels. Therefore, it is necessary, first of all, to investigate the influential factors on political participation to be able to act to encourage positive influencing factors and to reduce negative influencing factors. One of the most significant negative factors of political involvement of citizens is certainly political cynicism. The high level of political cynicism in modern democratic societies is considered a serious threat to democracy because it causes a decrease in political participation at all its levels. The purpose of this paper is to determine the existence and strength of the influence of political cynicism on political participation at the grassroots level (voting) in Eastern Croatia and the role of political information seeking. Also, the paper will analyse the potential causes and consequences of political cynicism and derive implications for reducing political cynicism using political marketing activities. The research was conducted with a personal survey method using a highly structured questionnaire in five Slavonian counties on a sample of 662 respondents. Data were processed using SPSS 26.0 (descriptive research results) and the Amos program for structural modeling which established cause-and-effect relationships. The research results showed a high level of political cynicism among the respondents. Structural modeling results have identified a significant direct negative impact of political cynicism on the intention to vote in the future and also direct significant negative impact of political information seeking on political cynicism and its direct significant positive impact on intention to vote.
... We should note that our study also contributes to improving our understanding of other topics for which SWD is a key predictor. Indeed, scholars have demonstrated that "dissatisfied democrats" are more passive and likely to support radical and/or populist parties (Bélanger and Aarts 2006;Hansen and Olsen 2019) and that sustained dissatisfaction with the performance of the democratic system may have the potential to engender spirals of political distrust and discontent (Hooghe and Dassonneville 2018;Rooduijn et al. 2016). Therefore, better knowledge on the link between elections and satisfaction with democracy seems an appropriate place to start in order to avoid these spirals. ...
Satisfaction with democracy is a vastly studied research topic. In this Element, the authors aim to make sense of this context by showing that elections (electoral processes and outcomes) influence citizens' satisfaction with democracy in different ways according to the quality of a democratic regime. To do so, they leverage the datasets from the Comparative Study on Electoral Systems (CSES) and uphold the belief that social scientists must take advantage of the increased availability of rich comparative datasets. The Element concludes that elections do not only have different impacts on citizens' satisfaction with democracy based on the quality of the democratic regime that they live in, but that the nature of the meaning attributed to electoral processes and outcomes varies between emergent and established democracies.
... The impact of populism, and also anti-elitism, on political trust has already been analysed in previous studies that find that voters of populist parties tend to distrust politics (Akkerman et al. 2017;Belanger and Aarts 2006;Swyngedouw 2001). While high levels of distrust among the public have fuelled the rise of populist parties (Hooghe and Dassonneville 2018), the strong anti-elite rhetoric of populist actorsin which the established parties and politicians are accused of not being able to represent the interests of the peoplefurther fuels distrust among populist voters (Rooduijn et al. 2016). ...
Citizens are more trustful of politics if their preferred party is an electoral winner and becomes part of the government. However, there remains the question of whether this positive effect of joining the government also holds for supporters of populist parties. Populists show low levels of political trust, as they strongly criticize the political elite. This study argues that voters of populist parties perceive the political system as more responsive to their concerns when their preferred party becomes part of the government and so they become more trustful of politics. Drawing on the case of Austria, the analyses demonstrate that political trust among populist party voters is higher when their party is in government. In contrast, non-populist voters' level of political trust is more stable, even when their party is not in government.
... There are two main explanations for the negative association between political trust and populist vote on the individual level. First, voting for populist parties or candidates may be understood as protest voting, and thus as an expression of disaffection with mainstream politics and political institutions (Bélanger and Aarts 2006), in line with the nature of populism as rejecting the entire political elite as corrupt and self-serving (Canovan 1999;Mudde 2004). The second explanation considers voting for populist parties as an expression of voters' policy preferences, which then leads to low political trust as a consequence of populist parties' antiestablishment rhetoric (Brug and Wouter 2003;Der Brug, Wouter, and Tillie 2005). ...
Studies typically find that supporters of populist parties exhibit low political trust. Drawing on research on winner-loser gaps in political support and the consequences of political polarization on attitudes, I re-examine the association between populism and political trust taking into account the supported party’s status in or outside of government, distinguishing between government leaders and junior coalition partners. I analyze data from the European Social Survey Rounds 1–9 from nine Central and Southern European countries that experienced populist parties as government leaders, combined with party characteristics from the Varieties of Party Identity and Organization as well as democracy scores from the Varieties of Democracy datasets. Results show that the effect of party status on political trust is stronger among supporters of populist than non-populist parties. Further, I find that supporters of populist governments enjoy greater trust advantages in less democratic contexts.
... The consequences of political cynicism are considered potentially dangerous for the development of a society, as it mitigates civic and democratic values and attitudes, and tends to reduce citizen participation in the political sphere, as a result of hopelessness or disinterest in public affairs (Patterson, 2002;Chaparro, 2018) and increases citizens' adherence to authoritarian Frontiers in Psychology 04 frontiersin.org or populist political positions as forms of opposition to the political system and what it has traditionally represented (Bélanger and Aarts, 2006;Levitsky and Ziblatt, 2018;Çakal et al., 2022). Espinosa et al. (2022c) find in a recent study in 11 Ibero-American countries, that the elements that constitute political cynicism goes beyond political distrust toward the system in general, so it is important to extend its understanding to the perception of corruption present in the system as a specific element on which distrust develops. ...
Populism is a phenomenon that is gaining attention in Political Psychology. The goal of the current study was to determine the relationship between populist attitudes, based on the populist demand and the perception of the populist offer, and several indices of political cynicism and attitudes toward democracy in Peru. To do this, a quantitative correlational study including 391 participants from diverse Peruvian locations was carried out. Both populist attitudes and critical perception of the populist offer are found to be directly related to Political Cynicism in its dimensions of Political Distrust, Political Hopelessness, and Political Moral Laxity, and inversely related to the dimension of Political System Change. Similarly, both dimensions of populism are directly related to Democratic Support and inversely related to Democratic Satisfaction. The findings support the notion that populist attitudes emerge in the context of distrust of the system and express an ambivalent relationship with democracy. Furthermore, the various approaches developed by the social sciences to address the populist phenomenon are discussed in terms of their strengths and limitations. KEYWORDS attitudes toward democracy, populist attitudes, political cynicism, perception of populist offer, Peru
... The consequences of political cynicism are considered potentially dangerous for the development of a society, as it mitigates civic and democratic values and attitudes, and tends to reduce citizen participation in the political sphere, as a result of hopelessness or disinterest in public affairs (Patterson, 2002;Chaparro, 2018) and increases citizens' adherence to authoritarian Frontiers in Psychology 04 frontiersin.org or populist political positions as forms of opposition to the political system and what it has traditionally represented (Bélanger and Aarts, 2006;Levitsky and Ziblatt, 2018;Çakal et al., 2022). Espinosa et al. (2022c) find in a recent study in 11 Ibero-American countries, that the elements that constitute political cynicism goes beyond political distrust toward the system in general, so it is important to extend its understanding to the perception of corruption present in the system as a specific element on which distrust develops. ...
Populism is a phenomenon that is gaining attention in Political Psychology. The goal of the current study was to determine the relationship between populist attitudes, based on the populist demand and the perception of the populist offer, and several indices of political cynicism and attitudes toward democracy in Peru. To do this, a quantitative correlational study including 391 participants from diverse Peruvian locations was carried out. Both populist attitudes and critical perception of the populist offer are found to be directly related to Political Cynicism in its dimensions of Political Distrust, Political Hopelessness, and Political Moral Laxity, and inversely related to the dimension of Political System Change. Similarly, both dimensions of populism are directly related to Democratic Support and inversely related to Democratic Satisfaction. The findings support the notion that populist attitudes emerge in the context of distrust of the system and express an ambivalent relationship with democracy. Furthermore, the various approaches developed by the social sciences to address the populist phenomenon are discussed in terms of their strengths and limitations.
... The 2002 election in which the populist party of Pim Fortuyn (List Pim Fortuyn) won a significant number of seats, enabling it to join a CDAled coalition government, laid bare the new fault lines in Dutch democracy. This election marked the transition to a political landscape in which other political issues, mainly revolving around immigration and national identity, would become more important (Achterberg & Houtman, 2006;Belanger & Aarts, 2006;Oudenampsen, 2018). ...
Between 1980 and 2015, Amsterdam changed from a poor city under a radical left-wing government to a city dominated by middle classes. Our central concern is to explain and understand this transformation; the (re-)making of Amsterdam as a middle-class city. This book asks the question how can a city ruled by the socialist or social democratic Labour Party for a century, and internationally famed for its social policies, become a place where gentrification sets the tone and (neo)liberal urbanism takes hold again? To answer, we focus on the interlocking socio-economic and political dynamics that have reshaped Amsterdam’s social geography.
... The second explanatory approach is that the choice to support a radical right party is driven by political discontent. Those who are dissatisfied with mainstream parties and the political regime might vote for radical right populist parties to demonstrate their discontent (e.g., Bélanger and Aarts 2006;Hernández 2018). However, research shows that voters for far-right parties cannot be seen as purely 'protest voters' (e.g., Van der Brug et al. 2000). ...
Previous research demonstrated that voters for the Dutch radical right party PVV were the most stable voters among the highly volatile electorate. However, since 2017 two new radical right parties have successfully entered the Dutch Parliament: Forum for Democracy (FvD) and JA21, conceivably at the expense of the PVV. The success of these new parties is puzzling, because there does not seem to be much room for new parties campaigning on a highly similar platform. In our paper, we use LISS panel data to study the determinants of vote switching patterns between four subsequent elections from 2017 to 2021. We find that the surprise victory of the new far right in 2019 can be explained by its ability to attract both former PVV voters as well as voters new to the far right. Since then, FvD has lost many of its supporters again, but these voters have mostly switched to other far-right parties, meaning the far-right support base has become fragmented, yet enlarged. This suggests that when provided with viable alternatives, radical right voters are as volatile as other voter groups.
... Manifestations of political cynicism are considered potentially dangerous for the development of a society, as they erode civic and democratic values and attitudes, reduce citizen participation in the political sphere, and increase a sense of hopelessness and disinterest in public affairs (Chaparro, 2018;Patterson, 2002). Such manifestations also increase citizens' acceptance of authoritarian or violent measures as a form of opposition to the political system and what it represents (Bélanger & Aarts, 2006). In addition, political cynicism produces in citizens the belief that, as a result of apparent systemic corruption, anyone engaging in political processes will inevitably become corrupted by those processes themselves (Cappella & Jamieson, 1997). ...
This study investigates; (1) how Political Cynicism is structured and, (2) how this structure relates to Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) in 11 Ibero-American countries (N=2388). The results show that the structure of Political Cynicism is composed of four dimensions: (1) Mistrust, (2) Perception of Corruption, (3) Need for Change and, (4) Political Moral Laxity. Furthermore, the study reveals that there is no homogeneous model of relations between the dimensions of Political Cynicism with RWA and SDO by country. However, at a general level it is noted that Mistrust acts as a diffuse indicator of dissatisfaction with the political system that increases Political Moral Laxity, while the Perception of Corruption, functions as a specific indicator of dissatisfaction that is directly associated with the Need for Change and, inversely, to Moral Laxity. Both RWA and SDO increase the negative manifestations of Political Cynicism, but the most interesting result is the stability of the observed relationship between SDO and Moral Laxity in 10 of the 11 countries considered in the study. The results are discussed in terms of the costs that Political Cynicism represents for the consolidation of Democracy, especially in its manifestation of moral laxity.
... Populism is considered a "thin-centered" ideology that views politics as a struggle between a pure, homogeneous people and a corrupt, manipulative elite (Mudde 2007, p. 23). Studies show that such anti-elite attitudes correlate with increased support for PRR parties (e.g., Akkerman et al. 2014;Bélanger and Aarts 2006). Nativism is a belief that "states should be inhabited exclusively by members of the native group ('the nation')" (Mudde 2007, p. 20) which becomes visible, e.g., in antiimmigrant attitudes. ...
Based on the assumption that disclosing explicit populist radical-right (PRR) attitudes and voting intentions for PRR parties may be inhibited by a social desirability bias, this paper aims at developing a measure for implicit populist attitudes (IAT) and at assessing its explanatory power for the prediction of PRR party support. Using data from a German online survey ( N = 898), the populism-IAT is tested against corresponding direct measures of populist attitudes and anti-immigrant attitudes to predict voting propensity for the German PRR party Alternative für Deutschland ( AfD ). Results reveal that social desirability concerns indeed restrict the likelihood of reporting a high propensity of PRR vote; however, direct measures turn out as best predictors for self-reported voting intentions. Inconsistencies between implicit and explicit attitudes may indicate sensitivity to social (un-)desirability perceptions, when attitudes are displayed on the implicit but not on the explicit level. We find such incongruencies for 9% of our respondents regarding populist attitudes, and for 21% regarding anti-immigrant attitudes, indicating that the latter are considered even more undesirable. In light of our findings, we discuss the potential explanatory power of implicit attitudes for less deliberate forms of political behavior and the assumption of populist and anti-immigrant attitudes still being regarded as socially undesirable in Germany.
... The recent success of populist parties in different countries has led researchers to increasingly examine why voters support populist parties. Studies have found evidence for a strong link between populist attitudes and the preference to vote for a populist party (Bélanger & Aarts, 2006;Geurkink et al., 2020;Werts et al., 2013) for both left-and right-wing populist parties Van Hauwaert & van Kessel, 2018). To date, findings on the relation between belief in conspiracy theories, ideology, and voting preference are mixed (e.g., Thórisdóttir et al., 2020). ...
Despite the alleged affinity between populism and conspiracy theories, how they relate on the individual level remains relatively unknown. This study explores the relation between populist attitudes and conspiracy beliefs at the individual level. First, I test whether the conspiracist facets, which directly involve governmental participation, are associated with the dimensions of populist attitudes. Further, I examine the relation of political trust with the dimensions and facets of both constructs as well as their predictive power of the self-reported propensity to vote for a populist party. To test these assumptions, a cross-sectional study was conducted in Germany. Confirmatory factor analyses indicate a strong association between conspiracist facets that directly involve governmental participation and the anti-elitism and sovereignty dimensions of populist attitudes. Findings further show that low political trust is related to all dimensions of populist attitudes–especially anti-elitism–and to the conspiracist facets. Furthermore, the sovereignty dimension of populist attitudes and low political trust predict the propensity to vote for the right-wing populist party AfD. These findings provide new insights to a more nuanced understanding of populism on the individual level and the relation to conspiracy beliefs.
... RRPs, which usually have a strong populist component, however, frequently campaign on an anti-establishment platform that subverts citizens' trust in politics and political elites. Concomitant with that, RRPs are especially successful in mobilising and attracting voters that have a low level of trust in politics, politicians and political institutions (Belanger andAarts 2006, Söderlund andKestilä-Kekkonen 2009). It follows that RRP voters are less likely to embrace social investment. ...
Recent economic and societal transformations have changed how much and what voters demand from the welfare state. Support for social policies has shown to be high but directed towards particular types of policies. This dissertation studies what these electoral demands imply for parties' strategies and stances. The main finding
is that the new demand-side structure results in a recalibration of partisan welfare politics. Besides the traditional alignment of left parties in favour of a generous welfare state and more skeptical right parties, this thesis identifies a second dimension in welfare politics emerging from a conflict over welfare state priorities, i.e. the relative
importance of social investment vs. consumption policies. Following a mass politics approach, this dissertation argues that voters' social policy priorities are key to our understanding of today's welfare politics. The empirical analysis demonstrates that parties, in an attempt to expand their vote share without jeopardising extant voters,
incorporate current and potential new voters' priorities in their welfare profiles. Voters' priorities over the type of welfare state thereby translate into a new partisan alignment opposing universalistic and particularistic parties. The findings have important implications for the future of the welfare state. New types of coalitions, cross-cutting the traditional left-right divide, are likely to further the growth of the social investment state that we have witnessed in recent years, possibly against the opposition of parties with strong ties to traditionally-oriented electorates, as we find them among the working class or the population of declining or rural regions.
... Populismus impliziert in dieser Lesart kaum eine positive Wahlmöglichkeit, sondern hauptsächlich die Ablehnung etablierter Akteure (und Institutionen). 2 Diese resultiert aus einem geringen politischen Vertrauen und geringer externer efficacy. Zugleich, und damit verbunden, speist sich die Kritik an den (etablierten) Parteien aus einer wahrgenommenen mangelnden Responsivität und perzipierter programmatischer Ununterscheidbarkeit (Belanger und Aarts 2006;Treib 2014). Die Präferenz für populistische Parteien ist in dieser Lesart eine Folge von Anti-Establishment-Einstellungen (Krause et al. 2017;Schwarzbözl und Fatke 2016). ...
Dass sich der Parteienwettbewerb um politische Sachfragen dreht, ist ein zentrales Merkmal demokratischer Wahlen in repräsentativen Demokratien: Welche Parteien bieten welche politischen Positionen an und betonen welche Probleme oder Errungenschaften in ihren Wahlprogrammen sowie während des Wahlkampfes? Die BürgerInnen, unterschiedlich in ihren politischen Präferenzen und ihrer subjektiven Wahrnehmung politischer Probleme, vergleichen die politischen Angebote und entscheiden sich für das Angebot, das ihren eigenen Vorstellungen am nächsten kommt. Interessanterweise existiert in einem der produktivsten Forschungszweige der (vergleichenden) politischen Soziologie der letzten Jahre – in der Forschung zu den Hintergründen der Wahl populistischer Parteien – mit Blick auf die Sachfragenorientierung des Wählens eine Lücke: Angesichts des Erfolgs populistischer Parteien fragt die Forschung vermehrt nach individuellen Ursachen der Wahl solcher Parteien. Ein zentrales Argument zielt auf populistische Einstellungen: BürgerInnen mit einer stärkeren populistischen Einstellung unterstützen mit größerer Wahrscheinlichkeit eine populistische Partei.
... Van Praag 2002), and Fortuyn had managed to capitalize on these feelings, as shown by the high turnout and support among voters who had previously abstained. 9 Statistical analyses of voter motivation showed that fear of asylum seekers and cynicism towards the government correlated (to roughly the same degree) with the decision to vote for Fortuyn (Bélanger & Aarts 2006;Van Holsteyn & Irwin 2003). While the LPF fell apart after it entered government, Fortuyn clearly had an impact outlasting the party that carried his name. ...
... Forventningen her er at folk som stemmer på systemkritiske partier og protestpartier, vil ha lavere politisk tillit fordi stemmegivningen sier noe om deres egen tillit til og tilfredshet med det politiske systemet (Haugsgjerd, 2019). I litteraturen finner man for eksempel at de som stemmer på høyreradikale partier, nokså systematisk har lavere politisk tillit enn andre velgere (Bélanger, 2017), og en av forklaringene er nettopp at slike partier uttrykker mistillit til måten det politiske systemet fungerer på (Bélanger & Aarts, 2006). Det samme kan sies om partier andre steder på den politiske høyrevenstre-skalaen. ...
Why do some citizens trust in local political actors and institutions while others do not? With data from the Norwegian Local Election Survey 2019, we examine characteristics of citizens with high and low local political trust. The analyses indicate that trust in the different political actors and institutions is closely linked. For example, those who report high trust in the mayor also report high trust in politicians in general, in the municipal council, and in the municipal administration. In other words, people tend to have either high or low trust in the entire local political system. Furthermore, we find that trust in local political systems and actors is associated with a number of individual and contextual factors including the sense of belonging to the municipality, the use of municipal services, and political participation. Trust also seems to be linked to being on the winning team: those who voted for parties that won the election are more trustful than those who voted for parties that that did not win the election.
... In the Dutch election of 2002, Pim Fortuyn, an openly homosexual sociologist, achieved considerable electoral success by combining anti-Islamic and liberal values (Bélanger and Arts, 2006;Lubbers and Güveli, 2007). He argued that Islam was a backward religion owing to its denial of equality for women and its intolerance of homosexuality (Sniderman and Hagendoorn, 2007, p. 19-20). ...
This paper examines the impact of far-right agency on public political tolerance—what the parties on the far right do to disconnect themselves from accusations of extremism and thus increase their political tolerance by the public. Examining such patterns is challenging because of the multiple varieties of party attributes and strategies that are used by the far right. This paper uses a conjoint survey experiment conducted in the Norwegian Citizen Panel. Each respondent was presented with one vignette describing important attributes of a hypothetical far-right initiative and was then asked to evaluate whether this initiative should be allowed to hold an event. The conjoint design makes it possible to test the impact of the ideological and organizational varieties of the far right. The results demonstrate that what the parties on the far right do is crucial for public political tolerance. Denying extremism and excluding extreme members increase tolerance. However, the features that the far right is not in control of, such as its ideological legacy and the fact that some of its members have been convicted of racist speech negatively affect public political tolerance. The paper concludes that the agency of the far right is a necessary but not sufficient condition for public political tolerance of the far right.
... Research also shows that both PRR voters and citizens with anti-immigrant attitudes are less satisfied with the way democracy works and express less confidence in political institutions than other voters (Lubbers et al., 2002;Belanger & Aarts, 2006;McLaren, 2015McLaren, , 2012aMcLaren, , 2012bRooduijn, 2018). PRR parties have even been shown to fuel democratic discontent in some circumstances, as their voters pick up the parties' anti-elite rhetoric (e.g., Rooduijn et al., 2016;Harteveld et al., 2017;Hooghe & Dassonneville, 2018). ...
Populist radical right (PRR) parties are increasingly included in coalition governments across Western Europe. How does such inclusion affect satisfaction with democracy (SWD) in these societies? While some citizens will feel democracy has grown more responsive, others will abhor the inclusion of such controversial parties. Using data from the European Social Survey (2002–2018) and panel data from the Netherlands, we investigate how nativists’ and non-nativists’ SWD depends on mainstream parties’ strategies towards PRR parties. We show that the effect is asymmetrical: at moments of inclusion nativists become substantially more satisfied with democracy, while such satisfaction among non-nativists decreases less or not at all. This pattern, which we attribute to Easton’s ‘reservoir of goodwill’, that is, a buffer of political support generated by a track-record of good performance and responsiveness, can account for the seemingly contradictory increase in SWD in many Western European countries in times of populism.
... The elite does not know what the ordinary people consider important and thus cannot represent their interests. This feeling of anti-elitism is one important reason for voting for a populist party, which is called a protest vote (Belanger & Aarts, 2006). The second reason is the strong and personalistic leadership in populist parties. ...
The main thesis of this paper is that people in areas of (expected) population decline vote more populist to express their discontent about the current and future state of their place of residence. In many ways a “populist voting mark‐up” could be expected, as declining areas often are associated with being forgotten, fomenting societal discontent and mistrust in established political parties ultimately expected to lead to more populist votes. Using the outcomes of the Dutch national elections in 2012 and 2017, we link shares of populist votes for the PVV (Party for Freedom) and SP (Socialist Party) to indicators of population decline, as well as other demographic (“compositional effects”), local and regional characteristics (“contextual effects”) to appraise what causes higher rates of votes for populist parties in regions of decline. We do not find a “populist voting mark‐up” for declining regions when controlling for contextual effects. However, we do find that both the compositional and the contextual circumstances in areas of population decline are in such a way that they provoke discontent expressed in voting. We also conclude that it is very important to distinguish between different parties when their party programs are as contrasting as in the case of the PVV and the SP. Their different focus on immigration (PVV) and jobs (SP) is clearly visible in the results.
... This echoes the logic of the protest-vote model, positing that voters do not just vote for parties because of shared policy positions and issue priorities, but that they could also consider their discontent with the political elite (Kselman and Niou 2011). Voting for parties outside the establishment, such as new parties, has often been understood as an act of voters with low political trust (Miller and Listhaug 1990;Bergh 2004;Bélanger and Aarts 2006). Therefore, the literature on aggregate new party success has often identified general political distrust as an important predictor (Harmel and Robertson 1985;Hug 2001;Tavits 2006;Lago and Martínez 2011;Sikk 2011). ...
Why do voters vote for new political parties? This article tests the microfoundations of why voters support new parties. We examine three perspectives: that citizens vote for new parties because the established parties stand distant from the citizens’ left-right position; that they vote for new parties because the existing parties ignore the issues that the citizens prioritize; or that they vote for new parties because the citizens are cynical about established parties in general. Based on an analysis of more than three decades of Dutch Parliamentary Election Surveys, we conclude that all three factors matter but that ideological distance is by far the strongest predictor.
... Previous research generally shows that both protest attitudes and ideological considerations drive the vote for radical populist parties -albeit, depending on the particular country and party, with varying degrees of importance for both determinants (e.g. Bélanger & Aarts, 2006;Oesch, 2008;Ramiro, 2016;Schumacher & Rooduijn, 2013;van der Brug, 2003;van der Brug et al., 2000). How did these determinants play out in the 2019 Belgian elections? ...
Drivers of Support for the Populist Radical Left and Populist Radical Right in Belgium
This study investigates how protest attitudes and ideological considerations affected the 2019 election results in Belgium, and particularly the vote for the radical right-wing populist party Vlaams Belang (VB) and for the radical left-wing populist party Partij van de Arbeid - Parti du Travail de Belgique (PVDA-PTB). Our results confirm that both protest attitudes and ideological considerations play a role to distinguish radical populist voters from mainstream party voters in general. However, when opposed to their second-best choice, we show that particularly protest attitudes matter. Moreover, in comparing radical right- and left-wing populist voters, the article disentangles the respective weight of these drivers on the two ends of the political spectrum. Being able to portray itself as an alternative to mainstream can give these parties an edge among a certain category of voters, albeit this position is also difficult to hold in the long run.
... Surveying the polls and the available data on the electorate of Fortuyn, political scientists were quick to point out that it was wrong to see the LPF as a party mobilizing solely the lower classes. 30 They noted only a minor overrepresentation of the lower educated and lower incomes, leading to the conclusion that the Fortuyn electorate formed a relatively representative reflection of the Dutch population. The logical conclusion was that 'explanations for the success of Fortuyn that focus on the mobilization of a specific sociologically circumscribed group' were not backed up by the survey data. ...
A series of editorials and opinion pieces declared 2016 to be the ‘Year of the Angry Voter’. It is illustrative of the wider resurgence of a particular conception of anger that contains striking parallels to the philosophical concept of ressentiment as elaborated by Friedrich Nietzsche and the German-Jewish philosopher Max Scheler. They defined ressentiment as a form of political anger that does not seek a clear remedy. It is this particular conception of irremediable political discontent that appears to resurface in current discussions on populism and the angry voter. In so doing, the concept of ressentiment seems to have traversed a curious trajectory. Nietzsche and Scheler originally conceived of ressentiment as a critique of the striving towards equality. While at present, the notion of ressentiment is mobilized to explain the rise of right- wing populist movements whose agenda is, in important respects, decidedly inegalitarian. In this chapter, I trace this transformation back to the interwar period and the work of the Dutch essayist Menno ter Braak. With the rise of National Socialism in the 1930s, an important change occurred in the usage of the term ressentiment. German conservatives such as Herman Rauschning mobilized the work of Nietzsche and Scheler to criticize Nazism from the right. In the Netherlands, the leading essayist and literary critic Menno ter Braak took up this new usage of the term in the 1930s, blaming egalitarianism and democracy for the rise of National Socialism. On closer inspection, this shift in the application of the term ‘ressentiment’ from the left to the right is analytically dubious, and that includes current debates about right-wing populism.
... The definition of protest voting in the political science literature is problematic because it does not see protest voting as an outcome variable, but rather a relationship between two variables. Political distrust is used to explain why some citizens vote for protest, new, third, nonmainstream, or populist parties or rather than established parties (Bélanger & Aarts, 2006;Bélanger & Nadeau, 2005;Hetherington, 1999;Hooghe, Marien, & Pauwels, 2011;Miller & Listhaug, 1990). What is actually considered a protest vote within political science depends on which party attracts lowtrust voters and this depends on the party system. ...
Do people signal protest by bringing out a protest vote when they feel they have been collectively disadvantaged? Political scientists have been interested in “protest voting” yet theoretical understanding is limited. Social psychologists have studied other forms of collective protest extensively. The present study integrates insights from the political science approach to protest voting and the social psychological approach to protest behavior to study how a context of perceived collective disadvantage influences voting for protest parties. We conducted a field study with a quasi-experimental design. This allowed us to study effects of a plausibly exogenous variable—the presence versus absence of societal disadvantage (the experience of man-made earthquakes)—on both determinants of and on subsequent protest voting. Results reveal that the presence of earthquakes affects levels of protest voting via (national) trust, regional identification, and perceptions of efficacy.
... Radical right parties, which usually have a strong populist component, however, frequently campaign on an anti-establishment platform that subverts citizens' trust in politics and political elites. Concomitant with that, radical right parties are especially successful in mobilizing and attracting voters that have a low level of trust in politics, politicians and political institutions (Bélanger and Aarts 2006;Söderlund and Kestilä-Kekkonen 2009). ...
Recent literature shows that radical right parties (RRPs) present moderate or blurry economic stances. However, this article argues that this blurriness is restricted to only one of the two main conflicts of contemporary welfare politics, namely on questions centring on welfare generosity. In contrast, when it comes to the goals and principles the welfare state should meet, RRPs take a clear stance favouring consumption policies such as old age pensions over social investment, in accordance with their voters’ preferences. The empirical analysis based on new, fine-grained coding of welfare stances in party manifestos and original data on voters’ perceptions of party stances in seven European countries supports this argument. RRPs de-emphasise how much welfare state they want while consistently and clearly defending the traditional welfare state’s consumptive focus against recalibration proposals. These findings have important implications for party competition and welfare politics.
... A large body of literature has focused on the implications of the 'losers of globalization' thesis at the individual level by looking at the impact of educational and socioeconomic background, anti-immigration attitudes and political trust on radical right voting (e.g. Tillie 2000, 2005;Bélanger and Aarts 2006;Stubager 2010). However, one of the major difficulties of the structural approach, and its empirical tests at the individual-level, is to understand the timing and cross-national variation of radical right support. ...
Support for the radical right has risen in most Western democracies. Globalization and modernization processes are usually seen as the source of this development, reshaping political conflicts and producing new groups of people that feel ‘left behind’. However, few studies test how the relatively common trends in globalization shape the variation in the timing and extent of radical right support across countries. Focusing on the economic dimension of the ‘losers of globalization’ theory, we argue that income inequality is a suitable indicator to measure the extent to which some groups have fallen behind and to capture the fear of decline in material well-being of people not (yet) at the bottom of the income distribution. The relative deterioration in material conditions, we argue further, translates into a lower subjective social status of vulnerable groups who then turn towards the radical right. By cultivating nativism and thus providing non-economic criteria of social status, the radical right becomes more attractive as societies become more unequal. We show evidence for our hypothesis by comparing vote shares for radical right parties in 20 Western democracies between 1980 and 2016. The findings indicate that rising income inequality substantially increases support for the radical right in the long run. In addition, rising inequality translates into lower subjective social status of nontertiary educated men and this process of status decline further contributes to radical right support. Hence, there are both material and non-material linkages between income inequality and radical right support.
The thesis investigates the effects of multiple crises on public attitudes towards European integration. Specifically, it shows how Euroscepticism and populism connect during periods of exogenous shock. The analysis considers two major crises: the Euro-crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. Building on multiple Eurobarometer Surveys delivered between 2009 and 2022 and testing the hypothesis with multiple linear regression analyses, we assess whether increasing Eurosceptic tendencies are correlated with increasing populist attitudes, checking for the influence of external shocks on their relationship. After a detailed literature review, Chapter 1 introduces the research question. In Chapter 2, Euroscepticism is presented within the framework of two major theories of European integration-neofunctionalism and postfunctionalism. Chapter 3 explores the interplay of crisis scenarios and the emergence of populist movements in Europe. Chapter 4 explains how and why Euroscepticism and populism play a significant role in contemporary European politics. Finally, Chapter 5 is dedicated to the empirical analysis of the hypotheses outlined in the introduction and presents the main findings. The current work contributes to the literature regarding the determinants of support for transnational integration and the explanatory power of major theories of European integration. Furthermore, it offers additional evidence regarding the interdependence between Euroscepticism and populism in relation to different crisis shocks: symmetric and asymmetric.
Background: Numerous studies in political psychology have tried to provide a clear demarcation between the profiles of leaders belonging to traditional parties and those belonging to populist parties. Currently, however, the question linked to recognizing the phenomenologically relevant characteristics of the populist leader still appears unsolved.Objective: The present study aims at bringing out the essential peculiarities of populist leaders, using the method of investigation proposed by phenomenological psychopathology.Methods: The research was oriented to apply an epochè aimed at revealing the characteristics of the populist leader from a first-person perspective. The study focused on how the intentionality of consciousness of the populist leader is expressed and on how to explore the way of being-in-the-world of the populist leader through the exploration of existentials, that is, the essential structures that constitute the condition of every experience.Results: By applying the method proposed by phenomenological psychopathology, the results showed that it is possible to bring out a profile of the populist leader. In this regard, the populist leader seems to live in a “manic” temporal dimension, in which there is no space for slow maturation because everything seems to have been lived quickly, hoping a soon reaching new Enlightenment. The space is lived so that the distance between the world of politics and that of the ordinary citizen is reduced. The populist leader seems to outline a scenario in which even the most difficult projects, which would foresee a macro-social change, are within reach. The lived body by the populist leader is characterized by being “on edge”: a dysphoric mood prevails, and the emotional picture is predominantly characterized by feelings of anger and aggression. Finally, alterity is split by the populist leader mainly into two subgroups: one in which the profile of the ordinary citizen is idealized and the other in which all those who should be part of an élite far from safeguarding the interests of the people are denigrated.Conclusions: The present study has highlighted that the method of investigation proposed by phenomenological psychopathology can clarify the fundamental characteristics concerning the style of the populist leader.KeywordsAlterityAntagonistic grouAnti-establishmentBeing-in-the-worldComprehensive methodEliteEpochèExistentialsExplanatory methodIdeologyIntentionality of consciousnessLeaderLeadershipLived bodyLived experienceLived spaceLived timeParty movementsPeoplePersonalistic leadershipPersonality traitsPhenomenological psychopathologyPolitical establishmentPolitical psychologyPopulismPopulist appealPopulist leadersPopulist ideologyPopulist movementsProtest behavior
This chapter discusses the electoral landscape of the Netherlands more generally and Amsterdam in particular. It maps the support for the main political parties in Amsterdam throughout the period 1977–2014, focusing the attention on those parties that represent both old and new class fractions in the city. The analyses indicate that the ethnic, demographic and social changes over three decades also entail a shift in the political landscape of the city. Gentrification is clearly associated with a changing electorate: the city is increasingly middle class and correspondingly becoming a more liberal city. The electoral geographies of Amsterdam demonstrate that spatialized social processes underpin the production of urban politics and power.
Until recently, Spain was one of the few European democracies lacking a populist radical right party. The Andalusian 2018 regional election opened the door of the regional parliament to Vox, a good example of the populist radical right party family: Vox gained a 11% vote share and 12 seats in the regional parliament, supporting a right-wing government in the region (for the first time after 36 years of governments by socialist PSOE). In the national and regional elections that followed the Andalusian 2018 regional one Vox increased its results, gaining access to a number of regional parliaments and to the national one, becoming part of the political landscape and influencing governments formation and political national and regional agendas. This article analyses the electoral support for VOX in that Andalusian 2018 regional election. Of course, that support must be understood as a multifaceted and multidimensional phenomenon due to factors in the micro, meso and macro levels, which explanation is to be found both in the demand, offer and contextual perspectives. The aim of the paper is to tests several theoretical approaches suggested by the comparative literature to explain the vote for the populist radical right parties.
Despite the alleged affinity between populism and conspiracy theories, how they relate on the individual level remains relatively unknown. This study explores the relation between populist attitudes and conspiracy beliefs at the individual level. First, I test whether the conspiracist facets, which directly involve governmental participation, are associated with the dimensions of populist attitudes. Further, I examine the relation of political trust with the dimensions and facets of both constructs as well as their predictive power of the self-reported propensity to vote for a populist party. To test these assumptions, a cross-sectional study was conducted in Germany. Confirmatory factor analyses indicate a strong association between conspiracist facets that directly involve governmental participation and the anti-elitism and sovereignty dimensions of populist attitudes. Findings further show that low political trust is related to all dimensions of populist attitudes–especially anti-elitism–and to the conspiracist facets. Furthermore, the sovereignty dimension of populist attitudes and low political trust predict the propensity to vote for the right-wing populist party AfD. These findings provide new insights to a more nuanced understanding of populism on the individual level and the relation to conspiracy beliefs.
En el contexto local, la participación política (PP) juvenil ha sido limitada a su ámbito representativo, y los jóvenes han sido catalogados como apáticos políticos y desinteresados de su compromiso cívico con la sociedad, sin indagar por otras modalidades de PP. Por ello, desde el modelo psicosocial, se realiza un primer estudio (1) que explora los repertorios de PP, así como sus atribuciones y motivaciones de participación; en caso del segundo estudio, (2) se analiza las relaciones entre las variables socio-cognitivas (Conocimiento Político, Interés en Política y Eficacia Política), actitudinales (Confianza Política y Cinismo Políticos) y emocionales vinculadas a la PP no convencional en una muestra de jóvenes en Lima. En el primer estudio, se realizó 8 entrevistas a jóvenes afiliados a organizaciones civiles, cuyas respuestas fueron analizadas en base al enfoque de análisis temático. En base a los resultados cualitativos, se identifica (1) la concepción de PP, (2) los motivos de PP, y (3) los riesgos y limitantes de la PP. En caso del segundo estudio, participaron 132 jóvenes en Lima a través de encuestas online; posteriormente, realizó se realizaron análisis correlacionales, de regresión múltiple y path analysis. En base a los resultados, se identifican dos modalidades de PP: contenciosas y de expresión cívica, y se evidencia un modelo explicativo para la PP de expresión cívica, en el cual el Cinismo Político, la Eficacia Política y el Interés en Política tiene efecto sobre la PP. Se discute la importancia de los resultados para explicar el involucramiento de los jóvenes limeños en la política.
We utilize the literature on social pacts to argue that governments can reduce manual worker support for the radical right by engaging in an inclusive process of decision-making with unions. Our analysis examines 11 Western European countries between 1999 and 2017 and employs a Heckman selection model. We find that when left or mainstream right governments complete social pact agreements, manual workers become less likely to support radical right-wing parties (RRPs); but when such governments fail to convert social pact proposals into social pact agreements, manual workers become more likely to support RRPs. We also find that social pact agreements have a greater effect on manual worker support for the radical right when they occur under mainstream right governments, but that failed social pact proposals have a greater effect on manual worker support for the radical right when they occur under left governments; and that the social pact formation process matters more for the RRP support of manual workers who belong to a union than those who do not. Our results suggest that manual worker support for the radical right is not only a function of issue voting or socioeconomic and policy outcomes, but also features of the policymaking process.
Populist parties foment discontent with the establishment. Previous studies explored whether sentiments of discontent and protest can predict populist voting. In this paper, we argue that past electoral protest in a community, rather than merely a sense of discontent, is a good predictor of new populist lists and their electoral support. We explore this connection using blank voting, a measure that allows a systematic and unbiased evaluation of protest at the municipal level. We first test our theory on the Italian Five Star Movement (M5S). Controlling for economic and demographic variables, we demonstrate that in municipalities with high blank vote in previous elections, the probability of new M5S lists and M5S vote share were higher. Testing the generalizability of our theory using cross-national populism data, we show that past protest in the form of blank/null voting is a strong predictor of the level of populist rhetoric in a political system.
The recent strengthening of right‐wing and far‐right populism is one of the greatest political manifestations of our times and a dominant feature of the current European political landscape. In Greece, its rise coincided with a period of a prolonged financial aid programme (‘bailouts’) imposing harsh austerity measures and deep structural reforms. The objective of this study is to assess the extent to which the spatially differentiated gains of Golden Dawn, one of the most anti‐establishment, anti‐migrant and anti‐EU political parties in Europe, were due to (socio)economic or cultural changes (or both) that took place in the country in recent years. The findings provide evidence in favour of the combined role of (socio)economic and cultural grievances; however, the former seem to be more important than the latter.
European democracies have experienced drastic changes in electoral competition. Voter support for insider parties that have traditionally governed has declined while support for radical and populist parties has increased. Simultaneously, citizens’ declining political trust has become a concern, as confidence in political institutions and actors is low across numerous countries. Interestingly, the linkage between political trust and support for insider parties has not been empirically established but deduced from the fact that outsider parties are often supported by dissatisfied citizens. We address this gap adopting both an institutional- and an actor-centered approach by investigating whether trust in parliaments and in parties is associated with the electoral performance of insider parties on the aggregate level. Combining different data sources in a novel way, we apply time-series cross-section models to a dataset containing 30 countries and 137 elections from 1998 to 2018. Our results show that when political trust is low, particularly institutional trust, insider parties receive less electoral support. Hence, we provide empirical evidence that decreasing levels of political trust are the downfall of insider parties, thereby opening a window of opportunity for challenging outsider parties.
Within the framework of the current democratic crisis, the electoral success of the so-called anti-establishment parties has been repeatedly and often associated with protest voting. Several scholars have tried to deal with this topic in the past, focusing particularly on the psychological dimension of the matter, i.e. on whether individual support for these actors was actually characterised by protest motivations. Yet, in so doing, they have almost completely overlooked the issue of how protest actually contributes to the electoral performance of apparent protest actors. The aim of this paper is precisely to fill this gap. Indeed, by looking at three Southern European countries (i.e. Greece, Italy and Spain), it aims to test the common-sense hypothesis that a higher strength of protest motivations in voters’ minds implies an increasing success of anti-establishment parties at the electoral level. Methodologically, this is accomplished by a series of counterfactual regression models on data from the 2014 European Election Voter Study (EES).
This contribution examines voter turnout among individuals dissatisfied with democracy. Specifically, we ask under which conditions dissatisfied citizens make use of their right to vote, and how this manifests itself in their voter preference. The results of our analysis of 21 European countries identify party affiliation as the most important determinant for the decision of dissatisfied individuals to participate in elections altogether. In general, a majority of displeased individuals does participate in elections, and hence do not express their alienation by abstaining from voting. However, we do not find any evidence that dissatisfied voters primarily vote for protest parties. Only when a protest party has already reached a respectable size are dissatisfied voters more likely to affiliate with them than with a classical opposition party – however, not significantly more likely than dissatisfied individuals with an affiliation to a government party. Our results thus support the conclusion that voter turnout of dissatisfied voters does not lead to the destabilization of the political system.
To explain the impact of the new politics of Fortuyn and his party LPF on Dutch politics, we have analysed the election programmes 1998 and 2002. The positions of parties are measured by the confrontational approach. Dutch politics in 1998 was a depoliticized democracy, which we have modelled by a three-dimensional ideological triangle. This triangle is based on the division between the three main ideologies of the three-party families, the socialists, the liberals and the Christians. Fortuyn dominated the political agenda of the election of 2002 with his criticism on the purple coalition. His new politics was focused on economic and multicultural issues. We have used these issues for the construction of a two-dimensional space of competition 2002. The model of 2002 helps to explain the ideological positions of the parties and the advent of a centrifugal democracy.Acta Politica (2003) 38, 2349. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ap.5500002
Americans often complain about the current operation of their government, but scholars have never developed a complete picture of people's preferred type of government. In this provocative and timely book, John Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse, employing an original national survey and focus groups, report the specific governmental procedures Americans desire. Their results are surprising. Contrary to the prevailing view that people want greater involvement in politics, most citizens do not care about most policies and therefore are content to turn over decision-making authority to someone else. People's most intense desire for the political system is that decision makers be empathetic and, especially, non-self-interested, not that they be responsive and accountable to the people's largely nonexistent policy preferences or, even worse, that the people be obligated to participate directly in decision making. In light of these findings, Hibbing and Theiss-Morse conclude by cautioning communitarians, direct democrats, social capitalists, deliberation theorists, and all those who think that greater citizen involvement is the solution to society's problems.
The results of a survey conducted after the second round of the 1988 presidential election stress the inadequacy of the classical models of voting behaviour, as far as the Le Pen vote is concerned. The majority of lepenist electors identify themselves neither with the National Front, nor with the extreme-Right; they show no electoral stability, no strong sociological specificity. Less educated than the average, they do not correspond to the profile of the rational voter. With the exception of a small hardcore of regular voters, politicized, extremist and dedicated to the National Front, Le Pen supporters are protest voters that come and go.
Voter distrust of the national government is an ongoing theoretical concern for scholars who study voting behavior in the United States. Previous research demonstrates that distrustful voters are less likely to vote for major party candidates than their more trusting counterparts. Using the American National Election Survey, we explore the relationship between citizen distrust and voting for three major third-party challengers (Wallace, Anderson, and Perot) and the use of trust levels as predictors of third- party voting. We find citizen trust levels are significant and strong predictors of third-party voting, independent of other common explanatory variables of vote choice. We also find trust levels are stable over time, and we find little evidence to support the argument that trust levels measure trust of incumbent political figures.
In this article we address the question whether or not the votes for anti-immigrant parties can be considered as protest votes. We define protest votes by the motives underlying electoral choices, building on earlier research done by Tillie (1995) and Van der Eijk & Franklin (1996). That research showed that ideological proximity and party size are the best predictors of party preference. On this basis we designed a typology of motives for party choice and how these motives would manifest themselves empirically. Analyzing the 1994 elections for the European Parliament for seven political systems we show that anti-immigrant parties attract no more protest votes than other parties do, with only one exception: the Dutch Centrumdemocraten. Voting for anti-immigrant parties is largely motivated by ideological and pragmatic considerations, just like voting for other parties. In addition, (negative) attitudes towards immigrants have a stronger effect on preferences for anti-immigrant parties than on preference for other parties. Social cleavages and attitudes towards European unification are of minor importance as determinants of preferences for anti-immigrant parties. The overall conclusion is that a rational choice model of electoral behavior has strong explanatory power for party preferences in general, but also for the support for anti-immigrant parties in particular.
This article looks to build a motivation profile for extreme right voters of the Vlaams Blok in the 1995 general election. Voters' subjective motivations are studied using an open-ended question from the Belgian–Flemish public broadcaster (VRT) exit-poll. After a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of using open as opposed to closed questions, the different motives are classified on a functional basis according to existing theoretical voting behaviour models. HICLAS, a hierarchical classes analysis method for binary objects (parties) by features (motives) data, is used to create a subjective cognitive and affective map of the extreme right Vlaams Blok (VB) voters. The research strategy reveals the existence of motives to support the VB that have previously been mentioned only rarely (if at all). The results also lead us to re-evaluate the relative importance of the different motivations for vote choice (e.g. Flemish nationalism and communitarian issues, crime and law and order, political scandals, …). Furthermore, the results make it clear that traditional social groups do not see the VB as the party representing their interests. The reasons why voters support the VB are to a large extent different from the reasons that the VB leadership claims that they support it; the VB vote is not solely a question of economic self-interest or fear (of crime and migrants). This has important consequences for solutions designed to “manage” these issues, given the rejections of party politics and the anti-political attitude of the extreme right voter.
In this article we study Front National voting behaviour from a micro and macro perspective, by taking into account individual and contextual characteristics simultaneously. We test ve theories that offer explanations as to why certain social categories, such as e.g. lowly educated people, people with a low income or younger people, are more likely to vote for the Front National. An unfavourable out-group attitude, an authoritarian attitude and a nonconformist attitude turn out to be unique for the Front National electorate, whereas identication with France and political dissatisfaction can be found among other electorates to the same extent. Between regions, large variance exists in Front National support which is explained partly by the number of immigrants present, but only indirectly by the unemployment level.
Scholars have consistently demonstrated that no link exists between declining political trust and declining turnout, but they have paid less attention to the effect of trust on vote choice. In an era characterized by declining trust, the incumbent party has lost, and third parties have strongly contested, four of the last eight presidential elections. Such outcomes are historically anomalous. This study demonstrates that declining political trust affects vote choice, but the electoral beneficiary differs according to electoral context. In two-candidate races, politically distrustful voters support candidates from the nonincumbent major party. In races with three viable candidates, third-party alternatives benefit from declining political trust at the expense of both major parties.
This paper argues that all measurement is theory testing. Therefore, measurement always constitutes a tentative statement about the nature of reality. Some general implications of this perspective are discussed. Alternating Least Squares, Optimal Scaling (ALSOS) is then presented as a general strategy for obtaining empirical information about the measurement properties that exist within a given data set. The great advantage of this approach is that characteristics such as the levels of measurement associated with particular variables are viewed as testable hypotheses rather than a priori assumptions. An ALSOS regression analysis is performed on data from the CPS 1992 National Election Study. The results show that several variables which are usually interpreted as "pseudo-interval" measures actually only provide ordinal-level information. More generally, levels of measurement are important because they affect the degree of ambiguity in researchers' interpretations of variability in empirical data.
The ability to collect and analyze large amounts of data is a growing problem
within the scientific community. The growing gap between data and users calls
for innovative tools that address the challenges faced by big data volume,
velocity and variety. One of the main challenges associated with big data
variety is automatically understanding the underlying structures and patterns
of the data. Such an understanding is required as a pre-requisite to the
application of advanced analytics to the data. Further, big data sets often
contain anomalies and errors that are difficult to know a priori. Current
approaches to understanding data structure are drawn from the traditional
database ontology design. These approaches are effective, but often require too
much human involvement to be effective for the volume, velocity and variety of
data encountered by big data systems. Dimensional Data Analysis (DDA) is a
proposed technique that allows big data analysts to quickly understand the
overall structure of a big dataset, determine anomalies. DDA exploits
structures that exist in a wide class of data to quickly determine the nature
of the data and its statical anomalies. DDA leverages existing schemas that are
employed in big data databases today. This paper presents DDA, applies it to a
number of data sets, and measures its performance. The overhead of DDA is low
and can be applied to existing big data systems without greatly impacting their
computing requirements.
In this contribution I respond Van der Zwan's critique of my study (Van der Brug 2003). I clarify the theoretical underpinning of my study and how it relates to my previous co-authored work. Then I evaluate the empirical evidence presented by Van der Zwan. I conclude that Van der Zwan's critique is unfounded because it misrepresents the disputed article, as well as much of my previous work.Acta Politica (2004) 39, 84–91. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ap.5500055
With the growing levels of political distrust witnessed in the 1960s and 1970s came two distinct and competitive hypotheses attempting to explain this political disillusionment. Miller (1974a, 1974b) argued that distrust resulted from poor performance of the political system as evidenced by policy failures, and Citrin (1974) argued that political distrust as measured by the Center for Political Studies was the result of disapproval of incumbent political officials and was not in any way due to systemic considerations. In this paper an institutional explanation of low levels of political trust is offered that accounts for the high correlation between trust and incumbent approval. The general evaluation of political institutions influences one's trust in the political system and also one's predisposition to approve of an incumbent.
There are a variety of explanations for diminished levels of popular support for American government, institutions, and leaders evident since the Watergate era. Prominent theories focus on the changing nature of us political culture or perceptions of economic conditions. A plausible alternative explanation is that citizens feel inadequately represented by agents of government, and that the linkages facilitating representation no longer function effectively. Although the role of political parties often is portrayed as declining, parties still have the potential to be meaningful conduits for citizen representation. The article examines explanations for public support or alienation from various dimensions of the political system, focusing on citizens' orien tations toward political parties. In general, it finds a strong connection between citizens' partisanship and feelings about political parties and their support for the political regime and democratic processes.
The effect of antiparty sentiment on voting behavior is examined comparatively using recent individual-level electoral survey data from Canada, Britain, and Australia. The author distinguishes two dimensions of antipartyism: the rejection of traditional major-party alternatives (specific antiparty sentiment) and of political parties per se (generalized antiparty sentiment). He argues that disaffected voters in these countries are attracted to third or minor parties and support them to voice antiparty sentiments. The results show that in general, third parties benefit from specific antiparty sentiment at the mass level. The rejection of party politics per se, in contrast, brings citizens to abstain, unless some third parties—antiparty parties such as the Reform Party in Canada and One Nation in Australia—electorally mobilize generalized antiparty feelings. The results also indicate that compulsory voting in Australia affects disaffected voters’ behavior; in particular, those who reject all party alternatives would be more likely to abstain if they had the choice.
The Netherlands represents the prototypic case of a consociational democracy; in addition, the Dutch system has an extremely low threshold for obtaining representation in the legislature, making it open to challengers of any political persuasion. This article has two explicit goals: to compare two models of issue-based party choice, the directional and proximity models; and to understand the changing nature of electoral competition in the Netherlands. The article's analytic focus is the elections of 1971, 1986, and 1994. These elections, the only ones for which appropriate data are available for testing the issue theories, represent important points in the historical sequence. Tests of the alternate issue voting models generally favor directional over proximity theory. The broader analysis suggests substantial change in Dutch politics, away from the tight structuring of subcultural allegiances to a more politically homogeneous culture in which party strength appears rather fluid.
Recent scholarship on American voting behavior contends that political cynicism prompts citizens to support a third party candidate. I maintain this research fails to consider an alternative direction of causality between political trust and third party support. Using an exogenous measure of political trust, one uncontaminated by candidate preference, analysis demonstrates that political cynicism is shaped by preference for an American third party rather than being causally prior to that preference. Students of American electoral behavior must consider the possibility that major third party candidacies shape supporters' political orientations and concerns in much the same manner as the major political parties do.
Voting decisions are influenced by electoral systems, particularly when voters are dissatisfied. Plurality rule electoral systems tend to restrict the number of effective parties. As a consequence, people may often vote for a party not because of its attraction but because of a lack of a genuinely preferred alternative - to wit, protest voting. Similarly people will often confront specific choices between abstaining and an unsatisfactory vote in plurality-rule electoral systems. The purpose of this article is to explore the logic of protest voting and abstaining by employing a public choice approach. Adapting Hirshman's approach for voting behaviour, this article focuses on the variable `quality' provided by political parties, i.e. the quality-satisficing approach. This approach allows us to frame a comprehensive explanation of the choices between protest voting and abstention, which in existing often seem discrete or unrelated.
The 2002 parliamentary election in the Netherlands will always be associated with the name of Pim Fortuyn. His murder only nine days before the election was the first political assassination in the Netherlands in more than 300 years. The sudden success of the new party he had founded, coupled with the major losses for the Labour and Liberal parties, made this an historic election. This article attempts to understand the motivations of the voters at this election, in particular the voters of the List Pim Fortuyn (LPF). It is first shown that the conventional wisdom, which assumes voting based on religion and social class, and voting along ideological issue lines, has lost its ability to explain voter behaviour in the Netherlands. An explanation based on retrospective economic voting is also rejected. The success of the LPF is accounted for by the popularity of Fortuyn and his appeal among those who had cynical attitudes towards government or who were dissatisfied with the performance of the incumbent government. The popularity of Fortuyn is shown to have been related to political issues, in particular those relating to asylum seekers and the integration of foreigners in the country.
In this article, three models to explain the LPF vote are tested; the socio-structural model, the protest vote model, and the policy voting model. Popular explanations of the success of the LPF in 2002 consist of mixtures of the socio-structural and the protest vote model. Votes for the LPF are described as protest votes, mainly from low-educated angry white men, who are sociologically expected to feel mostly attracted to the simple populist message of a charismatic politician. The results from this study show, however, that these explanations are not valid. LPF voters hardly fit the sociological profile proposed in this literature. Moreover, general feelings of discontent towards parties and politicians (political cynicism and lack of political efficacy) did not affect the LPF vote. Instead, the effect was the other way around: preferences for the LPF fuelled political cynicism, and reduced political efficacy. This study provides firm support for the policy voting model. In 2002, LPF voters evaluated the LPF on the basis of its policies, mainly its fierce position on refugees. So, votes for the LPF were based on the same kind of reasoning that voters for other parties make: voters vote for the party they agree with the most on those issues they consider important. In conclusion, implications of these findings are discussed for (1) theories of voters for right-wing populist parties in general, (2) explanations of LPF support in particular, and (3) the strategies employed to treat such parties (accommodation versus the cordon sanitair).Acta Politica (2003) 38, 89106. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ap.5500005
A commonly heard explanation of the results of the May 2002 parliamentary election is that the vote changes occurred because of a shift to the right within the electorate. Previously published results are summarized here to show that this hypothesis must be rejected. Instead, a second hypothesis is formulated which explains the vote shifts in terms of the new calculations that voters were forced to make when a new, credible party entered the electoral marketplace. The analysis here presents empirical support for this hypothesis by demonstrating that voters were aware of the positions taken by the List Pim Fortuyn (LPF), especially on those issues that Pim Fortuyn had placed at the forefront of the political agenda. Voters clearly saw the LPF as a party of the right on these issues. The positions that are perceived to have been taken by the electorate in the eyes of the voter are as important as the positions taken by the voters themselves in understanding the May 2002 results.Acta Politica (2003) 38, 6987. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ap.5500004
In this paper, some main lines of a turbulent political year will be sketched. In the autumn of 2001, the coming campaign was expected to be dominated by the contest between the two main governmental parties, the PvdA (labour) and the VVD (liberals). The political arrival of Fortuyn prevented this scenario to become true. Under the leadership of Fortuyn, the anti-establishment party Liveable Netherlands (LN) that started as a leftist populist developed into a rightist populist party. Fortuyn dominated the 2002 campaign and forced other parties to focus on his campaign themes. The success of Fortuyn's party seems to be in particular attributable to his viewpoints concerning asylum seekers and criminality. Balkenende and his party, the CDA, are the winners of the confusion caused by the arrival and the murder on Fortuyn. The elections of January 2003, after the quick collapse of the new cabinet Balkenende, did not bring about the desired majority in parliament for the CDA and the VVD. The CDA remained the largest party, but it was above all the PvdA, under the new leadership of Bos, which profited by the increasing priority that voters gave to social economic issues.Acta Politica (2003) 38, 522. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ap.5500003
It has been said about the United States that it is now suffering ‘a crisis of regime’. Europe, we have been told, is in little better condition: ‘all over Europe the First World War broke up the structure of society which, before 1914, had provided the necessary basis of confidence between government and governed. There no longer exists, except in a few places such as Switzerland, that general acceptance of the conduct of national affairs that adds to the vigor of government and society alike.’ ¹ These are the kinds of practical political problems to which the concept of political support, as found in systems analysis, has been directed.
The shock 2002 general election result in the Netherlands has provided a wake-up call to those who believed it would withstand the Europe-wide rise of the far right more successfully than others. This article firstly investigates why Lijst Pim Fortuyn performed so well, and suggests that its popularity owes more to its anti-establishment stance than its xenophobic outlook. The second half of the article links the upheavals to normative deficiencies in the ‘third way’ framework, and concludes that a more distinctive left-of-centre agenda needs to be formulated, both in itself and in relation to containing the far right.
While the causes of declining political trust have been investigated extensively in the literature, much less empirical effort has been devoted to the study of its behavioural implications. This article focuses on the decline of trust in Canada during the period 1984 to 1993, and on its effect on Canadian voting behaviour. We build upon M.J. Hetherington's (‘The effect of political trust on the presidential vote, 1968–1996’, American Political Science Review 93 (1999): 311–326) work to explore the impact of political trust on the vote and on abstention in a multiparty electoral context. Multinomial logit estimations are performed using individual-level survey data from three Canadian federal elections. While distrust is shown to significantly affect electoral participation, thus acting as an alienating factor, the results indicate that decreasing trust acts more as a motivation to support third-party alternatives. The study further demonstrates that, in a multiple party setting, ‘old-line’ major parties electorally suffer from declining political trust, but some third parties benefit more from this phenomenon than others. Contrary to what was the case in the previous two elections, distrustful individuals in 1993 were more likely to vote for the Reform Party or the Bloc Québécois than support the New Democratic Party.
The Extreme Right in the Netherlands has always been relatively weak; there was neither a strong ideological right-wing tradition nor a solid social base. Moreover, the Extreme Right has always been fragmented and divided. Historically, three varieties can be distinguished: theocratic Protestantism (‘Very Old Right’), neo-fascism or national socialism (‘Old Right’) and ethnocentric nationalism (‘New Right’). The third variety, since 1984 represented by the Centre Democrats, has gained some ground in recent years. Though reliable data are still scarce, it seems plausible that the party has attracted not only ideologically motivated extremists but also ‘protest voters’, mainly in older urban working class areas.
In this article we set out to improve our knowledge onvoting for extreme right-wing parties, i.e. the Republikaner, by taking into account social,political and contextual characteristics. We test fourtheories that provide explanations as to why certainsocial categories are more likely to vote for the Republikaner. The hypotheses are tested withmultilevel analyses, with data from a national sample(N = 4688). Multinomial analyses provide additionalinformation on how theoretically derived politicalattitudes effect voting behaviour.
Comparable survey data from Norway, Sweden and the United States are used to examine trends in political trust for the period 1964-86. During the early part of that period trust declined in all three countries; later it recovered for Norway but continued to plummet in Sweden and the United States. Three major features of the party system are hypothesized to explain the difference in these trends for the three countries. These features are: the structural aspects of the party system; the public's cognitive judgements of the parties as representatives of the policy interests; and the possibility that a negative rejection of political parties as undesirable institutions may spill over to citizen evaluations of government more generally. One major finding is that political discontent in Norway was reduced because new parties provided the disaffected with a means of representation, thus channelling dissatisfaction back into the electoral arena. In Sweden and the United States, which have more rigid party systems, accumulating dissatisfaction was directed at the regime more generally because many people failed to see any of the parties as a viable alternative.
Voting for the LPF: some clarifications', Acta Politica 39Anti-immigrant parties in Europe: ideological or protest vote?
- W W Van Der Brug
- M Fennema
- J Tillie
van der Brug, W. (2004) 'Voting for the LPF: some clarifications', Acta Politica 39: 84–91.
van der Brug, W., Fennema, M. and Tillie, J. (2000) 'Anti-immigrant parties in Europe: ideological
or protest vote?' European Journal of Political Research 37: 77–102.
Fragments from the pillars: small parties in the Netherlands
- P Lucardie
Lucardie, P. (1991) 'Fragments from the pillars: small parties in the Netherlands', in F. Mu¨ller-Rommel and G. Pridham (eds.) Small Parties in Western Europe: Comparative and National
Perspectives, London: Sage, pp. 115-134.