The rise of the radical right has presented a challenge to mainstream parties in a number of European countries. As Bartek Pytlas writes, one of the strategies mainstream parties have adopted in several cases has been to co-opt the platforms of radical right parties in the hope of colonising their support. Based on an analysis of Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, he argues that adopting the policies of the radical right can prove counterproductive as it legitimises the underlying narrative used by radical right parties. Mainstream parties can see off this challenge to their electoral support only by simultaneously taking ownership of the broader narrative of the radical right. He notes that this strategy nevertheless poses a challenge for the quality of democratic discourse in Central and Eastern Europe.
In recent years, exclusionary nationalist narratives traditionally limited to Europe’s radical right parties have made their way into public discourse and mainstream party rhetoric in a more or less moderated form. This “pathological normalcy” of competition between radical right and mainstream parties, while not limited to Central and Eastern Europe, is particularly visible in this region.
A prominent case is Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz in Hungary, but similar developments have also taken place elsewhere. In Poland, at least since 2005, the conservative Law and Justice party, which decisively won Poland’s latest election on 25 October 2015, engaged in competition with the radical right LPR and embraced its national-Catholic ideology. In Slovakia between 2006 and 2010, the social-democratic Smer shifted time and again towards exclusionary nationalist stances on ethnic minorities of their then coalition partner, the radical right SNS.
Yet, in spite of this discursive influence, radical right parties in Central and Eastern Europe experience subsequent periods of success and failure at the polls. Viewed from a long-term perspective, their election results vary fairly independently of economic conditions or the state of party system consolidation. In the aforementioned context of “pathological normalcy”, this begs the question of how mainstream party competition influences the electoral fortune of radical right parties.
In a recent book, I analyse this mechanism and extend the analysis from spatial competition over issues towards the hitherto mostly overlooked dimension of narrative contest over the meaning of these issues. As laid out in the seminal work of Bonnie Meguid, mainstream parties can engage in competition with niche actors by choosing an accommodative, adversarial or dismissive strategy towards niche issues. Still, previous studies offer no unanimous answer to the question of the exact electoral effect of each particular approach.
This is evident especially with regard to the most popular strategy of issue accommodation. A frequent argument is that a shift to the right by a mainstream competitor contributes to radical right parties losing support. Yet several cases, including Hungary, Austria and the UK, show that mainstream co-optation also legitimises radical right issues and establishes them in the midst of the democratic discourse, facilitating the success of niche parties. The timing of the shift to the right is often mentioned as a cause of these varying effects. Nonetheless, even late mainstream re-positioning can lead to failure for radical right parties (Poland), whereas early co-optation does not always hamper radical right success (Hungary).
If the result of accommodative strategies is not fixed, what then accounts for their varying effects? I suggest that a shift of spatial positions regarding an issue is not the sole dimension of party competition. Instead, we must look not only at whether, or which radical right issues are accommodated by mainstream parties, but also how they are accommodated, or in regard to which legitimising narratives within an issue does co-optation take place.
Next to spatial shifts, I therefore identify a discursive dimension of party competition that I describe as ‘narrative shifts’: do mainstream parties adopt more restrictive or exclusionary positions on, for example, minority or immigration issues, but remain within their own frame? Or do they also shift towards the underlying radical right frame on this issue? I argue that the influence of an accommodative strategy by mainstream parties on radical right electoral fortunes depends not only on whether mainstream competitors successfully co-opt salient issues central to the radical right, but also on whether they manage to obtain ‘frame ownership’ over important radical right narratives that legitimise these issues.
To account for the interaction between the discursive influence of radical right frames and narrative party competition, I look at key debates on collective identity (nationalising, minority and morality policy) in Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. The results of my analysis (a full account of the methodology is available in the book) suggest that narrative party competition over frames does influence radical right electoral fortunes, all else being equal.
When mainstream parties co-opt issues such as minority rights or immigration that are central to the radical right, it hampers the success of radical right parties if their mainstream competitors not only adopt the issue, but also the underlying narrative of the radical right that legitimises it. In Poland and Slovakia, mainstream parties managed to successfully adopt the resonant narrative of the radical right and thereby also colonised radical right voters. However, where this ‘frame takeover’ fails despite mainstream parties shifting their actual positions to the right, as was the case in Hungary, radical right parties profit from their distinctive approach due to the rising salience of the issue.
Co-opting the approach of the radical right is therefore a double-edged sword for mainstream parties. While in some circumstances it can impede the success of radical right parties, it also influences the broader democratic discourse within a country and legitimises the wider narrative of the radical right. My analysis further suggests that simply ignoring newly emerging narratives is an ineffective approach. Should new salient issues arise, as in the case of Jobbik’s anti-Roma discourse in Hungary, both strategies provide favourable opportunities for niche parties and their narratives to enter a country’s party system.
A better strategy would be to decrease the resonance of radical right narratives by presenting comprehensive, non-exclusionary, pluralist counter-narratives, rather than simply co-opting or ignoring the platform of radical right parties. Admittedly the effectiveness of this approach depends on the extent to which nearby competitors resist the temptation to seek new voters on the far right.
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Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.
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Bartek Pytlas – Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
Bartek Pytlas received his doctoral degree in Comparative Political Science from European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder). He is currently Lecturer at the Geschwister Scholl Institute of Political Science, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
Mr. Pytlas seems to be worried about the quality of democratic discourse in Central and Eastern Europe. That is very noble of him, but his worries about the quality of democratic discourse should start at home.
It was Germany’s Ms. Merkel who disrespecting a series of EU laws invited millions of migrants to come to Germany. She never discussed this with any of the democratically elected leaders of the countries between Germany and Turkey.
After these people arrived, at her personal invitation, she would like to force other European countries to accept these migrants. Again, without any consultation or consensus.
Now She has delivered yet another decree by which the EU and consequently, every EU member state should make illegal migration legal.
What gives Ms. Merkel the right to dream up laws and policies that everybody has to follow? Is this the new European democracy, and those disagreeing with this are the ‘far-right’ ?
This is nothing short of pure dictatorship.
Yeah, I totally agree, you hit the nail right in the head! These extreme Neolib/ Loonie- left people have got a LOT of nerve that they get to determine who is *mainstream* and who is far right or extremist. Of course they very seldom talk about extreme left or or even consider how extremist the Neo- liberal ideology and practice have gotten. For many of those *mainstream* eggheads liked Joe Stalin, the Soviet Communist dictator was THE MAN and they praised him, one of the most brutal, bloody handed tyrant of the 20th Century and even refused to write about the mass murders in the KGB concentration camp system, the GULAG. Whatever they believe in at the moment that’s mainstream, and they are Prophets of POLITICAL CORRECTNESS!
Yes, I totally agree with you. What I find shocking is the scale of hypocrisy, oppression and the attack on the nation states’ sovereignty.
The reason why Merkel is still keep letting in migrants has nothing to do with humanitarianism. I do not think she feels anything toward these people. She is a rational and opportunistic person.
Her reason is purely economic. The unit labour cost of a migrant is lower than a German’s. Cheap labour can help the German companies to remain ‘competitive, in other words, to make more profit. However, by streaming into Germany, but not to other countries, the migrants unwittingly increase the internal economic imbalance in Europe and the single currency area.
This is the reason why Merkel wants to legalise the immigration and she wants to force the mandatory quota system upon every European country by using the rhetoric of solidarity and fairness. In this way the German economy will be able to flourish, but only if other European countries take in the rest of the migrants.
Germany is planning to keep the better educated migrants and ‘shares’ only the rest with the poorer Central and Eastern-Europeans. This process is not going to stop until there will be enough cheap labour in every country.
Ordinary people are not going to benefit from this business, neither the majority of migrants. This is not about their interest, the whole thing is about the elite’s profit.
Next step is going to be the TTIP deal with the USA. We’ll have no say again. Welcome in the democratic EU: you are with us or against us?
What you are suggesting in your conclusion is that a governing centre-right party (Hungary) should use ‘hypocritical’ and ‘manipulative’ social-liberal rhetoric.
Of course, you reached this conclusion because you think that:
‘their election results (far-right parties) vary fairly independently of economic conditions or the state of party system coalitions.’
This is not true to life. The country’s economic condition/state is the most determining factor here. In Hungary the far-right party was founded and became stronger when Ferenc Gyurcsany socialist government bankrupted the country and took the IMF loan by which Hungary lost its independence. Immediately after that, thanks to the greedy US, the recession made the country’s economic problem even worse. Therefore, the far-right became stronger.
The far-right party is still fairly strong in Hungary because the economic recovery is slow. However, I am confident to say when the economy recovers, the far-right party’s power will evaporate or in order to survive the party will change rhetoric as it has happened a few times.
Furthermore, because the liberal free market economy and the spread of social-liberal ‘values’ are responsible for the raise of the far-right in Hungary, I do not think the right cure can be the same.
I can tell you one thing: if the governing center- right coalition in Hungary started using liberal,/ leftist rhetoric they wouldn’t stay in power very long! They people are totally FED UP with the Neoliberal so-called *left,* because when in power they took the nation to the edge of bankruptcy, and they are very unpopular!
As a British Pakistani, I urge the British people to open their doors to millions of deserving refugees from the middle east. Germany can do it, why can’t you? Britain is more indebted because she carried out the supreme crime of invading Iraq that destabilized Syria. Britain appears to be – after Israel and America – the proverbial “pain in the arse” in the way of much needed world peace.