The effect of extreme right-wing parties on the politics of established democracies

There is a widespread concern that the electoral growth of the extreme right-wing parties (ERPs) may seriously disrupt democratic politics and policy-making in their countries. The major sources of concern are the ERPs' authoritarian and exclusionist policy advocacy and their open grievance about the existing democratic institutions. My dissertation investigates the urgency of this concern by focusing on the possible means by which the ERPs can affect liberal democracy. I refocus attention from ERPs to all other parties and raise the following question: 'Have the established parties protected democracy against right-wing extremism?' I answer this question indirectly, narrowing down the research to this specific question: 'Have mainstream parties begun to resemble ERPs by embracing and absorbing authoritarian and exclusionist demands?'; I first emphasize the potential threats of the ERPs on two democratic principles: universal equality and individual freedom. I argue that these parties' policy solutions contradict both principles. I then define the historical meanings of the left and right and locate the ideology of the extreme right in a historical context. After laying these foundation stones, my research develops in three further steps. First, I look at the growth in the ERPs' vote-share in order to investigate the extent to which their 'electoral breakthrough' has given them political clout. I find ERP electoral success is not generalizable across all established democracies. Second, I explore their vote-share potential by examining the individual determinants of ERP-voting, with particular attention to how close voters are to ERPs ideologically and to voters' sense of using their ballots as statements of anti-system protest and general dissatisfaction with existing democratic institutions. I find that ERP-voting is primarily an ideological phenomenon. In particular, possessing a right-wing ideology (being on the right) is much more strongly determinative of ERP vote support than feelings of dissatisfaction. On this evidence, given the ideological distribution of voters, I have no basis for predicting significant further-growth in the ERPs' vote-share in a near future.; Finally, I turn to an investigation of a more subtle influence of the ERPs on democratic politics by asking whether the absence of vote support in many countries is a consequence of the established parties having occupied ERPs' policy space. I define two types of rightward movement. Preemption is the case in which a mainstream party moves rightwards before an electorally viable ERP arrives on the scene. Accommodation takes place after an ERP receives a significant electoral success. I use the data provided by the Comparative Manifesto Project to observe preemptive and accommodative movements in nineteen post-war democracies. The empirical results demonstrate that several established parties have indeed moved rightwards in the last thirty years. Therefore, I conclude that the real threat to democracy has come from the established parties rather than ERPs themselves.