The Rise Of European Radical Right Parties And Its Influence

Recently, European radical right parties have developed rapidly and grabbed a number of seats in both national elections and European Parliament Election in 2014. With the economic globalization and representative democracy crisis, the lower-class people have been forced to marginalization, in terms of economic, political and cultural aspects. Radical right parties strategically cater to working-class people’s concerns and soon attract large quantities of votes. United Kingdom Independence Party (Ukip) is one of those typical radical right parties. With the fragmentation of British politics, the vote share of the two major parties, Conservative and Labour, has dwindled constantly. The rise of Ukip then will exert profound impacts on British Two Party System. From the perspective of 2015 British General Election, although Ukip only got one seat in Westminster, it won 3.8 million votes and 13 per cent of vote share. This means Ukip has transformed from a single-issue party to an enduring mainstream political power. Who backs Ukip? What are true drivers of Ukip’s support? To what extent has Ukip influenced the Conservative and Labour? These are the research questions this dissertation will mainly focus on.This dissertation will be divided into four sections. The first part will analyze how Two Party system erodes, which leaves political space for Ukip. Then examine the election results of Ukip in terms of European Parliament Elections in 2009 and 2014 and General Elections in 2010 and 2015.The results indicate that Ukip has grown from a marginalized party to an influential force in British political agenda.The second section will investigate the features of Ukip supporters. It can be seen that the base of public support for Ukip can be considered as duplex. The first part concerns with traditional right-wing Conservative voters. It is Cameron’s "liberal Conservatism" that brings Conservative to the middle ground, which irritates some traditional right-wing Conservative voters and forces them to join Ukip. The second source of support is about "left-behind" working class group. The transformation of social and economic structure and social values will widen class cleavage in Britain. The "left-behinders" are those who are old, white blue-collar workers, with little education and few skills. The main motives for their support lie in Euroscepticism, hostility towards immigration, distrust in mainstream parties and a pessimistic outlook on life.The third part will analyze "Ukip’s single-issue party" label, which links closely with its founding principle-Euroscepticism. How Ukip has shed its single-issue party label and mobilized its voters’ support.The final section will concentrate on how Ukip has affected Conservative and Labour, in terms of not only election results, but also the construction of their policy structuring. However, according general election performance, Ukip’s future might not be as bright as it seems, in that it still faces dilemmas, such as evenly spread of its votes and latent internal division.