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What explains the success of radical right parties in some European countries and not others? Sound like a trendy topic? Well... it is! @TerriGivens was an early voice in this debate, & this week we read her investigation in "Voting Radial Right In Western Europe" (2005) (1/7)
Givens has to set the stage for her argument given the prominence of the established lit at the time. Sure, unemployment and immigration likely played a role but why the variation in radical right (RR) party success in a region equally affected by such structural changes? (2/7)
Could RR be attracting different types of voters in different countries? Givens actually demonstrates remarkable similarity in RR voter profile across cases, without much change over the 1980s & 1990s: young, male, blue-collar, with lower ed levels (sound familiar?). (3/7)
Instead, Givens turns our attention to electoral rules & institutions that vary in extent to which they incentivize strategic voting. Where strategic voting is incentivized, RR parties are less likely to succeed; they flourish where strategic voting doesn't. (4/7)
This isn't just about majoritarian vs. PR; it is also about the degree to which mainstream parties coordinate & signal this coordination to the voter. Add to that the factionalism that characterized some RR parties + electoral threshold rules. (5/7)
Givens tests the argument in France, Germany, Austria, & Denmark, with clever tests of where & when we might expect to see strategic voting. My favorite part is the strange 1986 election in France, where the rules were changed to PR & the FN vote shot up from 0.3% to 9.6%. (6/7)
This was Duverger + Cox in action for the radical right! The book is so important to today's discussions about the rise of the extreme right, a must-read for anyone trying to understand this trend as well as how institutions shape both party & voter behavior in democracies. (7/7)
