Anti-System Parties

From Parliamentary Breakthrough to Government

Mattia Zulianello

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429749193
• Subtopic: Political Ideologies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book adopts an innovative conceptualization and analytical framework to the study of anti-system parties, and represents the first monograph ever published on the topic. It features empirical research using original data and combining large-N QCA analyses with a wide range of in-depth case studies from 18 Western European countries. The book adopts a party-centric approach to the study of anti-system formations by focusing on the major turning points faced by such actors after their initial success: long-term electoral sustainability, the different modalities of integration at the systemic level and the electoral impact of transition to government. The author examines in particular the interplay between crucial elements of the internal supply-side of anti-system parties such as their organizational and ideological features, and the political opportunity structure. Anti-System Parties is a major contribution to the literature on populism, anti-establishment parties and comparative political parties.

1 Introduction

It is an extraordinary paradox that the social sciences should be ever more prompted to explain politics by going beyond politics.

(Sartori 1990 [1968]: 182)

Introduction

Over recent decades, Western European party systems have increasingly been put under pressure by the growing relevance of political parties that question decisive elements of the status quo and challenge the established patterns of party competition. The spectacular breakthroughs of such parties have become frequent since the end of the so-called ‘golden age’ of party system stability (Lipset & Rokkan, 1967), as historically highlighted by the rise of formations such as the Danish Progress Party (Fremskridtspartiet, FrPd) in the 1970s, the German Greens (Die Grünen/Grüne) in the 1980s, the Swedish New Democracy (Ny Demokrati, NyD) in the 1990s, and the Dutch List Pim Fortuyn (Lijst Pim Fortuyn, LPF) at the beginning of the new millennium. Such a long-term trend was further catalysed by the outbreak of the Great Recession in 2009, which opened an unprecedented phase of party system instability and registered the emergence of a variety of new antagonistic actors such as the Five Star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle, M5S) in Italy, Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD), Podemos in Spain, and the Pirate Party (Píratar, PIR) in Iceland.

The conceptual and empirical challenges posed by the rise of such parties have been tackled by scholars through two principal perspectives. On the one hand, an impressive amount of research has been conducted following the so-called party family approach (Mair & Mudde, 1998; von Beyme, 1985) by focusing on populist (e.g. Mudde, 2007, 2010; Taggart, 1995; van Kessel, 2015), radical left (e.g. March, 2011; March & Rommerskirchen, 2015; March & Mudde, 2005), ethno-regionalist (e.g. De Winter & Cachafeiro, 2002; De Winter & Türsan, 1998; Tronconi, 2009), pirate (e.g. Cammaerts, 2015; Zulianello, 2018b), and green parties (e.g. Müller-Rommel, 1989, Poguntke, 1987; van Haute, 2016). On the other hand, especially more recently, scholars have increasingly attempted to tackle the phenomenon by going beyond the boundaries of the party family approach with the goal of identifying a set of defining properties that makes it possible to operate a major distinction between variously defined ‘anti’ parties and more conventional actors. The latter approach has usually adopted a bi-dimensional perspective, by focusing on two sets of properties: certain objective traits (e.g. propaganda, ideology or rhetoric) and some behavioural, or relational, properties (i.e. usually defined in terms of coalition potential). While this bi-dimensional approach has the great merit of putting the spotlight on specific features in order to conceptualize and analyse ‘anti’ formations as a single group, the outcome has been a ‘cottage industry’ of competing ‘anti’ labels referring to such political parties, including but not limited to: ‘a-system’ (von Beyme, 1985), ‘anti-political-establishment’ (Abedi, 2004; Schedler, 1996), ‘anti-party-system’ (Katz, 2011), ‘challenger’ (Hobolt & Tilley, 2016; Mackie, 1995), ‘new oppositions’ (von Beyme, 1987), ‘new protest’ (Taggart, 1996), ‘outsider’ (McDonnell & Newell, 2011), ‘pariah’ (Downs, 2012), ‘protest’ (e.g. Smith, 1989), and ‘structural opposition’ parties (Dewachter, Lismont, & Tegenbos, 1977).

Although the divergence of terminological opinions would not be a big problem in itself, the proliferation of alternative labels has severe implications for empirical research. On the one hand, Babelism is accompanied by the interchangeable use of different terms to refer to very similar phenomena, and this represents an obstacle for the accumulation of knowledge on the topic; on the other, the proliferation of ‘anti’ labels is – more often than not – accompanied by definitional vagueness and, even when clear definitions are provided, they are not equipped to cope with the dynamics of change (for details, see Zulianello 2018a and Chapter 2). These limitations become evident when the issue of reclassification arises.

This book is grounded in the conviction that empirical research should be conducted from solid conceptual foundations, and a considerable effort has been made to achieve, as much as possible, this purpose. After all, re-conceptualization is a necessary step for better empirical, and especially comparative, work, as Max Weber (1949 [1905], pp. 105–106) underlines: ‘The history of the social sciences is and remains a continuous process passing from the attempt to order reality analytically through the construction of concepts.

This book introduces a series of conceptual innovations that are then employed to empirically analyse anti-system parties. However, this book not only represents the first monograph dedicated to anti-system parties, but also introduces new analytical tools to investigate political parties more generally, both at specific points in time and over time.

Conceptual innovations

I often start my academic presentations by stressing that the major reason behind the rejection of Giovanni Sartori’s concept of anti-system party in the literature is based on a misplaced equation between the terms ‘anti-system’ and ‘anti-democratic’, which has no foundation in the Greek etymological roots of the word ‘system’ nor in the original Sartorian formulation (Sartori, 1966, 1976, 1982). However, my academic presentations usually then proceed by underlining the fact that the Sartorian concept of anti-system party itself presents evident limitations in terms of its capacity to set clear definitional boundaries and cope with the dynamics of change, with evident implications for empirical research. I usually emphasize that the relationship between the objective features of a given party, such as its ideology, propaganda, or rhetoric, and its behavioural properties is explored only in an inconsistent way by the classical Sartorian perspective (Sartori, 1966, 1976, 1982), while it is subject to problematic and over-simplistic assumptions in Giovanni Capoccia’s (2002) more recent ‘reassessment’ of anti-system parties. As I shall extensively discuss in Chapter 2, existing approaches to anti-system parties, like the competing ‘anti’ labels grounded on a bi-dimensional perspective, fail to clarify how a political party that enters the coalitional game while remaining substantially different from mainstream moderate actors – especially in terms of its attitudes towards decisive features of the status quo – should be reclassified. This point is highlighted in particular, though not exclusively, by populist parties such as the Austrian Freedom Party (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, FPÖ), the Danish People’s Party (Dansk Folkeparti, DF), and the Northern League (Lega Nord, since 2017 only Lega¹) in Italy, which have become central players in the coalitional game while remaining characterized by ideological radicalism and by the articulation of an antagonistic rhetoric.

This book is based on a revisited conceptualization of anti-system parties, and a clear set of guidelines for its empirical application is provided (Chapter 2). The revisited concept is grounded on an explicitly bi-dimensional perspective, which focuses on the assessment of both the ideological features of a party (the articulation of an ideologically inspired anti-metapolitical opposition) and its functional role in the party system – that is, its very visible interaction streams at the systemic level (the absence of systemic integration). It is important to underline that, although my conceptualization differs from classical approaches to anti-system parties (Capoccia, 2002; Sartori, 1966, 1976, 1982) in decisive respects, it shares with the latter an emphasis on the importance of conceiving the positive term ‘system’ and its negation ‘anti-system’ as ‘neutral’ and ‘relative’. This represents a decisive point to be emphasized because, as previously mentioned, many scholars still treat the terms ‘anti-system’ and ‘anti-democratic’ as synonyms, but this represents a serious misconception based on an inaccurate reading of Sartori’s seminal works (for details, see Chapter 2).

The explicit bi-dimensional structure of my revisited concept plays a decisive role in the construction of a new typology of political parties, making it possible to set clear conceptual boundaries and cope with the dynamics of change. The typology identifies four types of political parties (anti-system, halfway house, complementary, and pro-system) and, in addition to providing the tools for reclassifying anti-system parties if a change in terms of their ideological orientation towards crucial features of the status quo and/or functional role in the party system occurs, it enables the classification of political parties more generally. The revisited conceptualization and the novel typology I develop enable another major conceptual innovation, namely the identification of the modalities of the integration of anti-system parties (for details, see Chapters 2 and 4), thus tackling one of the most elusive points of the Sartorian conceptualization (Ieraci, 1992; Zulianello, 2018a). Positive integration indicates that an anti-system party has evolved into a fully-fledged pro-system party thanks to a substantial moderation of its core ideological concepts and to the achievement of systemic integration. Negative integration can be achieved through direct or indirect paths, and suggests that an anti-system party has evolved into a halfway house party because, despite integration into cooperative interactions at the systemic level, its ideological core remains in contrast with one or more crucial elements of the metapolitical system. Finally, the book also identifies a phenomenon pointing to a reversal of the status of integration: radical disembedding. This represents a process through which a political party that was previously integrated into cooperative interactions deliberately relinquishes systemic integration through substantial ideological radicalization and by the adoption of an isolationist stance in the party system.

A party-centric approach to the study of the anti-system parties: research questions and methods

Existing empirical research treating variously defined ‘anti’ parties as a single group tends to concentrate on the analysis of their aggregate electoral performance (e.g. Abedi, 2004; Hino, 2012; Hobolt & Tilley, 2016). At the same time, whereas the broader large-N comparative literature on political parties has widely employed ‘supply and demand’ analytical frameworks to investigate variations in electoral performance by testing the impact of the institutional environment and societal factors (for an excellent review, see Meguid, 2008), it is only over the last decade that an increasing number of broad comparative analyses have begun to include systematically the two crucial elements of the internal supply-side of politics, namely the organizational and ideological features of political parties themselves (Mudde, 2007), into their explanatory models (e.g. Carter, 2005; Norris, 2011; van Kessel, 2015). Significantly, this constitutes a common practice in the more case-oriented and small-N approaches, and represents a decisive step for comparative scholars to avoid interpreting political parties as being at the mercy of demand-side and/or external supply-side factors that are by definition outside of their own control.

In this book, anti-system parties themselves are at the centre of substantive interest, following a party-centric approach, and the study of such actors does not simply raise the question of their competitive prospects over time, but also involves examining the different patterns of integration into ‘the system’ they oppose, as well as their eventual evolution into governing parties. Indeed, instead of focusing only on a specific moment of the lifespan of anti-system parties, this book adopts a much broader perspective by investigating in detail the decisive turning points faced by anti-system parties following parliamentary entry.

This book thus explores three major research questions, each corresponding to a decisive turning point for anti-system parties:

RQ1) Why are some organizationally new anti-system parties able to achieve electoral sustainability following parliamentary breakthrough, while others fail to do so?

RQ2) What factors explain the different evolutions of anti-system parties in terms of their interaction streams at the systemic level?

RQ3) Why do some parties, transiting from anti-system status to government, suffer considerable electoral losses in the subsequent election, while others perform well at the polls?

As such research questions refer to different turning points; they obviously evoke different ‘universes’ of empirical cases. Accordingly, the case selection for each research question is carried out following a ‘variable-geometry’ principle (64 parties for RQ1; 6 extensive case studies for RQ2; 21 parties for RQ3) in order to ensure both a homogenous analysis as well as the widest analytical breadth to avoid selection bias (Table 1.1).

The three major turning points faced by anti-system parties following the achievement of parliamentary representation are investigated through the adoption of a mixed-methodology combining the two major approaches to causal complexity: qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) and in-depth case studies. Indeed, as Carsten Schneider (2008, p. 57), following Bear Braumoeller (2003), underlines, ‘causal complexity can be understood in different, not necessarily mutually exclusive ways’. One conception of causal complexity focuses on the interaction between different factors over time (Abbott, 2001; Pierson, 2011) and is usually explored through the in-depth analysis of few cases, in particular through process tracing (George & Bennett, 2005). As David Collier (2011, p. 824) underlines, process tracing ‘is an analytic tool for drawing descriptive and causal inferences from diagnostic pieces of evidence – often understood as part of a temporal sequence of events or phenomena. Given the close engagement with cases and the centrality of fine-grained case knowledge, process tracing can make decisive contributions to diverse research objectives’. This conception of causal complexity is adopted to tackle RQ2, as the integration (and possible disembedding) of pol...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 (Re)defining anti-system parties: the statics and dynamics of a revisited concept
• 3 Enduring or fleeting challenges to established parties?
• 4 Changing interaction streams: modalities of integration and disembedding
• 5 Governing between metapolitical and coalitional pressures: electoral asset or liability?
• 6 Epilogue: a new wave of anti-system parties in crisis-ridden Europe
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Appendix C
• Index