Policy Responses to the Radical Right in France and Germany

Public Actors, Policy Frames, and Decision-Making

Bénédicte Laumond

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367347390
• eBook ISBN: 9781000050530
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Comparative Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Based on research fieldwork conducted in France and Germany, this study seeks to explain how public actors have taken part in the regulation of the expression of right-wing radicalism.

The author compares these two neighbouring countries which have framed the struggle against right-wing radicalism differently. German political and state actors have constructed a public policy responding to political radicalism, whilst in France, the radical right is primarily handled in the political arena. The text evaluates how these two Western European democracies address the paradox of tolerance (i.e. the fact that liberal democracies may restrain rights they value, such as freedom of speech, in order to repress intolerant forces that threaten democracy).

This book is core reading for scholars and students interested in the spread of far-right politics in contemporary democracies.

1 Responding to right-wing radicalism

A policy matter

This book is about reconciling the analysis of responses to the radical right with policy studies. It is about how two liberal democracies, France and Germany, have contended with the paradox of tolerance and how a series of public actors have framed right-wing radicalism and empirically dealt with this phenomenon. This chapter presents the theoretical foundations of the book’s research. The discussion that I present is grounded in the idea that the analysis of public responses to the radical right should be articulated with a policy approach. Therefore, I first examine the existing literature in policy studies contending with responses to right-wing radicalism, especially with regard to France and Germany, and argue that previous literature provides only limited insights into the perceptions of actors and the reasons for which they act the way they do. Accordingly, I then present the comparative research design based on constructivist theoretical underpinnings which address the role of public actors in the elaboration of policies. Subsequently, I provide an explanation as to why I have chosen to refer to the “radical right” and how I articulate right-wing radicalism and right-wing extremism. In addition, I present how this book contributes to the research field on “militant democracy” and finally elaborate on the operationalisation of the research question and expound upon the methodological approach.

Reconciling policy studies and the politics of defending democracy

This book takes a critical approach which assumes that responding to the radical right is not a single process leading to a homogeneous set of measures. I seek to open the black box of the policy process leading to the implementation of measures against the radical right. In order to do so, a Foucauldian influence has accompanied the construction of this research. Foucault argues that

the state is nothing else but the effect … of incessant transactions which modify, or move, or drastically change, or insidiously shift sources of finance, modes of investment, decision-making centres, forms and types of control, relationships between local powers, the central authority, and so on. In short, the state has no heart, as we well know, but not just in the sense that it has no feelings, either good or bad, but it has no heart in the sense that it has no interior. The state is nothing else but the mobile effect of a regime of multiple governmentalities.¹

(Foucault, 2008, p. 77)

This approach advocates for paying attention to practices, knowledge, and decisions in order to identify how the governance of political radicalism is operationalised. The Foucauldian concept of governmentality focuses the attention upon the articulation between power and knowledge, that is, a focus on discovering “which kind of rationality public actors are using” (Foucault, 1980, p. 226). Foucault finally underlines that the focus should not be on the legal order, but rather on the multiple practices of governmentalities that rely on technical procedures, on instruments, and on strategic power relations that are unstable and reversible (Foucault, 1994, p. 584). In short, this book examines the political rationalities organising the power relations (Lascoumes, 2004, p. 5) to regulate political radicalism.

Actors’ perceptions on measures against the radical right

Drawing on these observations, the literature on the reactions to the radical right has questioned the exercise of state power on a political phenomenon. Some have questioned the selective use of the repertoire of instruments. For instance, Hans-Gerd Jaschke (1991) explores how German authorities have implemented measures protecting the constitutional order in Germany (see Chapter 3) and shows that the protection of democracy is closely associated with the idea that political radicalism needs to be handled with an internal security approach. This conveniently prevents political authorities from debating on the opportunity to proscribe movements and on the relevance of introducing other types of measures to address political radicalism (e.g. preventive measures). In this way, Jaschke shows how political radicalism has become a matter of domestic security, especially during the 1970s when Germany faced a wave of left-wing violence. He argues that the concept of militant democracy enshrined in German legislation has been used by the government to legitimise the implementation of repressive security measures. This example illustrates the central role of state actors in the construction of practices repressing political radicalism. Another decisive element is the diversity of state actors involved in the formulation and implementation process of responses to right-wing radicalism. In Germany, the highest executive and judicial authorities acknowledged the need to lead an intellectual and political debate to discuss what radicalism is. But in the 1970s, as left-wing terrorism emerged, the assumption that an intellectual and political debate was legitimate became of secondary importance. This attitude became unsuitable in the 1990s when right-wing violence became a salient issue and civil society groups organised against right-wing radicalism. In this context, Jaschke argues that the role of interactions occurring between the institutions in charge of the protection of democracy and the critical contribution of civil society should be explored. In sum, Jaschke invites his fellow scholars to analyse the responses to the radical right not as the result of mere interactions between radical groups and security authorities, but rather as a complex phenomenon encompassing a myriad of public actors with various backgrounds and perspectives. In addition, the various actors involved in the regulation of the radical right might express different perceptions of the legal arsenal. Britta Schellenberg (2014) conducted research focusing on the small town of Mügeln in Saxony where right-wing riots occurred in 2007. No consensus existed on the motives of the riots which triggered public debates. Whereas the Saxon State Security Department and the Mayor of Mügeln denied the racist nature of the riots, representatives from left-wing parties promptly denounced the racist character of the violent event. Schellenberg identifies different frames among individuals: members of left-wing parties recognised the racist motive of the riots, whereas the Christian Democrat Party belittled the racist dimension of the event. This research highlights the heterogeneous character of perceptions, suggesting that an approach based on actors’ frames and perceptions might be helpful to better understand the rationale behind the regulation of right-wing radicalism.

Instruments of policy studies applied to an analysis of responses to the radical right

Frame approach to explore the policy-making process regarding the regulation of right-wing radicalism

The purpose of this book is to unravel the articulation between the issues framed by policy actors as public problems (in this instance, the radical right or part of it) and how they use policy instruments to address those. I do not adopt a problem-solving perspective that would assume that public actors merely seek to resolve problems and consequently act in order to constrain the influence of right-wing radicalism, as such a perspective would imply that French-German similarities or differences can be explained by similar or different levels of right-wing violence in both countries, thus generating more or fewer responses from the authorities. Additionally, a problem-solving approach masks the fact that public actors may perceive the issue differently from one country to another independently from the nature of the phenomenon. This approach finally misses the importance of policy choices that are made by actors according to their own representations. How has right-wing radicalism been understood and subsequently framed by public actors in charge of responding to it? In his research analysing the race policy development in France and Britain, Bleich (2003) explains why policy outcomes are different: while “France maintains a strict colour-blind code, Britain has accepted a number of race-conscious policies. Whereas France has traditionally preferred to use criminal law to fight racism, Britain relies heavily on civil law for punishing discrimination” (Bleich, 2003, p. 8). In order to understand why these countries chose such different approaches, Bleich formulates three questions: 1) Who are the actors responsible for initiatives? 2) What are those actors’ goals? 3) What factors constrain or enable their actions? Exploring the perceptions of state actors requires robust theoretical tools. Bleich convincingly argues that the most fruitful option to answer these questions is the policy frame approach. Frames are defined as “selecting, organising, interpreting, and making sense of a complex reality so as to provide guideposts for knowing, analysing, persuading and acting” (Rein and Schön, 1991, p. 263). In this process, the relevant policy actors first name a problem and thereby reflect their understanding of a given situation, then they “select what should be seen and therefore divert attention from other features” (van Hulst and Yanow, 2016, p. 97), and policy-actors finally tell a story that “binds elements of a situation into a pattern that is coherent and graspable” (Ibid.). This research aims to collect these stories in order to identify different policy frames among actors responding to the radical right, if such frames exist.

Bleich claims that a perspective focused on ideas is “strong at explaining cross-national differences and can satisfactorily explain policy outcomes” (2003, p. 13). Policy frames are embedded in history and enable the exploration of the policy-making process. For instance, Bleich unravels the mechanisms explaining the different approaches in Britain and France: one determining element is the role of ideas in the forging of frames. Whereas British policy-makers have conceived racism in terms of colour and have consequently fought “access racism” involving discrimination and inequalities between racial groups, French actors have considered the category of race irrelevant to the French context and have focused on fighting “expressive racism” manifested through defamation or provocation to racial hatred (Ibid., p. 14ff.). By revealing a cau...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Responding to right-wing radicalism: a policy matter
• 2 The radical right and its opponents in France and Germany: contextualisation and evolutions (1950–2017)
• 3 Towards the identification of national frames of responses to right-wing radicalism
• 4 Towards the identification of multiple frames among actors responding to the radical right: between ideas, institutions, and interests
• 5 The decision-making process of policy responses to the radical right
• 6 Banning right-wing extremist associations in France and Germany: decision-making process and outcomes
• Conclusion
• Index