Researching the Far Right

Theory, Method and Practice

Stephen D. Ashe, Joel Busher, Graham Macklin, Aaron Winter, Stephen D. Ashe, Joel Busher, Graham Macklin, Aaron Winter

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781315304656
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Metodologia e ricerca nelle scienze sociali

Researching the Far Right brings together researchers from across the humanities and social sciences to provide much needed discussion about the methodological, ethical, political, personal, practical and professional issues and challenges that arise when researching far right parties, their electoral support, and far right protest movements.Drawing on original research focussing mainly on Europe and North America over the last 30 years, this volume explores in detail the opportunities and challenges associated with using ethnographic, interview-based, quantitative and online research methods to study the far right. These reflections are set within a wider discussion of the evolution of far right studies from a variety of disciplinary viewpoints within the humanities or the social sciences, tracing the key developments and debates that shape the field today. This volume will be essential reading for students and scholars with an interest in understanding the many manifestations of the far right and cognate movements today. It also offers insight and reflection that is likely to be valuable for a wider range of students and scholars across the humanities and social sciences who are carrying out work of an ethically, politically, personally, practically and professionally challenging nature.

PART I

Disciplinary overviews

1

POLITICAL SCIENCE APPROACHES
TO THE FAR RIGHT

Nonna Mayer

In June 1984, the French Front National (FN) led by Jean-Marie Le Pen drew an unexpected 10.9 per cent of the votes in the European elections.¹ His success marked the beginning of the so-called ‘third wave’ of right-wing extremism in Europe (Von Beyme, 1988: 11) which was the largest and the longest-lasting one since World War Two.² First understood through the prism of fascism, these parties soon appeared to be of a specific nature, and thus renamed ‘post-fascist’, ‘post-industrial’ or ‘modern’. Nevertheless, these parties continue to be seen as posing a threat for democracy. The main challenge for political science research is to treat such parties with the kind of politically detached attitude, as well as the conceptual and methodological tools, applied to other parties. Rather than giving an exhaustive account of the proliferating literature that these parties sparked, this chapter focuses on key turning points in this area of research, showing how the change in definitions, explanations and operationalization of the far right followed the expansion and transformations of the party family itself, as well as discussing the methodological challenges that this involved. The conclusion explores new avenues for research.

Definitions: From extremism to populism

The question of how to define the parties composing the ‘third wave’ has been controversial. Right-wing extremism (RWE) was the first category to be used by political scientists. An overview of research in this field between 1980 and 1995 showed that there was a raging ‘war of words’, with no less than 28 competing definitions of RWE based on 58 distinctive ideological features (Mudde, 1996). Where some authors parsimoniously used a single criterion, such as ‘anti-democratic’, ‘anti-immigrant’ or ‘exclusionist’, others listed up to ten core features ranging from ‘extreme nationalism’ to ‘cultural pessimism’ (Falter and Schumann, 1988).³ Moreover, other scholars employed a combination of criteria. For example, Piero Ignazi’s definition, one of the most used, combined a spatial dimension (i.e. perceived position of party on the left-/ right-wing scale), an ideological criterion (i.e. reference to fascism or not) and an attitudinal measure (i.e. pro- or anti-system; that is, pro- or anti-democracy), thus contrasting the ‘old’ type of extreme right party which had demonstrated a fascist imprint (e.g. National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), German People’s Union (DVU), Dutch Centre Party (CP’86) and British National Party (BNP) to a ‘new’ non-fascist type of party exuding more of a right-wing anti-system standpoint while delegitimizing the mainstream parties (e.g. French FN, German Republikaner, Dutch Centre Democrats (CD), Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) and the respective Danish and Norwegian Progress parties) (Ignazi, 1992). However, rarely were the categorizing criteria strictly defined, or were their respective weights assessed and any empirical validation provided.

The term ‘radicalism’ started to be used in the mid-1990s (see Merkl and Weinberg, 1993). Less stigmatizing and less connected to fascism and Nazism, this term quickly gained ground. In post-war Germany, extremism from the left and from the right were both considered to be antidemocratic and ‘unconstitutional’ by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. This led to state surveillance and eventually a ban. Radicalism, or being ‘in opposition to the principles of the Constitution’, was seen as being the lesser evil and, therefore, not subject to such procedures. While in the United States the term ‘radical right’ was being used to refer to the ‘pseudo-conservative’ movements of the 1950s, such as the anti-communist McCarthyism crusade (Bell, 1963).

In France, Pierre-André Taguieff (1984) was the first to describe the ideology of the FN as ‘national populist’. For Taguieff, it was the heir of both the ultra-nationalist and popular Boulangist movement of the end of the nineteenth century and the anti Dreyfus Leagues, thus demonstrating an ideological mix of nationalism, xenophobia, and demagogy in the name of ‘the people’. In the English-speaking literature, Hans-Georg Betz labelled these ‘third wave’ parties ‘radical right-wing populism’ (Betz, 1994). For Betz, they differed from the extreme right because they did not reject the democratic rules of the game nor did they advocate violence. They also differed from the centre right parties because they were in favour of a radical transformation of the post-war social democrat consensus, mainly in relation to the welfare state and the acceptance of a multicultural society. These parties were populist in their political argumentation (i.e. showing faith in the common sense and moral superiority of the ordinary people while also offering simple solutions to complex problems) and in their political strategy (i.e. articulating a ‘politics of resentment’ in a bid to mobilize ‘the people’ against the political class and elites). Moreover, these parties exalted manual workers and small producers in opposition to non-productive workers described as being parasites and lazy. The term ‘Radical Right Populism’ was then redefined by Cas Mudde (2007) as a core ideology combining three components: nativism (i.e. a combination of nationalism and xenophobia), authoritarianism (i.e. belief in a strictly ordered society) and populism (i.e. position the pure people in opposition to corrupt elites).

Similar debates surround the varieties of radical/extreme/populist rights taking into account their respective ideological and programmatic diversity beyond just their focus on immigration. For instance, whereas Ignazi (1992) distinguished between old fascist and new anti-system extreme rights, Betz (1994) distinguished between national-populist and neoliberal populist parties, liberal on economic and cultural issues. At the same time, Husbands (1992) distinguished between populist-nationalist, neo-fascist, nationalist, traditional xenophobic and militant neo-Nazi extreme right parties, while Kitschelt and McGann (1995) distinguished between fascist, welfare chauvinist, right-wing authoritarian and populist anti-statist radical right parties.

The terms of radical/extreme/populist right can all be found in the existing literature. For example, in Mudde’s (2017) edited collection on the contemporary Radical Right between 1988 and 2013, many of the authors disagree on which labels should be attributed to certain parties. However, the label ‘populist radical right’, as redefined by Mudde, is gradually starting to prevail. Indeed, a consensus is taking shape with regard to the necessity to adopt a wide and pragmatic definition of the Radical Right family’s contours at large, including borderline cases which until now had been considered either too violent (i.e. the Greek Golden Dawn and the Hungarian Jobbik), or too mainstream (i.e. Norwegian Progress Party and the Swiss People’s Party). For simplicity, the term Radical Right (RR) will be used in the remainder of this chapter.

Explanations: From demand-side to supply-side factors

Early studies of the aforementioned ‘third wave’, as well as the post-war neo-Nazi resurgences, were heavily inspired by interpretations of fascism and Nazism, thus stressing psychological or psycho-analytical factors. In their seminal study of the electoral rise of neo-Nazi parties in Germany during the mid-1960s, Erwin Scheuch and Hans-Dieter Klingemann referred to ‘Right-Wing Extremism’ as ‘a normal pathological condition’ of society that was likely to reappear periodically during times of social crisis and anomie. The potential supporters of these parties in the 1980s were thus described as authoritarian, ethnocentric, and more likely to be found among the less educated working class or the lower middle class (see Von Beyme, 1988; Merkl and Weinberg, 1993). Until now, innumerable surveys focus on the attitudes of RR voters, searching for xenophobia, nationalism, authoritarianism and political distrust as a precondition of their support for these parties.

Another block of theories focused on the correlation between these attitudes and macro-structural changes associated with processes of modernization. The ‘third wave’ of the RR was first attributed to the transition from industrial to ‘post-industrial’ societies. Ronald Inglehart (1977) argued that there was a ‘silent revolution’ at the heart of this process produced by the diffusion of post-materialist values which enhanced citizens’ personal autonomy and tolerance. In fact, Ignazi (1992) described the rise of the RR as being a ‘silent counter-revolution’: that is, a reaction against these values. Indeed, while Inglehart had foreseen the resulting political changes on the left of the political spectrum, most notably the electoral rise of libertarian and green parties, he did not anticipate the neo-conservative backlash on the right. More specifically, Inglehart did not predict that social change could produce both libertarian and authoritarian-xenophobic values. In contrast, other authors focused on the political consequences of social change, noting that urbanization, social mobility, education, declining class and religion-based solidarities had produced a more fluid and atomized society, thus weakening old party loyalties, while favouring a ‘politics of resentment’ or ‘anti-politics’ that has proven fertile ground for the emergence of the RR (see Betz, 1994).

In the 1990s, globalization started to gain more attention. The increasing integration of markets in the world economy was seen as generating winners (i.e. who took economic advantage from globalization) and losers (i.e. those who felt threatened by globalization). Betz (1994) was one of the first to connect these changes with the electoral rise of RR parties during the mid-1980s. The opening of borders, the incoming flows of immigrants and economic competition from the low-wage countries of the global south, were perceived as threatening the jobs of the unskilled workers. Feeling ignored by the mainstream parties, they turned to the RR for protection. Later work subsequently differentiated between the so-called potential ‘losers of economic globalization’ (i.e. those more concerned with job insecurity and perceived competition from migrant workers) and the ‘losers of cultural modernization’ (i.e. those seeing multiculturalism, cosmopolitism and universalistic norms as a threat to their identity (see Bornschier and Kriesi, 2012).

Another factor put forward to explain support for the RR was the dualization of the labour market in capitalist societies. Since the 1970s, atypical forms of work arrangements had developed, increasing the divide between ‘insiders’ with high-wage protected jobs, and vulnerable ‘outsiders’, with unskilled, low-paid and fixed-term jobs (Emmenegger, Haüsermann, Palier, and Seeleib-Kaiser, 2012). This divide cuts through the old class lines, pitching outsiders against insiders, thus bringing the former to support either the extreme left or the extreme right or to abstain (Lindvall and Rueda, 2014; Rovny and Rovny, 2017). Moreover, Standing (2014) has conceptualized these outsiders as ‘the precariat’, a new ‘dangerous’ class in formation, who are:

floating, rudderless and potentially angry, capable of veering to the extreme right or extreme left politically and backing populist demagoguery that plays on their fears or phobias.

(Standing, 2014: 4)

The Great Recession of 2008 and the austerity policies that followed have sparked new interest in the political impact of the economy on support for the RR. It has been argued that popular discontent would lead to changes in voting patterns, thus breeding support for populist radical parties on both the right and the left, with voters punishing incumbent governments in line with the classical ‘retrospective voting’ logic, holding them responsible for the economic conditions prevailing in the period prior to elections (see Bartels and Bermeo, 2014; Kriesi and Pappas, 2015). Beyond the economic crisis, the appeal of the RR has been linked more deeply to the crisis of democratic politics in an age of globalization, austerity and rising inequalities. Peter Mair was the first to analyze citizens’ ...