The Extreme Right's Impact on Economic Liberalization

In the last years, numerous studies have pointed to an empirical connection between (rising) levels of migration and (falling or stagnating) levels of social spending across OECD countries (Alesina and Glaeser 2004). However, while the underlying causalities for this linkage are well theorized for the individual level (Luttmer 2001; Gilens 1999), literature rarely addresses them for the macro-level. In this paper we seek to fill this research gap, by providing the first comparative study on the impact of Extreme Right Parties (ERPs) on economic liberalization policies, i.e. redistributive and regulative liberalization. Combining a new quantitative dataset on party positions with in-depth qualitative case studies, we show that ERPs have spurred economic liberalization in three different ways: by pushing mainstream right parties further to the right on issues of liberalization, by changing patterns of coalition building regarding social and economic policy, and finally directly via policy-formulation when part of national governments. Our tentative results show that the impact of ERPs on regulative liberalization has been much more pronounced than on redistributive liberalization (social spending), and that their main channel of influence is via changing patterns of coalition formation – even if these parties are not themselves part of government.