The New Winning Formula: How Anti-EU and Xenophobic Ideologies Bring Big Wins for the Radical Right

Support for radical right parties in Western and Eastern Europe has surged in the past decade. Contemporary radical right parties are no longer the anomaly of European democracies. Rather, such parties are the norm of the political landscape. We argue that increased support for the radical right is driven by a new winning formula: anti-EU and xenophobic ideology that both root in radical right parties’ nativism. While the xenophobic rhetoric can focus on immigrants or indigenous minorities, it is the opposition to European integration and loss of sovereignty that unites the radical right across Western and Eastern Europe.

These two sets of issues - anti-EU and xenophobia - are working for the radical right's electoral appeal because of a favorable opportunity structure: the economic crisis and the ongoing migrant crisis have exposed cracks in the sustainability of the European project. In this study, we examine how the structure of political competition on these issues influences the electoral fortunes of radical right parties. We analyze whether an increasing level of polarization and salience of parties’ positions with regard to European integration and mainstream party convergence on this issue lead to an increase in radical right parties’ vote share. Similarly, we analyze the effect of party competition on immigration in Western Europe and on the rights of ethnic minorities in Eastern Europe. Our analysis relies on the Chapel Hill Expert survey series on party positions between 2002 and 2014.