The Success and Failure of Right-Wing Populist Parties in the Benelux Countries

Léonie de Jonge

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000400007
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Conservatism & Liberalism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book focuses on the varied support for the populist radical right in the Benelux countries: Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Despite many common characteristics, right-wing populist parties have historically been more successful in the Netherlands and Flanders than in Luxembourg and Wallonia.

This book argues that the variation in the success of right-wing populist parties depends to a large extent on the way in which they are perceived and received in a given polity. In the Netherlands and Flanders, mainstream parties and the media have contributed to politicising issues pertaining to immigration and national identity, thereby tilling the field for the populist radical right. In Luxembourg and Wallonia, mainstream parties and the media have resolutely limited the opportunities for right-wing populist challengers to influence the public debate.

This volume will be of interest to practitioners as well as students and scholars of party politics, the media, the populist radical right and the Benelux region.

1Right-wing populism in Europe

A story of success and failure

The populist radical right has become an important political force in Europe and beyond. Over the past years, support for so-called ‘right-wing populist parties’ has increased substantially across the continent. As a result, in the first decades of the twenty-first century, concern about the possibility of a renewed ‘swing to the right’ in European politics loomed large among media commentators and mainstream politicians. For instance, an editorial published in The Economist in November 2015 warned of ‘stormy weather’ as Europe faced its ‘biggest crisis in a generation’ with ‘the mass influx of refugees […] aggravating many of Europe’s other looming problems’, thereby ‘stoking populism everywhere’ (The Economist 2015).

This statement echoed earlier warnings by European leaders about the rise of populism in the face of crises. In 2010, for example, the then-President of the European Council, Herman van Rompuy, identified populism as ‘the greatest threat to Europe’ (Frankfurter Allgemeine 2010). Similarly, in 2013, then-President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, expressed deep concern ‘about the divisions that we see emerging: political extremes and populism tearing apart the political support and the social fabric that we need to deal with the crises […]’ (European Commission 2013).

Their concern can partly be explained by the fact that the European ‘lurch’ to the right has been accompanied by the resurfacing of nationalist and anti-immigrant sentiments. For some, the advances made by right-wing populist parties evoked memories of the political disintegration of the 1930s (see, for example, Steigmann-Gall 2016). In particular, disagreements about immigration have given rise to some of the most heated and emotionally loaded public debates of our times. In the wake of the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015, anti-immigration demonstrations mushroomed in major cities across the European continent, and far-right violence against immigrants and minorities increased sharply (Mudde 2019: 4). By the time we turned the page on the second decade of the new millennium, it became increasingly obvious that the far right had moved from the margins of the political spectrum into the mainstream: nativism, authoritarianism and populism now routinely feature in the discourses of ‘centrist’ political parties, while the populist radical right has become increasingly normalised.

The spectacular rise of populist radical right parties constitutes one of the most dramatic changes in European politics in the post-war era. The electoral fortunes of right-wing populist parties have coincided with the decline of the traditional party families that long dominated European politics, thereby illustrating the ‘thawing’ of European party systems that had long been declared ‘frozen’ (Lipset & Rokkan 1967). It is therefore perhaps not surprising that the phenomenon has been matched with a proliferation of academic studies seeking to shed light on the reasons behind their electoral success (e.g. Albertazzi & McDonnell 2008; Betz 1994; Eatwell 2003; Kitschelt & McGann 1995; Mudde 2007; Pytlas 2015).

The research puzzle

As Cas Mudde (2016: 2) has noted, ‘[t]he populist radical right is by far the best-studied party family within political science. Since the […] early 1980s, more articles and books have been written on far right parties than on all other party families combined’. However, the disproportionate attention that these parties have received (Mudde 2013) tends to obscure the fact that they have not been equally successful in all Western European countries. Indeed, there is great variation in the electoral performances of such parties across the continent; while right-wing populist parties have formed part of (or provided parliamentary support for) national governments in some countries including Austria, Denmark, Norway, Italy, Switzerland and the Netherlands, they have been virtually non-existent or unsuccessful in rallying broad support in countries such as Portugal, Ireland and Luxembourg. In other words, the development of right-wing populist parties in Western Europe has been a story of failure as well as success. This raises questions about the variation in the electoral fortunes of these parties in Western Europe. Specifically, why have right-wing populist parties with an anti-immigration agenda succeeded in garnering broad electoral support in some countries but failed to do so in others?

This book seeks to answer this question by focusing specifically on the Benelux region (i.e. Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg). The Benelux countries provide useful comparative case studies: despite numerous commonalities, including a shared history, these countries have had very different experiences with right-wing populism. Indeed, right-wing populist parties have been more successful in the Netherlands and Flanders (i.e. the northern, Dutch-speaking part of Belgium) than in Luxembourg and Wallonia (i.e. the southern, French-speaking part of Belgium). Considering the fact that right-wing populist parties have emerged in all neighbouring countries including Germany with the Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany or AfD) and France with the Rassemblement National (National Rally or RN – formerly known as the Front National or FN), the absence of a successful right-wing populist contender in Wallonia and Luxembourg is particularly puzzling. Why have the Netherlands and Flanders witnessed the rise of right-wing populist contenders, whereas comparable movements in Luxembourg and Wallonia have failed?

Defining right-wing populism

The great variation in the electoral performances of right-wing populist parties has long puzzled scholars. As a result, this question has been examined under different guises, for instance, by focusing on (right-wing) extremist parties (Carter 2005; Coffé 2005), populist radical right parties (Mudde 2007), anti-immigrant parties (van der Brug et al. 2005), right-wing populist parties (Bornschier 2012), radical right parties (Art 2011; Norris 2005), populist parties (Manucci 2020; van Kessel 2013), niche parties (Meguid 2008) or challenger parties (Hino 2012). Since this book seeks to explain the electoral performance of parties that are (1) situated on the right end of the political spectrum (in socio-cultural terms) and (2) populist, I generally use the term ‘right-wing populist parties’ when referring to the object of my study.

The definition employed in this book draws from the works of other scholars, notably Cas Mudde (2004, 2007) and Benjamin Moffitt (2016). In very general terms, ‘right-wing populist parties’ are defined here as political parties that are nativist, exclusionist and radical in the sense that they reject certain features of liberal democracy without being anti-democratic. Furthermore, they are populist in their rejection of ‘appropriate’ political behaviour (i.e. they break taboos) and, above all, in their appeal to the pure ‘people’ in opposition to the corrupt and evil ‘elite’. This definition clearly merits further discussion. The next chapter, therefore, provides a more elaborate justification of this conceptualisation. At this point, it is sufficient to note that the labels ‘right-wing populist’ and ‘populist radical right’ are used interchangeably, whereas the ‘far right’ is used as an umbrella term to refer to a broader range of parties on the right end of the political spectrum and includes radical (democratic) and extremist (anti-democratic) parties (Mudde 2010: 1169; Ravndal 2017: 847).

What we know (and what we don’t)

Populism research is a booming industry, thereby resembling something of an ‘academic gold rush’ (Jäger & Borriello 2020). Partly as a result of this trend, there is a growing tendency in the field to neglect previous academic research on the topic (Hawkins & Rovira Kaltwasser 2018: 526). Instead of trying to reinvent the academic wheel, this book draws on the rich existing body of academic research to derive a comprehensive analytical framework (presented in Chapter 2) that comprises different perspectives, thereby deepening our understanding of the electoral trajectories of right-wing populist parties.

The electoral performance of (right-wing) populist parties is typically conceptualised as a marketplace, where success and failure are contingent on ‘public demand’ and ‘party supply’ (e.g. Eatwell 2003; Kitschelt & McGann 1995; Mudde 2007; Norris 2005; van Kessel 2013). Broadly speaking, demand-side explanations highlight factors that create a breeding ground in which right-wing populist parties can thrive, notably socio-economic or political conditions that make voters more prone to support right-wing populist parties, while supply-side theories highlight the mechanisms that enable right-wing populist parties to harness demand for right-wing populist ideas.

Classical demand-side explanations include so-called ‘grievance theories’, which hypothesise that broad structural and societal changes, such as immigration, European integration, economic recessions, globalisation, secularisation or rising unemployment rates, can generate insecurity and fuel popular dissatisfaction with mainstream, consensus politics (Eatwell 2003; Ivarsflaten 2008; Mudde 2007). Essentially, scholars focusing on demand-side explanations have argued that broad structural and societal changes fuelled demand for right-wing populist parties (Betz 1994; Ignazi 1992, 2003; Minkenberg 2000), particularly among the so-called ‘losers of globalization’ (Kriesi et al. 2008). In a seminal contribution, Hans-Georg Betz (1994: 27) suggested that the emergence of the populist radical right can largely be seen as ‘a consequence of a profound transformation of the socioeconomic and sociocultural structure of advanced Western European democracies’. The breakdown of social cleavages – that is, the key, historical fault lines structuring European societies into subgroups – that had long h...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Right-wing populism in Europe: A story of success and failure
• 2 Explaining right-wing populist trajectories: Towards a framework for analysis
• 3 History of the populist radical right in the Benelux
• 4 Mainstream parties: Catalysts or buffers against the populist radical right?
• 5 The media and the populist radical right: Friend or foe?
• 6 Right-wing populist parties in the Benelux and beyond: Future pathways
• Annex I: List of interviews with media practitioners
• Annex II: List of interviews with party representatives
• Annex III: List of experts consulted
• Index