Democratic or Not: Public Acceptance of Nativist Movements in Western Europe

• In Event: The Far Right in Government and Society

Abstract

The scholarly literature on the so-called populist radical right has repeatedly noted how some of them have fared very well in elections and have risen to significant political influence, while others have not done so. This pattern, the literature has argued, is related to the social stigma attached to supporting the extreme right in contemporary Europe. Here we agree that such stigma is important, but argue that the common strategy of conceiving contemporary nativist movements as either “new” or “old” far right has clouded rather than clarified what drives the public to accept or reject them. Instead, we propose an account which puts at its center the public perception of these movements as democratic or not. We propose that there are two, not one, main drivers of such perceptions: (1) The nativist movements’ role in and relation to the institutions of democracy and (2) their relations to historical fascism. From this theoretical framework we predict patterns of public acceptance of a variety of nativist movements (political parties and activist organizations). The predictions are tested and largely supported by comparative survey experimental data collected in five Western European countries—France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden -- in 2017 as part of the European Internet Panel Study (EIPS).

Authors

• Elisabeth Ivarsflaten, University of Bergen

• Lise Bjånesøy, University of Bergen

• Lars Erik Berntzen, University of Bergen