Populist Right Success and Mainstream Party Adaptation: The Case of Free Trade

• In Event: European Political Economy

Abstract

Are populist right parties making mainstream parties more economically protectionist? From West to East, European parties of the populist right are experiencing increasing electoral success by running on platforms stressing cultural and economic protectionism. While previous studies have found a causal link between populist right success and mainstream parties’ shifts on immigration and multiculturalism, an unexplored topic is the degree to which populist right success is causing mainstream parties to become more lukewarm in their support for trade liberalization and economic globalization. By imbuing the issue of trade with the symbolic power of nationalism, populist right parties can transform trade into an “easy” issue for voters, causing mainstream parties to avoid the politicization of trade by deemphasizing it from their campaign statements. In this paper, I test this deemphasis hypothesis by conducting a quantitative text analysis of mainstream parties' campaign rhetoric from 1990 to 2020, covering 21 European democracies.

Author

• Alex Honeker, University of Pittsburgh