Populism in Action Analysis – Page 5

PiAP Research Fellows Share Three Key Findings From Their Research

Josh Allen on 19th May 2021

This autumn the Populism in Action Project will be publishing a Special Issue of the open access journal Politics and Governance on populist radical right party organisation, with a special focus on the extent to which parties in this family remain centralized in decision-making. The Special Issue will cover both Western and Eastern/Central Europe and include contributions by experts from all over the continent. All four of the Populism in Action Project’s Research Fellows will contribute an article exploring the findings of the research that they’ve been undertaking since 2019. Ahead of the publication of the Special Issue, in this series of blog posts our research fellows share “three key takeaways” from their articles

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Dr. Adrian Favero explores – “Leaders vs. Members: Can the Swiss People’s Party Deal with the Tension?”

Dr. Judith Sijstermans shows – “How Belgium’s Vlaams Belang Leads the Way in Digital Politics”

Dr. Mattia Zulianello surveys – “Italy’s League: A Modern Mass Party”

Dr. Niko Hatakka considers – “The Finns Party: Free Rein or Reining In?”

Has the Pandemic Changed Populism in Italy?

Josh Allen on 17th May 2021

Donatella Bonansinga will be presenting the research which underpins this blog post (co-written with Populism in Action’s Dr. Daniele Albertazzi and Mattia Zulianello) at the 6th Prague Populism Conference on 18th May 2021 between 14:30 and 15:30 (Czech time). You can watch the conference live feed here.

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by Donatella Bonansinga

The Italian populist right had already changed significantly since the 2018 elections reconfigured its relations of power.

After decades of Silvio Berlusconi’s dominance, the League led by Matteo Salvini became the coalition’s biggest force. Berlusconi’s Forza Italia was sidelined with 14% support, further shrinking to 8% in the 2019 European Parliament elections. A third party, Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy), became the coalition’s minor force, gaining more than 4% of votes in 2018. Its support grew exponentially, and the party effectively displaced Forza Italia.

Then the pandemic arrived.

Politics in the Time of COVID

When Coronavirus infections began their spread across Italy in February 2020, the three parties of the Italian populist right positioned themselves cautiously vis-à-vis the national Government. They were well aware that Italians were rallying around Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte at a moment of acute crisis.

While the populist parties turned Europe into a key element of debate, they did so in starkly different terms. The more radical forces — the League and Fratelli d’Italia — attacked the European Union for its inability to help Italy, insinuating that supranational institutions were conspiring to damage the Italian economy. In line with their nativist ideology, both cast blame for the virus upon Chinese nationals and immigrants and amplified the narrative of strong border protections.

Berlusconi also diverted the debate towards the EU, but he did so with a positive welcome of European efforts during the early phases of the pandemic. The former Prime Minister had already begun distancing himself from the more radical tone of his allies since the 2019 European Parliament elections. He is using the pandemic as a further opportunity to present himself and his party as a responsible, non-populist force.

After the dramatic first wave in Italy and the movement of the virus throughout Europe, the economic and social impact of the pandemic was evident. EU member states agreed on an unprecedented mutualization of debt, the Recovery Fund.

Presented again with the opportunity to mobilize the EU as a focus of debate, the populist coalition only displayed a lack of unity. The League dismissed the Fund. Fratelli d’Italia remained cautiously sceptical. Both continued their nativist trope of illegal immigrants spreading the virus. In contrast, confirming his strategic Europhile-turn, Berlusconi celebrated the Fund’s approval.

The “Winning Formula” Remains

At the end of 2020, the League declined to 24% in the polls, from a peak of 34% in the EU elections. Fratelli d’Italia had become the third-biggest force in Italy, pushing aside the “hybrid” populist Five Star Movement which is in government with the center-left Partito Democratico. It also relegated Berlusconi, once the indisputable leader of the coalition, into a minor player with Forza Italia polling at around 7%.

Despite these significant changes, the coalition projects important elements of continuity, especially in terms of its political message and overall support. It is still a populist force counter-posing a virtuous Italian people against distant and harmful elites in Rome and Brussels. Despite Berlusconi’s softer tones and newly-found affinity for the EU, the coalition still dominates the agenda with immigration, anti-EU, and law and order themes.

The political message is shaped by populism, nativism, and Euroscepticism as it was when Berlusconi founded the coalition 20 years ago. This is a consistent political offering with a stable support remaining well above 40%.

Despite some reshuffling and new sources of division brought by the pandemic, the coalition is in good electoral health and can count on a winning formula for the foreseeable future.

Donatella Bonansinga is a PhD student in the Department of POLSIS at the University of Birmingham. You can follow her on Twitter here. In addition to the conference presentation on this topic, her research with Daniele Albertazzi and Mattia Zulianello has been published as “The right-wing alliance at the time of the Covid-19 pandemic: all change?” in Contemporary Italian Politics.

This blog is co-published with EA Worldview

Daniele Albertazzi’s Analysis is Quoted in Politico Europe Article on Giorgia Meloni

Josh Allen on 14th May 2021

Analysis of the shifting dynamics of the populist radical right in Italy by Populism in Action’s Principal Investigator Dr. Daniele Albertazzi was quoted in “Could Giorgia Meloni be Italy’s first female prime minister?” an article for Politico Europe written by Hannah Roberts and published on 12/05/21.

Daniele Albertazzi explains that Meloni poses:

“a realistic threat” to Salvini’s leadership of the right-wing alliance… She is in a very good place.”

And that:

“The right-wing parties have a long history of working together [having] governed together for twenty five years…

Meaning if the Brothers of Italy come ahead of the League in a future election:

“…it is hard see how anyone can stop her becoming prime minister,”

The article can be read in full here.

The Finns Party: Free Rein or Reining In?

Josh Allen on 10th May 2021

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by Dr. Niko Hatakka

In March 2020, the populist radical right Finns Party expelled its youth organization. The increasingly overt ethnic nativism of the young activists had become a hindrance to the party’s objective: re-establishing legitimacy as a potential component of a governing coalition.

To constrain unwanted communications, the leadership had urged the youth association to revise its rules and require everyone to be members of the party. When this was rejected, the youth branch was expelled.

The episode is a telling example of how the Finns Party’s organisational approach and practice teeters between horizontal participation, autonomy, and centralised control.

Building the Formal Organisation

In the early 2010s, the Finns Party became one of the largest parties in Finland, thanks to a massive boost in funding and perceived legitimacy after a strong performance in the 2011 elections. In the following years, the leadership developed an active and extensive network of local associations, whilst also adopting some characteristics of a movement party.

The party’s formal organization combines ostensibly democratic elements, such as a party congress where all members have the right to vote, with a weakly supervised and powerful executive. The regional and municipal organisations are run autonomously by volunteers. The national party instructs and guides them, with the executive reserving the power to assume direct control of problematic associations and expel troublesome members; however, direct intervention in the actions of the local and regional levels has only occurred in dire circumstances.

A wide and active organisation with low requirements for entry and participation are key to campaigning and candidate recruitment for the party. This has been vital for the Finns Party’s success, especially in municipal elections, with candidates recruited for 98% of constituencies for elections in June. Still, while existing on paper, the network of municipal associations is patchy and not especially active in certain regions.

In areas where the organisation is strong, the party’s communities of participating activists are characterised by a vivid collective identity and a high level of ideological coherence. According to the party’s elite, this is mainly fueled by a sense of belonging and a desire for change.

Adjacent and Informal Activism

As the Finns Party’s organisation expanded between 2008 and 2012, both in members and geographical coverage, the party became a vehicle for radical right demands articulated by online movements external or adjacent to the party’s formal organization.

According to its elite, the Finns Party tries to educate its membership and shape it ideologically. In addition to local meetings and events, this relies on active intra-party communications, mentoring, socialization, and training to discourage unwanted or ideologically incongruous activism. However, a significant number of the party’s members – and its supporters and sympathizers – have little or no connection to the party’s formal organisation.

Although the party’s official activism mostly takes place at the local level, almost half of the party’s members have not taken out membership in a local association. As many sympathizers identify with the party only through the media or online, some activism contributing to the party’s performance and functioning takes place in a realm that is external to the formal organization. For these activists, the party provides a point of identification and political purpose, but the formal party organisation cannot keep an eye on their actions and online interactions.

So while party-adjacent online activism has been essential to the rise of the Finns Party, it has also stripped the party’s official bodies of some agency.

Overlapping Modes of Organisation

The Finns Party can be characterized as a modern mass party benefiting significantly from synergy with party-adjacent online activism. It has enjoyed the stability of a strong formal organisation, while also being boosted by agile and sympathetic communities of online supporters.

But this has required the party to balance between the rewards of autonomy for its formal and informal activists and the challenge of knowing when, where, and how to rein them in.

Because of the horizontal nature of the party’s leadership selection and program production, its balancing act has had a permanent effect both on party ideology and on its organizational form. The party’s mix of formal and informal modes of organization was key, for example, in the mainstreaming of nativism and in the election of Jussi Halla-aho as leader.

Even though having two interlinked modes of political organisation is beneficial to the party, this situation also necessitates the formal party organisation investing time and effort into avoiding potential threats to its legitimacy, image and internal stability. This was highlighted by the party’s recent decision to rein in its youth organisation instead of turning a blind eye on its radicalisation.

Dr. Niko Hatakka is the Populism in Action Project’s Finland focused Research Fellow. You can follow him on Twitter here.

“Right-Wing Populist Party Organisation across Europe: The Survival of the Mass-Party?” PiAP at ECPR 2021

Josh Allen on 30th April 2021

At this year’s European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) General Conference (taking place online, 30th August-3rd September 2021) the Populism in Action Team will be leading and participating in a panel entitled Right-Wing Populist Party Organisation across Europe: The Survival of the Mass-Party? which will present key research findings from the project. The panel will be chaired by PiAP’s Dr. Judith Sijstermans (University of Birmingham), Co-Chaired by PiAP’s Dr. Stijn van Kessel (Queen Mary, University of London), with Prof. Sarah De Lange (University of Amsterdam) as the Discussant.

Panel Abstract

This panel analyses the nature of populist radical right party (PRRP) organisations and the relationship between PRRP organisations, leaders, and party members. We present initial results of our comparative research project which studies long-established PRRP parties in Western Europe: the League in Italy, the Flemish Interest in Belgium, the Swiss People’s Party, and the Finns. PRRPs are often still associated with centralised and ‘charismatic’ leadership, but we find that several PRRPs have invested in creating organisations more similar to the ‘mass party’ model, in which parties actively recruit members and create communities of loyal partisan activists.

In our four case study papers, we explore how party elites attempt to foster involvement, activism and loyalty from the party base. We analyse how these efforts are managed within each party’s, often highly centralised, organisational structures. Through these in-depth case studies, our papers also reflect on the nature and development of the mass party model in the current era. Our panel will conclude with a comparative analysis of all four cases. This analysis explores the extent to which personalisation and centralisation have helped to manage organisational tensions in PRRPs and to facilitate changes in leadership. It will also reflect on the importance of these organisational structures and dynamics for populist parties today.

Panelists

1. Dr. Mattia Zulianello (University of Birmingham) – Fostering and Exporting a Modern Mass Party: Agency and Structure in Salvini’s League

2. Dr. Niko Hatakka (University of Birmingham) – Between horizontality and centralization: Organizational form and practice in the Finns Party

3. Adrian Favero (University of Birmingham) – Rootedness, Activism and Centralisation: The Case of the Swiss People’s Party

4. Judith Sijstermans (University of Birmingham) – The Vlaams Belang: A Mass Party of the 21st century

5. Stijn van Kessel (Queen Mary University of London; presenting), Daniele Albertazzi (University of Birmingham) – The Survival of the Mass Party: Centralisation, Rootedness and Control Among Populist Radical Right Parties (PRRPs) in Europe

Programme details: A programme for this year’s ECPR General Conference will be released presently. It will be available via the Consortium’s website – where registration has already opened.

The right-wing alliance at the time of the Covid-19 pandemic: all change? Published

Josh Allen on 28th April 2021

“The right-wing alliance at the time of the Covid-19 pandemic: all change?” an article by PiAP’s Principal Investigator Daniele Albertazzi, University of Birmingham PhD student Donatella Bonansinga and PiAP’s Italy focused Research Fellow Mattia Zulianello was published in Contemporary Italian Politics yesterday.

Donatella explains that in the article:

Daniele Albertazzi, Mattia Zulianello and I, assess change and continuity on the Italian (populist) right. We argue that, despite changes in leadership, shifts in power relations and conflicting stances during the pandemic, this coalition shows important elements of continuity too, especially in terms of ideological messages and electoral support. Our analysis scans the year 2020 by looking at 5 key turning points, examining how parties and leaders of the Italian right reacted to these salient events on Twitter. It also reconstructs the evolution of their support in voting intention polls throughout the year.

You can read the article in full here.

Italy’s League: A Modern Mass Party

Josh Allen on 27th April 2021

League rally in Pontida, Matteo Salvini appears on a big screen to the left hand side of the image Italy, September 2019

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by Dr. Mattia Zulianello

Most descriptions of Italy’s League (Lega), led by Matteo Salvini, portray it as a party whose success is entirely dependent on social media and the fortunes of its leader.

This is a mistake. The League is the legacy of its predecessor, Umberto Bossi’s Northern League (Lega Nord, LN) and provides an outstanding example of a modern mass party.

For most of the LN’s existence, Bossi concentrated his energy on an organizational structure inspired by traditional mass parties. There was a notable paradox: while the LN had nothing to do with the ideology of Leninist parties, its organisational structure and its overall logic of operation were inspired by them.

The “people” whom the League claims to defend are no longer just Northern Italians, but all Italians. However, the organisational structure sought by Bossi continues and evolves by exploiting new technologies.

Democratic Centralism and Leninist Organisation

The LN was characterised by an unquestionable hierarchy, recruitment mechanisms designed to protect it from careerists and opportunists, a plurality of ancillary structures for all the League’s activities, and cadre schools for the formation of the ruling class. But above all, the LN was centered on the decisive importance of activism, Bossi’s “unknown militant”. This was a mission, a constant commitment, cemented by loyalty and devotion to the party.

In line with its Leninist-derived organizational structure, today’s League considers loyalty, respect for internal hierarchy, and ostentatious activism as its supreme values. The party’s apparatus is shaped like a pyramid and hinges on democratic centralist principles, conveying the idea of being “one body”. Space is provided for discussion and internal debate, but externally the message of the party must be univocal.

On the Streets and on the Web

While Bossi’s League was a traditional mass party, Salvini’s carefully exploits new technologies, in particular social media and instant messaging systems, to adapt this organizational model to the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century.

The League today is less bureaucratic and more efficient, but its pillar remains the “ostentatious” militant, someone who sets up the gazebos, does flyering, and pours mulled wine. Social media is important for the communication strategy, but it is only one part of a triptych comprising Television, Internet, and Territory.

Old media, new media, and on the ground physical activism are integrated to amplify the message. Activists pursue a wide range of activities both on-line and off-line: leafleting, gazebos, party local festivals and rallies, protests, petitioning, social events, and book presentations. Activism is an activity and an ideology, enveloping members in a “family” or “team” for a grassroots base which can be mobilized as required.

This activist base, structured through a network of local, provincial, and regional branches, makes the League much more resistant when is losing support and helping it grow faster when conditions are favourable.

Exporting the North’s Modern Mass Party to the South

In Northern Italy, Salvini’s League has inherited the organizing principles and practices of the old LN, as well as its membership, structures, and resources. Activists can be mobilized in days thanks to deeply embedded patterns of loyalty, dedication, and respect for hierarchy.

The League is attempting to “export” this modern conception of the mass party to the South, but its potential for success remains unknown. Organisational routines require time to take root and consolidate in a new context, and the League’s roll-out of its organisational model is an unprecedented political operation.

The League has not only reinvented itself ideologically from a populist regionalist party to a state-wide populist radical right party. It has done so with the explicit intention of exporting its organisational model to regions that in the past were hostile and which the party derided. This is the League’s decisive challenge.

Dr. Mattia Zulianello is the Populism in Action Project’s Italy focused Research Fellow. You can follow him on Twitter here.

Daniele Albertazzi Interviewed by Radio Adelaide

Josh Allen on 9th April 2021

Branding for The Focus current affairs radio show on Radio Adelaide in Australia. Consists of the shows name in slightly serified block capitals in tangerine orange and black, next to a cartoon, faintly cubist style rendering of a head with an open mouth speaking which is in grey

On 06/04/21 Populism in Action’s Principal Investigator Daniele Albertazzi was interviewed about the populist radical right in Europe during the Covid-19 pandemic by the current affairs show The Focus (Radio Adelaide, Australia).

Listen to the Interview Here on the Radio Adelaide Player.

How COVID Caused the Swiss Radical Right to Tie Itself in Knots

Josh Allen on 8th April 2021

An elderly white man in a suit and tie sat on a diasis in a wood panelled hall is interviewed by two white journalists, one is man, one is a woman, both of whom are also smartly dressed and who are in their late 30s. Bundeshaus (Bern / Switzerland) with plexiglass protection against Covid-19: President of the Council of States Hans Stöckli in an interview in the Chamber of States

by Dr. Adrian Favero (PiAP’s Switzerland focused Research Fellow)

This article originally appeared as “How COVID caused the Swiss far right to tie itself in knots” on The Conversation on 29/03/21. It is reproduced here with full attribution and the consent of the author.

The first COVID-19 case was reported in Switzerland on February 25 2020. Soon after, the country experienced alarmingly high rates of the disease. The Swiss population moves around a lot, crosses borders with neighbouring countries regularly and lives in concentrated areas, none of which helped matters.

On March 11 2020, the World Health Organization classified COVID-19 as a worldwide pandemic and five days later, because of the “rapidly worsening” outbreak, Switzerland declared an “extraordinary situation” under the Epidemics Act. This declaration allowed the government to order necessary measures to contain the spread of the virus without approval from parliament.

All private and public events were banned; restaurants, bars, leisure facilities, non-essential shops and most schools had to close. The government also introduced checks on the borders with Germany, Austria and France and deployed around 8000 military personnel to help with logistics.

Switzerland has a decentralised, federal political system. The country has also been characterised as a “consociational democracy” in which a grand coalition of the four largest parties forms the government. This solves political conflicts by negotiation and broadly based compromises. The concepts of democratic inclusion and participation are also held in high regard. Against this backdrop, the federal government’s invocation of exclusive power was a controversial one.

All this means that Switzerland became an excellent case to study for understanding how a global health crisis affects the stability of well-established democratic institutions and shifts political debates.

Lockdown tension

The largest of Switzerland’s four major parties in the government, the Swiss People’s Party (SVP) is one of Europe’s strongest and most successful far-right parties. Since the 1990s, the SVP has shifted further to the right and has, in the process, progressed from appealing largely to conservative voters in rural areas to becoming a national force. It is anti-immigration and anti-EU integration.

The SVP occupies an unusual position in that it holds two of the seven seats on the Swiss Confederation’s federal government but continues to aggressively promote itself as the opposition to the political establishment. This balancing act has become particularly challenging during the pandemic.

At first, the four governing parties found themselves surprisingly united on introducing restrictions. However, this unity did not last long. True to its strategy of being both part of the government and the opposition, the SVP quickly changed direction. The party bemoaned the negative impact lockdown was having on the Swiss economy and instead demanded stricter border controls to prevent the spread of the virus. At the same time, it criticised the government’s general handling and management of the crisis, increasingly targeting the federal minister for health (from the Social Democratic Party).

Undoubtedly, some of the SVP’s criticisms were justified. The pandemic has revealed how trying it is for a government to steer a coherent course and communication when a country faces unexpected circumstances. This is even truer for a federal system with sub-national political entities. In Switzerland, each region (canton) has fiscal autonomy and significant devolved powers. And each of the 26 cantons has a different view of how to tackle the crisis, depending on their economic and cultural circumstances. What works for Geneva may not work for Zurich.

After a significant period of public support, scepticism began to really set in by the time of the second national lockdown in late October 2020. And yet people wanted more, not less central control over decisions.

In response, the SVP intensified its criticism and went as far as accusing the federal government of “introducing a dictatorship” – a surprising accusation from a party with two representatives in that same government and the most seats in parliament. What the SVP hoped to achieve with this strategy remains something of a puzzle.

Half in, half out

Radical-right leaders leaders and parties around the world have responded in different ways to COVID-19. Some political scientists argued that their responses depend on their position in each respective political system. If they are in power they are likely to enforce strict measures and if they are in opposition, they attack strong measures from the government.

The SVP occupies both positions, resulting in a meandering approach accompanied by an increasingly radical rhetoric in line with its ideological views. The attacks eventually culminated in questioning the Swiss consociational system itself – which, in turn, forced one of the SVP representatives in the Federal Council to publicly defend the status quo.

Ultimately, amid all this confusion, it is difficult to say whether or not this strategy has benefited the SVP. On the one hand, it allowed the party to strengthen its own populist profile, to be visible in the media, and to act as the defender of the public interest and the national economy. On the other, the SVP’s campaign against the government has made it look a rather ineffective partner in a grand coalition government.

The SVP’s troubles may be tied to Switzerland’s unique political system but they also speak to a question that resonates with radical-right parties everywhere: once you’ve found success as an outside agitator, what do you do once you become part of the establishment?

Daniele Albertazzi Interviewed by Agence France Presse

Josh Allen on 1st April 2021

Populism in Action’s Principal Investigator Daniele Albertazzi was recently interviewed by the Agence France Presse wire agency’s Alvise Armellini about the prospects for an alliance in the European Parliament between Poland’s PiS party, Hungary’s Fidesz party and Italy’s Lega party.

He said that:

it was “not unrealistic” that PiS, Fidesz and Salvini’s League could form a common European Parliament grouping, adding: “There are strong practical and financial incentives to do it.” – adding that this could happen despite the lack of ideological cohesion between right-wing forces on some issues – “They may say similar things on the EU, that it has too much power, but when it comes to things like sharing asylum seekers… the (Dutch) PVV and Orban have very different interests from Salvini,”

You can read a full English language version of the syndicated article here on the Barron’s Magazine website.