Category: Populism in the World

by Dr. Mariana S. Mendes (Technical University Dresden)

Portugal’s snap general election in late January 2022 made international headlines due to the incumbent left of centre Socialist Party (PS) gaining a surprise outright majority. This was a historic result for the PS, which had had to rely on the support of two radical left parties since 2015 in order to govern. At a time when many of the PS’ European counterparts struggle, it is little wonder social democrats elsewhere look to Portugal for inspiration.

Behind the overall image of stability, however, significant transformations are occurring in the Portuguese party system, particularly on the right. Traditionally occupied only by the centre-right Social Democratic Party (PSD), which remains the second largest party, and the Christian Democrat CDS-PP, the political right first showed signs of fragmentation in 2019, with the emergence of the populist radical right Chega and the Liberal Initiative (IL). In 2022, Chega and IL expanded from one seat apiece in the previous legislature to twelve and eight MPs, respectively. Increased competition by these new parties contributed to a disastrous result for the CDS-PP – a party that had been a reliable coalition partner for the PSD –, which was left with no seats in parliament. The PSD has also been impacted. By gaining a 28% vote share, the party did not manage to improve on its 2019 poll ratings, largely falling behind expectations. This is in itself evidence of a more polarised party system, as Chega and IL adopt more radical positions than the now defunct CDS-PP (Chega on both cultural and socio-economic issues, IL on socio-economic ones only).

Naturally, it is the rapid rise of the populist radical right that raises most eyebrows. Chega (meaning Enough) is now the third largest party in parliament. Established in 2019 by the former PSD militant André Ventura, the party leapt from 1.3% of the vote that year, to 7.2% in 2022. This result was not a surprise, though. Chega’s leader had already performed strongly in the 2021 Presidential election, garnering 12% of the vote, and opinion polling had been relatively stable between 2020 and 2022 (with Chega’s voting intentions generally oscillating between 5% and 9%). Though Chega had set its sights higher, it took the 2022 election result as a victory.

Chega’s rapid growth should not be regarded as the outcome of contextual circumstances specific to the current moment. Its low poll in 2019 (1.3%) is best explained by it being a brand new party then. Though it had already benefited from some media visibility before, it pales in comparison to the torrent of media attention that eventually came after obtaining a parliamentary seat. Moreover, researchers had already identified a latent social ‘demand’ for such a party, given the prevalence of ‘populist attitudes’ among the Portuguese population. Indeed, these attitudes are so widespread that it would be legitimate to wonder why Chega’s score is not higher, given that anti-elitism is central to the party’s discourse (for more on the party’s agenda, see here).

It is worth noting that Chega’s vote share remains below the average of radical right parties in Western Europe. While this may change over time, I have argued (with James Dennison) that Chega has not yet benefited from the ‘political opportunities’ that have aided many of its European counterparts, given the low salience of immigration as a concern amongst the Portuguese. This does not mean that the party has not been able to profit from nativism. In fact, Ventura does better in municipalities with higher shares of Roma people, whom his rhetoric often targets. Still, as Magalhães notes, Portugal seemingly remains ‘semi-detached’ from this world, given the salience of the socio-economic dimension to political competition, relating to specific socio-economic conditions and to differences in the class and educational composition of the electorate.

But if Chega’s rise clearly shows that there is a constituency for its claims, its influence on the election’s results might be even more profound. Though nobody can know for sure, pundits have frequently pointed out that the concentration of the left of centre vote in the Socialist party and an increase in turnout were at least partially the result of the fear of ending up with a right-wing majority that would include Chega. Voter’s rejection of Chega is quite high, judging by the fact that, among the leaders of major parties, André Ventura receives the most negative evaluations in opinion polls (with an overall score of 2,3 on a scale that goes from 0=very negative to 10=very positive, according to this ICS/ISCTE December 2021 poll). This is yet another example that supports the call for more research on ‘negative voting’ or the extent to which the rejection of certain parties affects the voting choices of sections of the electorate.

Despite the leader of the centre-right PSD stating during the campaign that his party rejected an alliance with Chega, his reassurances often seemed half-hearted or not unequivocal enough. He also showed his willingness to negotiate with the PS, but the centre-left seemed unreceptive to this. Fears of an arrangement with Chega were not unfounded, given the existence of a precedent at regional level. Following the 2020 regional election in the Azores, the mainstream right consented to a series of demands by Chega in exchange for its parliamentary support in the region. Amongst those demands was the reduction of ‘welfare dependency’ (‘subsidiodependência’), one of Ventura’s favourite policies and one on which convergence with the centre-right does not seem too difficult.

As elsewhere in Europe, the rise of the radical right in Portugal poses a challenge to the mainstream right and has spurred much debate on potential alliances, including within the PSD itself. The discussion is not settled and will likely be kept on hold until the next election. Much also depends on the future leadership of the PSD. Bringing together moderate parties is complicated, not least because Portugal has no tradition of ‘grand coalitions’ (one exception in the 1980s aside). The PS’ turn to the radical left in 2015 was interpreted by some as the start of enhanced ‘inter-bloc’ competition in Portuguese politics. What Portugal does have is a tradition of minority governments (though usually these have been of the centre-left). This means that the future inclusion or exclusion of Chega does not depend on the mainstream right alone, but could also hinge on the willingness of the centre-left to facilitate the governability of a minority right-wing government that excluded the radical right.

For now, the centre-left is firmly committed to a strategy of ostracising Chega. It excluded Chega from talks with other parties and defended rejecting the party’s candidate for vice president of the Parliament (the four largest parties get to nominate an MP to be vice president). This has sparked much discussion as to whether a cordon sanitaire approach is the best one, with the usual mix of principled and strategic arguments fuelling the debate. Considering the seminal work of Bonnie Meguid on mainstream parties’ strategies towards niche parties, the choice of an adversarial strategy might be unwise from a strategic point of view, if the goal is to prevent the growth of the radical right; the reason being that this strategy puts the radical right on the spotlight, contributing to increasing the saliency of its preferred issues. However, Meguid also notes that an adversarial strategy towards the radical right carries incentives for the centre-left, as it can contribute to weakening the centre-left’s most direct competitor, i.e. the centre-right (since the radical right competes directly with the centre-right for the conservative vote). Whether the Portuguese centre-left has principled or strategic considerations in mind, cannot be grasped very easily. But if the PS is inclined towards the former, it should consider that the rejection of Chega and its ideas does not necessarily require a permanent adversarial posture. In fact, a dismissive strategy may even work better, not least in a scenario where many of Chega’s ‘core issues’ seem of little importance to the average Portuguese citizen.

This piece of original analysis for the Populism in Action Project, is a guest post kindly written by Dr. Mariana S. Mendes of the Dresden Technical University. Her PhD on “Delayed Transitional Justice: Accounting for Timing and Cross-country variation in transitional justice trajectories” was awarded by the European University Institute in 2019. You can follow Mariana on Twitter here.

by Dr. Bartek Pytlas (LMU Munich)

Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS) party is an excellent case through which to explore the organisational features of a strongly institutionalised, incumbent party which uses populist radical right (PRR) politics. My recent analysis of PiS shows that it is important to contrast what such parties say with what they actually do in terms of organisation. This demonstrates that we must pay increased attention to how parties communicate and ‘perform’ their organisation.

During the 2015 presidential and parliamentary campaigns PiS tried to strategically normalise its image. The mask dropped immediately after the party won the parliamentary election, as it increased its powers at the expense of democratic principles and constitutional norms.

Interestingly, since at least 2015 the PiS has enacted not only programmatic, but also organisational reinvigoration. It has made overtures to some features of the mass party for the purposes of electoral mobilisation and simulated a dispersal of power away from its long-time Chair, Jarosław Kaczyński. In practice, however, little has changed, as PiS has not invested in establishing stronger linkages between party representatives and members, and remains a strongly centralised organisation dominated by its leader.

Mass party? Not quite.

Whilst PiS has enacted linkages that resemble those of the mass party to mobilise sympathisers, it has not developed a mass party organisation in actual practice. During the 2015 campaign, the party stressed that achieving its programmatic goal of “good change” depended upon a united effort by both the party’s “new” caring and efficient leadership, and engaged non‐member sympathisers. Yet, whilst between 2015 and 2019 PiS reported a doubling of its membership, it did not actively engage in expanding its membership base. Most notably, despite PiS’s calling on sympathisers to engage with the party during election campaigns, it did not even put much effort into integrating its actual members into the organisation, or socialising them into the party in a significant and sustained way.

Surveys of activists indicate PiS members had considerable expectations regarding their potential engagement in party activity, but that this was not prioritised by the party itself. One PiS official surveyed admitted that the party had few ideas about how to involve rank‐and‐file members outside periods of electoral campaigning. In these surveys, PiS activists explained the party’s reluctance to admit new members with reference to issues regarding party management, or concerns within regional party branches that an influx of new, highly engaged members could destabilise existing intra‐party power relations and hierarchies.

Organisational reinvigoration – but still a centralised party

Despite the fact that it has performed organisational renewal, PiS remains a strongly centralised party constructed around patronage networks and the power of its long‐time leader: Jarosław Kaczyński. In addition to formal prerogatives, the position of the current party leader is strengthened by his de-facto control over the party’s ongoing operations. Few key decisions can be made without the consent of the PiS Chair who has never hesitated to use the sanctions at his disposal to tame internal dissent.

Despite this situation, the radical public image and absolutist leadership style of Jarosław Kaczyński has clashed with the party’s electoral strategy. During the 2015 parliamentary campaign, the party did not foreground its leader, spotlighting instead new, less well known party leaders as candidates for executive office. In this way the PiS ostensibly appeared to renew its leadership, simulating the dispersal of power away from its long‐time Chair.

Up to 2020, Kaczyński remained a “mere rank‐and‐file” PiS Member of Parliament – at least in formal terms. From this back seat position he nonetheless continued to exert control over the party, as well as its parliamentary and governmental activities – both in person and via central office bodies. By being the party’s “backseat driver” Kaczyński could control the party’s activities without having to respond for the government’s actions. With assistance from PiS loyalists in the media, the party leader could also present himself as the symbolic saviour of Polish politics – even, if required, from the malaise affecting his own party.

Populist Radical Right (PRR) strategies and performative organisational ‘rebranding’

The example of PiS demonstrates how useful it is to compare whatever PRR parties proclaim with what they actually do concerning their organisation. We have also seen how vital it is to observe how parties may adjust the image behind their organisational profile for strategic purposes.

A performative organisational “rebranding” enabled PiS to include selected appeals to the mass party in their campaigning, whilst minimising the organisational costs and perceived risks to internal hierarchies brought about by the mass party organisational model. Blurring its organisational profile also helped PiS to enact an image as a renewed challenger, distinct from the world of “politics as usual”, whilst supporting the party’s vote‐maximising strategy. This suggests parties can use performative organisational rebranding as part of their normalisation strategies – which is especially important to PRR parties.

But whilst parties can strategically try to “have their cake and eat it”, this does not necessarily ameliorate intra-party conflicts, and can potentially (re-)activate them. Personal conflicts within PiS and the governing coalition have re‐emerged since 2020 amidst increasing anti‐government protests, and the COVID‐19 crisis. Simultaneously, the central office has signalled initial moves towards reorganising the party’s regional operations, causing further disquiet within the party. It will be interesting to observe what direction the party will take in the future, not least once its founding leader decides to pass the torch on to a successor.

Dr. Bartek Pytlas is a postdoctoral researcher at the Geschwister Scholl Institute of Political Science, LMU Munich. He is the author of the award‐winning monograph “Radical Right Parties in Central and Eastern Europe: Mainstream Party Competition and Electoral Fortune” (Routledge). His work has been published in journals such as West European Politics and Journal of Common Market Studies. His current project funded by the German Research Foundation focuses on strategic patterns of anti‐establishment politics across Europe. You can follow him on Twitter here.

by Dr. Anna-Sophie Heinze (University of Trier)

September 2021’s Federal General Election was not a success story for the “Alternative for Germany” (AfD). However, the party has clearly established itself organisationally and is unlikely to disappear in the coming years. The question now is what influence it will exert in the future.

First election losses at the federal and state level

After this year’s federal election on 26 September, the AfD had little apparent reason to celebrate. With 10.3% of the vote, it had lost not only 2.3% of its national support compared to 2017, but also its status as the largest opposition party (which had given it some privileges in the Bundestag during the last legislative period). The result, however, came as little surprise: firstly, opinion polls had been indicating relatively stable support for the AfD at between 10-12% for months (whilst fluctuating more widely for the CDU, SPD and Greens). Secondly, the AfD had lost votes in all the state level elections held earlier in 2021 (Baden-Württemberg -5.4%; Rhineland-Palatinate -4.3%; and Saxony-Anhalt -3.5%).

Much has been written about the reasons for this defeat. On the one hand, this year’s Federal General Election was very much about the succession of the chancellorship after 16 years of Angela Merkel at the top, allowing fewer opportunities to focus on “typical” populist radical right issues. Additionally, the AfD’s image was undermined by internal party disputes and donation scandals, including one concerning a top candidate, Alice Weidel. At the same time, the party had to tackle the question of how to deal with the threat of surveillance by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, all whilst the new anti-COVID restrictions party dieBasis (the base) won 1.5% of the vote. These votes may otherwise have gone to the AfD.

Stable party organisation and stronghold in “the east”

Taking a close look at the AfD’s organisation and mobilisation reveals why the party is unlikely to disappear in the medium term. Unlike previous far-right parties (e.g. the NPD, DVU or Die Republikaner), the AfD quickly built up a complex, relatively stable organisation with strong branches in all 16 of Germany’s federal states. In our forthcoming article in the Populism in Action Special Issue of Politics & Governance edited by Daniele Albertazzi and Stijn van Kessel, Manès Weisskircher and I show how the AfD’s organisation has always been characterised by: dual leadership, relatively high participation by its members and strong cooperation with far-right social movements (for instance PEGIDA, and, more recently, also the anti-COVID Querdenken movement, which mobilises against anti-COVID restrictions and vaccines). The AfD has developed positions on all major issues in recent years and is increasingly trying to present itself as a “normal” party, even adopting the election slogan “Germany. But normal”.

The AfD has had its electoral “strongholds” in eastern Germany for some time. At the federal election, it even became the largest party in Saxony and Thuringia, by receiving 24.6% and 24% of the votes, respectively. Moreover, it is only in eastern Germany that it also won direct mandates (on the basis of votes given to specific candidates, rather than party lists). It gained 10 of these in Saxony, 4 in Thuringia and 2 in Saxony-Anhalt. The reasons for this strong showing are manifold, including the feeling of most eastern Germans that they are treated as “second-class citizens” (for a more in-depth analysis see Manès Weisskircher’s article in The Political Quarterly). The AfD also seems to be gaining support where the CDU has lost its formerly dominant position. Crucially, the AfD mobilises across the entire electorate and is often the preferred party amongst younger age cohorts – which again speaks for the party’s established status, at least in eastern Germany. This raises the question of how other parties should react to it.

Long-term success largely depends on the behaviour of the other parties

Now that the AfD has established itself, the million-dollar question is what influence it will gain in the long term. As I argued in my West European Politics article back in 2018, the behaviour of the other parties plays a crucial role here. Once established parties engage with a “pariah”, this step towards “normalisation” cannot be reversed (for more on this, see recent work by Léonie de Jonge, who will also contribute to the Special Issue mentioned above). Although other German parties have largely excluded the AfD so far, there have been exceptions at the subnational level, like the contentious election of Thomas Kemmerich as Prime Minister of Thuringia with votes from the FDP, CDU and AfD in February 2020.

While direct cooperation with the AfD remains taboo, the mainstreaming of AfD positions is having much indirect impact. This can be observed particularly among actors from the CDU and the CSU. One of the most prominent examples is Hans-Georg Maaßen, who was selected by the CDU as a local constituency candidate (Direktkandidat) for the Federal General Election, eventually losing to the SPD. In the near future, the election of the CDU’s new party chair next January will most probably be decisive to settle the extent to which the party will distance itself from the AfD. The empirical evidence suggests that many potential AfD voters cannot be “won back”, with recent research by Viola Neu indicating that 50% of them would rather vote for no party at all than for the CDU/CSU, if the AfD was not an option anymore.

The AfD’s future will also be shaped by its new party executive, which will be elected at the party’s conference on 11-12th December 2021. Party co-leader Jörg Meuthen (one of the last prominent representatives of the “rather moderate” camp) has announced he will not run again, increasing speculation about a further rightward turn for the party. As mentioned above, the party will probably be cautious about this, for at least two reasons: the threat of state surveillance and its efforts to establish itself (e.g. by possibly attracting state funding for its own political foundation). More generally, these developments highlight, once again, why we should not focus too much on individual elections or events, but keep our eyes open for the entire ideological, strategic and organisational panoply underlying the establishment of the far right, so as to understand why the AfD is here to stay.

Dr Anna-Sophie Heinze is a political scientist at the Trier Institute for Democracy and Party Research (TIDUP), University of Trier, Germany. In 2019, she defended her PhD thesis on party responses towards the AfD at the Friedrich Schiller University, Jena. Her research focuses on political parties, democracy, populism, and the far right. You can follow her on Twitter here.

by Dr. Arthur Borriello, Université libre de Bruxelles

On January 7, 2020, the Spanish Parliament provided the setting for an unusual scene. Podemos’ leader, Pablo Iglesias, burst into tears after the investiture of Pedro Sanchez, President of the Socialist Party (PSOE), as the new Prime Minister leading a coalition government that included his own political formation. Ten years after the outbreak of the economic crisis in the Euro area, almost exactly six years after the creation of Podemos, the political heir of the Indignados had finally made it into national government, therefore achieving one of its key stated goals. Sixteen months later, Iglesias gave another solemn speech, in which he announced his retirement from politics in these terms: “when your role within your organization and your task to improve democracy in this country becomes greatly limited and mobilizes the worst elements of those who hate it, certain decisions have to be taken without hesitation”. This occurred after a regional election campaign in Madrid. Iglesias had unexpectedly decided to step down as the country’s deputy prime minister to rescue Podemos from certain defeat, but eventually only secured a disappointing 7.21% of the vote and 10 seats out of 136. The campaign had been marked by threats of violence, including towards Iglesias himself.

The end of a political cycle

The outcome of the Madrilenian contest was not that surprising, however. After all, the result of the previous regional election in Madrid, held on May 26th, 2019, had been even worse, considering Podemos had lost 20 of their 27 seats in the regional assembly. This time the odds were stacked against the parties in government. The PSOE endured a severe defeat, too, registering its worst-ever result in the region (the popularity of Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the People’s Party’s charismatic candidate, being readily apparent). Iñigo Errejón argued in a recent interview that 26 years of right-wing government in the Madrilenian region has shaped the political subjectivities in favour of the right. This defeat, however, calls for an explanation beyond purely local factors. For one must remember that Iglesias’s tears in January 2020 were not of joy; rather they were the product of mixed feelings. Nostalgia, first of all, the long march to national government having come at high cost. On the way to executive power, Podemos lost two million voters, experienced harsh internal tensions leading to painful splits, and abandoned many of its initial aspirations. Relief, too. The alliance of socialists and populists was the result of long and arduous negotiations initiated nine months earlier, which succeeded only after a risky second election weakened both leftist parties, while reinforcing the far right. Bitterness, finally. Podemos’ weakness was the very reason why it finally set foot in government, as the hegemony of PSOE was not in danger anymore.

Podemos’ recent defeat confirms the exhaustion of the political cycle opened by the anti-austerity protests of 2011. The “old” vs “new” opposition that arose from the discrediting of centre-left and centre-right elites in the context of the Euro crisis has given way to a return to a more classic left-right structure of political competition coupled with an exacerbation of the centre-periphery cleavage. This trend has led to the decline of Ciudadanos – the other political force that erupted in the aftermath of the recession and positioned itself as a “new” pole of the emerging opposition. As well as the birth of a new party on the far-right, Vox, putting an end to the “Spanish exception”. In this configuration, the opposition between two antagonist blocs (left vs. right) has progressively obscured the new axis of competition between insiders and outsiders, marginalizing the latter contenders. At the end of this process, Podemos has been relegated to PSOE’s left, as a credible junior partner for left coalitions, but without any further capacity to influence the coordinates of the political debate. Its initial transversal ambition has practically disappeared; in many respects, Podemos is not to be considered “populist” anymore, but simply represents a renewed version of the old Spanish radical left.

The paradoxes of left populism

This trend sheds light on an interesting paradox. The old channels and structures of political representation – arguably the main long-term factor behind the populist upsurge – do not disappear all of a sudden. Rather, they are crumbling and resisting at the same time. The cleavages, organizations, and actors of party democracy keep, at least partially, a foothold in certain sectors of society making it difficult for new contenders to extensively remould political identities along new lines of competition. Any left populist contender finds itself progressively torn between two temptations: going populist or going leftist. In the first scenario, they abandon the radical left’s classic ideological coordinates and modes of organization and opt for the lightest and most open structure to attract voters and members. In doing so, however, they might be unable to win the loyalty of specific social groups in the long run and end up becoming the victims of the volatility that enabled them to erupt onto the political scene in the first place. In the second scenario, they decide to opt for heavier structures and more recognizable ideological positionings entrenching the party in specific sectors of society. The pitfall of such strategy is before our eyes: while the voter base of Podemos is now certainly more loyal than ever, it has considerably shrunk in numerical terms, leaving the party’s electoral strength far from its initial ambitions to transform Spanish society. In a paradoxical situation in which volatility and atomization coexist with resilience and inertia, left populism has seemed forced to choose between evaporation and marginalization.

What next?

Pablo Iglesias’ resignation was certainly a shock for most observers of Spanish politics. Yet, it does not represent a turning point in the fullest sense, since it simply accelerates a trend already in play. Podemos is increasingly turning into a “normal” party, more structured and less dependent on the figure of its charismatic leader to condense the affective investment of a wide range of heterogeneous demands. The twilight of Spanish left populism does not leave us without lessons, however. As the structures of political mediation and representation are eroding across Western democracies, other populist contenders are yet to arise. As the Spanish example teaches us, these must be careful not to underestimate the inertia of the party system they rise against and find a good balance between anchoring themselves to specific segments of society and the ideological and organizational agility that would help them navigate through the (partial) void of representation. These are the minimum conditions required if they wanted to become a credible majoritarian force capable of social transformation.

This piece of original analysis for the Populism in Action Project, is a guest post kindly written by Arthur Borriello who is a FNRS postdoctoral researcher at the CEVIPOL (Centre for the study of politics), Université libre de Bruxelles. His research interests include contemporary populism, neoliberalism, and political discourse. His main research project focuses on the rise and transformation of left populist movements in Europe in the wake of the Euro crisis, with a particular focus on Italian, Spanish, and French politics. You can find his publications on ResearchGate.

by Dr. Marta Lorimer (University of Exeter)

Just over 10 years ago, on 16th January 2011, Marine Le Pen took over from her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, to become president of the Front National (FN, National Front; now, Rassemblement National, RN, National Rally). As she took the helm of the party her father had dominated for nearly 40 years, many wondered whether the FN would survive the change of leadership. Ten years on, the answer to that question is clear: the RN has not only survived – it has thrived. However, Marine Le Pen has not been able to achieve all her objectives, leaving her and the party in a potentially precarious situation.

The Rassemblement National: A Brief History

The Front National (FN) was originally founded in 1972 with the aim of bringing the different currents of the French far right together. Despite Jean-Marie Le Pen being regarded as a charismatic leader on the right, during its first ten years the party struggled to gain relevance.

The FN’s first national-level success came in the European Parliament elections of 1984, when it secured 10% of the vote and elected its first MEPs. The RN has been a force to be reckoned with ever since. While still struggling to gain representation at the national level – due to France’s two-round electoral system – it has grown into a party representing over one-fifth of the French electorate.

Marine Le Pen’s leadership

Marine Le Pen took over the party in 2011 with the clear aim of turning the RN into a party of government.

To achieve this, she initiated a process of ‘dédiabolisation’, or ‘de-demonisation’ aimed at softening the party’s image. She embraced Republicanism, backtracked on some of the party’s more controversial stances and expelled militants holding exceedingly radical views. Following a series of comments by Jean-Marie Le Pen about the Holocaust, she went as far as breaking very publicly with her father and expelling him from the party, in a saga that included reports of her cat being viciously murdered by her father’s Doberman. Finally, in an attempt to symbolically complete the transition from ‘eternal opposition’ to ‘government in waiting’, in 2018 she changed the party’s name to Rassemblement National.

In parallel, under the influence of ideas from her former adviser Florian Philippot, she also revised the party’s message so as to target voters on the left of the political spectrum. Arguing that her party was ‘neither left nor right’ and asserting the emergence of a new cleavage between ‘patriots’ and ‘globalists’, she sought to expand her voting base by attracting disillusioned working class voters.

Neither strategy was entirely new: ‘de-demonisation’ was first discussed by the RN’s leadership in the 1980s, while the ‘neither left nor right’ line had already been briefly adopted in the 1990s. However, Le Pen made both elements strategic goals, and imposed her strategy to the party machine.

Ten years, mixed results

Marine Le Pen’s ten years at the head of the RN can be roughly divided into two periods: ‘pre’ and ‘post’ the 2017 presidential election. From 2011 until 2017, Le Pen’s strategy of de-demonisation bore fruit: hence the RN’s election results improved steadily as did perceptions of the RN’s image. Indeed, according to Kantar’s ‘Barometer on the image of the RN’, an increasing number of French voters perceived the RN as fit to govern. Whilst in 2011, 56% of polled respondents viewed the RN as a ‘threat to democracy’, only 47% held the same view in 2014.

The RN also benefitted from a news cycle that spoke to its key issues. In particular, the migration crisis in 2015 and the sequence of terrorist attacks perpetrated by Islamist fundamentalist that hit France during the 2010s gave the party’s agenda stronger resonance.

Paradoxically, the 2017 presidential election marked both the high point of Le Pen’s tenure as RN leader and its lowest. After an otherwise lacklustre campaign, Le Pen made it into the second round of the presidential election. This was only the second time an FN/RN leader had gone as far as that: fifteen years previously, Jean Marie Le Pen had faced the outgoing Jacques Chirac, following a surprise first round defeat of the Socialist Lionel Jospin. Marine Le Pen also nearly doubled her father’s 2002 result. In 2002, Jean-Marie Le Pen’s vote between rounds only marginally improved, from 16.8% to 17.8%, whilst Marine Le Pen’s increased from 21.3% to 33.9%.

However, the contest presented many challenges for Marine Le Pen. During the campaign, her positions on the European Union were heavily criticized as too extreme. Moreover, a disastrous performance in the debate that preceded the second round undermined her hard-won polling and reputational gains. In a head to head with the soon-to-be President Emmanuel Macron, Le Pen appeared aggressive, unprepared and frequently rambling in the face of a better prepared adversary. The debate was widely perceived as a debacle both within and without the party. While it is unlikely that she would have won the presidency even had she performed well, the debate marked the end of Le Pen’s 2017 presidential ambitions.

Le Pen’s image has not fully recovered since 2017 and the party’s latest electoral performances have not been its strongest. In the European elections of 2019, it won 23.3% of the vote (down from 24.9% in 2014), and it recently failed to make significant inroads in the 2020 municipal elections. It has also been marred by financial and legal issues which have raised questions about its long-term prospects.

Luckily for the RN, most French parties are currently in disarray. The left is divided and still recovering from 2017, while the right-wing Les Republicans are struggling to find the leader they need to take them into the next presidential election. In this context, Le Pen still appears as Macron’s main opposition – and Macron is happy to feed this narrative because he views Le Pen as his ‘natural’ opponent and potentially an easy target.

While for now, it may be enough for Le Pen to survive, it is unclear whether being the only visible and organized opposition will be enough for her to win the presidency in 2022. Le Pen can find comfort in a recent poll which showed that a run-off between her and Macron would find them very close (52% to 48% for Macron). However, there is still a long way to go until 2022, and being ‘ok’ might not be enough to break the RN’s glass ceiling. It is also unclear what the RN will do if Le Pen fails again. Many are already looking to her niece, Marion Maréchal, as the next leader, but the party may find itself in troubled waters by end of 2022.

10 years on, Marine Le Pen has achieved a lot, however, her best may not be enough.

by Dr. Mariana S. Mendes (Dresden Technical University)

Europe’s burgeoning family of radical right parties has recently gained a new member in a country previously considered immune to such trends. The Portuguese party Chega (Enough) recently made headlines thanks to the result obtained by its leader in the country’s presidential election on January 24^th 2021. With 12% of the popular vote, André Ventura – Chega’s leader and sole member of parliament – secured third place in the poll. Perhaps more importantly, he has also taken advantage of this contest to gain unprecedented personal visibility and establish Chega as a serious political competitor.

Introducing Chega

Officially founded in April 2019, Chega’s first electoral feat was the October 2019 legislative elections, where it gained 1,3% of the popular vote. It was one of three parties to gain parliamentary representation for the first time in 2019 (the other two being the liberal Iniciativa Liberal [1,3%] and the left-wing Livre [1,1%]). Of the three, Chega is by far the one which has benefited the most from parliamentary representation and the concomitant increase in media attention. In this respect, it has ostensibly profited from the tabloid-like style and rhetoric of its leader – which is prototypically right-wing populist, as it combines anti-establishment stances with the targeting of out-groups. This is a radical novelty in the Portuguese political scene.

Not only is André Ventura the party’s only public face – possessing a monopoly on party communications – but the party itself is held together, above all, by allegiance to him. Indeed, adherence to the leader is so strong that it has often been said that the party fosters a “cult of personality”. Though this is far from sufficient to prevent internal feuds (which have little to do with the leader, and more to do with intraparty power plays and personal antagonisms), there is one undisputable truth accepted within the party: Ventura is the uncontested leader and there is no Chega without him.

To start with, Chega is the creation of Ventura alone. Though he has obviously found supporters along the way, Chega was initiated by Ventura to put forward an agenda he had been unable to pursue previously as a member of the centre-right PSD (Partido Social Democrata), and grant him the political pre-eminence he had unsuccessfully tried to achieve there. His sense that there was fertile ground for a project like Chega dates back to the local elections in 2017 when, running as a PSD candidate in Loures, a municipality on Lisbon’s outskirts, he adopted a controversial platform explicitly targeting the Roma community for allegedly living on welfare benefits (among other things). His relatively good results, as well as the unprecedented media coverage his campaign received (unusual in local elections), were the first clear sign for him that the politicisation of “politically incorrect” topics could be a successful political strategy. Unable to disseminate his agenda within the PSD, and increasingly frustrated at the party’s internal hierarchy and centrist course, he quit in October 2018 and proceeded to create Chega, counting on the assistance of friends, acquaintances and crucially, social media (see Marchi, Riccardo, 2020).

Chega is not only the product of Ventura, but it seems to be above all a vehicle for Ventura. Kefford and McDonnell (2018) have noted perceptively that, while leaders are usually the expression of parties, so-called “personal parties” turn this formula on its head, with the parties instead being an expression of the leader. This seems to be the case with Chega so far, not only because Ventura created it and is the only face of the party, but also because its very existence, at least for the time being, depends entirely on him.

Nevertheless, it must be said that, on paper at least, Chega aims to be a party with an organisational structure and internal life similar to that of mainstream parties. In this regard, it has tried to appear a conventionally organised party – in contrast to, most flagrantly, the case of Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party in the Netherlands. Hence Chega has established party conferences, regional branches, a youth wing, and a (rapidly expanding) membership base (in January 2021, it was said to have 25,000 members already). If Chega’s organisational structure still appears underdeveloped, it is perhaps too early to tell whether this is the result of the party’s young age or an intended consequence of its “personal” nature.

“Growing pains”?

Tensions between establishing a properly functioning party and keeping it firmly under the leader’s control have emerged. While there are apparently internal democratic processes in place, Ventura has more than enough leverage to steer the party in directions he desires. This was most apparent at the party’s September 2020 convention, where Chega’s leader struggled to get his list of candidates to the party’s board approved (mostly because of conflicts among delegates). Refusing to give in, Ventura submitted the same list three times, threatening to resign if it was not approved at the third attempt… which in fact it was. Ventura’s grip on the party increased last December, when a directive was issued establishing sanctions against those who publicly criticise other party members or the party’s leadership, be it in the press or on social media. He justified this decision by saying he wanted to address a climate of internal strife that is allegedly damaging the reputation of the party – a climate often attributed to the party’s “growing pains”, in light of its rapidly expanding membership, lack of organisational capacity to absorb members, and the alleged infiltration of “opportunists”.

It is too soon to tell how such tensions will unfold. On the one hand, it is apparent that the party is keen to expand its grassroots presence, so as to maximise its electoral appeal. On the other hand, past research into personal parties has unequivocally shown that, as organisational entities, they tend to be “weak, shallow and opportunistic” (Gunther and Diamond, 2003). Ventura’s ideal model seems to be a party where power is concentrated at the top, but where the base is occasionally called on to directly elect the leader (which, to be fair, is not a model radically different from other parties in Portugal). This formula endows the leader with a legitimacy which allows him to justify sidestepping middle-ranking party members, as he did in the party’s September convention. Back then, and in a quintessentially populist fashion, Ventura claimed that power should remain with the grassroots (i.e. with their elected leader) and not with “behind-the-scene party structures”.

That said, Chega’s prospective problems have less to do with lack of internal democracy and more to do with internal conflict and an overreliance on Ventura. These are customary problems amongst populist and personal parties and it is easy to see why (the recent implosion of Thierry Baudet’s Forum for Democracy in the Netherlands being a case in point). Infighting, infiltration by extremists, scandals, or simple strategic miscalculations by leaders often turn these parties into their own worst enemies. And even if leaders are skillful political players, as seems to be the case with Ventura, the long-term viability of the project is critically dependent on the party’s ability to attract the electorate by not relying exclusively on its leader’s appeal. It also depends on it improving its organisational structure — that is, ceasing to be a personal party. For the time being, there is no figure within Chega that comes close to Ventura in terms of appeal and rhetorical skill. Though this could be a symptom of the party’s youthfulness, it is in clear contrast to, for example, Vox in Spain – another relatively new radical right party, which has several figures that recurrently appear next to the party’s leader, Santiago Abascal, and take turns with him in the party’s external political communications. Chega, meanwhile, remains the André Ventura show.

This piece of original analysis for the Populism in Action Project, is a guest post kindly written by Dr. Mariana S. Mendes of the Dresden Technical University. Her PhD on “Delayed Transitional Justice: Accounting for Timing and Cross-country variation in transitional justice trajectories” was awarded by the European University Institute in 2019. You can follow Mariana on Twitter here.

by Dr. Léonie de Jonge (University of Groningen)

Once known for its progressivism and social tolerance, the Netherlands long seemed ‘immune’ to far-right tendencies. However, since the turn of the 21st century, the country has witnessed the rise of several influential right-wing populist parties, including the Lijst Pim Fortuyn (LPF), Geert Wilders’s Freedom Party (PVV) and, most recently, the Forum for Democracy (FvD), led by flamboyant far-right newcomer Thierry Baudet.

The rapid ascent of the FvD was remarkable by any measure. Founded as a Eurosceptic think tank in 2015, the party won two of the 150 seats in the Dutch House of Representatives after garnering 1.8 percent of the vote at the 2017 general election. Two years later, the FvD became the largest party in the Dutch Upper House after winning nearly 16 percent of the vote at the 2019 provincial elections. In January 2020, the party announced that it had become ‘the biggest party in the Netherlands by membership’, thereby surpassing traditional mass parties, including the Labour Party and Christian democrats.

The FvD’s success story was offset in November 2020, when the party succumbed to infighting. The implosion resulted in a massive exodus of (senior) party members as well as a more general loss of public support. Whilst the future of the party is currently uncertain, it seems fair to state that the breakthrough of the FvD initiated a new phase in the history of right-wing populism in the Netherlands, characterised by the normalisation of the far right in the public sphere and competition within the populist radical right party family. Indeed, since 2017, two far-right parties have parliamentary representation in the Netherlands: the PVV and the FvD.

But what exactly characterises the FvD? How does it differ from Wilders’s PVV? And why did it implode? This contribution provides an overview of the parliamentary far right in the Netherlands run-up to the 2021 general election.

The FvD in Comparative Perspective

Just like the PVV, the FvD is commonly classified as a populist radical right party, characterised by authoritarianism, nativism and populism. As such, both parties are staunchly anti-immigrant and deeply Eurosceptic. There are however, some key differences, particularly with regards to their electorate. For instance, in contrast to PVV supporters, FvD voters tend to be more highly educated and economically right-leaning (in the sense that they favour a less egalitarian income distribution).

Turning to the supply side, there are also noteworthy differences between the two parties and their leaders. Officially, the FvD was set up as a conservative party, with the aim of improving the general state of democracy in the Netherlands by ‘breaking the party cartel’ and giving Dutch voters more of a say in the decision-making process, notably by introducing binding referendums, popular initiatives, directly elected mayors and e-democracy. In fact, in its early days, the FvD presented itself as a more moderate and socially-acceptable right-wing alternative to the PVV. Over time, however, it became increasingly obvious that the FvD had tacked to the far right. How did this happen?

The short answer is that the more extreme right elements were present from the start. The term ‘far right’ is generally 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 extreme (anti-democratic) parties. The FvD has blurred these lines. Soon after the party’s initial electoral breakthrough in 2017, tensions emerged between different factions within the party. In the internal battle over the party’s ideological course, the more radical and, at times, extreme right undercurrent prevailed.

It is useful to differentiate between the comparatively ‘moderate’ official party manifesto and the more radical and, at times, extremist messages broadcast by the party leader, Thierry Baudet, who is considerably more radical than his far-right predecessors – including Pim Fortuyn and Geert Wilders. While Wilders has focused most of his nativist agenda on the preservation of Dutch culture (notably by opposing Islam), Baudet has made blatantly racist comments. For instance, in 2015, Baudet already expressed his wish for a ‘predominantly white Europe’, and in 2017, he warned about the alleged ‘homoeopathic dilution of the Dutch population’ with people from other cultures, thereby drawing upon the extreme-right Great Replacement conspiracy theory.

The difference between Wilders and Baudet was further illustrated by their respective responses to the recent storming of the US Capitol. While Wilders was quick to distance himself from the attack by underling his commitment to democracy, Baudet shared a tweet he had originally posted in 2016, stating Trump ‘would be a great leader for the West as a whole’ – although he later removed the tweet and denied having posted it in the first place. In light of the public statements made by the party’s leader, the FvD might best be described as an extreme right party. This also partly helps to explain the party’s implosion.

The Fall of the FvD

The collapse of the FvD occurred in several phases. The party’s descent in the polls started in the summer of 2019, when the party’s co-founder and senator Henk Otten was expelled after publicly accusing Baudet of ‘pulling the party too far to the right’. In 2020, the FvD lost credibility when Baudet (who had initially pushed for stricter lockdown measures) became a vocal ally of anti-lockdown protests and voiced support for COVID-19 conspiracy theories. In November 2020, renewed allegations of anti-Semitic, homophobic and racist messages being spread on internal message boards in the party’s youth wing surfaced in the media, after which underlying tensions in the party’s leadership erupted into a public dispute.

In an attempt to ward off mounting pressure to distance himself from allegations of extremism, Baudet renounced his position as lead candidate for the 2021 general election, but subsequently backtracked his decision to resign. Having hijacked the FvD’s official social media channels, Baudet announced that he would be organising a ‘binding referendum’, asking members to decide on his fate as party leader. In response to this move, several prominent party representatives including elected officials and election candidates renounced their membership. On 4 December 2020, the FvD announced that 76 percent of the party’s 37,000 members had voted for Baudet, thereby putting an end to the leadership struggle. The internal dissention caused the FvD to plummet in the polls from approximately 17 percent in March 2019 down to approximately 2 percent in December 2020.

The Far Right in the Run-up to the 2021 Election

The big winner from all this appears to be Geert Wilders, for whom the chaos in the FvD came at a perfect moment in time, as the Netherlands is gearing up for elections in March. Indeed, the loss of support for the FvD was mirrored by a resurge in support for the PVV, which currently polls in second place, right behind Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s centre-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). As Cas Mudde has observed, ‘as another “intellectual” far right contender bites the dust’ (thereby echoing the electoral trajectory of Pim Fortuyn), it appears that ‘the boring “common” far right mainstay picks up the electoral debris and gets ready to take center stage once again’.

The more serious consequences of the rise and fall of the FvD is the normalisation of the far right in the public sphere. With his extremist remarks and behaviour, Baudet has pushed the boundaries of what is considered ‘acceptable’ even further than those before him. There is a possibility that Geert Wilders’s PVV will now come to be seen as a moderate, relatively ‘mainstream’ alternative to the FvD. A quick glance at the PVV’s 2021 manifesto indicates that the party wants to close borders to all migrants from Islamic countries, send back Syrian asylum seekers, close down all mosques and outlaw the Qur’an, thereby confirming that Wilders has retained his radical edge.

It too soon to make definite predictions on the outcome of the 2021 general election. What is interesting, however, is that current polling estimates actually look quite similar to the political landscape at the time of the previous elections, in March 2017. While some had expected (or hoped) that the pandemic would fundamentally stir the fault lines in European politics, the current Dutch political landscape seems relatively ‘stable’. This is all the more surprising in a country in which party politics has become increasingly fragmented and volatile over the past decades.

This piece of original analysis for the Populism in Action Project, is a guest post kindly written by Dr. Léonie de Jonge of the University of Groningen who is an expert on populist radical right and extreme right politics in the Benelux countries. You can follow Léonie on Twitter here.