Stepping Up to the Challenge: How European Parties Respond to Electoral Threats from a Growing Radical Right

The populist radical right has been rapidly rising in many European countries over the last decades. This rise has weakened the position of mainstream parties and introduced immigration as a salient issue in politics. Mainstream parties are required to find ways to deal with this new challenge. This thesis combines three papers that study the reactions of mainstream parties to this new challenge from three different angles. The first paper uses data from voter surveys to measure the threat the radical right poses to the voter base of various mainstream parties in eight European countries. Using this data, I show that parties who are at a higher risk of losing voters to the radical right take more restrictive positions on immigration in future elections. This effect persists even when controlling for radical right vote share, showing that parties are affected differently by the rise of the radical right and adjust their immigration policies according to the threat posed by the radical right. This previously ignored difference in threat helps explaining why parties accommodate the radical right, even though doing so is not correlated with a decrease in radical right vote share. The second paper examines competition between niche parties. A significant part of the radical right electorate comes from voters who are dissatisfied with democracy, and have traditionally voted for left-wing parties. This has prompted discussion about the possibility of a left-wing populist party that opposes immigration, but supports extensive welfare, challenging the radical right. The recent foundation of such a party in Germany, the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht, offers an opportunity to study the effects of a left-populist challenger on the party system in a case study. Analysing press releases from the German parties during the 2024 European Parliament election, I show that such a party can indeed compete for the radical right electorate, and prompts accommodation from the radical right. The AfD has responded to the rise of Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht by emphasising its commitment to peace and its opposition to German involvement in Ukraine, as well as blurring its position on economics. Unlike other parties, most notably the mainstream right, it has not increased its emphasis on immigration. This shows that radical right parties are also responsive to their electorate, and can be challenged by other niche parties. Finally, the third paper highlights negative campaigning against radical right parties. Mainstream parties are generally thought of as more trustworthy and competent than challenger parties. They can use this advantage to compete against the radical right without requiring to talk about immigration, which is likely to alienate a part of their voters and draw more attention to the radical right. Despite these incentives to campaign negatively against radical right parties, there is very little work done on negative campaigning against radical right parties. In this paper, I use data from newspapers in five European democracies to show that on average, radical right parties face significantly higher levels of negative campaigning than mainstream parties of similar size and importance. This effect is primarily driven by attacks on their general valence. Radical right challenger parties face on average 150% more attacks on their general valence than other parties, all else being equal. The lack of research on this topic suggests that this is a major oversight in the literature on the radical right that requires deeper analysis. As a whole, my thesis offers a comprehensive view of the strategic party reactions to competition from radical right challengers, and how mainstream parties can meet this challenge.