Toward a Majoritarian Mobilization Model for Western Europe.

Since its major breakthrough in the late 1980s, the Western European Far Right’s unifying feature has been its hostility toward immigrants from the Third World, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union and a program advancing the interests of the ‘native’ ethnic majority. Though its new importance as an electoral movement is generally accepted, there exists a tension in explanations of the Far Right’s electoral fortunes. Major comparative studies, writing from a perspective grounded in modernization (and now post-modernization) theory, tie Far Right success to a transition to post-industrial society, coupled with the inability of existing parties to cope with a shift in the electorate’s preferences privileging post-industrial issues. In contrast, ethnic mobilization is a well-known feature of politics in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, South America and now Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Ethnic competition in these regions is primarily theorized as some combination of economic and cultural competition between ethnic groups in close proximity. This paper seeks to bridge that divide by reconceptualizing the Far Right as the response by an ethnic majority to the ‘threat’ posed by an incoming ethnic minority, a ‘majoritarian mobilization’. Rather than see the recent success of the Far Right as the success of a coalition of voters threatened by the transition to post-industrial economies, this paper portrays the Far Right’s success as the response to a perceived ‘invasion’ by non-Western immigrants in the late 1980s. To consider the evidence for a majoritarian mobilization, this paper surveys support at the national level for the Far Right in 15 Western European cases between 1980 and 1999, using a combination of stylized facts and systematic data on electoral returns, immigration, unemployment and crime. In explaining divergence in Far Right success at the national level since 1980, this study privileges the level of immigration, electoral rules and the character of a state’s political culture. A majoritarian mobilization cannot occur without the credible threat of permanent, significant economic and cultural competition between ethnic groups. In Western Europe, states with significant immigration in the late 1980s and early 1990s were faced for the first time in 70 years with the possibility of permanent and significant ethnic minorities. Once the pre-conditions of a majoritarian mobilization are met and ethnicity has become salient in the electorate, electoral rules and political culture determine approximately how successful majoritarian ethnic parties are in mobilizing national vote support. Whether a state has electoral rules permissive or restrictive toward party entry at the majoritarian ethnic party’s point of takeoff determines its ability to succeed beyond the local level. Second, whether a state’s political culture is predisposed to dampen or aggravate ethnic tensions determines whether ethnicity remains durable as a political issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]