Accommodation versus Detachment: The Determinants of Spatial Interaction Between Extreme Right Parties and Center Right Parties.

The electoral increase of the extreme right-wing parties (ERPs) in some Western European democracies since the 1970s have led to the emergence of an extensive literature regarding possible individual and macro-level factors behind this ?unexpected? upsurge. Nevertheless, ideological or issue-based reactions to the ERPs from established mainstream parties have mostly been neglected. It is acknowledged by many scholars that especially the new-type ERPs (those that do not associate themselves with the interwar fascist era) influence political agenda not only by spreading socially authoritarian opinions regarding restrictions on immigrants as well as a ?need? for strict law and order, but also by changing the locations of the established parties in general and the center-right parties in particular. For instance, it has been argued that both of the center-right parties in France (RPR and UDF) have, in time, taken similar positions to that of the National Front on the immigration issue by giving negative messages to immigrants such as encouraging them to leave the country or proposing to cut social benefits provided for them by the government. Another option for established parties can be to further marginalize the ERPs by detaching themselves from them altogether (rather than accommodate) and creating a ?cordon sanitaire? against such parties. In my paper, I will present the possible factors that may encourage the established center-right parties to accommodate the political demands of the ERPs by shifting towards more to the right, hence, closer to the position of the ERPs. Arguing that all parties want to gain and maintain office, I will put forward the following hypotheses: 1-Convergence of established parties toward the center of the ideological spectrum increases the likelihood of a center-right party to move closer to the position of the ERP if that party has an equally powerful challenger (increases the likelihood of accommodation), and 2-Decreasing levels of disproportionality and increasing levels of multi-partyism increase the likelihood of accommodation by the center-right parties in accordance with the ERPs. I will benefit from Comparative Political Dataset 1960-2001 (Armingeon, Meyeler and Menegale) as well as expert scores for political parties in order to measure my outcome and predictor variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]