Respectable radicals: why some radical right parties in the European Parliament forsake policy congruence

ABSTRACT

Policy congruence has been identified as the main driver of European Parliament (EP) alliances. Yet, radical right parties are divided between three EP groups: European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR); Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD); Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF). This article investigates why four radical right parties in the ECR and EFDD – the Danish People’s Party, the Finns Party, the Sweden Democrats and UKIP – neither joined the apparently more ideologically homogenous ENF nor allied all with one another in 2014. Using Chapel Hill data, we find no policy logic explaining their alliance behaviour. Rather, our interviews with those in the parties indicate that they privileged national ‘respectability’ calculations when deciding alliance strategies. We therefore propose an alternative theory of EP group formation that sees some radical parties play a two-level game in which the perceived domestic ‘office’ and ‘votes’ benefits of European alliances outweigh those of ‘policy’.

KEYWORDS:

• European Parliament
• European Parliament groups
• Euroscepticism
• radical right
• right-wing populism

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers, as well as Niklas Bolin, Kevin Deegan-Krause, Reinhard Heinisch, Anders Ravik Jupskås, Onawa Promise Lacewell, Benjamin Leruth, Cas Mudde, Jonathan Polk and Marco Valbruzzi for their very useful feedback on earlier drafts of this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Duncan McDonnell http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0319-3747

Annika Werner http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7341-0551

Notes

1 Excluding MEPs from extreme right parties such as the Hungarian Jobbik and the Greek Golden Dawn, there were 72 radical right MEPs in 2014 (out of 751 MEPs overall).

2 While the Five-Star Movement is regularly termed ‘populist’, it has not been considered ‘radical right’ by scholars.

3 We also performed crosschecks with data from the Manifesto Project (MARPOR/CMP, Volkens et al. 2016). These confirm our results (see Online Appendix).

4 Neither the AFD nor PiS were considered ‘radical right’ by most scholars at the time EP groups were formed in 2014.

5 This is substantiated by t-tests (a) comparing all RR parties with all non-RR parties under investigation, and (b) comparing non-RR parties in the EFDD and ECR with RR parties from the ENF, ECR and EFDD. We find that there are significant differences between, firstly, all RR parties and all non-RR parties and, secondly, between non-RR parties and RR parties in the ECR and EFDD. By contrast, there is no significant difference between the RR parties in the ENF and those in the ECR and EFDD. See Online Appendix, p. 3–4.

6 This is confirmed by the analysis of VB’s 2012 national manifesto. See Online Appendix, Figure A.1.

7 This result is supported by the t-test comparing the RR parties in ENF and those in the ECR and EFDD. See Online Appendix p. 4.

8 There is a significant difference between the immigration positions of all non-RR and all RR parties. See Online Appendix p. 3.

9 See Online Appendix (pp. 3–4) for further t-test and ANOVA analyses.

10 See Online Appendix.

11 Speroni’s comment may also shed light on why the LN felt able to move to the ENF in the 2014–2019 Parliament.

Additional information

Funding

The initial interviews for this project in 2014 were conducted using funds from a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship that Duncan McDonnell held at the European University Institute. The Centre for Governance and Public Policy at Griffith University funded the research trips for McDonnell to conduct interviews in 2015. We thank both institutions and the European Commission (Seventh Framework Programme) for their support.

Notes on contributors

Duncan McDonnell

Duncan McDonnell is senior lecturer in the School of Government and International Relations at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia.

Annika Werner

Annika Werner is research fellow in the School of Government and International Relations Politics at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia.