What are the critical differences among radical right activists? How do different types of activists influence a party’s development and its elec
toral performance? What explains the variation in the number and type of activists across parties and across countries? This chapter addresses these three questions in turn and in so doing lays out the theoretical model that the case studies illustrate.
Although the argument is specific to radical right parties, it both draws from studies of other types of political parties and develops a set of gen
eral propositions that are also relevant to them. Rather than viewing par
ties through the lens of the unitary rational actor or the dichotomy of
“ leaders” and “ followers,” I divide activists into three ideal types based on their ideological motivations: extremists, moderates, and opportunists.1 1 also distinguish among activists on the basis of both their education and their political experience, under the assumption that some people bring
1 M y analysis of these activists resembles Kitschelt’s (1989) theory of left-libertarian party behavior, which in turn follows Anthony Downs’s (1967) analysis of bureaucracy.
According to Kitschelt, whether left-libertarian parties decide to follow a “ logic o f con
stituency representation,” and express the values and ideology of their organization regardless of electoral success, or a “ logic of electoral competition” depends on the rela
tive strength of three types of activists: ideologues, lobbyists, and pragmatists (49-55).
The balance of power among these groups in turn depends on the political environment in which the party operates. M y tripartite division of radical right activists is clearly differ
ent from Kitschelt’s of left-libertarians, but the method of theory construction is similar.
Kitschelt, it should be noted, does make a distinction between different kinds of radical right activists in his work on the radical right (1995), particularly in the German case, although party organization is not his primary concern.
i 9
a wider set of skills to party politics than do others.2 The general distri
bution of activists within parties, I then argue, helps determine their abil
ity to mount effective electoral campaigns, manage factionalism, exhibit competence, gain legitimacy, and offer a message that maximizes the par
ty’s appeal among voters. Activists thus provide the microfoundations for a theory of radical right party development. As stated previously, I take it as a given that a combination of sociostructural changes in the 1970s and 19805 - particularly the rising salience of immigration - led both to voter denand for radical right parties and to the formation, or transfor
mation, of parties to fill that demand. All of the parties that I cover in this book benefited from an electoral breakthrough that gave them visibil
ity, oftentimes out of proportion to what their electoral tallies deserved.
In addition, the dramatic success of some of these parties - particularly the French National Front - provided models for party organization and electoral strategy that could in principle be adopted. Yet it was the nature of the act vists that determined whether the opportunity could be seized and the n.odel successfully imitated.
After linking activists to electoral performance, this chapter analyzes the two independent variables that influence the distribution of activists within radical right parties. The first is the “ indigenous resources” - other political parties, voluntary organizations, social movements, informal net
works - fiom which radical right parties recruited their initial core of per
sonnel. In drawing on preexisting organized groups in society, radical right parties were no different from Social Democratic, Christian Democratic, and Green parties. And like parties in general, the origins of radical right parties cast a long shadow over their subsequent development (Panebianco 1988). Absent certain historical legacies, it was simply not possible for radical right parties to find the activists they needed to succeed. But these initial means were not enough: radical right parties needed an opportunity as well. This opportunity was supplied, or denied, by mainstream political parties and social actors. By influencing the costs and benefits of radical right acti\ism, the external environment determined the number and type of activists that radical right parties attracted.
T he central argum ent is straigh tforw ard : a com bination o f histori
cal legacies (the means) and actions by other political and social actors (the opportunity) determ ines the building blocks o f radical right parties,
1 The argunent here is similar to that of Gryzmala-Busse (2002), who claims that the presence, or absence, of elites with “ portable skills” explains the success and failure of postcommunist parties in Central and Eastern Europe.
Activists and Party D evelopm ent 3 i
f i g u r e 2 .1 . A model o f radical right party development.
which in turn shape their internal development and ability to persist elec- torally. Yet because the argument has a number of moving parts, and because I begin with the activists and their effects before turning to the conditions that produced them, Figure z .i might prove a useful reference for the rest of this chapter.
Radical Right Activists
During my interviews and participant observations, I was constantly reminded of how poorly the world of radical right activism conforms to its popular perception as an undifferentiated mass of racists and street thugs. To be sure, I did meet a number of individuals who fit popular stereotypes: war veterans who made yearly pilgrimages to Waffen-SS reunions, conspiracy theorists who tried to convince me that Jews were in complete control of the international financial regime, and angry young men who boasted about their violent confrontations with left-wing activ
ists. But I also met local politicians who had become concerned about the changing complexion of their neighborhoods, spouses who followed their partners into politics without developing deep political convictions of their own, and many people who had originally joined their party before it adopted an anti-immigrant program but who now agreed with its outlines. To this eclectic mix one could add sports stars and minor tele
vision celebrities looking to begin a political career, political wanderers who had burned their bridges with other parties, adventurers looking for a thrill, and people who possessed virtually no interest in politics whatso
ever but were attracted by the small salary that often came with the post of communal councilor.
The w o rld o f radical right activism is thus heterogeneous: the m ultiple paths to activism , the variou s levels o f com m itm ent, and the diverse view s and attitudes cannot be fully captured by any simple categorization. Yet an ideal typo logy can help preserve the essential variation am ong the population o f radical right activists w hile allo w in g us to m ake certain generalizations. A lthough in practice m any radical right activists possess attributes o f the three types below, this tripartite typo logy provides the foundation fo r the general argum ent.
E xtrem ists come in several forms, but what unites them is their hostil
ity to, or outright rejection of, parliamentary democracy. Many of them are revolutionary and believe in the possibility of building a new authori
tarian order. In the immediate postwar era, most extremists were unre
constructed fascists or Nazis. As this generation began to wane in the 1960s, a new cohort of militants mobilized against a rising tide of left- wing activism and resuscitated fascist and Nazi discourses and symbols.
Since the 1970s, neo-Nazi youth movements have produced a third and fourth generation of extremists. These activists tend to subscribe to bio
logical racism and condone, or even embrace, the use of violence against their purported enemies, particularly leftists and immigrants. They are also likely to be venomously anti-Semitic and to deny or trivialize the Holocaust. Extremists thus represent the most radical element within the far right landscape. Some have spent years reading and developing their political views, while others are motivated by simple, brute prejudice.
M oderates accept the democratic rules of the game. Although they may want to alter democratic institutions - by creating a presidential system or more direct democracy through referenda - they differ fun
damentally from extremists in this respect. And although the designa
tion may seem oxymoronic for radical right party members, the political views of this group in other matters are moderate compared with those of extremists. The defining characteristic of moderates is an adherence to ethnopluralism rather than to biological racism. Most are very careful to point out that they have nothing against other ethnic groups, but stress that the cohabitation of established native populations with new, cultur
ally distinct immigrant groups inevitably leads to a host of irreconcilable problems.3 They view themselves as defenders of their nation and culture rather than of their race. Unlike extremists, moderates outwardly reject any form of violence. They also normally condemn Nazism and fascism,
J Moderates are thus similar to the “ immigration skeptics” that Rydgren (2008) differenti- ates from “ racists” and “ xenophobes” among radical right voters. Extremists are clearly closer to the latter two categories. <■
Activists and Party D evelopm ent 33
although their interpretations of the period often exonerate most of the population (including themselves and their predecessors) from massive violations of human rights. While not denying the Holocaust, they may often compare atrocities committed by other states, particularly Stalinist Russia, to those of the Nazis and their collaborators in an effort to release their nations from a singular burden.
O p p o rtu n ists differ from extremists and moderates in that they do not generally emerge from far right subcultures. They may be political novices attracted by the radical right’s general message or, more likely, by its elec
toral success. They may also be politicians from other parties that have failed to advance within them or have seen their star fall. Whatever their path to activism, opportunists tend to hold less coherent attitudes than either extremists or moderates. They are more interested in power, mate
rial benefits, visibility, and career advancement than they are in ideology.
In addition to their attitudes and motivations, activists differ along two other important dimensions. The first is their socioeconomic status (SES), which is a composite of their education, income, and occupation.
Not only have radical right parties tried to recruit activists with the same SES as their median voters; they have also sought to attract their share of university-educated professionals and to place these activists in high- profile positions. This does not mean that activists with lower SES cannot make good candidates or leaders: Pia Kjaersgaard of the Danish People’s Party, for example, has no university education and worked as a nurse before entering politics. Yet to the extent that education is correlated with a general set of skills that are helpful for party organization, campaign
ing, and parliamentary work, radical right parties benefit from having members with high SES.
The second dimension is political experience. Some radical right activ
ists have long political careers that include service in national parliament or government. Others have no political experience whatsoever. To some extent, levels of experience are endogenous to electoral success: parties that win representation and participate in government obviously end up having members with a higher level of political experience than those that do not. Yet radical right parties also began their lives with different levels of experience among their activist core, and these initial differences affected their trajectories.
Activists, Parties, and Voters
The distribution of activists within radical right parties shapes their internal development, and ultimately their electoral performance, in four
ways. But before we explore these mechanisms, it is important to note why the nu m b er of activists - irrespective of their type - matters as well.
Some radical right parties are, in fact, empty shells with a miniscule num
ber of active members, while others possess a genuine rank and file. To take two extreme cases, the French National Front was estimated to have close to forty thousand members in the mid-1990s, while the German People’s Union could probably count only several hundred after its 1998 breakthrough in Sachsen-Anhalt.
The number of party activists matters for electoral performance, even in an age when parties rely increasingly on the media and public rela
tions professionals to communicate with the public. The view that new technologies made parties less reliant on their members dates from at least V. O. Key’s observation in the late 1950s that “ the door-bell ring
ers have lost their function of mobilizing the vote to the public-relations experts, to the specialists in radio and television, and to others who deal in mass communication” (Key 1958: 376; quoted in Scarrow 1996: 88).
Yet while technology has undoubtedly affected party organization, par
ties still count on their members to perform a number of crucial tasks.
Scarrow finds that parties value the “ outreach benefits” that members provide, and her description of these is worth quoting at length:
Party leaders m ay value members for the support they can mobilize by means o f everyday contacts. For instance, those under the influence o f theories such as Paul Lazarsfeld’s two-step communication model may consider members who are local notables (“ opinion leaders” ) to be particularly valuable, because such citizens are thought to routinely influence the political views of those in their communities [footnote in original text]. Others m ay view even non-notable mem
bers as potentially valuable ambassadors to the community, as people who can multiply votes through their willingness openly to declare, and even to explain, their personal allegiances. Party members’ everyday contacts may be especially valued in parties which are struggling to gain, or regain, public recognition and acceptance.(Scarrow 19 9 6 : 46, emphasis mine)
Members are also important in producing the “ campaign effects” that influence both voter turnout and vote intention in the United States (Iyengar and Simon 2000). Since mobilization efforts also appear to matter in Britain (Whiteley and Seyd 1994, 2003), Germany (Finkel and Schrott 1995), and Japan (Cox, Rosenbluth, andThies 1998), there is rea
son to believe that campaigns matter in general. Hillygus (2005) argues that while mobilization efforts have only a marginal influence on those already planning to vote, they do raise turnout among those who had not planned on voting. This finding is potentially important for radical
Activists and Party D evelopm ent 35
right parties, since they do better than most other parties among previous nonvoters.
While mobilization efforts include activities such as canvassing, direct mailing, and making telephone calls, Gerber and Green’s (2000) experi
mental study suggests that only personal canvassing increases turn
out. Empirical studies also show that canvassing raises voter turnout (Huckfeldt and Sprague 1992; Wielhouwer 1999; Niven 2004). If we assume that the reach of canvassing increases with the size of the party rank and file, which appears to be a safe assumption, then we can say that radical right parties with a large activist base possess a greater ability to mobilize potential radical right voters than do parties with a smaller rank and file. In other words, someone still has to put up the signs, man the information booths, and knock on doors. Elections can occasionally be won without a party rank and file, but as recent U.S. elections have shown, the “ ground game” still matters.
One thing that parties absolutely cannot do without, however, is can
didates. Radical right parties often have difficulty finding people to stand for office, and this problem is magnified when the party has only a small pool of activists from which to recruit them. Under such circumstances, it becomes very difficult to contest enough constituencies to mount a truly national campaign and to overcome any hurdles required for parliamen
tary representation.
Numbers matter in yet another way. Parties with many activists can afford to be choosy about whom they allow to stand for office and whom they put in important positions. They can select from among the best available alternatives. Parties with few members do not have this lux
ury. For example, when Hans Janmaat, the leader of the Dutch Center Democrats, was asked why his party was filled with criminals, his telling reply was “ because 1 can’t find anyone else.” 4
Cohesion
Let us now turn to how the attributes of activists, and different distri
butions of activists, affect four other dimensions of party development.
The first is the degree of cohesion. All party leaders live with the fear that they will be unable to reconcile their internal divisions, that their private conflicts will become public, and that splinter groups will form.
While some degree of factionalism is unavoidable in any political party, intense and chronic infighting is enervating in multiple ways. Splinter
* Meindert Fennema, personal communication.
parties may compete for the same slice of the electorate and draw votes away from the original party. Large splits threaten the party’s survival, and it can take years to recover the organizational resources that were lost. Even defections by individuals can be costly, particularly when they hold elected office and their actions deprive the party of state funds. Any type of infighting - which the media will most likely report - signals to both voters and potential coalition partners that the party is unstable and perhaps unreliable. More generally, any time a party is consumed with putting out its own fires, it has fewer resources to devote to other necessary tasks. For all these reasons, preventing internal conflicts from becoming severe is one of the central tasks that all parties face.
Although most successful radical right parties have experienced peri
ods of intense internal conflict, these have generally been exceptional episodes. Indeed, observers often note that successful radical right par
ties maintain a degree of internal discipline that few other types of par
ties have been able to achieve. Cohesion also matters more during the consolidation phase of party development than thereafter. The French National Front, Norwegian Progress Party, and Austrian Freedom Party have all survived major party splits, yet these occurred after they had already qualified as successful parties. By contrast, factionalism, as we shall see, has prevented other parties from capitalizing on their initial electoral breakthroughs.
Although factionalism within radical right parties has many possible sources, three particular distributions of activists are especially likely to produce chronic infighting. The first is a party with many extremists. For a variety of psychological and ideological reasons, extremists tend to be as hostile to one another as they are to established political parties and to parliamentary democracy.5 When radical right parties draw from extrem
ist subcultures, the fragmentation and personal rivalries that characterize these subcultures are reproduced in party politics.
The second is a party with many opportunists. Since most opportun
ists, and particularly those whom the party recruits for high places on its electoral lists, have not worked their way up through the ranks, they have experienced none of the socialization rituals that could potentially create loyalty to the organization. Because they are careerists rather than ideologues, they will quit the party or defect to another if the opportunity
5 This dynamic is similar to the “ cliquish politics” that Kitschelt (1989) found to be prev
alent in left-wing subcultures and that then reappeared within left-libertarian (Green) political parties.
Activists and Party D evelopm ent 37
Activists and Party D evelopm ent 37