Book Review: Tjitske Akkerman, Sarah L de Lange and Mathhijs Rooduijn, Radical Right-Wing Populist Parties in Western Europe: Into the Mainstream?
| Author | Lazaros Karavasilis |
| Published date | 01 November 2019 |
| Date | 01 November 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1478929918819185 |
| Subject Matter | Commissioned Book Reviews |
Political Studies Review
2019, Vol. 17(4) NP8 –NP9
journals.sagepub.com/home/psrev
Commissioned Book Review
819185PSW0010.1177/1478929918819185Political Studies ReviewCommissioned Book Review
book-review2019
Commissioned Book Review
Radical Right-Wing Populist Parties in
Western Europe: Into the Mainstream? By
Tjitske Akkerman, Sarah L de Lange and
Mathhijs Rooduijn (eds). Abingdon: Routledge,
2016. 316 pp., £29.24, ISBN 1138914983
Radical right-wing populist parties have been
at the forefront of the academic research during
the past years due to the growing impact of
these parties in Western European political sys-
tems. The impact of the radical right has also
different aspects, ranging from how they influ-
ence party systems, government formation and
policy agenda, among others. This collective
volume questions whether the radical right-
wing parties change their nature and ideology
as they become more integrated into the politi-
cal mainstream and participate in democratic
processes. With that as the main aim of this
volume, the book comprises 13 chapters, 2 of
them focusing on an overview of right-wing
populist parties’ programmatic profiles and
voters, while the rest of them present case stud-
ies from different countries. The Introduction
serves as a very good example of contextual-
izing the argument in its whole as well as pro-
viding new definitions on ‘mainstream’ and
‘mainstreaming’ (p. 6–9). Along with them, the
importance of the right-wing populist parties’
goals and how the political opportunity struc-
tures influence the mainstreaming of these par-
ties are established as the main guiding lines of
the structure of the book, while in the last part
of the Introduction an outline of each chapter is
also presented.
Written by Tjitske Akkerman, Sarah de
Lange and Matthijs Rooduijn, the first empiri-
cal chapter of the book serves as the operation-
alization of the ‘mainstreaming thesis’
established in the Introduction. Using data
from the Comparative Manifesto Project
(CMP) and the Chapel Hill Expert Survey
(CHES), the authors try to measure certain
indicators on the programmatic profiles of
these parties like immigration and ‘nicheness’
(p. 34–37), to prove if right-wing populist par-
ties change their profile when they are inte-
grated into the mainstream. The following
chapter written by Matthijs Rooduijn focuses
more on comparing the voters of radical right-
wing populist parties with those of the main-
stream parties based on data from the European
Social Survey (ESS). By examining Western
European cases, Rooduijn attempts to answer
the question of whether the voters of main-
stream parties tend to vote radical right-wing
populist parties because the latter are becom-
ing more mainstream or because voters become
more radicalized.
As the first of the chapters that analyse spe-
cific country cases, Reinhard Heinisch’s and
Kristina Hauser’s examination of the main-
streaming of the Austrian Freedom Party
attempts to bring forth some hidden aspects of
the party. By utilizing the policies and election
programmes of the party, the authors examine
if the party has become more mainstream dur-
ing its participation in a government or in
opposition. Following a similar methodology
on the Danish People’s Party, Flemming
Christiansen also attempts to highlight if the
party has become more mainstream and how
that influences its further policies as a radical
right-wing party in the fifth chapter of the
volume.
Continuing with the sixth chapter, Ann-
Cathrine Jungar explores the case of the True
Finns in Finland and its transformation from an
agrarian rooted populist party to a radical right
populist one. Making use of various sources
including both party and non-party material,
Jungar examines the opportunities that led to
the radicalization of the True Finns from 2003
until today. The Party for Freedom in the
Netherlands is the case of analysis for the next
chapter, as Tjitske Akkerman follows the tra-
jectory of the party from its foundation until
today, exploring the shift of the party’s goals.
Using also data from the Chapel Hill Expert
Survey, Akkerman concludes that instead of
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