Explaining the emergence of radical right-wing populist parties: the case of Denmark.

Denmark became famous in the early 1970s as the home of the strongest right-wing populist party on the continent, the Progress Party, which emerged in the landslide election of 1973 with 15.9 per cent of the vote. Today, the Progress Party has withered away, whereas another rightist party, of a new kind--the Danish People's Party--has taken its place, with 7.2 per cent of the vote in the 1998 election and 12.0 per cent of the vote in the 2001 election. Contrary to earlier studies on Danish right-wing populism (e.g., Goul Andersen and Bjorklund 2000; Bjorklund and Goul Andersen 2002), which treat the Progress Party and the Danish People's Party as almost synonymous--and emphasise the continuity between them--I will argue that they belong to two different party families and that they must be treated accordingly if we want to explain the recent emergence of the Danish People's Party. Contrary to the Progress Party--which was a tax-populist, anti-bureaucracy, protest party--the Danish People's Party is as much akin to the new extreme right as to populism. In fact, I will argue that it should be seen as a member of the new party family of radical right-wing populist (RRP) parties that have emerged in Western Europe during the 1980s and 1990s (and which comprises parties such as the French Front National, the Austrian FPO, among several others). To use a minimalist, generic definition of the new party family, RRP parties share the fundamental core of ethno-nationalist xenophobia (based on the so-called ethno-pluralist doctrine) and anti-political establishment populism (Rydgren 2003a). (1)

The fact that the Danish People's Party is a member of this new party family has certain theoretical and methodological implications, which have largely been disregarded in earlier studies. First, in explaining the emergence and electoral success of the party, we should not treat it as a discrete entity arising independently of RRP parties in other countries. Second, and related, we should not only search for explanatory causes within Denmark--today, in our open globalised world, there are no reasons to assume that explanans and explanandum are always to be found within the same delineated geographical territory (of the nation-state). By following these guidelines, we increase the chances for not only explaining the Danish case, but also contributing to an increased, accumulated understanding of the emergence of the new party family of RRP parties generally.

More specifically, I have in an earlier study (Rydgren forthcoming) argued that the emergence of the RRP parties can be explained with a model combining two groups of mechanisms: First, the innovation and successful cross-national diffusion of a new, potent master frame--combining ethno-nationalist xenophobia (based on the so-called ethno-pluralist doctrine) and anti-political establishment populism--which enabled parties of the extreme right to (1) mobilise on xenophobic and/or anti-immigration attitudes without being stigmatised as racists, and (2) to pose serious critique on contemporary democratic systems, and thereby foment political protest, without being stigmatised as antidemocrats. Second, in order to reach a full explanation of why the RRP parties emerged when they did in respective political system, and why RRP parties have failed completely in some countries, we must also consider a group of mechanisms failing within the composite notion of expanding and contracting political opportunities. This model has the advantages of being as suitable for explaining so-called 'positive cases' as it is for explaining 'negative' ones--and of being general enough to escape ad hoc explanations of singular cases, while at the same time flexible enough to be applicable to empirical cases all over Western Europe.

Since this model has been presented in detail elsewhere (Rydgren forthcoming), I will only summarise the central parts (in sections 1 and 2). In the following sections the model will be applied to the Danish case. The aim of this paper is twofold: to understand the emergence and electoral success of the Danish People's Party since the mid-1990s, and to evaluate the usefulness of the model by testing it against empirical data.

POLITICAL OPPORTUNITIES

Following Tarrow (1998: 19-20), political opportunities will be seen as 'consistent--but not necessary formal, permanent, or national'--resources that are external to the party or movement in question. If an RRP party is to emerge, some--but not all--of the various political opportunities presented below would have to be present.

(1) Most general--and most important--the emergence of niches on the electoral arena (Rydgren 2003b). This is a composite notion, and overlaps in significant parts with mechanisms that will be discussed below, under the headings of 'dealignment/realignment' and 'politicisation of new issues'. Nevertheless, we may assume that no new parties will emerge and sustain their electoral support over time if (i) there are no sufficiently large niches, defined as gaps between the voters' location in the political space and the perceived position of the parties (i.e., the party images and/or position on crucial issues) in the same space, and (ii) the proportion of voters with a high degree of party identification is close to 100 per cent (see Rydgren 2003b).