Working Paper
Reference
Cleavages, opportunities, and citizenship: Political claim-making by the extreme right in France and Switzerland
GIUGNI, Marco, PASSY, Florence
Abstract
This very exploratory paper looks at the impact of dominant conceptions of citizenship on the mobilization by the extreme right. Previous work has focused on the role of structural cleavages and institutional opportunities such as party alignments and competition. While we acknowledge the importance of such factors, here we focus on citizenship rights as the relevant political opportunity structure for the mobilization of the contemporary the extreme right in Western Europe. We start from the idea that one of the main characteristics of the contemporary extreme right is its framing of the notion of national identity in ethnocultural terms (as opposed to a framing in civic-territorial terms) and examine a number of hypotheses regarding four aspects of the mobilization by the extreme right: (1) its presence in the public space, (2) its organizational forms, (3) its forms of actions, and (4) the content of its claims.
We illustrate our hypotheses through a comparison of public claim-making by extreme right actors in France and Switzerland, two countries that differ substantially in the models of citizenship.
GIUGNI, Marco, PASSY, Florence. Cleavages, opportunities, and citizenship: Political claim-making by the extreme right in France and Switzerland. 2000
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http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:103597
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Political Claim-making by the Extreme Right in France and Switzerland
Marco Giugni and Florence Passy Department of political science University of Geneva
Uni-Mail 1211 Genève 4 Switzerland
E-mail: marco.giugni@politic.unige.ch, florence.passy@politic.unige.ch
Abstract
This very exploratory paper looks at the impact of dominant conceptions of citizenship on the mobilization by the extreme right. Previous work has focused on the role of structural
cleavages and institutional opportunities such as party alignments and competition. While we acknowledge the importance of such factors, here we focus on citizenship rights as the relevant political opportunity structure for the mobilization of the contemporary the extreme right in Western Europe. We start from the idea that one of the main characteristics of the contemporary extreme right is its framing of the notion of national identity in ethnocultural terms (as opposed to a framing in civic-territorial terms) and examine a number of hypotheses regarding four aspects of the mobilization by the extreme right: (1) its presence in the public space, (2) its organizational forms, (3) its forms of actions, and (4) the content of its claims.
We illustrate our hypotheses through a comparison of public claim-making by extreme right actors in France and Switzerland, two countries that differ substantially in the models of citizenship.
Political Claim-making by the Extreme Right in France and Switzerland
This paper compares the mobilization by the extreme right in France and Switzerland. The focus is not only on protest activities such as public demonstrations or violent confrontations which characterize social movements, but more broadly on the intervention of social and political actors in the national public space. We discuss this subject matter in relation to three types of explanations. Social movement theories have stressed the relationship between the emergence (or transformation) of social and cultural cleavages and the rise (or transformation) of certain types of movements. According to this view the recent revival of the extreme right in Europe can be explained in part with the politicization of a new cleavage created by modernization and the speeding up of social change. Other accounts have pointed to the role of political opportunities provided by political alignments and party competition. For
example, extreme right parties would have taken advantage of the fact that traditional parties have not been ready to bring solutions to new problems. These accounts focus on the impact of the institutional context and political opportunity structures on the emergence and
development of the extreme right.
We follow a political opportunity approach. However, unlike previous work which has stressed institutional variables, we propose to look at the impact of models of citizenship – i.e.
dominant regimes of incorporation of migrants in the host country – as the relevant political opportunity structure for the rise of the extreme right. Models of citizenship form the cultural- institutional settings that impinge upon collective actors who mobilize over issues pertaining to immigration and ethnic relations. We explore the hypothesis that the extreme right owes its success to the fact that it mobilizes over these issues, which are very salient issues in the contemporary public debates in most European countries. We confront our argument with data from an ongoing research project on the mobilization on ethnic relations, citizenship and immigration. The data were gathered in one national newspaper in each country following a sampling strategy. The sample includes public claims in the field of immigration, ethnic minorities, antiracism, and the extreme right in France and Switzerland for the period from 1990 to 1994.
We would like to make clear that this paper is work in progress and that our analysis to a large extent has an exploratory character. First of all, our departure from a perspective that stresses the role of political institutions to inquire into the impact of models of citizenship is new, which means that we are wandering in terra incognita. Furthermore, as it will become
clearer below, our two-country comparison not always yields a firm empirical ground to test our hypotheses. We are only at the beginning of our exploration of the relationship between dominant conceptions of citizenship and political claim-making over immigration and ethnic relation issues, including claims by the extreme right. Our intention is not to provide a strong argument or test of hypotheses, but simply to suggest a new direction in the analysis of the mobilization by the extreme right, and thus in the study of the relationship between processes of social and economic development and the dynamics of contemporary social movements.
Our empirical analyses will therefore largely have an illustrative purpose.
Structural Cleavages, Political Alignments, and Party Competition
Previous work on the extreme right has stressed two types of explanations: a demand-side and a supply-side explanation. Theories that look at the role of social and cultural cleavages for the emergence of extreme right attitudes and behaviors clearly belong to the former group.
Social movements are based on social and cultural cleavages which form as a result of large- scale processes of social change such as industrialization, urbanization, state formation, modernization, and so forth. Indeed, the grievance approach to social movements (e.g.
Kornhauser 1959; Smelser 1962; Turner and Killian 1957) rests largely on this view. As far as the extreme right is concerned, there are two ways in which structural changes might affect its mobilization. First, there may be a re-politicization of existing cleavages, although not
necessarily in the exact same terms as in the past. The anti-establishment position of certain populist parties like the Northern League in Italy, for example, could be seen as a renewed saliency of the center-periphery cleavage. This line of conflict may also be taking an international dimension in the opposition to the process of European integration and the reluctance on the part of certain sectors of the society (or certain countries like Switzerland) to join this process in favor of the preservation of national prerogatives and identities. Second, new cleavages may emerge. Kriesi (1994) has proposed to see the new social movements and the movements of the extreme right as resulting from the politicization of two new types of cleavages. He sees, on the one hand, the new social movements as arising from a basic antagonism within the new middle class between those who control organizational assets (the
“managers”) and those who simply dispose of resources such as skills and expertise (the
“professional specialists”).1 On the other hand, the very same structural transformations of the
1 It is among the latter – more precisely among the “social and cultural specialists” – that the new social movements draw most of their human resources (Kriesi 1989), as people belonging to this sector of the new middle class tend to defend those anti-authoritarian and emancipatory values that are among the principal
western societies would have given rise to a deepening conflict between the winners and the losers of the modernization process. The new middle class would be the winners, as opposed to a more heterogeneous class of losers who have poor social and cultural resources to cope with rapid social change (accelerated among other by globalization processes) and who form the mobilization potential for the extreme right.
Kitschelt (1995) offers an alternative scheme for the study of structural cleavages which have given rise to what he calls the new radical right. According to him, on the demand side, the potential for the rise and success of the new radical right stems from three types of divisions: one referring to the prevailing decision modes (libertarian versus authoritarian), one concerning the allocating resources (market/liberal versus populist/socialist), and one
pertaining to the models of citizenship (cosmopolitan versus particularistic). New radical right parties combine an authoritarian ideology, a market/liberal position toward the allocation of resources, and a particularistic conception of citizenship and membership in the national community (see below for more on the latter aspect). Thus, the new radical right also includes neo-liberal elements (Betz 1993). Other authors, however, prefer to characterize the
contemporary extreme right as national-populism (Hainsworth 1992), that is, a combination of xenophobic nationalism and populist appeal.
However, as Bartolini and Mair (1990) have noted, social and cultural dividing lines must be politicized to become political cleavages which impinge upon the mobilization of collective interests, including those of extreme right actors. Thus, processes of social change create a potential for the mobilization of collective actors, but this potential remains latent as long as it is not politicized (Kriesi et al. 1995). The political process approach to social movements (e.g. McAdam 1982; Kitschelt 1986; Kriesi et al. 1995; Tarrow 1998; Tilly 1995) has applied this idea to the concept of political opportunity structure, which captures those aspects of the political context of movements that mediates structural conflicts given as latent mobilization potentials.
A number of supply-side factors have been mentioned which may transform the mobilization potential and hence favor the rise and success of the extreme right. We can distinguish between two dimensions in this respect: (1) the access to the political system (for example, the electoral system) and (2) the dynamics of alignment, demarcation, and
competition among parties. Both aspects may provide the extreme right with a political niche
characteristics of new social movements. The other sector of the “professional specialists” – the “ technocrats” – is more closely tied to the organization and hence less likely to defend anti-authoritarian and emancipatory values.
to be exploited in electoral terms. Kitschelt (1995), for example, stresses the role of party competition to explain the rise of the radical right in Western Europe. Kriesi (1994) has pointed to various dimensions of the political opportunity structures (including formal access to the system) as mediating the mobilization potential of the extreme right in actual action and argued more specifically that the continued existence of the movements of the extreme right depends on the policy responses of the established political elites from both the left and the right. Similarly, Koopmans (1996) has shown that racist and extreme right violence in Germany was strongly influenced by the political debate over asylum legislation. Further authors who have focused on political alignments and party competition include, among others, Schain (1987) for the case of France and Thränhardt (1995) from a comparative perspective.
Thus, the two types of explanations are often combined to account for the rise and success of the extreme right. To simplify, we may say that structural cleavages related to the modernization process are a necessary but not sufficient condition for the emergence of the extreme right. They create a potential for its mobilization. In order for such potential to translate into action, certain institutional conditions must be met which pertain to the electoral system or the structure of political alignments and party competition. In particular, there must be a political entrepreneur that raise issues which can mobilize the public. We would like to suggest that this task is facilitated when the issues raised by the political entrepreneur resonate with the larger cultural-institutional context as expressed in the dominant model of
citizenship. It is to this aspect that we now turn.
Models of Citizenship and the Political Opportunity Structure for the Extreme Right in France and Switzerland: Theory and Hypotheses
Both Kitschelt (1995) and Kriesi (1994) include citizenship models among the factors that may facilitate the emergence of the radical right. Unfortunately, they do not develop this aspect in their explanations, which focus on political and institutional variables. Recent work in the social movement perspective, however, has begun to pay more careful attention to the impact of collective definitions of criteria of membership in the national state on the
possibilities for extreme right actors to mobilize existing potentials. Koopmans and Statham (1999a), for example, have looked at the differential success of the extreme right in Germany and Italy in relation to ethnic and civic conceptions of nationhood. Here we would like to follow this line of reasoning for the cases of France and Switzerland. At the same time, we try to explore more in detail the ways in which such conceptions influence four aspects of the
mobilization by extreme right actors: (1) their presence in the public space, (2) their organizational forms, (3) their forms of actions, and (4) the content of their claims.
The point of departure in this approach is “a definition of the extreme right as a social movement that mobilizes an ethnocultural framing of national identity against the idea of the nation as a political or civic community” (Koopmans and Statham 1999a: 229). To be sure, this is not a “single-issue movement” (Kitschelt 1995; Mitra 1988). The extreme right includes a wide range of phenomena such as neo-fascist parties, revisionist and antisemitic circles, skinheads, and so forth. Furthermore, anti-systemic feelings are often part of its ideology (Ignazi 1992). However, one of the main characteristics of the contemporary extreme right in Western Europe is its xenophobia, which can lead to racist attitudes and behaviors (Hainsworth 1992). This has implied not only a shift of the ideological foundation of the juridical repression of extreme right parties from anti-fascism to anti-racism (Fennema 1997), but also that much of its mobilization deals with the policy area of immigration and ethnic relations. It therefore is useful to identify certain aspects that define this policy area and examine how they may affect the extent and forms of right wing extremism.
We focus on two dimensions: (1) the formal criteria of inclusion in or exclusion from the national community and (2) the cultural obligations posed on outsiders to become
members of that community (Giugni and Passy 1999; Koopmans and Statham 1999b). In the policy area of immigration and ethnic relations, these two dimensions refer to citizenship rights as a crucial factor for determining the ways in which migrants are incorporated into the receiving countries (Brubaker 1992; Castles 1995; Favell 1998; Smith and Blanc 1996;
Schnapper 1991; Soysal 1994). On the formal side, we distinguish between ethnic-cultural and civic-territorial criteria for granting citizenship rights. Citizenship is based on birth and kinship (jus sanguinis) in the former case and on choice and belonging to a political
community in the latter case (jus solis). Brubaker (1992) has looked at Germany and France as the archetypal examples of these two ways of defining the criteria of inclusion in the national community. On the informal side, citizenship rights may imply the assimilation of newcomers to the dominant (national) culture or, following a cultural-pluralistic view, the recognition of ethnic difference.
If we combine these two dimensions, we obtain four ideal-typical conceptions of citizenship. In the ethnic-assimilationist model migrants face a closed national community and must downplay their ethnic difference in order to adapt to the norms and cultural codes of the host society. Switzerland and Germany are examples of this model. In the civic-
assimilationist model it is relatively easy to obtain citizenship, but ethnic-based identities
must be given up in order to accept the norms and values of the republican state. French is the most often cited example. In the civic-pluralist model migrants have easy access to citizenship and are at the same time recognized their right to ethnic difference. Britain and the
Netherlands are two examples in Western Europe. Finally, in the ethnic-pluralist model the recognition of difference is coupled with an ethnic conception of citizenship. This may lead in certain circumstances to differentialist or even segregationist policies toward minority groups.
South Africa under the Apartheid would be an obvious example.
In the following we focus exclusively on the first two models through the examples of France and Switzerland. We explore the possibility that models of citizenship define (a relevant part of) the political opportunity structure for the mobilization by collective actors within the field of immigration and ethnic relations (Giugni and Passy 1999; Koopmans and Statham 1999b) in these two countries.2 We propose a number of more specific hypotheses regarding the impact of models of citizenship on the mobilization by the extreme right with respect to the four aspects mentioned above. We would like to reiterate that theses
hypotheses, which we formulate here only in their directional aspect and discuss in more detail below, to a large extent have an exploratory character.
First, as far as the presence in the public space is concerned, we expect the extreme right to be stronger (in the sense of bring more present in public debates) in Switzerland than in France. For its ideology resonates with the ethnic-assimilationist conception of citizenship.
The French civic-assimilationist model, however, should favor claim-making by the extreme right on issues other than immigration and ethnic relations. Second, since xenophobic claims resonate with the ethnic conception of citizenship, not only the extreme right, but also the traditional parties largely incorporate themes pertaining to immigration and ethnic relations in their agendas. This erodes the possibilities for the development of the extreme right within the parliamentary arena and offers more opportunities for the mobilization outside parties (i.e.
social movements). Third, given the more favorable institutional opportunities for the mobilization by challengers in Switzerland (Kriesi et al. 1995), the levels of violence by the extreme right should be lower than in France. However, we expect them to be higher within the ERCI field due to less favorable opportunities offered by the models of citizenship.
Fourth, the content of the claims of extreme right actors within the ERCI field is expected to follow the prevailing models of citizenship. Thus, France’s civic-assimilationist (and basically
2 We have tried in another paper (Giugni and Passy 1999) to show how models of citizenship affect the claim- making by immigrants and ethnic minorities in the same two countries examined here.
inclusive) model should lead social and political actors to focus on minority integration politics, while Switzerland’s ethnic-assimilationist (and basically exclusionist) model should channel public debates toward the regulation of immigration flows.
Data Retrieval
We confront our hypotheses with data from an ongoing comparative research project on the mobilization on ethnic relations, citizenship, and immigration (MERCI).3 Data retrieval is based on one national newspaper in each country (Le Monde in France and the Neue Zürcher Zeitung in Switzerland). We content-analyzed every second issue of the newspaper source.4 We define public claims broadly as any intervention (verbal or non-verbal) made on behalf of a collectivity and visible in the public space which bears on the interests or rights of other collectivities. These include: (1) protest actions and collective mobilizations (street
3 The MERCI project includes the following country studies, in addition to France and Switzerland (study conducted by the present authors at the University of Geneva): Germany (Ruud Koopmans,
Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung), Great Britain (Paul Statham, University of Leeds), and the Netherlands (Thom Duyvené de Wit, University of Amsterdam).
4 Previous work on social movements and contentious politics has proved the robustness of protest event analyses as a way to measure movement mobilization (e.g. Kriesi et al. 1995; Olzak 1989; Tarrow 1989; Tilly et al. 1975; see further Rucht et al. 1998). Doubts were raised as to possible biases, in particular as regards the newspaper source, sampling, and the coding procedure. Newspapers may yield both selection and description biases (McCarthy et al. 1996). First, selection biases could be important when one looks only at social movement actions and protest events, as the publication of events is influenced by their size, radicalness, and novelty, as well as by the issue attention cycle (Danzger 1975; McCarthy et al. 1996; Snyder and Kelly 1977). However, we are interested not only in protest events, but in all forms of actions, including speech acts and political decisions.
The selection bias is likely to be less important for this kinds of events. Furthermore, we take newspapers as the vehicle for the debates occurring in the public space. Therefore the filter made by newspapers allows us to assess the degree of access of social and political actors to the public space. Second, description biases should not be too strong insofar as we are coding the actors’ stated goals and not the journalists’ judgements or analyses of the event at hand. Comparisons made with additional newspapers for the cases of Britain and Germany suggest that description biases are limited (Koopmans and Statham 1999b). Newspapers are thus arguably good source for the coverage of news of national scope and significance, that is, those we are particularly interested in
(Koopmans 1998). Third, regarding the issue of sampling, some have criticized the use of a non-random sample, especially the choice to take only the Monday issue of the paper (Barranco and Wisler 1999) Since we took every second newspaper issue, biases due to sampling should be much less relevant in our case. Our sample is more comprehensive than one based on the Monday issue and is not biased toward events occurring during the weekend. Finally, potential intercoder reliability problems to a large extent were avoided as we checked every single event in our data set and corrected for possible coding errors or variations from one coder to the other.
demonstrations, petitions, confrontational and violent actions, etc.), (2) speech acts (public statements, written reports, media-addressed events in general, etc.), (3) political decisions (laws, administrative acts, judicial decisions, etc.), (4) repressive measures by the state against extreme right and ethnic minority actors.
We coded all public claims pertaining to immigration, asylum, and aliens politics, minority integration politics (including citizenship), and antiracism. These claims define the field of ethnic relations, citizenship, and immigration (henceforth ERCI field). In addition, we coded all claims by ethnic minorities, regardless of their relation to this field. Finally and most importantly for our present purpose, we coded all claims by extreme right actors. The data gathered in the research project cover the period from 1990 to 1998 included, but in this paper we focus on the 1990-1994 period.
We coded a number of relevant variables for each claim retrieved. The most important ones are: the location in time and place, the actor, the specific form, the specific aim, the causal frame, the targeted actors, and the object of the claim. The coding was done following a semi-open system of codelists which allowed us to obtain as much detail as possible on the variables of interest while providing at the same time a structured framework for the
collection of data. In particular, the codelist for the aim (content) was left open and coders asked to add new codes each time they encountered a new type of claim. The information contained in the raw variables was summarized in a set of variables to be used in cross- national comparisons. The analyses presented in this paper are based on these summary variables.
Findings
Presence in the Public Space
The expectation regarding the presence of the extreme right in the public space (i.e. its strength) in a way is ambivalent. On the one hand, the position of the extreme right toward issues pertaining to immigration and ethnic relations resonates with the ethnic-cultural conception of citizenship and national identity. This should provide more opportunities for this type of claims. On the other hand, in countries that convey an ethnocultural definition of citizenship, chances are higher that these themes are integrated into the political agenda of the members of the polity and mainstream parties (Koopmans and Statham 1999a). This should rob the extreme right of their favorite mobilization issues and therefore diminish its presence in the public space.
Table 1 shows the results of this ambivalence. The table’s upper section refers to all forms of claims, while the lower section focuses on collective mobilizations. The proportion of claims within the ERCI field with the presence of the extreme right is indeed
approximately the same in France and Switzerland. In both countries, less than 10 % of the claims in this field have involved extreme right actors. Models of citizenship do not seem to discriminate between countries in this respect. However, if we compare the share of claims within the ERCI field with the total claims, we see that the Swiss extreme right has paid more attention to immigration and ethnic relation issues than its French counterpart. For in France the presence of extreme right actors in the public space in general is about the double than that which occurs in the ERCI field, whereas in Switzerland we observe more or less the same proportion of claims.
Table 1
We have an indirect indicator of the extent to which issues pertaining to immigration and ethnic relations are integrated in the agendas of parties by looking at the position of claims toward these issues.5 Results are shown in Table 2. Generally speaking, Swiss parties have a tougher stance toward migrants than their French counterparts. The important point here, however, is that in this policy area the traditional rightist parties are closer to the position of the extreme right in Switzerland than in France, as more than half of their claims display an anti-minority, racist, or xenophobic position. This indicates that not only the extreme right, but also the members of the polity in Switzerland integrate elements of the ethnic-cultural conception of citizenship and national identity in their agenda. This would explain the relatively limited presence of the extreme right in the public space, in spite of the fact that its claims resonate and find greater legitimacy in a context in which the criteria for the inclusion of migrants in the national community are defined in ethnocultural terms.
Table 2
5 This variable provides a general indicator of the position of claims with regard to the rights, position, and evaluation of immigrants and ethnic minorities (and of those who mobilize against them). It was coded as follows: claims whose realization implies a deterioration in the rights or position of migrants and claims that express a negative attitude with regard to migrant (both verbal and physical) or a positive attitude with regard to xenophobic and extreme right groups or aims get code –1; claims whose realization implies an improvement in the rights and position of migrants and claims expressing (verbally or physically) a positive attitude with regard to migrants or a negative attitude with regard to xenophobic and extreme right groups or aims get code 1; neutral or ambivalent claims get code 0.
The distribution of collective mobilizations gives us somewhat different results. The extreme right is overall stronger in France. However, there has been more mobilization in Switzerland within the ERCI field, both compared cross-nationally to France and intra- nationally to all claims. Thus, issues pertaining to immigration and ethnic relations are more frequently addressed by the Swiss extreme right, but only in a social movement mode. This suggests among other that the organizational forms of right wing extremism are different in these two countries, an aspect to which we turn next.
Organizational Forms
Scholars usually explain the organizational forms of collective interests by means of institutional variables. For example, the type of electoral system determines the specific configuration of parties in a given political system (Lijphart 1984). Similarly, both the internal and external structuration of social movements depends on political institutions (Kriesi 1996).
Classical institutional analysis help us to explain the degree of fragmentation of the party system and hence of the extreme right as well. Yet it does not allow us to fully understand why in certain countries extreme right values and positions are carried mostly by parties, while in others the social movement form is more important. To be sure, unlike the new social movements (perhaps except for the ecology movement), the extreme right takes primarily the form of a party everywhere. This might be due to the fact that it is not a single-issue
movement but covers a wide range of political issues and to the consequent need to have a partisan representation. However, the balance between the form party and the form social movement varies across countries. Models of citizenship can give us a hand in explaining why it is so.
As a result of the strategies of demarcation and competition among parties, in countries in which citizenship is defined along ethnic lines, both mainstream and extreme right parties do not totally absorb the radical demands regarding the exclusion of immigrants and minorities, xenophobia, or racism, hence leaving a political space for radical
mobilizations on these issues. Following this line of reasoning, we expect the extreme right in Switzerland to be organized in both the partisan and social movement forms, whereas in France, where citizenship is defined in civic and political terms, we should observe mostly the form party. Table 3 provides evidence supporting this hypotheses: parties are the main
channel for the expression of extreme right interests in France, both within and outside the ERCI field. The social movement form, on the other hand, plays a greater role in Switzerland, although even here parties still dominate the scene.
Table 3
In countries in which citizenship is defined on the basis of ethnicity, social and political actors are offered opportunities to frame their claims in ethnocultural terms, including the exclusion of minority groups from the national community and xenophobic claims. As we said, the members of the polity, specifically the traditional parties, are more likely to incorporate these issues into their agendas in a context in which the ethnic-cultural conception of citizenship prevails. This leaves the extreme right with fewer opportunities to address such issues due to the competition among parties (Koopmans and Statham 1999a).
However, the incorporation into mainstream politics of the themes of the extreme right is limited, as traditional parties cannot publicly frame the immigration issues in racist or xenophobic terms. Even extreme right parties cannot afford to be too extremist and have an overtly racist discourse if they want to keep legitimacy and go beyond very marginal electoral gains. To be sure, sometimes extreme right parties do make extremist public statements.6 We are not saying that these parties are not ideologically close to xenophobia or even racism, but only that they do not convey overtly xenophobic or racist messages very often in the public space. Overall, these kinds of claims remain rather marginal.
If we get a closer look at the distribution of extreme right claims among the various actors, we note a further difference between the French and Swiss situations. Table 4 shows that about three-quarters of extreme right claims are made by the National Front, once again both within and outside the ERCI field. Thus, the National Front is nearly the only
institutional channel for carrying extreme right interests. In contrast, the extreme right in Switzerland not only has a larger share of social movement claims, but in addition there is no dominant party as in France.7 Numerous small parties share the power at the far right of the political spectrum. Furthermore, some of them have a local (cantonal) scope, like for example the League of Ticinesi.
Table 4
Of course, models of citizenship are of little help to explain this difference, which stems above all from the degree of fragmentation of the political system and the type of electoral system. Specifically, the proportional rule adopted in Switzerland, coupled with the strong territorial and political decentralization leads to a fragmentation of the organization of
6 For example, nobody would deny that National Front’s Jean-Marie Le Pen or Christoph Blocher, the leader of the radical branch of the Swiss People’s Party, often make extremist statements.
7 In the recent elections for the national parliament, however, the Swiss extreme right has become more concentrated around the People’s Party, as some of the smallest parties have failed to get seats.
the extreme right. In contrast, France’s majority (two-ballot) system, coupled with the
centralization of power, favors the organization of the extreme right around one major party.8 Thus, the National Front not only captures the large majority of extreme right votes, but also dominates the public space through its claim-making on issues pertaining to immigration and ethnic relations as well as other, more traditional extreme right issues (such as anti-
establishment and anti-left claims). In Switzerland, this task is shared among a larger number of parties and organizations. Finally, it is important to note that the number of parties
determines in turn the process of coalition formation, which is seen by several authors as a driving force behind the emergence of the extreme right (Kitschelt 1995; Schain 1987;
Thränhardt 1995).
Forms of Action
Table 5 shows that extreme right claims take most of the time the form of public statements.
Nearly 70 % of all claims are channeled by this form of action. This should not surprise us.
First of all, public statements are the less costly form of action. Secondly, parties mainly intervene in public debates through public statements. As political parties are the major organizational form taken by the extreme right, then this form of action plays a more conspicuous role than collective mobilizations. This holds above all in the case of France, where parties in general and the National Front in particular are the principal actors making extreme right claims. In addition, collective mobilizations and more generally unconventional actions by extreme right actors are more frequent within the ERCI field than in their claim- making in general.
Table 5
Political opportunity theorists have linked variations in the forms of action displayed by social movements to changes in certain characteristics of the political-institutional setting (e.g. della Porta 1995; Kriesi et al. 1995; Tarrow 1998). Kriesi et al.’s (1995) have argued that the more radical action repertoire of movements in France, as compared to Switzerland, depends on the very different opportunity structures in these two countries. Specifically, France’s selective inclusion setting, characterized by little access to the political system and exclusive prevailing strategies by the authorities, offers little opportunities to challengers and therefore force them to act disruptively. In contrast, Switzerland’s integration setting, which
8 Given the French electoral system, the recent split of the National Front in two parties to a large extent explains the failure of the extreme right in the last national elections. The majority rule sanctions party fragmentation.
combines facilitated access to the system and inclusive prevailing strategies, moderate the movements’ action repertoire.9 Thus, following this theory, extreme right movement
organizations should make use of radical forms of action in a closed general structural setting such as France’s and more moderate forms in an open setting such as Switzerland’s.
If we consider all types of movements, closed opportunity structures tend indeed to provoke more radical mobilizations in France than in Switzerland. As Table 6 indicates, protest is in general more confrontational and violent in France than in Switzerland. If we focus on the extreme right, however, we get the opposite picture, as its mobilization is much more radical in Switzerland. Altogether, confrontational and violent actions by the extreme right are almost the double there. This suggests that political opportunities vary according to the political issues at hand and the types of political actors who mobilize on those issues.10 In order to explain variations in the action repertoires of the extreme right, we must specify the relevant opportunity structure for this actor, specifically when it mobilizes on issues
pertaining to immigration and ethnic relations (Giugni and Passy 1999; Koopmans and Statham 1999a).
Table 6
Following a political opportunity approach, Koopmans (1996) has argued that racist and extreme right violence is higher where extreme right parties are stronger. The use of violence is a costly strategy because of the risks of repression and moral sanctions. Therefore, when more viable alternatives exist, the amount of violence diminishes. The presence of a strong extreme right party provides such an opportunity. His data show a strong negative correlation between the presence of important extreme right parties and the levels of racist and extreme right violence, with the exception of Switzerland. At the same time, the levels of violence are particularly high in both Germany and Switzerland, two countries that convey an ethnic-cultural definition of citizenship.
9 In Kriesi et al.’s (1995) conceptualization of political opportunity structures, the movements’ forms of action are influenced above all by the general structural settings for political mobilization, which derives from the combination of institutional structures and prevailing strategies. As far as institutional structures are concerned, these authors stress four aspects: the degree of territorial centralization of the state, the degree of functional separation of powers, the strength and coherence of the public administration, and the presence of direct democratic procedures. Regarding the prevailing strategies, they distinguish between exclusive (repressive, confrontational, polarizing) and integrative (facilitative, cooperative, assimilative) strategies.
10 Kriesi et al. (1995: ch. 4) recognize that political opportunity structures vary according to the types of
movements as well as from one policy area to the other, but fail to specify the relevant opportunity structures for a the policy areas addressed by the movements object of their study.
In contexts in which the traditional parties have incorporated themes usually addressed by the extreme right, there are greater opportunities for radical actions on these themes. As we have seen, this is more likely to happen where the dominant discourse corresponds to and legitimizes the ethnic-cultural conception of citizenship (Koopmans and Statham 1999a). In such a context, not only the social movement form is more widespread, but there is more space for radical and violent actions carried by small extremist groups over issues pertaining to immigration and ethnic relations. These groups are seen as illegitimate everywhere,
regardless of the dominant model of citizenship, and hence face closed opportunity structures which, following political opportunity theorists, force them to make use of radical forms of action. However, since the ethnic-cultural conception of citizenship favors the claim-making by extreme right organizations outside the parliamentary arena, the action repertoire of the extreme right when it acts within the ERCI field is more radical in those countries in which national identity is framed in ethnocultural terms than in countries in which prevails a civic- political discourse. Thus, if the general structural setting for political mobilization is more closed in France than in Switzerland, political opportunities specific to the field of
immigration and ethnic relations present a reversed situation and are more closed in the latter country, leading to a higher degree of radicalism and violence by extreme right actors.
Content of Claims
Institutional opportunities are of little help to explain the content of claim-making. The opportunity structure formed by the dominant model of citizenship provides us with a helpful theoretical framework to grasp the thematic focus of public claims by the extreme right within the ERCI field. Models of citizenship give social and political actors specific symbolic
resources to address related issues in the public space. The ethnic-assimilationist model tends to exclude immigrants from the national community and create an important cleavage
between citizens and foreigners. We therefore expect public claims in such a context to focus mainly on immigration flows (i.e. the entry in and exit from the country) rather than on issues pertaining to the situation of immigrants in the host society and their integration therein. For migrants are still perceived not as members of the national community, but rather as
(guest)workers living in the country only on a temporary basis.
Minority issues, on the other hand, should be the main thematic focus in France as a result of the opportunities provided by the civic-assimilationist model of citizenship. Ethnic minority actors are accepted in the national community and most of them have full rights as French citizens. In other words, if in Switzerland they are to large extent excluded from the
society (and from many social, political, and cultural rights), in France they are most often included and benefit from social and political rights (although the French republican conception of citizenship does very little to recognize cultural difference and rights). We expect that, in such a context, public claims deal primarily with the integration of migrants in the host society. This holds for all parties involved and hence also for the extreme right. Of course, the evaluation and position of claims will differ very much according to the actor (in particular between the left and the extreme right), but the thematic focus should be the same.
Table 7 confirms this hypothesis. Public debates in Switzerland focus mainly on immigration, asylum, and aliens politics (i.e. on the regulation of flows). More detailed analyses show that the political asylum issue is dealt with most frequently. This is partly due to the deep historical roots of political asylum in Switzerland, which go as back as the 16th century (Vuilleumier 1987). Minority integration issue have a lower mobilization capacity.
Naturalization is the most frequently addressed issue within this general thematic focus.
Perhaps not by incident, it is the one that is most closely linked to the question of who is to be accepted in or rejected from the national community. In contrast, French public debates focus mostly on minority integration politics as well as on issues related to racism and antiracism.
These issues cover nearly 70 % of the claims within the ERCI field. More detailed analyses indicate that minority rights and their participation in the host society have a particularly strong mobilization capacity.11 The strong presence of the National Front in the public space is certainly not alien from the important proportion of racist and antiracist claims. In addition, racism is also related to the debate over the incorporation of ethnic minorities in the host society.
Table 7
The political claim-making by the extreme right to a large extent follows national public debates. In Switzerland, the political claim-making by the extreme right deals primarily with the regulation of immigration flows. About one third of their public claims concern this issue. In the recent history of Switzerland, the extreme right, in particular institutionalized actors such as parties, was very active in framing the problem of Überfremdung
(overpopulation). Extreme right parties have made extensive use of direct-democratic
11 The issue of the respect (or, conversely, denial) of specific religious rights has played quite an important role in this respect. The Islamic veil affair, in particular, has provoked an intense debate in France during the first half of the 1990s.
instruments in order to reduce the number of foreigners living in the country.12 The more detailed distributions presented in Table 8 regarding the specific thematic focus of claim- making show that claims by the extreme right on ethnic relations, citizenship, and
immigration in Switzerland are mostly framed in terms of entry and border control. Claims related to racism and antiracism are also important. In fact, racism is a sort of “bottom line”
for the extreme right in general. Yet, as we shall see below, it is less important in Switzerland than in France.
Table 8
While in Switzerland the extreme right, like the other social and political actors, does not very often address minority integration issues, in France the latter is at the center of the political debate in this policy area. Extreme right parties and organizations follow the overall rend in this respect, as about 80 % of their claims deals with minority integration politics as well as racism ands antiracism. Like in Switzerland, racist claims form the “bottom line” of the extreme right, but in France their amount is much higher. The French extreme right views migration not as a problem of inflows of immigrants, but mainly as a problem related to the integration of ethnic minorities in the French culture and society. For example, it often points to the difficulty for migrants, in particular those carrying very different cultures and religions, such as Muslims, to assimilate to the French habits and practices. In this view, migrants represent a threat to the unity of the French Republic. The inassimilabilité (inassimilativeness) of certain ethnic groups has always been a motive of racist, nationalist, and extreme right actors. They were and still are perceived as a source of disorder in the French society (Taguieff 1988).
Finally, Table 9 shows the general thematic focus of collective mobilizations by the extreme right in the two countries. We can see that pure xenophobic claims are much more frequent in Switzerland than in France. This is a result of the fact that in Switzerland the extreme right takes more often than in France the form of a social movement and acts mostly outside the institutional arenas.
Table 9
Conclusion
12 The most famous and the one that received the strongest popular support was the so-called “Schwarzenbach initiative,” which proposed in 1979 to half the number of foreigners.
Processes of social and cultural change do not impinge directly on the emergence of certain types of collective actors, specifically certain types of social movements. Contemporary right wing extremism is not, as some have argued (Minkenberg 1992), a direct reaction to the fundamental change in culture and values that has occurred in Western Europe. It rather depends on the politicization of new cleavages or the re-politicization of existing ones. In addition, it relates to the saliency of certain policy areas which become the main ground for the battles fought by extreme right parties and groups. The field of immigration and ethnic relations is perhaps the most important such areas today. The contemporary extreme right contributes to and, at the same time, takes advantage of the politicization of issues pertaining to this policy area. However, this process is constrained by the existing political opportunity structure defined by the dominant models of citizenship. Their impact explain in part the variations that we observe across countries in the presence, forms, and content of extreme right mobilization today.
This paper is work in progress. Therefore our analysis to a large extent has an exploratory and illustrative purpose. In general, however, our findings go in the expected direction. First, the extreme right has a larger presence in the public space in France in general but not within the ERCI field. Second, the ethnic-cultural conception of citizenship in
Switzerland offers more opportunities for the social movement organizational form of extreme right extremism. Third, the levels of violence displayed by the extreme right are higher in Switzerland. Fourth, the content of claim-making by the extreme right within the ERCI field follows the prevailing model of citizenship: France’s civic-assimilationist model leads claims to deal primarily with minority integration politics, while Switzerland’s ethnic- assimilationist model favors a focus on the regulation of immigration flows.
Our analysis suggests that two distinctions are important to an explanation of right wing extremism. First, we need to distinguish between the two principal organizational forms through which extreme right interests and identities are addressed in the public space: parties and social movements. This distinction is important not for mere descriptive reasons, but because the form party becomes an explanatory variable when we look at extreme right organizations outside the institutional arenas. Second, we should distinguish between the claim-making of the extreme right within the field of immigration and ethnic relations, which represents today its main battle ground, and claim-making outside this field and related to traditional issues as well as electoral competition. Finally, it should be clear that by focusing on models of citizenship we do not mean to imply that structural cleavages are unimportant or that such institutional factors as the access to the political system and party competition do not
play any role. Quite on the contrary, we think that these aspects are crucial to an explanation of the rise and success of the contemporary extreme right. Yet we have argued that they are in turn conditioned by the dominant conception of and discourse on citizenship and national identity, especially so to the extent that extreme right parties and organizations mobilize over issues pertaining to immigration and ethnic relations, framing those issues in ethnocultural terms.
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Table 1: Presence of extreme right actors in the public space in France and Switzerland, 1990-1994
All claims ERCI field
France Switzerland France Switzerland All forms of action
Extreme right actors involved 19.5 8.8 8.6 7.9
Other actors involved 80.5 91.2 91.4 92.1
Total N
100%
2449
100%
1193
100%
1773
100%
966 Collective mobilizations
Extreme right actors involved 36.3 24.0 26.3 34.8
Other actors involved 63.7 76.0 73.7 65.2
Total N
100%
511
100%
251
100%
320
100%
135
Table 2: Position of public claims toward issue by parties in France and Switzerland, 1990-1994
Extreme left
Left Right Extreme right
All parties France
Anti-minority, racist and xenophobic claims 16.1 3.6 28.8 49.2 18.1
Neutral, ambivalent and technocratic claims 9.7 31.4 31.1 45.0 28.6
Pro-minority, antiracist and anti-extreme right claims 74.2 65.0 40.1 5.8 53.2 Total
N
100%
31
100%
140
100%
222
100%
120
100%
419 Switzerland
Anti-minority, racist and xenophobic claims N/A. 11.5 53.2 69.4 37.7
Neutral, ambivalent and technocratic claims N/A. 9.8 15.3 18.4 13.1
Pro-minority, antiracist and anti-extreme right claims N/A. 78.7 31.5 12.2 49.2 Total
N
100%
61
100%
111
100%
49
100%
183 NOTES: Includes verbal claims only. The all parties category excludes extreme right parties.
Table 3: Types of extreme right actors involved in political claim-making in France and Switzerland, 1990-1994
All claims ERCI field
France Switzerland France Switzerland
Political parties 83.2 61.0 78.4 61.8
Social movement organizations / groups 15.9 35.1 20.9 36.8
Total N
100%
477
100%
105
100%
153
100%
76 NOTES: Includes both verbal and non-verbal claims.
Table 4: Extreme right actors involved in political claim-making in France and Switzerland, 1990-1994
All claims ERCI field France
National Front 77.6 77.1
Combat for the Values / Movement for France 5.7 1.3
French Action 1.0 -
Other extreme right parties / unions 1.0 2.0
Extreme right newspapers 2.1 4.0
Popular Alliance 2.1 -
Skinheads 2.9 5.9
Other extremists 2.1 3.3
Other extreme right organizations / groups 4.2 6.2
Total N
100%
477
100%
153
Switzerland
Swiss Democrats / National Action 22.9 23.7
Swiss People’s Party (SVP / UDC) 14.3 18.4
Freedom Party 13.3 14.4
League of Ticinesi 10.5 3.9
Other extreme right parties 1.0 1.3
Action for an Independent and Neutral Switzerland (AINS / ASIN) 6.7 2.6
Skinheads 3.8 2.6
Other extremists 21.0 26.3
Other extreme right organizations / groups 5.8 5.2
Total N
100%
105
100%
76 NOTES: Includes both verbal and non-verbal claims.
Table 5: Forms of public claims by the extreme right in France and Switzerland, 1990-1994
All claims ERCI field
France Switzerland France Switzerland
Public statements 67.3 58.1 67.4 63.2
Meetings 13.6 - 6.5 -
Direct-democratic actions - 5.7 - 5.3
Petitioning 0.2 2.9 - 1.3
Demonstrative protests 6.9 3.8 10.5 1.3
Confrontational protests 5.0 4.8 9.2 -
Violent protests 4.6 21.9 6.5 28.9
Total N
100%
477
100%
105
100%
153
100%
76 NOTES: Includes both verbal and non-verbal claims.
Table 6: Forms of public claims (extreme right excluded) in France and Switzerland, 1990-1994
France Switzerland
Political decisions 14.4 23.8
Public statements 58.8 62.0
Meetings 4.1 0.2
Judicial actions 2.2 -
Direct-democratic actions - 1.8
Petitioning 0.7 1.4
Demonstrative protests 7.9 5.8
Confrontational protests 6.0 1.2
Violent protests 5.8 3.6
Total N
100%
1714
100%
906 NOTES: Includes both verbal and non-verbal claims.
Table 7: General thematic focus of public claims within the ERCI field in France and Switzerland, 1990-1994
All actors Extreme right
France Switzerland France Switzerland
Immigration, asylum, and aliens politics 27.6 59.4 11.1 31.6
Minority integration politics 29.3 16.5 23.5 11.8
Racism/antiracism 40.1 20.5 58.8 26.3
Xenophobic claims 3.0 3.6 6.5 30.3
Total N
100%
1773
100%
966
100%
153
100%
76 NOTE: Includes both verbal and non-verbal claims.
