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Thesis

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Who deserves the Welfare? the Populist Radical Right's transformation of Social Policy

CHUERI BARBOSA CORREA, Juliana

Abstract

The thesis makes an important contribution to the literature on populist radical right parties (PRRPs) and on welfare state studies more broadly. It focuses on an underexplored aspect of PRRPs, namely how these parties impact social policy making when in government. So far, the literature has mainly explored how PRRPs shape policy in their core issues, migration policies for example. As shown by Chueri, PRRPs have become more supportive of welfare states since the 1990s but as argued convincingly in the thesis, these parties were able to have their own stamp on welfare reforms and have shaped the political space in coalition with other right-wing parties. Empirically, the thesis combines a quantitative and a qualitative approach in an exemplary fashion.

CHUERI BARBOSA CORREA, Juliana. Who deserves the Welfare? the Populist Radical Right's transformation of Social Policy . Thèse de doctorat : Univ. Genève, 2020, no. SdS 142

DOI : 10.13097/archive-ouverte/unige:134623 URN : urn:nbn:ch:unige-1346239

Available at:

http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:134623

Disclaimer: layout of this document may differ from the published version.

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Who deserves the Welfare? The Populist Radical Right's transformation of Social Policy

Juliana Chueri University of Geneva

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Promotor:

Prof. Dr. J. Pontusson Reading Committee:

Dr. M. Kolbe Dr. N. Giger Prof. Dr. B. Borgoon Prof. Dr. S. Hug

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For my nieces

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Contents

Chapter one: Introduction ... 16

Introduction ... 16

Literature puzzles ... 19

Expectations on the PRRPs’ influence on social policies ... 22

Analytical approach ... 24

Contribution of this dissertation ... 26

Outline of the dissertation ... 30

Chapter two: Theoretical framework of the dissertation ... 32

Introduction ... 32

The populist radical right-wing parties ... 36

PRRPs’ profile vis-à-vis distributive issues ... 42

PRRPs’ influence on policymaking ... 50

PRRPs’ influence on social policies ... 57

Welfare-state retrenchment and welfare chauvinism: A trade-off? ... 59

Deservingness and welfare state institutions ... 65

Welfare chauvinist strategies ... 69

Chapter three: Social Policy Outputs of Government Participation by Populist Radical Right Parties ... 74

Introduction ... 74

Hypotheses ... 76

Statistical studies ... 82

PRRPs’ influence on changes to public welfare state expenditure ... 82

Dependent variables ... 83

Independent variables ... 85

Results ... 90

PRRPs’ influence on the adoption of welfare chauvinist measures ... 102

Dependent variables ... 104

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Results ... 107

Conclusions ... 117

Chapter four: Between welfare state retrenchment and welfare chauvinism. Social policy outcomes of the DPPs’ government participation. ... 120

Introduction ... 120

Government coalition parties’ profile on welfare-state distribution and immigrants’ entitlement to rights... 123

Parties’ positions on the welfare state ... 123

Parties’ positions on immigrants’ entitlement to social rights... 125

Denmark: Fragmented party system and the right-wing bloc’s bargaining power ... 128

Welfare state retrenchment ... 132

Parties’ positions and negotiations on the Welfare Agreement ... 133

Parties’ positions and negotiations on the Recovery Package ... 136

Welfare chauvinist measures ... 139

Parties’ positions and negotiations on asylum seekers’ right to housing ... 140

Parties’ position and negotiations on Start Help ... 141

Parties’ positions and negotiations on the Agreement on the Future of Immigration 2006 ... 142

Parties’ positions and negotiations on immigrants’ access to family benefits .. 144

Election outcome of the restrictions ... 146

Conclusion ... 149

Chapter five: FPÖ’s government participation. Betraying the ‘common man’ without being punished? ... 153

Introduction ... 153

Coalition parties’ profiles on distribution and immigrants’ entitlement to rights ... 155

Coalition parties’ positions on the welfare state ... 155

Coalition parties’ positions on immigrants’ entitlement to the welfare state .. 160

Bargaining power of the FPÖ inside the coalition ... 163

Welfare state reforms in Austria ... 170

Welfare reform negotiations in the Schüssel I government ... 171

Welfare expansion in the Schüssel I government ... 174

Welfare chauvinist measures in the Schüssel I ... 178

Welfare reform negotiations in the Schüssel II government ... 179

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Welfare reform negotiations in the Kurz government ... 184

Welfare expansion measures in the Kurz government ... 187

Welfare chauvinist measures in the Kurz government ... 190

Electoral consequences of retrenchment on the Austrian welfare state ... 194

Conclusion ... 197

Chapter six: Social Outcomes of PRRPs’ Government Participation: A comparative analysis. ... 202

Introduction ... 202

Social policy outputs of PRRPs’ government participation in Austria and Denmark ... 203

PRRPs’ influence on welfare state reforms in Austria and Denmark ... 203

PRRPs’ influence on the adoption of welfare chauvinist measures in Denmark and Austria ... 207

Case study framework ... 212

Social policy outcomes of PRRPs’ government participation in Finland and the Netherlands ... 215

PRRPs’ influence on welfare state reforms in Finland and the Netherlands 215 Electoral consequences of PRRPs’ government participation ... 228

Main findings and discussion ... 232

Chapter seven: Conclusions ... 237

Introduction ... 237

Main findings ... 240

Right-wing parties’ and mainstream parties’ social policy preferences: an insolvable conflict? ... 243

Other explanatory variables... 247

Main contributions to the literature ... 250

Methodological consideration and limitations of the results ... 253

Methodological considerations ... 254

Limitations of this research ... 258

Where do we go from here? ... 260

Reference list ... 264

Appendix A. Descriptive statistics of the variables ... 299

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Appendix B. Government orientation variable ... 300

Appendix C. Brant test of the parallel assumption ... 301

Appendix D. Ordinal dependent variable ... 303

Appendix E. Proportional hazard assumption test ... 305

Appendix F. Alternative models on PRRPs’ influence on welfare state expenditure ... 307

Appendix G. Alternative models on PRRPs’ influence on generosity ... 311

Appendix H. Models applying the logarithmic PRRPs’ welfare position as independent variable ... 313

Appendix I. Alternative models on PRRPs’ influence on the adoption of chauvinist welfare measures ... 317

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List of tables

Table 1. Populist right-wing parties with parliamentary representation from 1980 to 2014 ... 41

Table 2. Cases of PRRPs’ formal and informal participation in government ... 86

Table 5 Regression models with public welfare state expenditure per head as dependent variable and continuous government orientation as independent variable... 92

Table 6. Regression models with public welfare state expenditure per head as dependent variable and ordinal

government orientation as independent variable... 96 Table 7 Regression models with public welfare state

expenditure per head as dependent variable and PRRPs'

logarithm position on welfare state as independent variable ... 99 Table 8. Regression models with welfare state generosity as dependent variable ... 101

Table 9. Regressions on PRRPs’ influence on chauvinist welfare measures; the table reports odds ratios ... 109

Table 10. Regressions on PRRPs’ influence on chauvinist welfare measures; the table reports hazard ratios ... 112

Table 11. Regressions on PRRPs’ influence on chauvinist welfare measures, by immigrant group; the table reports hazard ratios ... 116

Table 12 Case study framework ... 215 Table 13 Welfare retrenchment initiatives in selected cases. 219 Table 14 Welfare chauvinist initiatives adopted in the selected cases ... 228

Table 15 Descriptive statistics of the variables ... 299 Table 16 P-values of the Brant test ... 302 Table 19 Regression models with public welfare state

expenditure per head and left wing government as baseline ... 307 Table 20 Regression models with public welfare state

expenditure to GDP ratio as dependent variable ... 308 Table 21 Alternative models with public expenditure per head as depended variable ... 309

Table 22 Alternative models with the deserving public

expenditure to total social expenditure as dependent variable .. 310

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Table 21 Alternative models with welfare state generosity as dependent variable and share of PRRPs’ participation in coalition as independent variable ... 311

Table 25 Regression models with public welfare state expenditure per head as dependent variable and the interaction between PRRPs' logarithm position on welfare state and PRRPs’

government participation as independent variable ... 316 Table 25 Alternative Regressions on PRRPs’ influence on chauvinist welfare measures (N=3570, 1980–2014, 17 countries).

... 318 Table 26 Alternative Regressions on PRRPS’ influence on chauvinist welfare measures with left-wing governments as baseline; the table reports hazard ratios and odds ratios ... 319

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List of figures

Figure 1. Positive and negative quasi-sentences on welfare state. Percentage of the manifesto ... 46

Figure 2. Channels of PRRPs’ influence on policy outputs ... 56 Figure 3. Welfare chauvinist strategies ... 72 Figure 5. Number of pieces of approved legislation that decreased immigrants’ entitlement to social rights, 1980–2014.. 105

Figure 6 Number of restrictions on immigrants’ entitlement to social rights (1980–2014) in the 17 countries under consideration, by immigrant group ... 106

Figure 7 Table of frequency of the dependent variable of the ordinal logistic regression ... 107

Figure 8 Marginal effect of the participation of PRRPs in parliaments on the dependent variable for different levels of government orientation ... 113

Figure 9 Vote share of left-wing and right-wing blocs and the main right-wing parties’ strength from 1980 to 2014. ... 130

Figure 10 Vote share of main Austrian parties from 1983 to 2013 ... 195

Figure 11. Positive and adjusted stances on the welfare state for PRRPs’ that participated in the government, by country, from 1980 to 2014. ... 314

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Acknowledgements

During the past five years, I had the privilege of being advised by Jonas Pontusson. I could not have asked for a better supervisor. Jonas gave me absolute freedom to pursue my research interests and always provided me with sharp feedback. I am eternally grateful for his constant support and the time we spent discussing my work. Being able to work closely with the committee members was also fundamental to my research development. Mélaine Kolbe, Nathalie Giger, and Simon Hug—thank you for your attentive guidance. Additionally, I would like to thank Hans-Greog Betz for his comments on my early drafts and Laurent Bernhard for our productive discussions on populism beyond the European context. I also greatly appreciate the comments I received during the various conferences, workshops, and seminars that I participated in while I was a Ph.D. candidate. I wish to thank my colleagues who were also in those venues and who took an interest in my research.

Part of my doctoral research was conducted at the AISSR at the University of Amsterdam. The time I spent in Amsterdam was professionally and personally rewarding. A special thank you goes to Brian Borgoon—he was kind enough to receive me in Amsterdam and make me feel welcome at the institute. Brian’s advice, which was always precise, significantly contributed to shaping my research. In

Amsterdam, I had the chance to meet an extraordinary group of colleagues who challenged me with their constructive criticism, provided comments on my chapters and drafts, and advised me on my

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statistical analyses. The members of the PETGOV group, Sarah de Lange, Matthijs Rooduijn, Wouter Schakel, and Daphne van der Pas deserve special mention. I will always remember the wonderful friends I made at the University of Amsterdam; they were loving and generous people who provided me with the support and energy necessary to conclude my research. A special thank you to Diliara, Wouter, François, Daniel, Tara, Sarita, Márk, and Jos.

I am extremely lucky to have received continuous encouragement from my friends outside of academia. Gabriel, a lifelong friend, has always kept in touch despite my many moves and has always been willing to lend an attentive ear. I also want to thank Rapha and Alice—

they provided many nights of good food and provocative conversations when we lived together in Geneva. I am also extremely grateful for the love I received from my close friends Bruno, Fernanda, Laura, Marco, Marina, Matheus, Nathália, and Pier. Due to their warmth, Brazil will always feel like home to me. Additionally, I am grateful to have had Rafael as my partner throughout the majority of this research—his strength and perseverance have changed me, certainly for the best.

This thesis would never have been possible without my family.

Mom, thank you for your affection and for reminding me not to take things too seriously. Dad, it is needless to point out your role in my career choice; thank you for pushing me to become the best possible version of myself. I would also like to thank my siblings, incredible human beings and loyal friends, and my grandparents, who have always been there for me. I dedicate this monograph to Mariana, Isabela, Giovana and Laura, my nieces. I hope this dissertation inspires them to follow their most audacious dreams.

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Finally, I would like to thank Petter for renewing my interest in academic research, for being patient with my unconventional working hours, and, mostly, for being my refuge.

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Chapter one: Introduction

Introduction

Populist Radical Right-Wing Parties (PRRPs) have gained space in Western European democracies; they emerged in the early 1980s and have achieved considerable electoral success. De Lange (2012) shows that mainstream parties’ ambitions to gain government power and implement policies have caused them to turn to PRRPs as coalition partners. As a result, we have witnessed several cases of PRRPs participating in government coalitions. As expected, scholars have devoted significant attention to this new party family, assessing their defining characteristics and explaining the causes for their emergence.

Focusing on the demand side, the literature highlighted that sociocultural and economic changes propelled the emergence of this new political cleavage (Betz, 1994; Bornschier, 2010; Bornschier & Kriesi, 2012;

Hooghe et al., 2002; Kitschelt, 1994; Kriesi et al., 2006). A large academic debate occurred regarding the conceptual clarification of the phenomenon. The literature reached a relative consensus on classifying those parties as populist radical right-wing parties. Populism here is understood as a set of ideas1 that authors associate with a political discourse (De Cleen & Stavrakakis, 2017; Hawkins, 2010), political logic (Laclau, 2005), or thin-center ideology (Mudde, 2007; Stanley, 2008).

Within this framework, populism is defined as the opposition between

1For a critic of the ideational approach to populism see Moffitt &

Tormey (2014).

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the pure people and the corrupt elite and the belief that politics should express the general will of the people (Mudde, 2007). Besides being populist, these new parties combine, at least, nativism and authoritarianism in their core ideology (Mudde, 2007).

More recently, the literature turned its attention to the impact of PRRPs on the political system. Studies have shown that the electoral success of these parties led to a repositioning of competitor parties in national political systems (Norris, 2005; Bale et al., 2010; van Spanje, 2010; Alonso & da Fonseca, 2012; Schumacher & Kersbergen, 2016). In general, mainstream parties respond to these new adversaries by adopting hard stances on immigration and integration policies (Meguid, 2005; 2008). Still, these studies were restricted to the analysis of party manifestos, and policy outputs were not analyzed.

Motivated by the recurrent government participation of such parties in government, scholars turned their attention to the influence of PRRPs on policymaking. The available research generally focuses on policies that are considered part of the core of these parties’ policies, such as immigration, integration, and law and order. The results are mixed, as the literature reports that some PRRPs faced challenges in adapting to incumbency and were not able to deliver their campaign polices (Heinisch, 2003; Akkerman, 2012; Akkerman & de Lange, 2012; Biard et al., 2019). In general, the literature has been skeptical about the size of such parties’ influence on policymaking (Mudde, 2013).

Thus, so far, very few studies have assessed the influence of these parties on issues that are outside of what is considered their core agenda.

Particularly regarding the social policy domain, only Afonso (2015) and Röth et al. (2017) assessed the policy outputs of PRRPs’ government

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participation. The first study showed that by pursuing a welfare defense strategy when in government, PRRPs might jeopardize the coalitions’

stability. Conversely, the second study found a positive relation between PRRPs’ government participation and welfare generosity. Therefore, this monograph revisits this still open question about the relationship between PRRPs’ participation in parliament and government and the implementation of welfare state reforms. Specifically, I investigate the influence of these parties on the adoption of restrictions on immigrants’

entitlement to social rights, or welfare chauvinist measures, and restrictions or expansion on the general welfare state.

The motivation for tackling the influence of PRRPs on distributive issues is twofold. First, though studies have claimed that distributive issues have relatively less priority compared to cultural issues, it is expected that once these parties achieve power, they will influence policy beyond their core issues, including economic and social policies (Röth et al., 2018). Second, the literature reports that distributive issues have gained importance in the PRRPs’ agenda. Particularly, studies highlight that most of these parties combine support for the welfare state for the deserving groups and the exclusion of immigrants from benefits (Betz, 1994; Rydgren, 2004; Marks et. al, 2006; Afonso, 2015; Careja et al., 2016;

Schumacher & Kersbergen, 2016; Röth et al., 2017; Afonso & Rennwald, 2018). Thus, it is expected that once such parties achieve power, they will try to shape welfare reforms in order to appeal to their voters.

In light of this shift of PRRPs’ social policy preferences, I argue that downplaying PRRPs’ influence on social policymaking leads scholars to overlook transformations of welfare state configuration that impact distributive outcomes. Besides, the potential influence of these parties on

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policy outputs is particularly important during times of economic crisis, when distributive conflicts are likely to occur, and the question about who gets what is at the center of political debate. Understanding and theorizing the influence of PRRPs on social policy outputs thus is not only relevant for the ongoing debate in political economy literature about parties’ influence on welfare state reforms but also for migration studies, as those parties’ nativist positions on social issues might hamper immigrants’ integration.

Literature puzzles

There is a broad academic debate about the increase in importance of the cultural cleavage in Western European political systems. Studies have shown that the political dispute that was once mainly divided by the conflict regarding distributive issues, characterized by a clash between the left-wing and the right-wing parties, gained an additional cultural dimension that gathers post-materialist values (Kriesi, 1998). To put it simply, this new cleavage clusters the dispute between libertarian and authoritarian values (Kitschelt, 1994). From that perspective, the emergence of PRRPs in advanced democracies is a result of the increasing salience of cultural issues such as authoritarianism, conservativism and nativism in society (Ignazi, 1992).

So far, the literature has posited that those two cleavages are relatively independent from each other, and PRRPs mobilize voters mainly on the

‘value dimension’. This monograph challenges this assumption. Based on the previous studies of PRRPs’ manifestos and research on the relations between relative deprivation and radical right voting (Burgoon et al., 2018; Gidron & Hall, 2017; Rooduijn & Burgoon, 2018), I claim that there are good reasons to believe that distributive issues are also a driver

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for this cleavage and that those two dimensions highly influence each other. The studies of PRRPs’ policy preferences regarding welfare state reforms and such parties’ influence on social policies output, one aspect of the distributive issue, thus serve as evidence of the relevance of the economic dimension for PRRPs’ voters.

Throughout this thesis I also aim to challenge the idea that PRRPs have limited impact on policy outputs, particularly on issues that are not in what the literature considers their core ideology. Many scholars argue that, despite the increasing presence of such parties in parliament and their recurrent government participation, PRRPs’ impact on policy outputs is limited (Akkerman, 2012; Mudde, 2013). This occurred because these parties do not have sufficient power resources, qualified personnel or internal coherence to be able to influence policy outputs.

This claim was partially confirmed by empirical research that focused on the first experiences of PRRPs in government (Heinisch, 2003;

Akkerman, 2012; Akkerman & de Lange, 2012). The literature, nonetheless, suggests that there was a learning process and PRRPs have started to prioritize and influence policy outputs on issues that are central to their voters (de Lange et al., 2016). Also, studies have widely reported the indirect influence of PRRPs on the party system. The electoral success of these parties has led mainstream parties to adopt part of PRRPs’ position on issues such as immigration, integration and law and order (Norris, 2005; Bale et al., 2010; van Spanje, 2010; Alonso & da Fonseca, 2012; Schumacher & Kersbergen, 2016; Minkenberg, 2001, 2013; Schain, 2006; Williams, 2006).

When it comes to distributive issues, the relationship between PRRPs’ participation in politics and policy output is yet more intricate.

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First, the literature claims that distributive issues are not in the core of PRRPs’ ideology, and they thus are of secondary importance in those parties’ agendas. Relatedly, research posits that rather than adopt a clear position on the issue, PRRPs intentionally blur their policy preference in relation to the welfare state (Rovny, 2013). According to this reasoning, it is expected that PRRPs’ electoral success will have little influence on the reforms adopted. Although those points are relevant, especially to describe these parties in their infancy, the literature indicates that PRRPs are adopting a clear position in regard to the welfare state and that the salience of this issue is increasing (Rydegren, 2004; Derks, 2006; Zaslove, 2009; Afonso & Rennwald, 2018; Ennser-Jedenastik, 2018). Therefore, I expected that, as in other policy domains, these parties will seek to influence social policy outputs in order to meet their campaign promises.

Besides those literature puzzles, the current research deals with an empirical dilemma: the potential conflict between PRRPs’ and mainstream parties’ distributive preference within a government coalition. Mainstream right-wing parties prioritize economic performance; they cast votes based on their economic proposals and want to be perceived as fiscally responsible, which often means supporting welfare state retrenchment. Conversely, by the early 1990s, many PRRPs that emerged were promoting neoliberal agendas, and they expanded their vote share by embracing welfare state defense (Betz, 1994; Kriesi et al., 2006; Afonso & Rennwald, 2018). PRRPs’ distributive agendas, moreover, often include support for excluding immigrants from social protections, which is a policy not generally embraced, at least to the same extent, by mainstream parties (Careja et al., 2016). While this dilemma is documented in the literature (Afonso, 2015), we know very

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little about how such parties accommodate those differences when they form a government coalition. The literature on coalition governments has long assessed how policy conflicts are solved within a coalition (Bäck et al., 2011; Falcó-Gimeno, 2014; Moury et al., 2013; Klüver & Bäck, 2019; Strøm et al., 2010). Research, however, has not yet specifically assessed how PRRPs and mainstream parties accommodate when they form a government coalition, offering little guidance regarding what to anticipate regarding social policies outputs.

Expectations on the PRRPs’ influence on social policies

The questions that guide this dissertation focus on if and how PRRPs influence social policies outputs. The literature explains that a party’s bargaining power, generally measured in terms of its share of seats in parliament, is the main feature for explaining their ability to influence policymaking and translate pledges into legislation. Parties’ internal coherence and quality of bureaucracy, as well countries’ institutions, are also pointed to as determining features to explain variations in parties’

influence on policymaking (Heinisch, 2003; Akkerman, 2012; Akkerman

& de Lange, 2012). The question of how refers to the channels available for PRRPs to imprint their preferences on policy outputs. Focusing on immigration and integration, the literature reports that these parties have influenced policymaking directly and indirectly. Firstly, the increasing electoral success of PRRPs has led to their recurring government participation in Western European democracies. This access to power legitimizes the populist agenda and opens a window of opportunity for PRRPs to negotiate with coalition partners. Secondly, the electoral

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success of a PRRP signifies for the mainstream competitors that the issues that the PRRP has ownership of have gained significant political visibility. This motivates mainstream parties to adopt PRRPs’ policy positions in order to draw their votes, or to avoid losing votes to the competitor.

Considering the particularities of PRRPs’ social policy preferences, my expectation is that the growing presence of these parties in power will affect social policies’ outcomes in two main ways: it will lead to the adoption of restrictions on immigrants’ entitlement to social rights and to the protection of the welfare state for the native population. This first outcome is supported by the fact that welfare chauvinism has become a crucial component of the anti-immigrant agenda (Rydgren, 2004; De Koster et al., 2013), and this rhetoric is important to right-wing populist voting (Ivarsflaten, 2008; De Koster et al., 2013). I anticipate PRRPs’

influence to occur through both indirect and direct channels. Due to the risk of alienating the more moderate voters, mainstream parties should not defend cuts to immigrants’ social rights to the same extent as PRRPs (Careja et al., 2016). Nevertheless, a study showed that mainstream right- wing parties became more welfare chauvinist in response to PRRPs’

electoral success (Schumacher & Kersbergen, 2016). Given the centrality of this appeal in PRRPs’ agendas, they will also seek to adopt far reaching restrictions on immigrants’ entitlement to social rights when they access government influence.

I expect, additionally, that PRRPs will try to preserve or expand the welfare state for the native population when they are in government;

compared to a government formed only by mainstream right-wing parties, a coalition between mainstream parties and PRRPs will lead to

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less welfare state retrenchment. Avoiding cuts on social policies, nonetheless, might be a difficult task for PRRPs, as mainstream right- wing parties’ coalition partners usually defend the reduction of the welfare state and are evaluated by voters on their economic performance.

PRRPs thus might concentrate their efforts on preserving the welfare state for deserving recipients and consent to policy retrenchments that target undeserving recipients (Van Oorschot, 2006; Afonso, 2015).

The literature claims that PRRPs’ authoritarian and nativist approach to welfare state access shapes how those parties build a public image of welfare recipients and describe which groups are deserving and undeserving (Ennser-Jedenastik, 2018). Based on narratives about who is believed to be a burden and who contributes to the nation, immigrants are considered the least deserving (Goffman, 1974; Larsen, 2008;

Thomann & Rapp, 2017). Also, the unemployed and people dependent on social assistance are described as lazy welfare cheaters and underserving of social protection. On the other hand, the elderly are positively associated with people who have worked hard and contributed to society and are deserving of government resources.

Analytical approach

This monograph combines quantitative and qualitative methods to assess PRRPs’ influence on policy outputs. I performed two statistical studies.

The first analysis aims to assess the impact of PRRPs’ government participation upon welfare state provision (measured in terms of public welfare state expenditure and welfare state generosity). Following previous studies (Kwon & Pontusson, 2010; Lupu & Pontusson, 2011;

Römer, 2017; Röth et al., 2018), this analysis relies on a linear or ordinary

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least squares regression with panel-corrected standard errors (OLS- PCSE). Also, I seek to assess how deserving and undeserving groups are targeted by expansion or restrictions by analyzing the effect of PRRPs on different social policies. Then, I perform a study specifically on PRRPs’ influence on the adoption of legislation that restricts immigrants’

entitlement to social rights. This second study should be read as a complementary test of the hypothesis that recipients framed by PRRPs as undeserving of State resources are disproportionally harmed by restriction when those parties occupy parliament seats and government.

In this task, I employ data from the DEMIG policy database (DEMIG, 2015) on legislation that changed immigrants’ entitlement to social rights, and I run an event history analysis. The quantitative studies’ time frame is 1980 to 2014, and they are based on the data of 17 Western European countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and United Kingdom.

Following these, I perform two in depth case studies, on Denmark and Austria, focusing on the period when PRRPs were part of government coalitions in those countries. Those studies aimed to assess the conditions that enable PRRPs to imprint their preferences on policymaking, disentangle PRRPs’ and mainstream parties’ roles in the observed outcome and identify additional relevant variables to explain welfare state reforms. Those case studies also aim to provide information about the impact of policies adopted on parties’ electoral outcomes.

Finally, I include Dutch and Finish cases in the qualitative analysis. By addressing the period when PRRPs participated in the government coalition in those countries, I aim to triangulate the results observed in

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the Denmark and Austria cases, assessing the influence of the explanatory variables that appear as central to explaining social policy outputs in those additional cases.

Contribution of this dissertation

The motivation to investigate the influence of PRRPs on social policy outputs is the lack of academic studies on the matter vis à vis their potential importance in shaping distributive outcomes. I claim that the participation of these parties in Western European democracies impacts not only immigrants’ access to social protection, but it also has a broader influence on welfare state configuration and income distribution. In other words, the starting point of this monograph is the hypothesis that PRRPs interfere in distributive issues by shaping social policy reforms, directly and indirectly, according to their agenda. This thesis communicates with three research fields. It speaks to the literature on migrants’ integration by addressing how politics affects institutions. This monograph also aims to expand the ongoing discussion of parties’

impact on welfare state configuration by evaluating how this new party family influences distributive outputs. It, finally, communicates with the growing corpus of literature that assesses PRRPs’ influence on policy outputs.

Assessing the impact of the growing presence of PRRPs in parliaments and in governments on immigrants’ entitlement to social policies is a social imperative. In the context of increasing immigration and the challenges that governments face related to the inclusion of newly arrived groups in society, policy changes that reduce immigrants’

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entitlement to social rights impact immigrants’ vulnerability to poverty and social exclusion. Moreover, the adoption of such restrictive measures not only increases immigrants’ vulnerability to social risks and disrupts the integration of newly arrived immigrants, it also jeopardizes the assimilation of the second generation, thus reducing their opportunities to participate in society in an equitable way.

Considering the influence of PRRPs on general welfare reforms is equally relevant. The literature reports that PRRPs have become more supportive of welfare state expenditure since the 1990s (Rydgren, 2004;

Afonso, 2015; Careja et al., 2016; Schumacher & Kersbergen, 2016). This support is not unrestricted and comes with limitations on who deserves access to social benefits. Their authoritarian approach to welfare state distribution led them to consider some groups, such as the unemployed, non-deserving of public expenditure (Rydgren, 2004; Afonso, 2015;

Careja et al., 2016; Schumacher & Kersbergen, 2016), while the elderly are regarded as the most deserving of social policies.

I argue, therefore, that disregarding the influence of these parties’

position on welfare reforms has caused the literature to overlook the nuances of those welfare transformations and the distributive outcomes resulting from them. Indeed, most recent studies interpret the latest welfare reforms as part of the ongoing process of welfare state adjustments taking place in advanced economies since the 1980’s, disregarding how the change in political forces, resulting from the electoral success of PRRPs, affected those reforms.

As stressed above, the literature on PRRPs’ influence on policy output is in its infancy and includes few studies that approach the influence of PRRPs on the adoption of welfare chauvinist measures and

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on welfare reforms. In regard to the first movement, this monograph has a wider and more detailed scope than the previous work. It performs a large-N study that investigates the changes in immigrants’ entitlement to social rights in 17 Western European countries from 1980 to 2014. Also, it investigates how different immigrant groups are affected by restrictive measures. Finally, it seeks to disentangle PRRPs’ and mainstream parties’

roles in the adoption of welfare chauvinist measures.

Studies on PRRPs’ influence on general welfare state configuration are even more scarce. Afonso (2015) and Röth et al. (2017) make valuable contributions to the literature; there are, however, important issues still to be addressed. This monograph complements those works by taking into consideration the influence of PRRPs on the generosity of social policies for different groups of society. Additionally, Röth et al. (2017) limited their analysis to a single measure of welfare state coverage: the comparative welfare entitlement database. This database only encompasses the main insurance programs: pension, unemployment, and sick benefits. I complement this previous study with information of welfare efforts in order to encompass a range of other benefits, such as social assistance, in the analysis.

The quantitative research has two main results: it shows that despite the changes in PRRPs’ agendas regarding distributive issues, to a welfare defender position, when in government, these parties compromise with mainstream right-wing parties on the retrenchment of public expenditure. Therefore, contrary to my expectation, a government made up of right-wing parties and PRRPs is more restrictive than governments formed by mainstream right-wing parties alone. It is probably the case that PRRPs support welfare cuts in order to have latitude on immigration

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and integration policies, which are more salient issues on radical parties’

agendas. This exchange is partially illustrated by the fact that PRRPs’

government participation is associated with restriction on immigrants’

entitlement to social rights.

The analyses also suggest that the rhetoric of who is deserving of welfare expenditure is an important dimension to consider when interpreting PRRPs’ influence on public social spending. The groups considered by PPRRPs to be underserving of welfare benefits are disproportionately penalized by the ascension of these parties to government. On the other hand, public expenditure on policies that target the population considered deserving of welfare benefits are not negatively affected by PRRPs’ government participation. In line with this, the study of PRRPs’ impact on the adoption of restrictions on immigrants’ entitlement to social rights shows compelling evidence that these parties influence the adoption of welfare chauvinist measures directly and indirectly.

The case studies complemented those findings, showing how intra- coalition negotiation occurred. They evidenced that PRRPs sought to preserve social benefits for groups considered deserving but offered little resistance to support for restrictions on policies that target deserving groups. The research also indicated that welfare retrenchment and welfare chauvinist reforms are often negotiated in package deals: when in government, PRRPs seek restrictions on immigrants’ entitlement to social rights to compensate voters for welfare cuts. Additionally, the in- depth analysis clarified that the extent of welfare chauvinist measures adopted was not solely the result of the PRRP’s policy seeking strategy, as mainstream parties’ co-option of the PPRP’s welfare chauvinist

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rhetoric appeared as a necessary element to explain those restrictive reforms.

Outline of the dissertation

This dissertation is composed of seven chapters. After this introduction, there will be a theoretical chapter that provides an overview of the body of literature upon which this dissertation relies. Firstly, it will outline PRRPs as a party family, exploring the socioeconomic and cultural explanations for the emergence of the new cleavage in the party system.

Secondly, it will specify PRRPs’ positions on distributive issues and the importance of this dimension in those parties’ platforms. Thirdly, it will address the channels by which PRRPs might influence policy outputs and the literatures’ main findings about the relations between PRRPs and policy outputs. Finally, I posit expectations about PRRPs presence in parliaments and governments and the adoption of welfare chauvinist measures and welfare state reforms.

Following this, there will be five empirical chapters and a conclusion.

The first performs a quantitative study on the influence of PRRPs and the adoption of welfare chauvinist measures, combining an event history analysis and a panel data analysis. After that, I conduct a quantitative study on the impact of PRRPs’ participation in power on welfare state generosity and spending. Chapters 4 and 5 offer in-depth case studies on Denmark and Austria, respectively. Those two chapters address the negotiations on welfare chauvinist and welfare retrenchment measures that occurred during the period that PRRPs participated in the government. Their goal is to disentangle PRRPs’ and mainstream parties’

roles in the adoption of the measures and to identify other relevant

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variables that intervened in the observed results. The final analytical chapter compares the two cases and adds the Finnish and Dutch cases in a comparative framework design. Finally, there will be a conclusion, where I summarize the main conclusion and contributions of the thesis and make suggestions for future research.

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Chapter two: Theoretical framework of the dissertation Introduction

Writing in 1967, Lipset and Rokkan argued that the political systems in Western European countries were frozen around the same social cleavages2 – class, ethnicity, religion and region – that emerged with mass suffrage. Nevertheless, some years later Inglehart (1971) described the

‘silent revolution’: the transformation in the political culture that led to the emergence of a new cleavage in the political system. Analyzing the emergence of Green parties in 1970, Inglehart suggested that the political dispute around the distribution of scarce goods, represented by the left- right, or materialist, cleavage was losing importance to post-material values based on an aggregation of peoples’ preferences.

Accordingly, the existential security gained by some groups in Western European nations, especially among the youngest and best educated stratum of the society, triggered a change to non-materialist values, such as self-expression, diversity, tolerance and environmental protection, and these new values were translated into their political preferences. This cultural change led to a decline in the importance of traditional issues, such as religion and class, in structuring voters’

preferences and the emergence of a new ‘value cleavage’ (Mudde, 2007;

2According to Kriesi (1998) the conceptualization of cleavage is three- fold. First, it has a structural basis in a division of social groups. Second, these groups must be conscious of their collective identity. Third, a collective political actor must shape, give coherence to, and translate this social division into politics

.

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Rydgren, 2012), which led to a “more fluid, volatile relationship between social groups, value orientation and party preferences” (Kriesi, 1998, p.

1669). Influenced by this interpretation, the emergence of radical right- wing parties in the 1980s was considered a counter post-material, or a cultural backlash, response to the silent revolution described by Inglehart (Ignazi, 1992). This new movement on the right-side of the political spectrum supported a closed, authoritarian and conservative position regarding cultural values, such the defense of law and order, strict immigration policies, traditional family values, patriarchy, and rejection of cultural liberalism (Zaslove, 2009; Bornschier & Kriesi, 2012). This new party family mainly attracted the votes of the “losers of globalization”, such as low-skilled workers and small business owners, and other people who were pessimistic about the process of globalization or felt left behind by the State and were in favor of authoritarian solutions to social issues (Betz, 1994; Bornschier & Kriesi, 2012).

Thus, it is generally accepted that the Western European political spectrum, which was once divided in the left-right dichotomy, aggregating political preferences regarding economic redistribution, welfare state, and government regulation of the economy, has become a quadrant (Bornschier, 2010; Hooghe et al., 2002; Kitschelt, 1994; Kriesi et al., 2006). This additional division summarizes a series of noneconomic and cultural issues that have gained significant attention in the last three decades, including lifestyle, cultural diversity, nationalism and immigration. This new axis of party competition was named differently in the literature: libertarian/authoritarian (Kitschelt, 1994), post-materialist (Inglehart, 1990), or GALTAN – the opposition of

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Green, Alternative, and Libertarian (GAL) to Traditional, Authoritarian and Nationalist (TAN).

Having acknowledged the importance of cultural changes in explaining the complexification of the political system in the last 40 years, I turn to the socioeconomic roots of this change in electoral preferences.

The literature has pointed to the increase in economic anxiety and status loss suffered by the least educated blue-collar voters, resulting from structural transformations in labor markets driven by technology, the deepening of the globalization process, and welfare retrenchment. This economic insecurity and material deprivation are disclosed in cultural and social distress and are likely to produce demands for political action.

Therefore, borrowing from Polanyi’s (1944) idea of ‘double movement’, the disembedding of the economy is followed by a counter initiative to subordinate the market to political constraints.

Empirical papers have shown the importance of socioeconomic conditions as mediator effects to explain PRRPs’ electoral successes (Han, 2016; Burgoon et al., 2018; Rooduijn & Burgoon, 2018). Studies have also shown that in an environment of weak social protection, the increase of capital flows and immigration are associated with anti- globalization backlash, characterized by nationalist, authoritarian, and protectionist attitudes (Burgoon, 2009). It is expected that this protectionist attitude is combined with a demand for some kind of social protection. Notably, this demand for the embeddedness of the markets was poorly addressed by the mainstream left-wing parties. Contrarily, they have accepted neo-liberalism and promoted welfare state retrenchment (Green-Pedersen, 2001; Ross, 2000). In the context of the decline of ideological competition and disenchantment with traditional

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political elites, the counter movement predicted by Polanyi took this ‘ugly form’ of PRRPs’ voting.

Considering economic anxiety propelled the emergence of PRRPs, we need to understand how those parties respond to that. In that vein, this work is in line with Zaslove’s (2009) proposition of putting PRRPs’

economic platforms at the center of the analysis. Until recently, scholars were very much influenced by Mudde’s (2007) concept of a minimum definition of PRRPs, i.e., core elements that unify this party family’s ideology. This lowest common denominator, which will be discussed hereafter, does not include an economic ideology. In fact, those parties have been accused of being chameleons when it comes to socioeconomic issues (Taggart, 2010), or of blurring their distributive positions (Rovny, 2013). As expected, the inquiry into PRRPs’ placement in the left-right dimension has been downplayed by scholars of the far-right.

The current state of research in the field, nonetheless, supports the claim that PRRPs share a similar socioeconomic position (Rydegren, 2004; Derks, 2006; Zaslove, 2009; Afonso & Rennwald, 2018; Ennser‐

Jedenastik, 2018). Besides, recent studies present convincing reasons for the importance of considering this element in the analysis. Firstly, although early research argued that PRRPs give only irregular attention to socioeconomic issues and rarely have a clear policy proposal (Mudde, 2010), recent analyses of PRRPs’ manifestos confirm that the economic dimension is not negligible and is gaining space in most of these parties’

platforms (Afonso & Rennwald, 2018). Secondly, studies have shown that these parties’ economic platforms, especially their opposition to immigrants’ access to the welfare state, has become a distinctive issue in PRRPs’ party documents (Mudde, 2010), and this rhetoric has become a

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crucial component in anti-immigrant agendas (Rydgren, 2004; De Koster et al., 2013). Finally, the literature has shown that this rhetoric is an important variable for PRRPs’ voting (De Koster et al., 2013; Ivarsflaten, 2008).

In this chapter, I explore PRRPs’ distributive preferences, showing the particularities and relevance of their socioeconomic platforms across time, and hypothesize the channels available to these parties to influence social policymaking. In the next section, I will define the populist radical right-wing party family and specify which parties are considered in this study. Following this, I examine those parties’ preferences regarding distributive issues across time. I also address how the non-materialist aspects of those parties’ rhetoric shape their preferences on distributive issues. Then, I will explore the current literature on PRRPs’ influence on policymaking. Finally, I will speculate on social policy outcomes resulting from PRRPs’ presence in parliaments and in government.

The populist radical right-wing parties

The emergence of new parties on the right was one of the most important political occurrences in contemporary advanced European democracies. In conjunction with the Green parties, these new right- wing parties put an end to the stability of Western European party systems and increased polarization and party competition. In addition, such parties have been relatively successful over the past 20 years and have been able to enlarge their electoral pool, winning seats in national parliaments and participating in governments.

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As explained, the socioeconomic transformations faced by western European countries over the past 40 years created winners and losers, and the “losers of globalization” are a core element in explaining the emergence of the new right (Betz, 1993; Betz, 1994; Ignazi, 1992;

Kitschelt & McGann, 1995). This group, composed mainly of low-skilled workers and small business owners, perceived modernization as a threat and could not adapt to the global transformation. They felt they had suffered from the economic and political order and judged that the State benefitted those who did not deserve help, rather than the real hard workers (De Koster et al., 2013). From a cultural point of view, they believed national values should be celebrated and supported a more authoritarian attitude from the State. In such a pessimistic understanding of reality, immigrants easily become scapegoats; as they are considered a cultural and socioeconomic threat.

From a sociological perspective of party competition, this group of discontented voters created an opportunity for the emergence of PRRPs.

These parties shaped the political discourse, addressing this group’s anxiety. They celebrate national identity and the superiority of the common man. They also stressed societal issues such as violence, drug dealing, and unemployment, attacking the mainstream parties’ inability to confront such challenges and endorsing an authoritarian solution to the problems. In addition, they successfully exploited anti-immigrant sentiments for electoral gain. The PRRPs reinforce the notion that immigrants are an economic and cultural danger to the nation, using arguments that are often based on false assumptions to create fear and anxiety (Williams, 2006).

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As might be expected, many scholars have studied these new parties in the attempt to aggregate them into a family. The literature uses several combinations of words, sometimes indistinctively, to designate these parties. Most commonly, they are called radical right-wing parties, far- right-wing parties, extreme right-wing parties, radical right-wing populism, right-wing populism, and neo-right-wing populism (Mudde, 2015). This variety of terms also appears in the description of the core ideology of this party family: authoritarian, nationalist, xenophobic, anti- democratic, and populist. Unsurprisingly, scholars have not reached consensus regarding the list of parties that are considered part of this group. In line with Mudde’s (2002) proposition, this work uses the term

“populist radical right-wing party.”

The term “populism” also suffers from misspecification, and it is sometimes used in such a general and catchall manner that it becomes meaningless (Mudde, 2004; Pappas, 2012). This monograph will not engage in a discussion regarding the nature of populism, but will adopt Mudde’s widely accepted definition of the phenomenon (see Albertazzi and McDonnell (2008) for a discussion of the nature of populism or Mudde (2007) for a debate on populist ideology). Cas Mudde (2004, p.

543) defines populism as a “thin-centered ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ and ‘the corrupt elite’, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté general (general will) of the people.” Therefore, as defined by Laclau (1977; 2005), the central feature of populism is a discourse that pits ‘the people’ against the ‘elite’, understood as ‘the establishment’, ‘the system’ or ‘the State’

(Minkenberg, 2013).

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Also, by considering the population as a homogeneous group and denying intermediations between the peoples’ will and policies, populism is the opposition of elitism and multiculturalism. The populist parties, therefore, are essentially anti-liberal, as they believe that the majority should rule without limits, denying the existence of minority rights, and defending positive discrimination in favor of the ‘silent majority’

(Copsey, 2007). Because populism is a thin ideology, it is usually combined with other ideologies, such as nationalism, socialism, and liberalism.

Like many other scholars, I adopt the term “radical”, in addition to

“populist right”, in reference to the parties under consideration. This term is mainly related to those parties’ attitudes vis-à-vis democracy.

Mudde (2000, p. 13) explains that, in European literature, radicalism denotes that a party is hostile towards the constitution, whereas, for example, extremism reveals party opposition to the constitution.

According to Mudde’s (2007) minimal definition, populist radical right- wing parties are parties that have at their ideological core populism, nativism, and authoritarianism. Thus, these parties claim that there is a homogeneous native group in opposition to an alien minority that represents a cultural or economic threat to the nation. In addition, they argue that crimes should be punished severely, and they defend strict law and order policies. Finally, these parties associate foreigners with crime, advocate for stricter punishment, and defend deportation of immigrants involved in crimes.

I also restrain my analysis to parties that are located on the right side of the left-right political dimension. Historically, populism has been associated with both left- and right-wing parties. However,

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contemporary radical populism is generally associated with the right in Europe (Mudde, 2007). Recently, however, the literature has raised questions about the adequacy of calling this group of parties that emerged in the right upper side of the political quadrant “right-wing”, as many of them have moved toward the left, especially regarding welfare state support (Marks, et al., 2006) (this point will be explored in detail later in this thesis). Nevertheless, this work will maintain the adjective

‘right’ to name such parties. Firstly, because they are against true egalitarianism in the distribution of welfare resources (Betz, 1994), and secondly, because parties’ placement in the left-right dimension combines a set of issues and, in most of them, these parties maintain a right-wing profile (de Lange, 2007).

Following Inglehart and Norris’ study (2016), parties that scored more than 80 points on the standardized 100-point Chapel Hill Expert Survey’s cultural scale, and scored more than 50 in the left-right dimension, were considered in this study. Nevertheless, only parties that had parliamentary representation during the period of this study were included. The complete list of right-wing populist parties considered in this study is found in Table 1:

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Table 1. Populist right-wing parties with parliamentary representation from 1980 to 2014

Country Party Name Acronym

Austria Freedom Party of Austria FPÖ

Alliance for Austria’s Future BZÖ

Belgium National Front Belgium FN(b)

Flemish Interest/Flemish

Block VB

Denmark Danish People's Party DPP

Progress Party FRP(d)

Finland Finns Party/True Finns Ps

France National Front FN

Greece Popular Orthodoxy Rally LAOS

Independent Greeks AE

Popular Association Golden Dawn

LS-CA

Italy Italian Social

Movement/National Alliance MSI/AN

Northern League LN

Luxembourg Action Committee

Pensions/Alternative Democratic Reform Party

AR-ADR

Netherlands Centre Party/Centre

Democrats CP/CD

Pim Fortuyn List LPF

Party for Freedom PVV

Norway Progress Party (Norway) FRP(n)

Sweden New Democracy ND

Sweden Democrats SD

Switzerland Swiss People's

Party/Democratic Union of the Centre

SVP/UDC

Swiss Automobile

Party/Freedom Party of Switzerland

FPS

Ticino League LdT

Geneva Citizens’ Movement MCG

Vigilance V

Swiss Democrats (SD/DS) SD/DS

UK United Kingdom

Independence Party

UKIP

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PRRPs’ profile vis-à-vis distributive issues

In their influential work The Radical Right in Western Europe (1995), Kitschelt and McGann analyze the positioning of PRRPs in two dimensions: socialist/capitalist and libertarian/authoritarian. The authors point out three possible positions for these parties: 1) authoritarian capitalist, 2) populist antistatist, and 3) racist authoritarian

“welfare chauvinist.” They consider the authoritarian-capitalist appeal the “winning formula”. Moreover, they affirm that the authoritarian

“welfare chauvinist” strategy is associated with limited electoral returns;

it may be effective in a short period of depression or unemployment, but parties lose votes if they abandon the master strategy and emphasize immigration, xenophobia, and race.

In fact, this “winning formula” corresponds to the initial economic agenda of many PRRPs. In Scandinavian countries and others, such as the Netherlands and Switzerland, PRRPs defend a strong liberal agenda that included reducing taxes to a minimum in addition to having an authoritarian appeal. This formula has mainly attracted small business owners and white-collar workers (Kitschelt & McGann, 1995). However, scholars have pointed out that the master strategy that coincides with the emergence of such parties is not the one pursued during their electoral expansion (Betz, 1994; de Lange, 2007).

By 1990, PRRPs in the left–right scale became centrist in order to increase the number of working-class voters and to avoid losing the support of the petite bourgeoisie. This has been empirically confirmed

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by de Lange3 (2007) and the Chapel Hill Expert Survey4 (1999, 2002, 2006, 2010, and 2010). However, to place PRRPs’ on the left/right scale, scholars consider parties’ positions on several issues that compose this dimension, including their preferences on the welfare state. This operationalization can be misleading to the study of parties’ preferences on distributive issues, as PRRPs combine a relatively positive position regarding market economy, with support for social policy spending (Mudde, 2007; 2010). Additionally, Rovny (2013) questions the possibility of placing such parties on the economic dimension, as PRRPs deliberately adopt a blurry strategy to avoid a precise ideological placement.

This monograph, therefore, will focus solely on PRRPs’ preferences on welfare state institutions, taking into account possible contradictory stances in their discourses. The figure below summarizes the data on positive and negative quasi-sentences regarding the welfare state in the party manifestos of the main PRRPs. Despite significant party differences, two main patterns arise from the data. First, from the beginning of the 2000s the positive stances suppressed the negative ones in all parties except for the Swiss People’s Party in Switzerland. Second, the salience of welfare state support, measured by the percentage of favorable quasi-sentences in relation to the all quasi-sentences in the

3The author considered seven aspects in placing PRRPs in the left–right dimension: 1) privatization, 2) the public sector, 3) the welfare and social security system, 4) the labor market, 5) taxation, 6) the budget and financial deficit, and 7) trade and enterprise policies.

4 PRRPs’ position varies from 0 (extreme left) to 10 (extreme right). This classification considers the position of the parties in terms of the role of government in the economy, regulation, welfare, taxes, and spending.

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manifesto, increased in the 2000s and 2010s in comparison to data from the 1980s and 1990s. These findings corroborate the claim that PRRPs progressively became welfare defenders from the 1990s and that this issue has gained salience in these parties’ rhetoric in recent years. The Danish Peoples’ Party is an exception. Although the data confirms that the party is in favor of welfare spending, the salience of the issues has decreased since 2005.

Studies also acknowledge that most PRRPs became welfare state defenders (Betz, 1994; Rydgren, 2004; Marks et. al, 2006; Afonso, 2015;

Careja et al., 2016; Schumacher and Kersbergen, 2016; Röth et al., 2017;

Afonso & Rennwald, 2018). For example, Schumacher and Kersbergen (2016, p. 299) affirmed that PRRPs “transformed into zealous defenders of the welfare state.” However, it is important to highlight some specificities of these parties’ rhetoric. PRRPs’ nativist ideology prevents true egalitarianism, as they invariably support some type of non-native exclusion from social schemes. This notion that welfare benefits should be exclusive to citizens is known in the literature as “welfare chauvinism”

(Andersen & Bjørklund, 1990). For example, PRRPs justify this position through the cultural distance between natives and aliens, as exemplified by aliens’ alleged non-commitment to such core European values as gender equality and freedom of speech (Reeskens & Van Oorschot, 2012).

Additionally, the social construction of immigrants as undeserving of social benefits, as welfare abusers, and as welfare tourists (see Thomann

& Rapp (2017) for an analysis of the Swiss case) is often used to justify restrictions on immigrants’ entitlement. Thus, to defend national interests, PRRPs often advocate that aliens’ access to social benefits

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should be based on previous contributions, proof of attachment to the country, or long periods of residence. Although it was not explored during the emergence of PRRPs, welfare chauvinism has become an important component of PRRP rhetoric (Andersen & Bjørklund, 1990;

Rydgren, 2004; Ivarsflaten, 2008; De Koster et al., 2013). Indeed, Mudde (2010) claimed that welfare chauvinism is a distinct issue of PRRPs’ party documents and became part of their core ideology.

The nativist approach also leads these parties to prefer certain types of programs over others. PRRPs tend to defend retrenchment of means- tested and universal benefits, because ethnic minorities are disproportionally represented among the recipients. Meanwhile, they prefer social policies based on insurance schemes as they do not imply an income distribution from natives to non-natives (Arendt & Thomsen, forthcoming; Ennser-Jedenastik, 2018).

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Figure 1. Positive and negative quasi-sentences on welfare state.

Percentage of the manifesto

Source: Manifesto Project

(1) Favorable mentions of need to introduce, maintain or expand any public social service or social security scheme.

(2) Limiting state expenditures on social services or social security.

Favorable mentions of the social subsidiary principle (i.e., private care before state care).

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Although the research on welfare chauvinism often considers

‘immigrants’ as a homogenous group, it is expected that the ‘social distancing’ and the narratives of the social desirability of different categories of immigrants influences how citizens perceive immigrants’

deservingness of social protection (Jørgensen & Thomsen, 2016). For example, the literature points out that EU migrants are likely to be perceived as ‘one of us’,5 due to their cultural and ethnic similarities (Cappelen & Midtbø, 2016) and they are often related to labor migration.

On the other hand, asylum seekers are often perceived as economic refugees, or as attracted by generous welfare states.

Likewise, parties’ politization of immigrants’ access to social assistance and the support of welfare chauvinist measures should vary across immigrant groups. Kuisma (2013), for example, pointed to the Finns Party’s differentiation between “good” and “bad” immigrants: the culturally similar workers, who are willing to contribute to the Finnish welfare state, versus the asylum seekers, who the party claims are attracted by the generous Finnish welfare state. The idea that immigrants must contribute to the society before having access to social benefits, or must have some kind of social citizenship (Rose, 1996), is part of party’s agenda (Kuisma, 2013). This rhetoric, which has served as a support for the adoption of workfare elements by liberals, in PRRPs’ discourse is also linked to welfare chauvinism (Kuisma, 2013).

5 Directive 2004/38/EC, also known as The Citizens’ Rights Directive – which enables EU mobile citizens access to the same social

advantages as natives.

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