Explaining the electoral performance of radical right parties in Europe (2008-2019): a fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis

Abstract

Although radical right parties have been extensively examined since their significant breakthrough in the European political arena in the late 80s, not enough attention has been paid to the reasons behind their unequal electoral performance (or in other words, to the cross-national and within-national variations of their success). The aim of this research is to identify the different scenarios of electoral success for radical right parties in ten European countries between 2008 and 2019. Using fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) -a case-oriented technique which allows in-depth comparative examination and which is based on the concepts of equifinality and causal heterogeneity-, we test the role of several causal conditions related to some demand-side and supply-side explanations. Our results reveal four sufficient causal paths that lead to the success of these parties, which confirm that they are able to achieve relevance in quite diverse contexts. The four paths combine both demand-side and supply-side conditions, but the role of the latter is qualitatively and quantitatively more important. In particular, we see how radical right parties can effectively take advantage of favorable political competitive dynamics, even in the absence of a priori favorable socio-economic contexts. Overall, our findings run contrary to some mechanistic explanations in the literature and support the idea of conceiving of the radical right parties as a complex, multiform phenomenon which needs to be understood through both theoretical and methodological innovations.