Party ideology

Carter, Elisabeth

Abstract

Parties of the extreme right are to some extent ‘masters of their own success’. That is, regardless of the political environment in which they operate and regard less of the institutional contexts within which they find them selves, their elect oral success will depend, in part, on the ideology they espouse and the policies they put forward, and on the way in which they are organized and led. This chapter focuses on the first of these party-centric factors, and examines the extent to which the ideologies of the extreme right parties influence their fortunes at the polls. Rather than there being a uniform right-wing extremist ideology, the ideas and policies of the different parties vary quite consider ably, with some of these being more popular with the elect or ate than others. Consequently, it is quite possible that the variation in the elect oral success of the parties of the extreme right across Western Europe may be partly explained by the presence of different ideologies, with the more success full right-wing extremist parties embracing one type of ideology and the less successful ones adopting another. The chapter begins by discussing the much-debated concept of right-wing extremism and by examining the different terminology used to describe the parties. Then it considers the existing studies of right-wing extremist party ideology, and investigates the ways in which these works have sought to illustrate the diversity that exists among the West European parties of the extreme right. As will become clear from this discussion, these existing studies suffer from a number of limitations and, in the light of this, the chapter puts forward an alternative typo logy of right-wing extremist parties. Five different types of right-wing extremist party are identified. On the one hand, this typo logy allows for the full diversity that exists within the right-wing extremist party family to be illustrated. On the other, it means that the link between the parties’ ideology and their elect oral scores can be investigated. In this way it becomes possible to ascertain whether right-wing extremist party success is linked to a specific type of ideology, or whether, conversely, the nature of a party’s ideology matters little to its elect oral success. The chapter concludes with some thoughts on the importance of party ideology in an overall explanation of the disparity in the elect oral fortunes of the West European parties of the extreme right.

• Online Publication Date: Oct 21, 2016
• Publication Date: Oct 4, 2016
• Deposit Date: Jun 6, 2023
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis (Routledge)
• Pages: 46-85
• Chapter Number: 2
• ISBN: 9781315514574
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315514574-10