Populist Parties and Mainstream Party Competition: Issues and Frames, Strategies and Reactions

Abstract

Populist parties seem to have arrived in the midst of European party systems. Across the continent, we observe a growing influence of issues fundamental to radical right, left, and center populist challengers, the discursive diffusion of narratives previously monopolized by these parties into public debates, as well as voter-attraction to their resentful anti-establishment appeal turned against established parties and representative democracy. These challenges have prompted established parties to renounce from early cordon sanitaire and engage in competition with populist counterparts. The traditional spatial repertoire of mainstream competitors to these “niche” parties was to ignore, to reject, or to accommodate their challenger’s trademark issues and positions. Recent studies also underline the discursive dimension of party competition, focusing on strategies that legitimize particular issues and policies. But also strategies of enticement or coalition inclusion have been identified as part of the competitive responses. Although scholarly efforts for systematic research on these competition patterns are growing, the varying effects of the specific constellations, timing, or framing of strategies on populist performance, still remain in question. Furthermore, while research mostly focused on accommodative strategies of “nearby” - or proximal - competitors, fewer insights are known with regard to strategies of rejection and ignorance vis-à-vis challenger issues, as well as tactics of ideologically “distant” - or non-proximal - competitors. Finally, the role and effects of active challenger reaction to the attempts of issue and frame takeover by mainstream parties are themselves still open for debate. Given the manifold aspects of this relationship, the panel focuses on the following clusters of questions: a) How do the varying mainstream party competition strategies impact on the performance of populist parties? Does co-optation of niche issues and frames lead to populist electoral failure, or does it facilitate its success? How does it influence the diffusion and resonance of niche party discourse? What are the electoral or discursive effects of isolation or cooperation vis-à-vis niche parties as well as of rejecting and/or ignoring their populist issues? Can we observe different mechanisms and effects of competition strategies deployed by nearby and distant competitors? b) In which ways – and how successfully – do populist parties themselves respond to or become part of mainstream party competition? How do these actors react to different mainstream strategies? What are the mechanisms and effects of challenger strategies to establish or “defend” their issue or frame ownership? How do the “mainstreaming” strategies of populist parties bridge and blur niche and mainstream issues? Does it facilitate mainstream party cooperation with their populist challengers? The panel hence brings together innovative empirical and analytical contributions deploying both quantitative and qualitative methods, looking at the phenomena of populist parties and mainstream party competition both within and across European country cases. The panel is endorsed by the ECPR Standing Group on Extremism and Democracy.

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