Measuring the Effect of Radical Right Parliamentary Presence on Spatial Shifts Within the Central Eastern European Party Systems

Democracies in Central Eastern Europe (CEE) continuously struggle against the upsurge of radical right political parties (RRPs) and movements. Not only the rise of Jobbik in the late 2000s but also the almost uninterrupted representation of the SNS in the post-1989 Slovak parliament or the former government participation of the LPR together with the current revival of the National Movement in Poland contribute to this assertion. Still, scholarly research on this topic has hitherto focused mostly on RRPs’ electoral performance, largely omitting other effects of radical right presence apparent at the levels of agenda setting, policy making or the party system. If investigated at all, these effects are then rarely supported by data-based models that would measure their extent and influence on political systems. This paper aims to tackle some of these shortcomings and provide impulses for future studies on political impact of the radical right in CEE. Departing from empirical observations of party competition mechanisms between RRPs and their mainstream competitors, this contribution asks about the effects of RRPs’ presence in national parliaments on positional shifts within party systems in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. In order to analyse this aspect of radical right impact, a two-step model shall be applied. First, quantitative evaluation of expert surveys and the CMP dataset will be carried out to identify spatial shifts within the party system. Second, qualitative observations of political competition will be used to shed light on the mechanisms behind them. Based on this data, it shall be argued that the presence of RRPs in CEE parliaments, first, causes spatial shift to the right among mainstream competitors; and, second, facilitates the polarization of party systems along the issues crucial for the radical right, an effect that under certain circumstances outlives the radical right electoral success itself.