Party Competition and Radical Right Parties in Central and Eastern Europe. A Narrative Interaction Model of Electoral Fortune

In Central and Eastern Europe, radical right actors significantly impact public debates, policies and positions of mainstream parties. But despite this discursive influence, the electoral fortune of radical right parties in the region is much less stable. Some scholars already suggested that this may be due to nearby competitors that increasingly co-opt “radical right” issues. Nonetheless, there is still disagreement over the exact effects of mainstream strategies on radical right electoral results. By introducing a narrative perspective, the proposed model sheds new, fine-grained light on interactions between party competition, discursive impact and radical right electoral fortune. It argues that electoral failure and success depend not only on competition over issues, but also on mechanisms of frame ownership takeover within these issues. The model is tested comparatively by means of a QCA approach, using longitudinal and expert surveys combined with original data on radical right narratives in Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.