When the extreme-right is moderate: Right-wing parties and economic policy positions in Europe

This paper aims to contribute to the burgeoning literature on the ideological strategies of challenger parties in established party systems. While much of that literature has focused on the how challenger parties compete with mainstream ones by shifting their appeals to new typically non-economic issues that have not been a central part of party competition, there has been much less analysis of how challengers position themselves on the main economic dimension. We pay particularly attention in this paper to extreme-right parties that are rising in many parts of Europe. While their perceived extremism derives from their stances on the liberal-authoritarian dimension, such as migration, civil liberties, and gender equality, many of these parties also appear centrist or even to the left on the economy, thus appealing to voters on a mix of issues that combines both a rejection of liberal immigration policies grounded in economic status insecurity. We theorize that a number of factors affect the economic strategies of extreme-right parties, particularly the openings that may be provided by parties of the mainstream left when these compete to a greater degree with liberal positions on the liberal-authoritarian dimension and by the mainstream right when these compete mainly through economic liberalism. Together, these analyses should shed light on a neglected question, namely how right-wing populist parties resort to moderate economic appeals. Our paper uses two expert surveys we conducted in 2008 and 2013 in order to address these questions. We are thus able to examine the cross-party determinants of right-wing extreme parties; and we aim to begin to assess the dynamic patterns of right-wing policies on economic issues since the onset of the Great Depression in 2007.