Patterns of Legitimacy on the Far Right

This article addresses the question of how ordinary citizens view the legitimacy of far right initiatives using survey experimental data. The experiments were carried out in Norway between 2014 and 2016. The main pattern assumed in current scholarship is that the legitimacy of various far right political initiatives varies, and our study brings novel evidence to show that this is indeed the case. Existing literature further suggests that this variation in legitimacy is highly consequential for electoral outcomes. Our study brings forth novel knowledge about the causes of this variation. Some commonly advanced arguments in the literature are contradicted by our studies: We find (1) that legitimacy does not depend on whether or not a political party is associated with opposition to immigration and/or Muslims; (2) that legitimacy does not depend on whether a far right initiative is “new” or “old”; and (3) that the legitimacy of far right organizations cannot be predicted in any straight-forward manner from their size or geographic scope. Our studies do, however, find strong support for the argument that legitimacy on the far right depends on whether or not initiatives are single-issue or associated with a larger policy portfolio. The study thus contributes fresh empirical knowledge about patterns of legitimacy on the far right. Furthermore, the study advances our understanding of how actors in mature democracies become perceived as legitimate, and it shows, by way of example, how political science scholars can use survey experiments to study such dynamics.