Do Measures of Militant Democracy Contribute to Reduce the Policy Influence of Radical Right Populist Parties?

RRPP are on the rise in many countries. At the same time, they are often perceived as a threat to the quality of democracy. Consequently, mainstream parties traditionally adopt several militant democracy measures. If their effects on RRPP themselves have been studied, their effects on public policy has not yet been investigated. This paper thus asks: do measures of militant democracy contribute to reduce the policy influence of RRPP ? To provide an answer, the paper compares three RRPP with a different relationship to these measures and, thus, to power : the Swiss Union démocratique du centre (SVP), the French Front national (FN) and the Belgian Vlaams Belang (VB). While the VB faces a strong cordon sanitaire and the SVP is fully integrated into the political landscape, the FN is rejected from the power but without suffering from a formal cordon sanitaire. The policy influence of these parties is assessed regarding the role they play in the “foreigners’ criminality” issue. This issue is particularly relevant since both criminality and nativism are core characteristics of RRPP and because parties mostly try to influence their “own” issues. The process-tracing method is used to rebuild causal mechanisms between RRPPs’ pledges (X) and the development of these pledges (Y) in order to understand if they influence the process at some point. In addition, the analysis allows to detect to what extend mainstream parties potentially have complicated or even prevented the RRPRs’ policy influence. The results suggest the policy influence of RRPP firstly seems reduced because of measures of militant democracy. Yet their influence is mostly “indirect”. Therefore, they exercise influence on policy-making by influencing mainstream parties – usually by using a provocative and crude language, which makes public opinion more receptive to their message – or by resorting to direct democracy tools.