EXCLUSIONIST RIGHT PARTIES IN WESTERN EUROPEAN PARTY SYSTEMS

This dissertation is mainly concerned with political parties that usually cluster inside the area of right-wing radicalism. Major changes concerning Western European party systems represent the background of analysis. The study is underpinned on the recognition that, after the emergence of ecology and left-libertarian parties, the rise of right-wing parties is the most relevant and debated transformation in the configuration of party systems. Fourteen EU-member states are included in the set of inquiry and life-span analysis ranges from1990 to 2009. Firstly, the examination focuses on the identification of parties at stakes with the purpose of elaborating a suitable label. By exploring the right deviancy on value and cultural topics through expert survey datasets, the final label for those actors is Exclusionist Right Parties (ERPs). Secondly, the research takes into account factors that potentially affected the electoral performances of ERPs. The related framework is two-fold, composed of demand and supply sides. On the one hand, for the demand side, individual-level data are inspected; on the other hand, for the supply side, expert judgments have been employed to plot party positions along a couple of domains, i.e. economy and immigration. In conclusion, the aim of the final chapter is to shed light on the different ERPs’ electoral fortunes by pinpointing patterns of multiple combinations of conditions and constructing a weighted additive index.