Kurt Richard Luther

If you can't Beat them, Join them? Explaining Social Democratic Responses to the Challenge from the Populist Radical Right in Western Europe

Over the last three decades many Western European social democratic parties have been challenged by populist radical right parties. The growth and success of parties on the right flank of the party system represents a triple challenge to the social democrats: they increase the salience of issues traditionally ‘owned’ by the right; they appeal to working-class voters who traditionally support the centre left; and they may facilitate the formation of centre-right governments. This article explores social democratic parties’ strategic options in the face of this challenge, and tests the widespread assumption that the centre-left parties respond by taking a tougher stance on issues related to immigration and integration. Comparative analysis of developments in Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway reveals significant variation in the substance, scope and pace of the strategic responses of their social democratic parties. And it suggests that those responses are influenced not only by the far right but also by the reactions of mainstream centre-right parties and by parties on their left (and liberal) flank. Internal disunity, potential or actual, is also an important factor.

Of goals and own goals: A case study of right-wing populist party strategy for and during incumbency:

Using internal party documents and semi-structured interviews with over 200 activists of the Freedom Party of Austria, this article examines (anticipatory) adaptation in the intra-party and governmental arenas when this right-wing populist party switched its primary goal from populist vote maximization to office. It suggests such parties’ success will owe much to their leaderships’ capacity to identify and implement strategies and behaviours consonant with their new primary goal and to deal effectively with the inescapable tensions caused by the transition to incumbency. The article demonstrates how the FPÖ’s failures in these respects resulted in an own goal. Yet right-wing populists’ experience of incumbency is not necessarily doomed to failure. Agency remains an important determinant of success. Indeed, it appears supply-side factors may well be far better at explaining rapid shifts in the fortunes of such parties than the still predominantly demand-side approaches.

The Revival of the Radical Right: The Austrian Parliamentary Election of 2008

From 11 January 2007, Austria was governed by a coalition between Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer’s Social Democratic Party of Austria (Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs, or SPÖ) and the Austrian People’s Party (Österreichische Volkspartei, or ÖVP) headed by Wilhelm Molterer. The coalition had been a forced marriage at odds with the party system bipolarisation evident since the formation in February 2000 of Wolfgang Schüssel’s coalition with the Freedom Party of Austria (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, or FPÖ) (Luther 2008). The SPÖ had wanted to govern with the Greens after the October 2006 election, but had lacked a parliamentary majority. Outgoing ÖVP Chancellor Schüssel could theoretically have formed a right-wing government. Yet there had been considerable opposition within his party to renewed cooperation with the FPÖ, which had for its part ruled out both re-entering government and any form of collaboration with the necessary third party: the Alliance for the Future of Austria (Bündis Zukunft Österreich, or BZÖ). Led by Jörg Haider, the BZÖ had in April 2005 broken away from the FPÖ, which it replaced as the ÖVP’s coalition partner, and had at the 2006 election then scraped back into parliament on 4.1 per cent of the vote. Before passing the party leadership to Molterer, Schüssel had headed the ÖVP’s coalition negotiation team. In Gusenbauer he had faced someone as keen to be chancellor as he had been in 1999, but with only one realistic option. A shrewd and unpredictable tactician, Schüssel had used this to try to ensure the coalition agreement contained neither radical change to the ÖVP’s neo-liberal policy agenda, nor commitments to the SPÖ’s key electoral promises of abolishing university tuition fees and cancelling the purchase of a new generation of interceptor fighters. Having made these

Austria's future and Waldheim's past: The significance of the 1986 elections

In 1986, Austrias image was dominated by the ‘Waldheim affair’, with allegations that the unedifying presidential election indicated a revival of anti‐Semitism, which ensured both Waldheims election and the National Council success of the FPO. This article argues that, while there clearly was a revival of anti‐Semitism, to attribute the victories of Waldheim and the FPO to this factor is simplistic. Instead, attention is directed at more fundamental developments in Austrias political culture, voting behaviour and political agenda, which together will have a greater influence on Austrias future than will Waldheims past.

The 2006 Austrian Parliamentary Election: From Bipolarism to Forced Marriage

Austria’s 2006 election brought to an end the centre-right coalition led by the Austrian People’s Party (Österreichische Volkspartei, or ÖVP). Upon first becoming Chancellor in February 2000, Wolfgang Schüssel had faced domestic and international protest over his decision to coalesce with Jörg Haider’s right-wing populist Freedom Party of Austria (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, or FPÖ). In September 2002, after months of conflict between its protest-oriented and pragmatic factions, the FPÖ imploded and its core government team resigned (Luther 2003). The ÖVP’s vote soared at the November 2002 election by 15.4 percentage points to 42.3 per cent, its best result since 1983. For the first time since 1966 it overtook the Social Democratic Party of Austria (Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs, or SPÖ). In February 2003 Schüssel revived the ÖVP/FPÖ coalition, correctly calculating that a party that had slumped from 26.9 to 10 per cent of the vote would be cheap in terms of portfolios and unable to offer much resistance to the ÖVP’s policy preferences. Within weeks, the FPÖ suffered the first of a string of electoral defeats, whose scale exceeded even those during the first ÖVP/FPÖ government. Elements within the FPÖ started to direct at Schüssel’s second government a vociferous attack akin to that which had helped topple his first. One central motivation was again their fundamental dislike of the FPÖ’s switch from vote maximisation to incumbency. Another was opposition to the government’s neo-liberal policies, which they rightly argued contradicted the FPÖ’s programmatic commitment to the ‘small man’ and were a major cause of the party’s electoral weakness. In April 2005, the FPÖ split along its irreconcilable internal fault line over governmental and electoral strategies (Luther 2008). Its government team, 16 of its 18 MPs and the Carinthian party left to form the Alliance for the Future of Austria (Bündnis

An end to the politics of isolation? Austria in light of the 1994 elections

1994 was a ‘Superwahljahr’ not only in Germany, but also in Austria, where it was likely to prove the most decisive year for the Austrian political system since the State Treaty year of 1955. There were three Landtag elections in March, a referendum on European Union membership in June, a further Landtag election in September, elections to the Chamber of Labour on the second of October and a general election seven days later. The issue in the referendum was clear: would Austria opt to become a full member of the European Union, or remain isolated from further European integration? But there were also big issues at stake in the other elections. Especially since the mid‐1980s, the federal party system had moved away from its post‐war consociational style towards more deconcentration and competition, with declining partisan attachment, greater electoral volatility and the emergence of new party actors. A key question for 1994 was whether the Grand Coalition parties ‐ the Sozialdemokratische Partei Osterreich...

Sozialpartnerschaft: Ein zentraler politischer Gestaltungsfaktor in der Zweiten Republik

behalf. The post-1968 tradition of often violent left-wing protest against the western order was motivated by the fight against ‘fascism’. The period of left-wing commitment to pacifism which followed it was motivated by the need to ensure there is no repetition of Auschwitz. Then, in the 1990s, following Cohn-Bendit’s suggestion that standing by and doing nothing was also reminiscent of Nazism (p. 240), the German Greens found themselves (largely) supporting western, NATO interventionism in the Balkans, again in the interests of preventing Auschwitz. As Kundnani’s superb book so clearly shows, it is not just history that is a matter of interpretation, but how you learn from it.