2.1. Far-right parties and far-right voting

Far-right parties share a characteristic ideological feature: At its core, their platform is based on a positional policy appeal. This core is supplemented and combined with an anti-establishment appeal: Far-right parties cast themselves as a pariah party and as the true defender of the popular interest against the corrupt establishment (e.g., Mudde, Reference Mudde2007; Van Kessel, Reference Van Kessel2015).Footnote ¹ Consequently, voters may be attracted to far-right parties on the basis of two distinct motives: Demand for the representation and implementation of the core policies that far-right parties campaign on and dissatisfaction with the political establishment.

Contributions that emphasize the role of policy demand in far-right voting usually adopt the premises of proximity theories (Downs, Reference Downs1957; Enelow and Hinich, Reference Enelow and Hinich1984; Van der Brug et al., Reference Van der Brug, Fennema and Tillie2000): Voters favor those parties that campaign on policies and issue positions that are closest to their substantive preferences. Notions of “pure” protest voting, on the other hand, view far-right voting as an instrumental act independent of policy-directed considerations. According to this perspective, politically dissatisfied voters act out of the rational desire to punish the incumbent elites or to protest against the political system which the established parties epitomize (Fennema, Reference Fennema1997; Van der Brug et al., Reference Van der Brug, Fennema and Tillie2000). Hence, a “pure” protest voter votes for far-right parties exclusively out of dissatisfaction with the establishment. An alternative perspective views protest motives as a supplementary factor to policy demand in explaining voting behavior. According to this view, policy-directed voting and protest voting are not mutually exclusive. Instead, they are distinct motives for supporting populist and anti-establishment parties. Over and beyond their policy preferences, voters who hold disdainful attitudes toward the political establishment and mainstream politics can be attracted by the antagonistic anti-establishment appeals of far-right parties (e.g., Akkerman et al., Reference Akkerman, Mudde and Zaslove2013; Van Hauwaert and van Kessel, Reference Van Hauwaert and van Kessel2018). Far-right voters may therefore act out of a single (i.e., policy-directed or protest) motive—or out of both at once.

Empirical analyses of far-right voting behavior have vastly rejected the notion that vote choices for far-right parties were exclusively driven by protest motives. While many inquiries show that far-right voting is predominately motivated by the demand for the far right's policies, either in terms of general left-right positions (Van der Brug et al., Reference Van der Brug, Fennema and Tillie2000; Van der Brug and Fennema, Reference Van der Brug and Fennema2003) or restrictive immigration preferences (Arzheimer, Reference Arzheimer2008; Ivarsflaten, Reference Ivarsflaten2008), several contributions point out that electoral demand for far-right parties is in fact co-determined by policy-directed considerations and political dissatisfaction (e.g., Arzheimer, Reference Arzheimer2008; Ivarsflaten, Reference Ivarsflaten2008; Schumacher and Rooduijn, Reference Schumacher and Rooduijn2013). As a persistent and yet puzzling finding, these studies show considerable heterogeneity in the effects of both policy demand and political dissatisfaction on far-right voting across electoral contexts. This indicates that the relative and absolute strength of far-right parties' policy and anti-establishment appeals varies widely. The crucial question, then, is how these differences can be explained.

Several studies have argued that party-specific cues condition the extent of policy-directed voting. Van der Brug et al. (Reference Van der Brug, Fennema and Tillie2000) and Van der Brug and Fennema (Reference Van der Brug and Fennema2003), drawing on previous work by Tillie (Reference Tillie1995), distinguish idealistic from pragmatic voters: The former vote for a party solely due to agreement with its policy, whereas the latter concurrently take into account the parties' strength and influence in the legislature. Empirically, however, these studies do not fully capitalize on this distinction. Given the small number of far-right parties included in Van der Brug et al. (Reference Van der Brug, Fennema and Tillie2000) and Van der Brug and Fennema (Reference Van der Brug and Fennema2003), these studies cannot systematically test whether the relevance of policy-directed considerations for far-right voting is increasing in far-right parties' strength. In contrast, Bos and van der Brug (Reference Bos and van der Brug2010) provide a direct test of strategically conditioned policy-directed voting. They show that subjective perceptions of party (leader) effectiveness and legitimicacy elevate the effect of policy preferences on party evaluations (see also Bos et al., Reference Bos, van der Brug and de Vreese2011). Similar findings with respect to stigmatizing news coverage of far-right parties by Van Spanje and Azrout (Reference Van Spanje and Azrout2018) corroborate the notion that policy-directed voting is contingent on strategic considerations. The use of innovative measures in these studies, however, comes at the cost of limited empirical scope: The studies focus on a maximum of two Dutch far-right parties in single electoral contexts. While extant research on far-right voting has thus embraced the idea that strategic considerations condition the scope of policy-directed far-right voting, we still lack a broad comparative test.

Furthermore, arguments on strategic cues in far-right voting have so far been confined to policy-directed considerations and hardly address the considerable contextual variation in the relevance of political dissatisfaction for far-right voting. Van Spanje (Reference Van Spanje2011) suggests that anti-establishment parties lose disproportionately following government involvement for “keeping the rascals in”: They alienate anti-establishment voters by helping mainstream parties stay in power. Yet, the findings from his party-level analysis cannot establish an underlying micro-logic: Government involvement may harm anti-establishment parties either by damaging the credibility of their anti-establishment appeal or by damaging their credibility of delivering on their policy appeal—e.g. due to unpopular concessions to their coalition partners or for demonstrating incompetence to govern (e.g., Heinisch, Reference Heinisch2003; Akkerman and De Lange, Reference Akkerman and De Lange2012; Afonso, Reference Afonso2015). This suggests that the distinction between government and opposition may critically change the electoral incentives that far-right parties supply both for voting on policy demand and for voting on political dissatisfaction. Given the increasing number of instances of far-right government involvement since the late 1990s, we should thus compare the electoral appeal of far-right parties not only in terms of their strength in parliament but also in terms of their government status.

While the extant literature has thus repeatedly touched upon the effects of far-right agency on the mode and strength of their appeal, we still lack a comprehensive argument and a comparative test. To address these shortcomings, I present a comprehensive theoretical framework for studying the repercussions of far-right government involvement and legislative strength on the micro-logic of far-right support.

2.2. Policy demand, political dissatisfaction, and strategic incentives

Much of the comparative literature on far-right parties' electoral and political success focuses on their agency within the opportunities and constraints posed by their political environments. My argument, in contrast, turns around the telescope and investigates the repercussions of far-right parties' past achievements on the micro-level mechanisms by which they mobilize support. I argue that far-right parties' past attainments of legislative strength and government involvementFootnote ² convey systematic and potentially divergent signals for the credibility of their policy and anti-establishment appeals. This, in turn, affects voters' prospective evaluations of these paties and systematically conditions how—and how strongly—voters are attracted to them.

My argument follows the basic logic of discounting theory (Grofman, Reference Grofman1985): Voters' do not just naively consider parties' nominal platforms but also how credibly parties can deliver on their ideological appeals.Footnote ³ As far-right parties campaign on a twofold ideological platform defined by policy and anti-establishment appeals, voters simultaneously scrutinize the credibility of both components: They discount the policy appeal when they anticipate that far-right parties are incapable of influencing the legislative agenda and assign less weight to the anti-establishment appeals when far-right parties fail to take a credible antagonistic stance toward established parties. Rather than focusing on general contextual determinants of electoral support for far-right parties (e.g., Van der Brug et al., Reference Van der Brug, Fennema and Tillie2005; Carter, Reference Carter2005; Arzheimer, Reference Arzheimer2009), my argument thus emphasizes systematic repercussions of far-right parties' past attainments on the formation of future vote intentions at the individual level.

First, in line with existing arguments of strategic voting (e.g., Downs, Reference Downs1957; Cox, Reference Cox1997; Van der Brug et al., Reference Van der Brug, Fennema and Tillie2000), I expect that oppositional far-right parties with a strong standing in the national parliament offer pronounced strategic incentives for policy-directed voting. This is because stronger far-right parties are more likely to influence the political agenda from the opposition benches. They may do so by a number of mechanisms: A strong presence in national parliament boosts parties' visibility in the media and systematically strengthens their ability to raise the salience of their core issues and issue positions. This, in turn, affects the issue attention and issue positions of mainstream parties as well as policy outcomes (Meguid, Reference Meguid2005; Van Spanje, Reference Van Spanje2010a; Wagner and Meyer, Reference Wagner and Meyer2017). Strategic voters are attentive to these incentives. The more they believe that a party can deliver on its policy platform, the more weight they assign to policy-directed considerations in evaluating the prospect of voting for the party. In contrast, voters who are pessimistic about a party's ability to leverage the issues and issue positions that it campaigns on will likely discount its policy appeal. Despite the high agreement with the parties' policies, they may not risk voting for a party that remains electorally irrelevant and vote for a more powerful alternative instead.

Conditional on sufficient legislative strength, far-right parties may also be able to join government (De Lange, Reference De Lange2012). This represents a unique context in which voters likely evaluate the party primarily in terms of its performance instead of in terms of its strength. Whether government involvement strengthens or hampers the policy appeal of far-right parties is ambiguous. On the one hand, government involvement offers parties a direct avenue for implementing policies and thereby much greater opportunities for delivering on their core promises than opposition. On the other hand, it also brings about the necessity of making policy concessions to their partners. Furthermore, internal strife over the challenges of government may lower the parties' valence and thereby lead voters to doubt whether the party can effectively promote its programmatic stances (Heinisch, Reference Heinisch2003; Akkerman and De Lange, Reference Akkerman and De Lange2012; Zaslove, Reference Zaslove2012). Far-right government involvement may thus convey counteracting incentives for policy-directed voting. I therefore expect that, on average, far-right parties in government attract voters on policy demand at comparable levels as they would have done in opposition.

Next, I discuss the implications of legislative strength for the relevance of protest motives. On the one hand, one might expect that stronger and more successful far-right parties are less likely to appeal to dissatisfied voters. Attaining and maintaining legislative strength usually requires initial efforts toward internal consolidation and professionalization (Art, Reference Art2011).Footnote ⁴ This typically comes with a stronger reliance on vote- and office-seeking strategies: To reach out to broader segments of the electorate, far-right parties strategically moderate extreme policy positions and place greater emphasis on policy appeals vis-à-vis anti-establishment messages (e.g., Art, Reference Art2011; Rooduijn et al., Reference Rooduijn, de Lange and van der Brug2014). As a result, they are confronted with less political ostracism (Van Spanje, Reference Van Spanje2010b; De Lange, Reference De Lange2012). Consequently, stronger far-right parties could fail to credibly set themselves apart from the political establishment.

The process of attaining and maintaining legislative leverage demands a balancing act—appealing to wider segments of the electorate while “maintaining the integrity of their populist and radical right identity” (Zaslove, Reference Zaslove2012, 444). Yet, far-right parties in opposition have sufficient leeway to do so successfully. Many far-right parties strategically combine broadly appealing stances on salient policy issues with a milder, non-extremist populist stance. Thereby, they can successfully foster the credibility of their policy appeal while maintaining the credibility, and possibly broadening the scope, of their anti-establishment appeal (Van Kessel, Reference Van Kessel2015). Hence, I expect that irrespective of their legislative strength, far-right parties in opposition maintain a credible anti-establishment appeal and therefore consistently attract politically dissatisfied voters.

Far-right parties in government, on the other hand, face liabilities that likely jeopardize a credible compromise between pronounced opposition to the establishment and an effective pursuit of substantive policies. As coalition partners of center-right parties, bound to coalition agreements and under pressure to deliver as policy makers, they are unlikely to credibly cater for popular protest sentiment. Voters who want to denounce the political establishment and oust them from power will not consider them a viable means toward these ends. Among the various explanations why far-right government involvement may alienate voters—unpopular policy concessions (Afonso, Reference Afonso2015), incompetence to govern (Heinisch, Reference Heinisch2003; Akkerman and De Lange, Reference Akkerman and De Lange2012), or joining forces with the political establishment (Van Spanje, Reference Van Spanje2011)—the last one therefore likely sketches the most important behavioral mechanism. Over and beyond the costs and benefits to the credibility of far-right parties' policy appeal, government involvement thus decisively harms the credibility of their anti-establishment appeal. Therefore, I expect political dissatisfaction to be of limited to no relevance in voting for far-right parties in government.

3.1. Data and operationalization

Empirical tests of the hypotheses laid out above require a broad sample of heterogeneous contexts under which prospective vote intentions take shape. I pool data from the 1989 to 2014 waves of the quinquennial European Election Study (EES) for 11 West European polities. Western Europe constitutes an ideal arena for analysis because the relative stability of its party systems ensures that parties' past performances can signal valid strategic incentives for future-oriented voting. The resulting sample comprises 48,404 respondents nested in 47 different political contexts.

Table 1 offers a full overview of all available countries, parties, and time points. Due to the inclusion of multiple far-right parties in some political contexts, the sample allows for the analysis of individual evaluations of a total of 52 far-right parties, 45 of which were in opposition and seven of which were in government at the time of the survey.

Table 1. Post-imputation sample based on EES 1989–2014

^(g) In government coalition. ^(g−) Formally supporting minority government. ^(w) West German sample only.

3.2. Model and estimation

Subjective probabilities of future voting for a given party have typically been accommodated in linear models (e.g., Van der Brug et al., Reference Van der Brug, Fennema and Tillie2000; Van der Eijk et al., Reference Van der Eijk, van der Brug, Kroh and Franklin2006). This is, however, problematic in analyses focusing on smaller and more polarizing parties such as those of the Western European far-right. As the bulk of respondents disclose that they consider it not at all probable to ever vote for a far-right party, the variable is heavily inflated with point mass at zero. In order to account for this distributional property, I treat individual responses to the PTV question as if they followed a left-censored process. I assume that individuals hold latent (i.e., unobserved) evaluations of far-right parties' electoral attractiveness, ptv_h*, which may extend into negative values. Individuals with non-positive evaluations of a given party's electoral attractiveness then report they consider it “not at all probable” to ever vote for it whereas individuals with positive evaluations report the observed survey response:Footnote ⁸

$$\eqalign{ {\rm ptv}_{h} = 0 & \;{\rm if }\; {\rm ptv}_{h}^{\ast} \leq 0 \cr {\rm ptv}_{h} = {\rm ptv}_{h}^{\ast} & \;{\rm if }\; {\rm ptv}_{h}^{\ast} \gt 0 }$$

An empirical test of the implications of my theoretical framework calls for a comparative assessment of the relevance of policy demand and political dissatisfaction for far-right voting. According to my theory, the respective relevance of these variables is conditioned by strategic incentives that stem from the political context. I have argued that for the vastly heterogeneous group of oppositional far-right parties, parties' strength exerts important repercussions on policy-directed voting. Among the more homogeneous group of far-right parties in government, in contrast, these incentives stem exclusively from the fact that these parties hold office: I have argued that this should first and foremost jeopardize their anti-establishment appeal, and thereby depress the relevance of political dissatisfaction. I thus model differences in the effects of policy demand and political dissatisfaction between far-right parties in opposition and far-right parties in government per separate models (inequations (1) and (2), respectively) and contextually induced differences in these effects within the former group per interaction effects of micro-level demand and far-right strength in equation (1). This allows me to retrieve distinct estimates of the relevance of policy demand and political dissatisfaction for far-right voting among oppositional parties at varying levels of their legislative strength on the one hand and for far-right parties in government on the other.

(1)$$ \eqalign{ {\rm ptv}_{h}^{\ast} = \;& \beta_{0j} + \beta_{1} {\rm dist}_{h} + \beta_{2} {\rm dis satisfact}_{i} + \beta_{3} {\rm seat \;share}_{\,j} \cr & + \beta_{4} {\rm dist}_{h} \times {\rm seat \;share}_{\,j} + \beta_{5} {\rm dis satisfact}_{i} \times {\rm seat \;share}_{\,j} \cr & + {\bf x}_{i}^{\prime} {\bf \gamma} + \nu_{i} + \epsilon_{h} } $$

(2)$$ {\rm ptv}_{h}^{\ast} = \beta_{0j} + \beta_{1} {\rm dist}_{h} + \beta_{2} {\rm dis satisfact}_{i} + {\bf x}_{i}^{\prime} {\bf \gamma} + \nu_{i} + \epsilon_{h} $$

Individual-specific control variables are captured by the vector x_i. I model differences in aggregate vote inclinations for the far right across choice contexts through heterogeneous intercepts, β_0j. In equation (1), these are modeled as random intercepts that vary by choice contexts. Due to the small number of contexts in the model described in equation (2), I model heterogeneity in β_0j by discrete intercepts akin to a “fixed-effects” approach. Whenever political contexts feature multiple far-right parties, the analysis includes multiple observations per individual. To account for the dependence among these, the models feature a random effect, ν_i. This captures individual-specific idiosyncrasies when multiple observations per individual are analyzed while assigning a joint intercept to all remaining observations.

I implement and estimate these models in a Bayesian framework using Stan.Footnote ⁹ Stan uses Hamiltonian Monte Carlo sampling, which is known for its fast convergence to the target distribution (Stan Development Team, 2016). I run sets of two Markov chains across M = 5 multiply imputed data sets. Each chain is run for a total of 2,000 draws of which I discard the first 1,000 as warm-up. This yields a total of S = 10000 posterior draws. I check for convergence within each set of chains across the imputations and consider chains to have converged when the Gelman-Rubin diagnostic remained below 1.1.