IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/zbw/espost/266559.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How challenger party issue entrepreneurship and mainstream party strategies drive public issue salience: evidence from radical-right parties and the issue of immigration

Author

Listed:
  • Williams, Christopher J.
  • Hunger, Sophia

Abstract

When mainstream parties accommodate radical-right parties, do citizens grow more concerned about immigration? Based on a rich literature, we argue that challenger parties’ ability to affect mainstream party positions, particularly on immigration, is associated with greater public salience of immigration and voter positivity towards challengers exists. We use Comparative Manifesto Project and Comparative Study of Electoral Systems data in order to show that challenger issue entrepreneurship, and mainstream accommodation are associated with greater public concern for challenger issues. These factors do not result in greater public positivity towards challengers. Our findings thus support the argument that a mainstream party accommodative strategy might not be as beneficial for them as often expected by pundit and political scientists alike. This has implications for understanding the effect of indirect party strategies on public attitudes, since mainstream accommodation changes public concern regarding issues, which may bolster challengers’ positions, including radical-right parties.

Suggested Citation

  • Williams, Christopher J. & Hunger, Sophia, 2022. "How challenger party issue entrepreneurship and mainstream party strategies drive public issue salience: evidence from radical-right parties and the issue of immigration," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 14(4), pages 544-565.
  • Handle: RePEc:zbw:espost:266559
    DOI: 10.1017/S1755773922000297
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/266559/1/Full-text-article-Williams-et-al-How-challenger-party.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1017/S1755773922000297?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Abou-Chadi, Tarik, 2016. "Niche Party Success and Mainstream Party Policy Shifts – How Green and Radical Right Parties Differ in Their Impact," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 46(2), pages 417-436, April.
    2. Meguid, Bonnie M., 2005. "Competition Between Unequals: The Role of Mainstream Party Strategy in Niche Party Success," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 99(3), pages 347-359, August.
    3. Paul Goren & Christopher M. Federico & Miki Caul Kittilson, 2009. "Source Cues, Partisan Identities, and Political Value Expression," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(4), pages 805-820, October.
    4. Martin Bisgaard & Rune Slothuus, 2018. "Partisan Elites as Culprits? How Party Cues Shape Partisan Perceptual Gaps," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 62(2), pages 456-469, April.
    5. Grande, Edgar & Schwarzbözl, Tobias & Fatke, Matthias, 2019. "Politicizing immigration in Western Europe," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 26(10), pages 1444-1463.
    6. Gessler, Theresa & Hunger, Sophia, 2022. "How the refugee crisis and radical right parties shape party competition on immigration," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 10(3), pages 524-544.
    7. Daniel Bischof & Markus Wagner, 2019. "Do Voters Polarize When Radical Parties Enter Parliament?," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 63(4), pages 888-904, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gessler, Theresa & Hunger, Sophia, 2022. "How the refugee crisis and radical right parties shape party competition on immigration," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 10(3), pages 524-544.
    2. Hutter, Swen & Kriesi, Hanspeter, 2022. "Politicising immigration in times of crisis," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 48(2), pages 341-365.
    3. Bayerlein, Michael, 2021. "Chasing the Other 'Populist Zeitgeist'? Mainstream Parties and the Rise of Right-Wing Populism," Open Access Publications from Kiel Institute for the World Economy 240403, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    4. Grewenig, Elisabeth & Lergetporer, Philipp & Werner, Katharina & Woessmann, Ludger, 2020. "Do party positions affect the public's policy preferences? Experimental evidence on support for family policies," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 179(C), pages 523-543.
    5. Petrarca, Constanza Sanhueza & Giebler, Heiko & Weßels, Bernhard, 2022. "Support for insider parties: The role of political trust in a longitudinal-comparative perspective," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 28(2), pages 329-341.
    6. Abou-Chadi, Tarik & Krause, Werner, 2020. "The Causal Effect of Radical Right Success on Mainstream Parties’ Policy Positions: A Regression Discontinuity Approach," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 50(3), pages 829-847.
    7. Albert Chiu & Xingchen Lan & Ziyi Liu & Yiqing Xu, 2023. "Causal Panel Analysis under Parallel Trends: Lessons from A Large Reanalysis Study," Papers 2309.15983, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2024.
    8. Grande, Edgar & Schwarzbözl, Tobias & Fatke, Matthias, 2019. "Politicizing immigration in Western Europe," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 26(10), pages 1444-1463.
    9. Catherine Xhardez & Mireille Paquet, 2021. "Beyond the Usual Suspects and Towards Politicisation: Immigration in Quebec’s Party Manifestos, 1991–2018," Journal of International Migration and Integration, Springer, vol. 22(2), pages 673-690, June.
    10. Borbáth, Endre & Hutter, Swen & Leininger, Arndt, 2023. "Cleavage politics, polarisation and participation in Western Europe," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 46(4), pages 631-651.
    11. Giampaolo Bonomi, 2024. "Divide and Diverge: Polarization Incentives," Papers 2405.20564, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2024.
    12. Kärnä, Anders & Meriläinen, Jaakko & Norell, John, 2024. "The Price of Exclusion: Coalition Formation in the Shadow of Rising Radical Right," Working Paper Series 1507, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    13. Proaño Acosta, Christian & Peña, Juan Carlos & Saalfeld, Thomas, 2020. "Inequality, macroeconomic performance and political polarization: A panel analysis of 20 advanced democracies," BERG Working Paper Series 157, Bamberg University, Bamberg Economic Research Group.
    14. Edoardo Cefalà, 2022. "The political consequences of mass repatriation," Discussion Papers 2022-05, University of Nottingham, GEP.
    15. Alizade, Jeyhun, 2024. "The Electoral Politics of Immigration and Crime," OSF Preprints h967e, Center for Open Science.
    16. Krause, Werner & Giebler, Heiko, 2020. "Shifting Welfare Policy Positions: The Impact of Radical Right Populist Party Success Beyond Migration Politics," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 56(3), pages 331-348.
    17. Christoph Arndt, 2016. "Issue evolution and partisan polarization in a European multiparty system: Elite and mass repositioning in Denmark 1968–2011," European Union Politics, , vol. 17(4), pages 660-682, December.
    18. Michel Beine & Ilan Noy & Christopher Parsons, 2021. "Climate change, migration and voice," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 167(1), pages 1-27, July.
    19. Özgür, Arslan-Ayaydin & Thewissen, James & Torsin, Wouter, 2021. "Earnings Management Methods and CEO Political Affiliation," LIDAM Discussion Papers LFIN 2021017, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain Finance (LFIN).
    20. Braun, Daniela & Grande, Edgar, 2021. "Politicizing Europe in Elections to the European Parliament (1994–2019): The Crucial Role of Mainstream Parties," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 59(5), pages 1124-1141.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:espost:266559. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/zbwkide.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.