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

Abstract

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.

The new populist radical right emerged on the Western European stage in the 1970s. It has since become a serious challenge to the established mainstream political parties in several countries. Much has been written on the reasons for its success (Van der Brug and Fennema, 2007; Van der Brug et al., 2005; Carter, 2005; Mudde, 2007; Norris, 2005; Rydgren, 2005). But its effect on party competition and policy selection has attracted less attention. Pippa Norris' (2005) discussion of the effect of ‘contagion from the right’ on other parties' programmes and Robert Harmel and Lars Svåsand's (1997) comparative treatment of the Norwegian and Danish conservative parties' responses to the populist radical right are the main exceptions. The present article pursues the question of how other parties react to the populist radical right challenge by exploring the responses of the mainstream parties on the left – the social democrats.

The question is worth asking not just because such parties, as crucial actors in Western European polities, have always attracted significant scholarly interest, but also because the populist radical right-wing challenge is particularly problematic for them – both in principle and in practice. The core issue of the populist radical right is arguably immigration (Ivarsflaten, 2008). Their demand for restrictive immigration policies commands broad support across Western European electorates, especially among the less affluent and less educated, thereby threatening a loss of vote share for social democratic parties. Moreover, losing votes to the populist radical right is worse than losing votes to, say, green or more radical left parties, because the former – unlike the latter – tend to help centre-right parties into government (Bale, 2003). As well as significantly tipping the bloc balance to the right and diminishing the centre left's chance of retaining or regaining office, populist radical right parties, along with their less radical counterparts on the conservative and Christian democratic centre right, pursue policies that are, on the face of it, inimical to the egalitarian and liberal-progressive principles that most social democratic parties espouse.

This article explores the challenges posed to, and the responses of, Europe's centre left by comparative analysis of the strategic choices of four social democratic parties in polities where the populist radical right has become a seemingly permanent (if not always stable) feature of the party system. The primary aim of our research is thus to understand why and when those social democrats whose electoral and governmental prospects are threatened by radical right-wing populist parties choose a particular strategy or combination of strategies.

To do this we produce comparable case studies covering Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Austria. These four cases have been selected because:

all four feature proportional electoral systems and relatively low electoral thresholds;

all four feature large social democratic parties with an ideological and historical commitment to the fair treatment of immigrants and ethnic minorities;

the populist right has developed a substantial challenge to the established parties in all four cases, but the timing and pace of the emergence of the populist right and the patterns of support for, or membership of, centre-right coalitions differ;

in all four cases the social democratic parties face competition from other left-wing parties in the form of radical, green and/or socialist left parties – parties that could be expected to be critical of any rightwards policy shift by the social democrats.

Our purpose, we should stress at the outset, is not to ‘prove’ that the radical right caused these centre-left parties to change their positions on immigration and integration policy. This could only be done, after all, by expanding the number of countries covered to include one or more control cases where populist radical right parties are not an electoral threat and then checking to see whether social democratic parties in such cases have behaved differently – a finding that strikes us as unlikely given that, as illustrated by the British Labour government after 1997, politicians react not just to the indirect threat posed by electoral competition from the far right but also to more direct evidence of voter and media concern about real or perceived problems.

Although it might be possible to approach our topic using quantitative methods (for example through the use of manifesto group data), we employ qualitative case studies because the question of timing and sequencing would appear to be crucial and this can only be captured by process tracing which takes context – including the role played by parties other than on the social democratic left and the radical populist right – into account (see Pierson, 2004). We avoid getting trapped in context, however, by interrogating each case with the same questions and then extracting the comparative value from each in our final section. We begin, though, by giving an overview of the ‘triple challenge’ radical right-wing populism presents for social democrats and by setting out a typology of their strategic responses. The subsequent four sections explore the responses developed by the Danish, Dutch, Norwegian and Austrian social democrats in more detail. The final section assesses the findings in a comparative light: which factors play a part in determining the timing and the scope of strategies that social democrats select on matters of immigration and integration?

Meeting the Triple Challenge

The success of the populist right represents a triple challenge to social democratic parties. First, most populist right parties campaign on issues that have long been ‘owned’ by the political right in the sense that, in Western Europe at least, the mere presence of issues related to immigration and integration has generally worked to its electoral advantage. Second, successful populist radical right parties siphon off votes that might otherwise have gone to the centre left, namely those in blue-collar occupations and those who are unemployed or in casual labour. This problem has been made more acute by the way the populist radical right has recently begun to appeal to these groups not just on the authoritarian end of the authoritarian–libertarian dimension but also on the left side of the state–market dimension (see Kitschelt, 2004; De Lange, 2007; Van Spanje and Van der Brug, 2005). Third, in several cases populist radical right parties have facilitated the formation of non-socialist governments, either by joining them or by providing parliamentary support for minority governments of the centre right (Bale, 2003).

The central question is whether the social democrats have changed their strategy by moving rightwards on the populist right's core issues – immigration and integration. All political parties regularly face decisions about party strategy, namely the broad formula for how they should compete, a combination of what their ends should be and by which means these should be pursued. When a new political issue emerges or a new political party takes the stage, an old party that might be disadvantaged as a result has, in essence, three options, each consistent with political scientists' different takes on electoral competition. First, it can stick to its guns, hold on to its principles and try to win the argument in ‘a competitive struggle for the people's vote’ (Schumpeter, 2006 [1942], p. 269). Second, it can seek to lessen the impact of the new issue by talking – and hopefully getting other parties and voters to talk (and think) about – other issues (Riker, 1996), ideally those it is acknowledged to ‘own’ (Petrocik, 1996; Robertson, 1976). Third, it can change its position on the issue – the response associated with the work of Anthony Downs (1957). These strategic responses are, of course, ideal types: in ‘the real world’ they may bleed into each other, with parties trading off between them. They are nonetheless analytically useful and warrant further discussion.

The first of the three ideal-typical strategies for a political party that is faced with a new issue or competitor is to hold its position, and to maintain its present strategy for electoral competition. This entails facing down the challenger by reinforcing the party's policy position, often in combination with an effort to communicate this position more clearly and to mobilise the party's core electorate. This strategy is consistent with the consensus that clearly emerges from the literature on party change, namely that, although parties eventually adjust their policies to meet changing social and electoral conditions (Adams et al., 2004), inertia is their default setting. Parties, after all, are not only ideological creatures, but function both as brands, which are sticky, and as organisations, the complexity of which can make innovation difficult (Budge, 1994). Politicians may also believe it is their duty, and in their power, to persuade voters, to shape their preferences rather than accommodating them by, say, moving closer to the centre: even in the UK, where a centripetal logic is stronger than it is in proportional representation (PR) systems, Labour and the Conservatives have often behaved in this way (see Dunleavy, 1991; Ward, 2006). As far as the challenge from the populist right is concerned, this ‘principled’ strategy is risky: it would entail mainstream social democratic parties openly and unashamedly making the case for tolerance of migration and multiculturalism in the face of contemporary, media-fuelled, concerns about terrorism, crime, welfare abuse and dependency, and the sheer pressure of population on public services and housing.

The second strategy involves an effort to defuse a new political issue, to decrease its salience or at least its relevance to electoral competition – in short, to try ‘heresthetically’ to reset the political agenda so it does not disadvantage them (Riker, 1996). In order to defuse an issue the party will avoid engaging in debate with other parties over it, choosing to focus on something else in the hope that other parties in the system will (eventually) do the same. As far as the challenge from the populist radical right is concerned, this kind of strategy would entail the social democrats trying to pre-empt further leakage of votes by seeking (in cooperation with the mainstream centre right) a broad consensus (opponents might label it a ‘conspiracy of silence’) on immigration and integration policy. This strategy may also involve an effort to play down the salience of the issues championed by the radical right, maintaining socio-economic issues at the core of left–right competition. The obvious problem with the strategy is that political parties, particularly perhaps on the left side of the spectrum, cannot hope to control an agenda that is driven in part by mainstream opponents who may be tempted to reject or defect from any consensus, as well as by the media and of course the real-life concerns of voters.

The third strategy resonates with Downs' (1957) classical model of two-party competition: adopt the position of the competitor. This rests on the assumption that the primary goal of political parties is to maximise votes, and that their policy positions should be understood primarily as a means to this end. If policy is less important than the pursuit of votes, the logic is ‘if you can't beat them, join them’: close down the issue space on the authoritarian– libertarian dimension by arguing that migration must be limited and multiculturalism tempered by an increased emphasis on what some call ‘integration’ but others label ‘assimilation’; that done, politics can get back to ‘normal’. The potential problems with this strategy lie inter alia in the time it might take to effect the change, in the loss of credibility that may result from charges of a policy U-turn (Kitschelt and Rehm, 2005, p. 14, p. 21), and in internal dissent, especially from ‘true believers’ opposed to the plans of the party's ‘electoral-professionals’ (Panebianco, 1988). There is also a risk – identified by John Petrocik – that a party adopting issues that, historically anyway, it has never ‘owned’ will find it difficult to persuade voters that it really does care about (and is capable of delivering on) them.

All three strategies have been attempted by Western European political parties which face new issues or threats from new competitors. The results have been mixed and the effects of changing strategy are sometimes unclear: like Alice in Wonderland, parties often have to run as fast as they can merely to remain in the same place (Mair, 1997). Hence, although we are interested in the results, our focus here is on identifying ideal-typical strategies and on why and when parties choose to pursue the strategies they do.

Our expectations when it comes to the centre left coping with the challenge of the populist radical right are as follows. Given the strength of social democratic party organisations in most Western European countries and their ideological commitment to tolerance on immigration and integration, we expect that they will not change their policies at the first hint of a challenge. Until that challenge becomes a manifest danger to their electoral position, the first strategy (which we label hold) is practically a default option. However, to the extent that the new issue or challenge is perceived as serious enough to warrant some kind of alternative action, the second strategy (which we label defuse) is more likely. Only when the populist right not only siphons off votes from the centre left but contributes to centre-right governments taking office – an event that is much less open to interpretation than voting patterns – do we expect the third strategy (which we label adopt) to become more attractive. Finally, given that any one party's success inevitably depends on the success and failure of its competitors right across the spectrum (see Mair et al., 2004, p. 270), and given that parties' ‘external’ behaviour often depends on ‘internal’ factors (see Lawson, 1990, p. 118), we also expect to see the choice of strategy being influenced by (1) the strategy of the parties on the mainstream right, (2) the level of internal consensus within the social democratic party in question and (3) the strategy of the left, liberal and green parties with which they compete. How far, then, are these expectations borne out in our four case studies?

Denmark: Too Little Too Late

In recent decades the content of party competition in Denmark has opened up as issues that depart from traditional left–right distributional concerns have come to play an important role. The left was able to establish ownership of the emerging environmental agenda, but the right made the running on immigration and integration. During the mid-1980s, the populist Progress party started to focus more intensively on immigration (Jensen, 2000, pp. 440–80) – partly in response to a more liberal law being introduced and more immigrants from the Middle East arriving in Denmark (Brøcker, 1990). Fortunately for the Social Democrats (Socialdemokratiet), however, the Progress party remained isolated on the issue: some on the mainstream right voiced Progress-style views on immigration, but centre-right governments from 1982 to 1993 had no interest in promoting such non-economic issues, dependent as they were on the Social Liberals (Radikale Venstre), who strongly supported a liberal immigration policy (Green-Pedersen and Krogstrup, 2008).

However, during the period of centre-left governments led by the Social Democrats from 1993 to 2001, the issue became central and its politicisation was one of the main reasons for the Social Democratic electoral defeat in 2001 which led to a change of government. The politicisation was partly the result of xenophobic rhetoric from the populist radical right, especially the Danish People's party (Dansk Folkeparti) which, beginning in 1995, emerged as a much more stable and serious political actor than the Progress party. However, the politicisation was also very much the result of a strong focus on the immigration issue from the mainstream right-wing parties, especially Venstre – the Liberals, who, since the Social Liberals had joined the Social Democrats in government, no longer had any incentive not to turn its issue ownership into votes (Green-Pedersen and Krogstrup, 2008).

The Social Democrats initially responded to the new right-wing challenge by trying to defuse the issue. However, as it became increasingly clear towards the end of the 1990s that questions of immigration and integration remained very much on the political agenda, the Social Democrats started to shift towards a more restrictive position on immigration, i.e. an adopt strategy (Holm, 2005). This was not, however, easy. First, the party was now governing with the Social Liberals, who calculated that their best interests in terms of votes lay not in adopting but rather in strong opposition to the right (Green-Pedersen and Krogstrup, 2008). Second, the Social Democrats were plagued by internal disagreements around the immigration issue: as far back as the 1980s, mayors from the municipalities around Copenhagen with a high percentage of migrants had called in the media for a change of course (Jensen, 2000). In so doing they generated increasing support but also visible opposition from their fellow Social Democrats at the national level.

After the Social Democrats' big defeat at the 2001 election, and the formation of a centre-right government that relied on populist radical right support in parliament, the section of the party that wanted to shadow the right-wing position on immigration and integration gained momentum. As a result, the party's position on the issue is not now significantly different from that of the right-wing government, whose legislative proposals in this area it has often supported. This shift has not, however, been as successful as some hoped. The right-wing government continued to claim that Social Democratic promises not to turn back the clock to a more permissive era were meaningless given that they would have to govern with the Social Liberals. The evident internal and inter-party disagreement on migration and multiculturalism made it difficult for the Social Democrats to counter this argument, thus helping to ensure another defeat at the 2005 election. Nor, it seems, has the shift done much to shake the right's ownership of the issue: the so-called ‘cartoon crisis’ of 2006 brought immigration back to the top of the agenda and the Social Democrats suffered immediately in the opinion polls. Winning back power, it seems, still means avoiding the immigration issue.

The Netherlands: Caught in the Middle

Contrary to common wisdom, the Dutch Labour party (Partij van de Arbeid or PvdA) woke up to the importance of immigration and integration before populist showman Pim Fortuyn exploded on to the scene in 2001. Its move, while in government in the 1990s, towards a more restrictive immigration policy and away from multiculturalism (Entzinger, 2003; Krouwel, forthcoming; Pennings and Keman, 2003) was a relatively quiet one, however. It may have been part of a wider shift which saw it become one of the front-runners of the ‘Third Way’ (Green-Pedersen and Van Kersbergen, 2002) and join an unprecedented ‘Lib–Lab’ coalition with the conservative-liberal VVD (Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie) and the more progressive-liberal D66. But the move was not one made under pressure from the populist radical right. Until 2001, the latter was weak and unable to attract any significant following. Yet the PvdA was aware of the electoral potential for more restrictive immigration policies and a backlash against multiculturalism, both among left-wing as well as right-wing voters (Mudde and Van Holsteyn, 2000; Thomassen, 2000). It hoped, however, that government action on the issues would, rather than making them more salient, defuse the threat.

Unfortunately for the PvdA, its coalition partner between 1994 and 2001, theVVD, did not cooperate. Indeed, its leader, Frits Bolkestein, continued to make much of his antiimmigration and anti-Islam agenda, thereby playing a part in shifting the main dimension of political competition from the socio-economic left–right divide to a more cultural dimension (Van Kersbergen and Krouwel, 2008). While the PvdA tried to frame immigration and integration in socio-economic terms (labour market access, income and education) Bolkestein, and later Fortuyn, insisted that the failed integration of minorities was more to do with language, religion and social behaviour (Van der Lubben, 2006). No longer able to defuse the issue, a fierce internal debate erupted within the PvdA between those who wanted to abandon ‘political correctness’ and the party leadership which did not want to alienate the party's substantial following among ethnic minorities (Scheffer, 2000; Vuijsje, 1989). As a result (the now world-famous) Ayaan Hirshi Ali defected to the VVD, suggesting that the PvdA was haemorrhaging support.

The failure to defuse the issue helped transform the strategic environment in which the Dutch social democrats now operated. Their move to the centre during the 1990s had weakened their core vote, some of which now supported either the Green Left (GroenLinks) or the fast growing Socialist party (Socialistische Partij). As the PvdA no longer defended its former multicultural positions – the hold strategy – and with their defuse strategy now backfiring, the party could do nothing else but adopt a more monocultural, tough-on-immigration stance. This was too late, however, to prevent radical populist mobilisation of discontent on both the left and right (see, for example, Belanger and Aarts, 2006; Pellikaan et al., 2003). On the right, Fortuyn fiercely attacked the PvdA for defending multiculturalism, European integration and welfare state expansion – an attack that resonated surprisingly well with traditional left-wing voters who perceived the welfare state to benefit ethnic minorities (Van Holsteyn et al., 2003). Nor did the attack end with Fortuyn's death and the subsequent implosion of his eponymous party, LPF. Since then it has been carried on by two major breakaways from the conservative VVD. Geert Wilders' PVV (Partij voor de Vrijheid) came from a standing start to win nine seats at the 2006 election, and more recently Rita Verdonk, formerly a minister with a hard-line reputation on immigration and integration, left to form the Trots op Nederland movement.

But, unusually, Dutch social democrats also faced a populist challenge on their left flank from the Socialist party (SP). Running on a monocultural, more left-wing and Eurosceptic agenda than the PvdA, the SP combined classic social democracy on the economy and welfare with more traditional and conservative cultural positions to offer an attractive policy mix to traditional left-wing voters. Unable to reset the political agenda, the social democrats became even more internally divided. More progressive and culturally libertarian supporters defected to the Green Left which still defended the traditional multicultural (and pro-European) stance, while a large section of the traditional left voted for the SP. All the other left parties – the SP, Green Left and even D66 – looked more authentic and less opportunistic than the PvdA, which, many argued, had tied itself up in knots trying to adapt to the transformed political landscape.

After going into opposition in 2002, the PvdA worked hard to talk about issues other than immigration and integration and looked as if it might enjoy a comeback, particularly after some impressive local election results. But this success proved temporary and it dropped even more support at the 2006 election even though (partly because of the efforts of both the Christian Democrats and the PvdA) immigration and integration issues were far less prominent than they had been in 2002 and 2003. Despite its poor performance at the election, the PvdA nevertheless made it back into government, this time as part of a grand coalition with the CDA (Christen Democratisch Appèl) and the conservative-religious CU (Christen Unie). The performance of the populist radical right PVV and the subsequent formation of Trots op Nederland suggest, however, that opposition to migration and multiculturalism will remain politically salient, rendering a defuse strategy difficult to maintain.

Norway: Pre-emptive Consensus

Political contestation of immigration and integration in Norway differs from the two cases discussed above. This is partly because the issue arose long before (rather than just before or after) the populist Progress party (Fremskrittspartiet) became a powerful actor on the political stage, and partly because the Labour party's (Det Norske Arbeiderparti) initial efforts to defuse the issue were relatively successful. Although the Progress party first won parliamentary representation in 1973, it did not break into double figures until the 1989 election. The Conservatives (Høyre) sought to marginalise their populist competitor on the right, and the centre-right coalition governments of the early 1980s kept their distance from the Progress party. Moreover, it was a Labour government that in 1975, after two decades of liberal immigration policy and long before the Progress party posed any threat, introduced tough measures which were dubbed ‘the immigration stop’. While these measures were contested, the debate was mild compared to the Danish and Dutch cases. Although the Progress party has done much to place immigration and integration firmly on the political agenda in Norway, and it played a clear role in pushing the Conservatives further to the right in the 1990s (Harmel and Svåsand, 1997), the gradual rise of the Progress party in the 1970s and 1980s actually followed a tightening of all Norwegian parties' stances on immigration; it did not cause it.

Labour's relatively strict immigration policy in the 1970s and 1980s came close to the ideal-type defuse strategy inasmuch as it was part of a consensual approach to dealing with the increasing salience of immigration and integration. During the 1980s Labour's party programmes emphasised immigrants' and refugees' rights and resources for culture and language teaching. Strict immigration policy was thus combined with a softer approach to integration. However, its party programmes began to change subtly in the 1990s, first becoming somewhat vaguer, and later shifting to an emphasis on rights and duties, including obligatory Norwegian lessons and warning against forced marriages and abuse of immigration rules. Like its original stance in the early 1970s, this mixed – then increasingly tough – message on immigration and ethnic minorities reflected broader political changes as much as a direct challenge from the Progress party. Indeed, the Progress party actually lost some of its exclusive appeal on immigration policy in the 1990s as other parties revised their stances on the issue, which in turn prompted the Progress party to turn its focus to criticism of the two main parties' conservative fiscal policy.

Labour's decision to respond to the increased salience of immigration and integration issues by seeking to defuse the issue depended partly on its own unity and partly on how its main competitors reacted. Having split over NATO in 1961 and over the EEC in 1972, Labour put a premium on party unity and had lost part of its left flank to the Socialist Left (Sosialistisk Venstreparti). However, Labour's left-wing rival focused on these foreign policy questions rather than make much of its objections to what it saw as Labour's ungenerous immigration and integration policies. And after 2000 the party even followed Labour's cue and began to address awkward issues concerning toleration of illiberal practices related to forced marriages and women's rights. In short, by the time the Progress party began to challenge the Conservatives for the position of Norway's third largest party in the late 1990s, the Socialist Left had more or less joined the restrictive consensus, making it all the easier for Labour to continue to adhere to it.

Party competition on the right side of the political spectrum and the centripetal dynamics of coalition governments in Norway have helped Labour sustain its consensus-oriented but relatively strict immigration policy, and thus its defuse strategy. All governments between 1985 and 2005 were minority governments, and none included the parties on the far right or left flank. In fact the Progress party's role in bloc building has been a distinctly mixed blessing for all concerned. Although the party supported a minority centre-right government after the 1985 election, it joined the left in a no-confidence vote a year later. Disunity on the right helped sustain centre-left and centrist minority governments throughout the 1990s. after 2001, however, the Progress party decided to support a centre-right minority government. This, in turn, helped push the parties on the left closer together (Madeley, 2002). When the Progress party withdrew its support from the centre-right prime minister during the 2005 electoral campaign (its demand for full coalition membership had been rejected), the left appeared coherent and credible by comparison and a coalition of Labour, the Socialist Left and the agrarian Centre party (Senterpartiet) won the election (Sitter, 2006). Moreover, because the Liberals (Venstre) have long been the party closest to the left-libertarian ideal on immigration and integration (Heidar and Saglie, 2002; Rasch, 2003), these issues are more divisive on the centre right than the centre left. For example, the Liberals do not fully share the left's and the Progress party's common concerns about low-wage immigrants undercutting ‘indigenous’ unionised workers. In short, one consequence of the dynamics of coalition politics has been that the presence of radical parties on the left and right flanks has not driven policy debate to the extremes. Immigration and integration are no exception. If anything, the populist right has been less of a problem for Labour than for the Conservatives.

Austria: Wanting it Both Ways

The principled opposition of the social democratic SPÖ (Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs) to the FPÖ (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs) originally stemmed from the latter's alleged pan-German revisionism, but it only strengthened when the FPÖ began to mobilise on immigration and integration policy in the early 1990s. That opposition was personified in SPÖ Chancellor Franz Vranitzky and manifested in a series of grand coalitions with the Austrian People's party (Österreichische Volkspartei or ÖVP) created precisely to freeze out the FPÖ, a strategy that did little to counter the latter's allegations of a stitch-up of state and society by the two big parties (Luther, 2000). Within these coalitions the SPÖ also sought to redirect the political agenda to other key issues, such as EU entry. As such, the SPÖ's strategy during the period up to the mid-1990s might be characterised as a mixture of hold and defuse.

In the early 1990s, Austria experienced a major influx of immigrants and asylum seekers, and anxiety about this was fanned by the FPÖ, which linked the issue both to crime and to EU accession (and subsequently to EU enlargement). The SPÖ could hardly fail to pick up on such concerns and on pressure from its union wing to protect Austria's labour market. Although its hold and defuse strategy remained popular among party activists, its electoral efficacy was in doubt. A few months after Vranitzky's replacement by Viktor Klima, SPÖ MPs voted for the 1997 ‘Integration Package’ and in 1998 for the Naturalisation Act. This legislation limited new immigration, introduced successive residence consolidation for existing aliens and also raised income and language hurdles for citizenship (König and Perchinig, 2005; Kraler and Sohler, 2005). Left-wing and green critics dismissed the SPÖ's decision to include elements of an adopt strategy as a capitulation to xenophobia rather than a serious attempt to short-circuit such sentiment.

For its part, the ÖVP's reaction to its disastrous 1999 general election result was to abandon the strategy of isolating the FPÖ in favour of ‘co-optation and castration’ (Luther, 2003, p. 150) via an ÖVP/FPÖ government. The ÖVP's shift to an all-out adopt strategy was reinforced by the government's 2003 ‘integration contract’ and its 2003 tightening of the asylum regime. These measures were significantly tougher than – but did not fundamentally contradict – those the SPÖ had approved in the preceding coalition. Under their new leader, Alfred Gusenbauer, SPÖ strategists knew that not only many of its activists, but also many of the blue-collar voters that the SPÖ had hung on to or hoped to win back were either not opposed to such policies, or were more concerned about traditional social and economic issues. By not opposing the government's more vigorous anti-immigrant policies they risked internal dissent, yet any electoral support that might be lost would, they calculated, go to the Greens, and would in all probability be small, especially compared to the votes won or at least maintained by not appearing overtly liberal. In light of such considerations and a desire not to weaken its future coalition bargaining position, the leadership not only dropped hints that it might abandon the Vranitzky doctrine of eschewing political cooperation with the FPÖ, but pursued a policy that could be described as hold and adopt.

In 2005, for example, it chose to consult with the government over the latter's restrictive Aliens Law Package, the initial draft of which contained some highly controversial provisions. It then pressured the parliamentary party to vote for the compromise bill that had been negotiated, prompting accusations from Vranitzky that the party leadership had moved towards FPÖ leader Jörg Haider's position, as well as the declaration from the SPÖ executive city councillor in charge of integration policy that the party had ‘nothing to gain from licking the boots of the extreme right’. In Vienna, the SPÖ was faced not only with a right-wing populist challenge but also a stronger Green challenge and it had thus adopted a hold strategy arguably more akin to that of the Greens than of its own national leadership (Perchinig, 2006).

Such internal dissent might help explain why the SPÖ subsequently opposed the government's 2006 bill which significantly tightened the naturalisation provisions. It did not, however, mean that the SPÖ would follow the Greens at the 2006 election in taking an uncompromisingly confrontational stance towards the resurgent populist radical right, now split between the FPÖ and Haider's breakaway Alliance for the Future of Austria (Bündnis Zukunft Österreich [Zukunft Österreich], or BZÖ) (Luther, 2008; Plasser and Ulram, 2007). Instead the social democrats advocated tightening up the asylum system and restricting immigration to those with much-needed skills. However, they also maintained (albeit somewhat less vocally) that it made sense to pursue relatively generous housing, education, employment, social and cultural policies designed to promote the integration of existing immigrants – a mix therefore of adopt and hold. Differences over migration and multiculturalism were not a source of significant divisions during the coalition negotiations that in January 2007 resulted in the formation of an SPÖ/ÖVP coalition, and apparently played no part in the fractious relationship between the two parties which eventually led to the coalition's break-up in July 2008. In the short period between Gusenbauer's replacement as party leader by Walter Faymann and the general election of 28 September 2008, SPÖ strategy seemed to have returned to a mixture of hold and defuse. The party's new leader openly rejected the FPÖ's approach to immigration policy and appeared to have reverted to the Vranitzky doctrine of ruling out an SPÖ/FPÖ government. On the other hand, he sought to focus the party's attention on traditional social and economic policy matters (on some of which SPÖ MPs outvoted the ÖVP with FPÖ support). In short, the party's strategy appeared to have shifted back to a mixture of hold and defuse, though only time will tell whether the SPÖ will be able to maintain its strategy of trying to have it both ways.

Comparative Analysis

As Robert Harmel and Kenneth Janda (1994) suggest, external shock in the form of electoral defeat and/or loss of office may not be enough by itself to precipitate change – that often requires a new leader as well. But such a shock is nonetheless a crucial driver, even if it sometimes takes time to kick in (Adams et al., 2004). We expected the disruptive (and for social democrats negative) impact of the populist radical right to have prompted centre-left parties to move towards a more restrictive stance on immigration and to question state support for multiculturalism. Our four case studies suggest that our expectations are only partially borne out. True, no social democratic party has opted simply to hold its position and fight the good fight for permissive immigration and integration policies. But there are more nuances in any centre-left shift towards adopting apparently more restrictive and assimilationist stances than first meet the eye, with regard to both the pace and the timing of that shift. These variations, the case studies suggest, are the product of at least three factors, namely the behaviour of the centre right, the unity of the social democratic party concerned and the reaction of parties on its left. These are discussed in more depth below, but also summarised in Table 1.

Table 1:

Influences on Social Democratic Strategy

	Conservative/liberal strategy	Social democrat internal debate	Other left/green parties’ response	Outcome: soc. dem. strategy
DK 1980s	Defuse	United	Hold	Hold
DK 1990s	Adopt	Divided	Hold	Defuse
DK 2000s	Adopt	Divided	Hold	Adopt
NL 2000	Adopt	Divided	Hold	Defuse/hold/adopt
NL mid-2000s	Defuse	Divided	Hold/adopt	Defuse
N 1970s	Defuse	United	Defuse	Defuse
N 2000s	Defuse	United	Defuse	Defuse
AT mid-1980s–mid-1990s	Defuse	United	Hold	Hold/defuse
AT mid-1990s–2000s	Adopt	Divided	Hold	Hold/adopt

Clearly the pressure exerted by a populist radical right party that is capable of depriving social democrats of votes and office is important. But strategy selection is also conditioned by the response of mainstream market liberal, conservative and Christian Democratic parties (see Bale, 2008) – in particular whether they seek to defuse the questions raised by the populist radical right and to marginalise these new challengers or whether they seek to adopt, to move to the right and even invite the radical right into coalition (Bale, 2003; Meguid, 2005). In Norway the conservatives helped to marginalise the populist radical right and to defuse their issues by enabling broad cross-party consensus on immigration and integration. This made things relatively easy for Labour. However, in Denmark and the Netherlands, both of which feature liberal as well as conservative parties on the right, at least one of the main centre-right parties chose to respond to the populist radical right by adopting its agenda. Even if the social democrats had already engaged in some pre-emptive restriction on immigration, this put them in a much tighter spot and eventually obliged them, too, to take a tougher stand on integration as well as immigration. This happened, too, in Austria, where the centre-right People's party not only adopted the populist radical right's agenda but co-opted it into government.

But the strategy selected by those parties to the immediate (mainstream) right of the social democratic parties we looked at is only one of three variables that help to explain the variation in the centre-left's responses. The second factor is the unity of the social democratic party, which in turn reflects its organisation, ideological stance and the policy preferences of its members and elite. Because successful efforts either collectively to defuse the populist radical right's challenge or to adopt some of its signature issues require innovation that is credible to outsiders, party unity is a necessary condition. The Norwegian party was (and is) considerably less divided on these issues than its Danish, Dutch and Austrian counterparts.

The third factor is how the other parties on the left react. Only in Norway has the socialist left sought to cooperate with the mainstream parties to defuse the immigration issue and played this down in electoral campaigns. In the three other cases at least one smaller green or left-wing party (and in Denmark a liberal party too) has challenged the social democrats' strategies on immigration, threatening a loss of left-libertarian votes and/or encouraging internal dissent from those who think their party should also be speaking out more strongly against the right. In the Netherlands, things were made even more difficult for the social democrats by a Socialist party which, if anything, outbid the Labour party in responding to its core voters' concerns about migration and multiculturalism; this left the PvdA losing votes to both left libertarians and left traditionalists, as well as, of course, to the right and centre right.

Abstracting away from the case studies, then, we can say that the hold strategy is the easiest initial response: it does not require innovation and, at least at first, does not provoke internal disunity or, indeed, criticism from the left flank. But if other parties adopt the populist radical right's agenda on immigration and integration, it is unlikely to work in the medium to long term. The defuse strategy can be an effective pre-emptive strategy but ultimately depends on the centre right (and to some extent the far left and the greens) choosing the same strategy so that left–right competition excludes immigration and integration issues. It also depends on social democratic unity, on the leadership being able to persuade its liberals not to go on the offensive, as well as silencing those who argue that the party must recognise and reflect public anxiety on immigration and integration. The adopt strategy may be the obvious response when one or more centre-right parties choose to emulate or at least accommodate the populist radical right. But it will provoke severe criticism from, and possibly a flow of political capital and voters to, the far left and the greens, and maybe the liberals too. This, and the fact that it will almost certainly lead to internal rows which cast doubt on the credibility of any rightward shift, make this strategy a difficult trick to pull off, however. It is therefore one to which few social democratic parties will convert wholesale. Most therefore end up pursuing a much messier course which mixes elements of all three ideal-typical strategies, none of which on its own offers a magic bullet.

Conclusion

New Labour in the UK has often justified its declared determination to ‘get tough on immigration’ by pointing to the supposedly malign consequences that flowed from its sister parties in continental Europe apparently ignoring the far right. Some members of those social democratic parties might agree with such an analysis, but most would be surprised. If anything, they would argue, their parties have not so much stood up to or ignored radical right-wing populists as conceded too much to them in an often vain attempt to limit their appeal. Our study suggests, however, that the picture is more complicated than that. The social democratic response to the rise of the populist radical right, and to the rise of the issues surrounding immigration and integration on which it mobilises, is far from uniform, whether we are considering the substance, the scope or the pace of that response. Our study also suggests that the response of centre-left parties is determined not just by the populist radical right itself but also by the behaviour of the mainstream right and of their left and/or liberal competitors, as well as by actual and potential dissent within their own ranks. All these factors mean that the Downsian ‘if you can't beat them join them’ strategy is not the default option. On the other hand, more principled, oppositional stances and more sophisticated agenda-setting strategies are similarly difficult for all but the most fortunate of parties. Most parties therefore end up mixing and matching, boxing and coxing, in the hope that they can stay competitive without surrendering too many of their values and too much of their credibility.

We began by emphasising that, rather than trying to ‘prove’ that populist radical right parties ‘caused’ their social democratic competitors to take a particular line on immigration and integration policy, we were interested in trying to understand why and when one strategy or combination of strategies was chosen by the centre left. We should end by stressing that the question of which strategy chosen is the most ‘successful’ – whether success be measured in terms of policy, office or votes – remains for us (and, indeed, for the parties concerned) a moot point. That said, perceptions of success or failure almost certainly feed back over time into the selection of strategy, both by these parties and by their sister parties in other countries. As such, which strategy (or, more likely, combination of strategies) works best is surely a subject for further research.

Footnotes

The authors would like to record their thanks to the anonymous referees, and to Cas Mudde, Sarah de Lange and Paul Taggart for helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. Thanks also to Mark Pol.

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