THE BACKWARD EAST? EXPLAINING DIFFERENCES IN SUPPORT FOR RADICAL RIGHT PARTIES IN WESTERN AND EASTERN EUROPE

Abstract

Radical right political parties in Central Eastern Europe have been far less electorally successful than their counterparts in Western Europe. This outcome contradicts an underlying assumption in scholarly work and public opinion of "the East" at a hotbed of nationalist political movements. This paper uses an original comparative dataset to examine the contextual economic, political, and social determinants of electoral support for radical right parties in 27 Western and Eastern European countries from 1991 to 2012. Support for radical right parties in Eastern Europe hinges on a different set of factors than in the West. The findings show that the commonly cited factors, such as economic development, immigration, and types of electoral institutions, do not explain cross-national differences in electoral support for the radical right or the difference in electoral support between Eastern and Western Europe. Rather, it is political stability and social trust that explain differences between West and East.

Headnote

Radical right political parties in Central Eastern Europe have been far less electorally successful than their counterparts in Western Europe. This outcome contradicts an underlying assumption in scholarly work and public opinion of "the East" at a hotbed of nationalist political movements. This paper uses an original comparative dataset to examine the contextual economic, political, and social determinants of electoral support for radical right parties in 27 Western and Eastern European countries from 1991 to 2012. Support for radical right parties in Eastern Europe hinges on a different set of factors than in the West. The findings show that the commonly cited factors, such as economic development, immigration, and types of electoral institutions, do not explain cross-national differences in electoral support for the radical right or the difference in electoral support between Eastern and Western Europe. Rather, it is political stability and social trust that explain differences between West and East.

Keywords: radical right parties, Eastern Europe, voting.

Introduction

In the last three decades, Western Europe has undergone a "Right turn" in politics.2 The emergence of popularly supported radical right parties is evidence of a shift to the Right in political attitudes (Betz 2003; Hainsworth 2000, 2008; Lubbers et al. 2002; Mudde 2007; Norris 2005). Aside from the Greens, the radical right "party family" is the only new addition to the European political space since World War II. Scholars initially paid little attention to radical right parties or dismissed them as "single issue parties" that would quickly fade away (Hainsworth 2000; Mudde 1999). Far from fading away, however, the presence of a radical right party in national parliaments has now become the norm rather than the exception across Western Europe (Bale 2003).

Scholars examining radical right parties' electoral fortunes have focused on case studies of countries with particularly successful radical right parties, such as France or Austria, or on comparative studies seeking to explain variation in support for radical right parties in Western European countries (Art 2006, 2011; Arzheimer and Carter 2006; Van der Brug, Fennema and Tillie 2005; Carter 2005; Gibson 2002; Givens 2005; Norris 2005; Schain et al. 2002). By focusing on a limited set of factors - economic downturns, electoral systems, and immigration, or what can be called the "usual suspect" variables - comparative studies have neglected to acknowledge the role of other factors that could explain differences in support. In addition, scholars have given surprisingly little attention to examining factors that might support radical right parties in the post-socialist Eastern European context (but see Bustikova 2009; Minkenberg 2002; Rose and Munro 2003). In sum, scholarly focus on the electoral success of radical right parties in Western European countries overlooks a puzzling paradox: namely, "why no the East?"

When compared to Western Europe, radical right parties in Eastern Europe have not been nearly as successful at amassing popular support (see Figure 1). This has been the case despite economic and political factors that would seemingly have facilitated a turn right: periods of high unemployment, economic stagnation, and proportional electoral systems that are more favourable to marginal challenger parties. Despite these predisposing factors, post-Socialist Eastern European countries did not become the perfect "breeding ground" for radicalization (Mudde 2007).

This paper examines the effect of economic, political, and societal factors on electoral support for radical right parties in 27 European countries over 22 years of national parliamentary elections, from 1990 to 2012. It sets out to answer two research questions. First, do changes in the standard contextual factors - the "usual suspects" - economic decline, high unemployment, high immigration, and proportional representation electoral systems - increase support for radical right parties in both Western and Eastern Europe? Second, are the determinants of support for the radical right different in Eastern Europe than in Western Europe?

In the following sections, I first discuss the relationship between radical right parties and nationalism. Support for radical right parties is an indicator of the appeal of nationalism, understood in its extreme exclusionary form of "ethnic nationalism." This is a departure from most studies of radical right parties that do not make a connection between electoral outcomes and theories of nationalism. However, I suggest that increasing support for radical right parties is not just an outcome of aligning economic and political factors. Rather, it is indicative of a broader societal resurgence of ethnic nationalism.

Second, I discuss the paradox of the "backward East" to underscore why scholars had predicted that radical right parties would be particularly successful in Eastern as opposed to Western Europe. Third, I present theoretical explanations for differences in support for the radical right in Europe. To the existing economic and political explanations, I add "social" explanations derived from theories of democracy. In the fourth section, I describe the data and statistical model I use to test the hypotheses from section three. The model is based on a new dataset of 167 parliamentary elections in Western and Eastern Europe. I then present results of the analysis in section five. Finally, I discuss the findings' theoretical implications for explaining differences in radical right support between Western and Eastern Europe.

i Defining the radical right

What defines radical right parties? What is the relationship between radical right parties and nationalism in contemporary Europe? As Mudde (2007, 139) points out, the most striking commonality in the rallying cries of radical right parties is the various take on the slogan, "France for the French!" or "Bulgaria for the Bulgarians!" This ubiquitous motto speaks directly to the distinguishing feature of radical right parties: ethnic nationalism, or the idea that the state exists to promote the interests of the titular ethnicity. In the broadest sense, radical right parties across Western and Eastern Europe share a strong nationalist and anti-establishment ideology with grievances aimed at immigrant or minority populations (Betz 2003; Hainsworth 2000, 2008; Lubbers et al. 2002; Mudde 2000; Norris 2005). Radical right parties' ideological platforms emphasize the imagery of cultural loss-be it language, tradition, or religion- which allows them to fashion themselves as the legitimate heirs to national culture, traditions, values, and history. As ideology, right-wing radicalism's "core element is a myth of a homogenous nation, a romantic and populist ultranationalism directed against the...principles of individualism and universalism" (Minkenberg 2002, 337).

Visions of ethnic nationhood, which determine who belongs and who does not to the national community, have come to define radical right parties' ideologies. More recently, in the case of Western European radical right parties, Euroscepticism has dovetailed with ethnic nationalism in complementary ways. Still, increasing electoral support for radical right parties signifies, at least in part, the sway of nationalist ideas.3 Because an ethnic vision of nationhood is at the core of the radical right's ideology, this cultural core shapes radical right parties' economic and political agendas.

Radical right parties cannot be classified based on economic platforms. Neoliberal economic policies, once the cornerstone of early radical right parties in the 1980s (Kitschelt and McGann 1995), disappeared from radical right parties' platforms in the 1990s (Gibson 2002; Rydgren 2005). Western radical right parties generally dropped neoliberalism from their economic agendas to instead emphasize economic protectionism and redistributive policies, but this new agenda contained one key caveat. In line with the view that ethnic and national belonging are one in the same, radical right parties' platforms advocate extensive social redistribution to the national ethnic majority alone while limiting redistributive efforts to 'unpopular' ethnic groups. The ideological shift from neoliberalism to social protection worked to attract new constituencies for radical right parties in Western Europe. Workers and middle classes turned out to support the radical right agenda, leading to a process of "proletarization" of the radical right electorate in the 1990s (Betz 1994). Workers, the traditional constituency of the Left, continue to be overrepresented among radical right party supporters (Rydgren 2007; Werts et al. 2012).

Much like neoliberal economic platforms, discursive and symbolic connections to the "Old Right" of inter-war fascism progressively disappear as radical right parties attempt to gain a permanent foothold in national politics. Radical right parties in both Western and Eastern Europe have sought to distance themselves from the inter-war legacies of fascism, even while relying on similar symbolism and minority scapegoating rhetoric. For example, in its early years the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) instituted black uniforms for party members, which it has since abandoned. The Hungarian Jobbik party and the Romanian Greater Romania Party also relied on implicit fascist symbolism (uniforms, red and black colours, slightly altered symbolism) but removed overt references from their "front stage" public personas. Softening of discourse is also evident in successful radical right parties' gesturing toward and cooptation of democratic values, which has proven particularly successful when paired with a critique of established political parties. Most radical right parties (with the exception of Switzerland) have the advantage of never having been in power, which provides a standpoint for criticizing established parties and policies (Mudde 1996).

It is, however, important not to overstate the softening of hard-line stances toward immigrants and minorities. In Western Europe, radical right parties target immigrants as unjust recipients of social benefits and offenders - or, at least, not upholders - of cultural traditions. For example, the well-publicized debate in France on Muslim women's use of headscarves was framed as at odds with French laicité (or secularism) in popular and political debates on the issue. This was quickly picked up by the National Front, which accused Muslim immigrants of imposing their values on French society and, who thus, used it as justification for opposing further immigration from non-European countries. While the National Front has softened its stance on immigration from repatriation of all immigrants to deportation of illegal immigrants only, the FN's position that non-white and non-Christian immigrants present a threat to French society has, in fact, hardened. Indeed, in all of Western Europe the imagery of the "Muslim threat" is fodder for radical right parties. In Eastern Europe, where foreign immigration is not as high as in Western Europe, radical right parties use the rhetoric of pure nationhood to target indigenous ethnic minorities, or the "enemies from within" such as the Roma and Jews. Mudde (2007) has referred to Muslims, Roma, and Jews as the "special enemies," because these groups are consistently used as scapegoats for a wide range of social problems.

Eastern Europe differs from Western Europe on another key aspect, which underscores the importance of understanding radical right parties in terms of cultural ideologies. The legacy of state socialism has made the traditional LeftRight political spectrum murky in Eastern Europe, where successor communist parties are still active and receive a consistent, though minor, share of the vote (Grzymala-Busse 2002; Kuzio 2008). Whereas in Western Europe, communist or far left parties are progressive and culturally liberal, in Eastern Europe, they are reactionary and culturally conservative. Thus, on the far left, communist parties draw on the legacy of the Soviet era to advocate for a return to law and order, stricter moral guidelines, and extensive social spending. On the far right, parties advocate for the exact same policies but, importantly, they add an ethnic vision of national belonging (Minkenberg 2002). Because of the similarity in economic and social platforms, radical right parties and communist successor parties often cooperate and become strange bedfellows (Ishiyama 1998)-an outcome that is almost unimaginable in the West

To summarize, radical right parties' economic and social policy platforms have changed drastically over time, but a core vision of ethnic nationalism continues to drive their political ideologies in both Western and Eastern Europe. For this reason, radical right parties can be treated as the organizational carriers of ethnic nationalism and support for radical right parties can be interpreted as evidence for the ideology's increasing appeal.

2 THE PARADOX OF THE "BACKWARD" EAST

As Figure 1 shows, radical right parties have been more successful in Western than in Eastern European countries. Why is this surprising? In this section, I discuss how several influential studies in history, political science, and sociology predicted the opposite outcome. The stark difference in electoral support for the radical right between West and East complicates long standing assumptions regarding the so-called backwardness of Eastern Europe and the potential for radicalization in the region.

In 1962, Gerschenkron's essays on economic development defined Russia, and by extension, the socialist Eastern European countries, in terms of economic backwardness (Gerschenkron 1962). Even though Gerschnenkron was using Germany and Russia as an example to make broader theoretical points about the process of industrialization in nineteenth century Europe, his formulations inaugurated the dichotomy, perpetuated by scholars following him, between the "civilized" West and the "backward" East. For example, the dichotomy of western/eastern nationalism, which roughly corresponds to the idea of civic/ethnic nationalism, reflects the often unspoken notion that the West is more developed, not just economically but also culturally. Even as former socialist countries joined the European Union, the notion that individuals from these countries, were not quite the same as their Western neighbours remained in the popular imagination. The name-games during the accession process of Eastern European states illustrate this notion of second-class belonging. Risse (2010) opens his book on European identity with a quote from the Hungarian writer Peter Esterhazy, which aptly captures the sentiment of second-class EU citizenship awarded to the new EU member states:

Once I was an Eastern European; then I was promoted to the rank of Central European...then a few months ago, I became a New European. But before I had the chance to get used to this status - even before I could have refused it - I have now become a non-core European (Risse 2010,1).

As Risse points out, Esterhazy's quote highlights the importance of regional and national identity in "New Europe" (Risse 2010). Yet, it also emphasizes the underlying assumption that Eastern Europe's history and lack of democratic development offsets it from the rest of the European "core" by implying that it remains prone to anti-democratic, radical right political movements.

Since Gerschenkron's early work, other prominent scholars have pointed to the problems of economic backwardness, the tendency toward authoritarianism, democratic underdevelopment, and ethnic tensions plaguing Eastern Europe. Writing shortly after Soviet disintegration, Janos (1993) vividly described the deeply entrenched but misguided vision of Eastern Europe as a sleeping beauty: upon waking, she would be rescued by her Western prince to return to her rightful place. In 1989, when the cracks of the Soviet system became painfully visible, Eastern Europe was far from a pure, sleeping beauty that could return to her previously romantic life. Rather, "the most striking of the historical continuities is the fact that...Eastern Europe has been and remains economically underdeveloped, [a] marginalized part of the European continent" (Janos 1993, 3, 7). Janos goes on to explain how "over the past centuries and decades the degree of this marginalization has tended to increase rather than decrease" due to economic decline, increasing inequality, and ethnic fragmentation. Ethnic tensions within Eastern European states were particularly dangerous, because "the 'higher purpose' of ethnic survival may be used to subvert political systems based on pluralistic principles". In other words, after the fall of state socialism, Eastern Europe was just, if not more, backward than it was before it "went to sleep" under the influence of the Soviet Union in the mid-twentieth century.

Howard's (2003) study on the development of civil society in Eastern Europe meticulously examined how post-Communist societies lagged behind on every measure of civic engagement and participation in the 1990s. Howard starts with the assumption that a well-developed public sphere between the state and the family is generally necessary for a well functioning democracy. Yet, he goes on to show how post-Communist European democracies have remarkably low and declining levels of membership in voluntary organizations. According to Howard, weak civil societies in the post-Communist world are a result of the lingering distrust of communist organizations, the prominence of friendship networks that serve as disincentive for joining formal organizations, and the widespread disillusionment with the rate of political and economic progress after Soviet collapse. These factors have pulled citizens away from participation in the public sphere. While Howard insists that a civic culture could be developed with the right political institutions, the overall prospect for civic and, by extension, democratic, development seems grim.

Howard's study feeds into broader theories of the relationship between civic participation, social trust, and democratic development. Kornhauser (1959, 99) described "mass societies" as particularly at risk for radicalization. According to Kornhauser, mass societies are characterized by a collection of atomized individuals who are disconnected from political life and who do not participate in a variety of associations that cut across socio-economic lines. The lack of a "multiplicity of associations and affiliations," as Kornhauser called it, opens individuals to manipulation by elites who are able to aggregate the atomized masses and direct their frustrations toward a radical political goal. The postCommunist states' weak civil societies-characterized by low civic participation, low levels of social trust, and declining membership in voluntary associations-places these states at risk for mass radicalization. Taking Howard's empirical evidence together with Kornhauser's theory of mass society suggests that the combination of a weak civil society, political and economic insecurity, and low levels of social trust facilitates right-wing radicalization in Eastern Europe.

Writing about the mobilization potential for radical right parties in Eastern versus Western Europe, Minkenberg (2002, 336) makes a similarly gloomy prediction: "The resulting strains of economic and political insecurity, especially the uncompleted process of democratization and consolidation of the new regime, provide opportunities for the radical right which present western democracies do not". Minkenberg goes on to qualify this statement by expressing doubt as to whether such movements could be effectively transformed into political parties, ending with a more toned down prediction that "the mobilization potential for the radical right in Eastern Europe seems rather large but not significantly larger than in western democracies" (Minkenberg 2002, 344). Even assuming this more modest prediction, the electoral data in Figure 1 show that the supposedly large mobilization potential for radical right parties has not been realized in Eastern Europe.

The "paradox" of the backward East is that its economic, political, and societal "backwardness" did not lead to a surge in radical right political movements. On the contrary, support for radical right parties, which has perennially been lower than that in Western Europe, has continued to decline in the East while increasing in the West (see Figure 1). Whereas scholars have been predicting disaster for the East, in reality, it is Western Europe that is becoming increasingly radicalized. The task facing researchers is to examine the determinants of electoral support in Europe in general and Eastern Europe in particular.

3 EXPLANATIONSAND HYPOTHESES

Which contextual factors increase support for radical right parties in Western and Eastern Europe? Are the explanatory factors different for the two regions? To answer these questions, this section generates hypotheses, to be tested in a regression analysis, based on three theoretical perspectives: structural strain, institutional politics, and theories of democracy.

3.1 Structural Strain: Economics and Immigration as the Usual Suspects

First, structural strain theories suggest, rather straightforwardly, that broad socio-economic changes contribute to frustration and thus increase the chances for political radicalization. Economic decline and rising immigration are the most common contextual factors for explaining support for radical right parties. The influence of these factors on electoral outcomes is hotly debated in the case of Western Europe but remains largely unexamined for Eastern Europe.

Hypothesis 1: Unemployment and economic decline increase support for radical right parties in both Western and Eastern Europe.

Hypothesis 1 is based on structural strain theory (Smelser 1962) which posits that economic decline strains social relations leading individuals to become frustrated and disconnected from society. As more individuals lose employment, are unable to participate in the labour market because they lack the needed specialized skills, or feel increasing competition, they may seek to express their frustrations wrought by decreases in opportunities (real or perceived) by turning to radical political parties. To capture this state of frustration resulting from socioeconomic change, scholars have also referred to the strain explanation as the "losers of post-industrialism" hypothesis (Mudde 2007; Rydgren 2007). The terminology underscores that radical right parties have a greater opportunity for garnering support when larger parts of the population are losing out from structural changes beyond their control, because it is at this point that individual grievances could be compelled to find political expression.

At the individual level, studies have found support for the "losers of postindustrialism" argument: manual workers, the unemployed, and people with lower educational attainment are more likely to vote for a radical right party (Lubbers et al. 2002; Arzheimer and Carter 2006). Wert et al. (2012, 11) find that "income level does not significantly affect radical right-wing voting after controlling for other individual characteristics". At the aggregate level, however, the evidence is less clear. For example, the Austrian radical right party, Freiheitliche Partei Österreich (FPÖ) enjoyed its highest levels of support during a period of low unemployment and tapering immigration (Art 2006). Looking specifically at unemployment, some studies of Western Europe find a positive correlation between unemployment levels and support for radical right parties (Jackman and Volpert 1996) and others a negative one (Lubbers et al. 2002; Knigge 1998; Arzheimer and Carter 2006). A few studies examining economic change and electoral outcomes for the radical right find no clear relationship (Bréchon and Mitra 1992; Westle and Niedermayer 1992).

Whereas in Western Europe, the decline of industry and welfare state retrenchment produced "losers of post-industrialism," in Eastern Europe the post-socialist transition produced "losers of transition" (Heilman 1998; Tucker, Alexander and Berinksy 2002). As in Western Europe, the "losers of transition" are those individuals whose skills became obsolete in the new socio-economic order, who relied heavily on the generous public safety net, and who, as a consequence, can be a potential electoral constituency for radical right and successor communist parties (Ishiyama 1998). In some countries, such as Russia in the 1990s, cooperation between communist and radical-right parties was an effective strategy benefiting the former. It remains to be tested, however, if economic decline in the post-socialist period benefitted the radical right exclusively.

In addition to economic decline, immigration is another type of "strain" factor that places pressure on the native population. In an extension of structural strain theory, ethnic competition theory proposes that ethnic groups with common economic interests see themselves as competing for economic resources (Coser 1956; Levine and Campbell 1972). The entrance of new ethnic groups into the labour market presents a perceived threat to the native population, particularly if the new comers are so-called "visible" minorities, which is often the case in Western Europe, where Turkish and North African Muslims make up some of the largest immigrant groups. Because immigrants often compete for manual or lower income service jobs, they become the natural scapegoats for the lack of economic opportunities among already precariously situated sectors of the population. The "immigrant threat" is equally powerful whether it is real or perceived.

Radical right parties across Western and Eastern Europe have picked up on the rhetoric of the immigrant threat by consistently linking immigrants to job shortages and high unemployment (Jackman and Volpert 1996). The National Front set the precedent for making the link between unemployment and immigration in the 1980s, when Le Pen, then the leader of France's National Front, coined such slogans as: "Two million immigrants are the cause of two million French people out of work'' (Mitra 1988). Le Pen's strategy of directly blaming immigrants for unemployment has since been copied by virtually every radical right party across Europe (Mudde 2007). Even in Eastern Europe, where immigration rates are on average lower than in the West, radical right parties' anti-immigrant discourse directly blames immigrants and indigenous minorities for shortages of economic opportunity and cultural loss. And while empirical evidence does not support the claim that higher immigration causes higher unemployment or that it negatively effects wages (Borjas 1995; Golder 2003b), the radical right has utilized this simple-albeit false-logic to effectively to construct a powerful frame that speaks to potential supporters. Indeed, previous studies have shown that immigration was one of the main reasons why voters said they supported a radical right party (Golder 2003a; Lubbers and Scheepers 2002; Mitra 1988).

Hypothesis 2: High numbers of immigrants increase support for radical right parties, but the effect of immigration is lower in Eastern Europe alone.

One implication of ethnic competition theory is that in countries where there are large numbers of immigrants, voters are more likely to support radical right parties. Yet, evidence on the relationship between immigration and support for radical right parties is inconsistent. Some studies of Western Europe have found a positive correlation between high immigration rates and radical right support (Knigge 1998; Gibson 2002; Lubbers et al. 2002), while others have found no relationship (Kitschelt and McGann 1995; Norris 2005). With a small number of cases, there are too many outliers to make a compelling argument: Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands have been high immigration countries with low long-term support for radical right parties. On the other hand, Austria and Finland are low immigration countries with highly successful radical right parties (Art 2011). Even studies examining subnational immigration effects by electoral districts have been inconclusive (Mudde 1999). For example, comparing districts in Austria, France, and Germany, Givens (2002) found that radical right parties received higher support in districts with a high percentage of foreigners in Austria and France but not in Germany. The methodological problem with district level comparisons is that detailed data on district voting and immigration rates are not available in all Western European counties and in almost none of the Eastern European countries.

For the case of Eastern Europe, the relationship between immigration and support for radical right parties has not been systemically examined even at the national level. Lack of comparable immigration data, especially at the local level, is one reason for this, but the main reason for the absence is the general assumption that immigration is a non-issue in Eastern Europe. Rather, the proportion of ethnic minorities is thought to be more important in Eastern European countries (Mudde 2007). However, as I discuss in the following section, due to the nature of ethnic heterogeneity measures, which are assumed to be slow moving variables that do not change over a twenty-year period, including these measures in an analysis with a longitudinal dependent variable is problematic. In one of the most comprehensive recent studies to examine countries in both Western and Eastern Europe, Werts et al. (2012) found that immigration has a positive effect on an individual's propensity to vote for a radical right party across all countries but the percentage of ethnic minorities does not. While the study only included five Eastern European countries and examined effects on an individual's propensity to vote for the radical right as opposed to actual electoral outcomes, the results suggest that immigration may indeed be an important explanatory variable across all of Europe, but the effect of immigration may be lower in Eastern Europe.

3.2 Political Factors: Electoral Systems and Political Stability

Second, theories of institutional politics emphasize how the structure of electoral systems can facilitate or deter support for radical right parties. The usual comparison is between majoritarian and proportional electoral systems.4 Proportional systems privilege small parties by allowing any political party that reaches an electoral threshold in popular support to have representation in parliament: between three and five percent in most countries. On the other hand, a majoritarian electoral system disadvantages small parties by allocating votes based on a winner-take-all system. Whereas proportional representation systems facilitate multi-partism, majoritarian single-member district systems facilitate a two party system (Duverger 1954).

Hypothesis 3: Proportional electoral systems favour radical right parties across all countries.

Political instability can contribute to the success of radical right parties by providing an opening in the political opportunity structure (Arzheimer and Carter 2006). Political opportunity structure is a broad concept that refers to the formal institutional factors and configuration of resources that facilitate or deter emerging political movements. Kitschelt (1986, 58) defines political opportunities as "specific configurations of resources, institutional arrangements and historical precedents for social mobilization, which facilitate the development of protest movements in some instances and constrain them in others." During times of institutional change, resources shift to previously marginal political groups (McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly 2001), supporters of the mainstream may become disillusioned if they do not see their political parties addressing key grievances (Kitschelt and McGann 1995), and social unrest increases political instability (Alesina and Perotti 1996). Political instability is evidenced by outbreaks of political violence, civil unrest, and frequent changes in governance (World Bank 2012). During highly unstable political times, established parties are weakened, and the radical right has the greatest opportunity to breakthrough with alternative solutions and ideologies.

Greece is a telling example of how political instability facilitates electoral support for radical-right parties. In the 2010 parliamentary elections, the radical right Golden Dawn party received almost seven percent of the popular vote at the national level. Such unprecedented support for the radical right was driven by the Greek government's inability to address the 2008 economic crisis that sent the Greek economy into recession (Angouri and Wodak 2014). As high-ranking officials, including the Prime Minister, resigned, the established parties lost legitimacy and Greek citizens organized mass anti-government protests. Taking advantage of this politically unstable moment, the Golden Dawn swooped in with its anti-immigrant and anti-mainstream message to win the largest share of support for a radical right party in Greece's democratic history.

It remains to be tested whether Greece's situation was anomalous or if political instability facilitates increasing support for the radical right. Given Eastern Europe's volatile post-socialist transition and the so-called "Color Revolutions" in the 1990s, political instability could have a greater effect on electoral support for radical right parties in Eastern than Western Europe.

Hypothesis 4: Political instability increases support for radical right parties across all countries but has a greater effect in Eastern than in Western Europe.

3.3 Social Factors: Civic Participation and Social Trust

A contribution of the current paper is to move beyond economic and political institutional theories to examine how social factors - trust and civic participation - affect support for radical right parties. Historical studies of interwar fascism (Berman 1997; Riley 2005, 2010) find that high civic participation and active networks of civic associations can foster support for fascist parties in Germany, Italy, and Spain. Classical theories of democracy, however, point to the opposite: high civic participation and the high social trust that it produces deters support for radical movements (both left and right) by forming the basis of liberal democracy (Howard 2003; Putnam 1993; Tocqueville 1988). The relationship between civic engagement and trust, on the one hand, and voting for radical right parties, on the other hand, has not been fully examined in the contemporary post-1991 period (but see Coffé, Heyndels and Vermeir 2007 for an analysis of local voting for radical right parties in the Netherlands).

Contemporary Western and Eastern European differ on the civic engagement and trust among citizens (Pichler and Wallace 2007; Rueschemeyer, Rueschemeyer and Wittrock 1998). Whereas Pichler and Wallace (2007) point to the regional diversity of "social capital regimes" that distinguish the more informal social networks in Eastern Europe from the formal civic associationism of Western European countries, the main distinguishing factor between West and East is the low level of participation and trust among the latter (Howard 2003; Letki 2004). This difference between West and East is important for understanding processes of democratization in the two regions. But, the thesis that without civic groups to serve as the Tocquevillian "schools of democracy" and foster social trust, citizens are left exposed to mass radicalization, remains to be empirically tested for the case of radical right parties.

Hypothesis 5: Low civic participation and lack of trust lead to higher success for the radical right

4 Data and model design

This study uses an original dataset to examine voting trends for radical right parties in national parliamentary elections in 27 countries: 16 are in Western Europe (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom) and 11 are in Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Ukraine). These countries represent all democracies in Europe including both EU and non-EU member states, except Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, and Malta, which are outliers in terms of size and income.5

To classify parties as "radical right," classifications in secondary literature (Bakker et al. 2012; Bustikova 2009; Lubbers et al. 2002; Mudde 2007; Ramet 2010; Rose and Munro 2003) were compared with two databases: the Manifesto Project Database (MPD) that classifies European parties into party families based on parties' platforms from 1945 to 2012 (Volkens et al. 2012)6 and Benoit and Laver's (2006) expert panel survey that classifies parties based on expert opinions. Table 1 lists the parties examined in each country and the number of national parliamentary elections per country from 1990 to 2012.

Included in the analysis are countries without an active radical right party (Ireland and Spain) and election years when no radical right party was represented. Whereas most studies exclude countries and election without an active radical right party, doing so biases the analysis and overestimates the effect of the explanatory variables. Excluding cases with a zero on the dependent variable introduces selection bias, because countries where conditions may deter the radical right are systematically missing. However, including the zero observations can also be problematic because it assumes that the explanatory variables have no effect on support for the radical right (Jackman and Volpert 1996). As is discussed in the following section, a solution to the selection bias and zero coding problem is to use maximum likelihood estimators (Golder 2003a).

Dependent Variable

The dependent variable (Pvote) is the percent of the popular vote received by all radical right parties in a parliamentary election. Electoral results are from the Norwegian Social Science Data Services European Election Database (NSD 2012). The NSD collects national electoral data for all European countries starting in 1990. In years when more than one radical right party participated in the parliamentary election, the vote is pooled. The total number of parliamentary elections across 27 counties and 22 years is 167 (n=167).

Independent Variables

To test the five hypotheses identified in the previous section, I collected data on economic, political, and social indicators for each country and year. Strain theory suggests that economic decline strengthens support for radical right parties (Hypothesis 1). Economic decline is captured by two measures: GDP per capita and unemployment. Data on GDP per capita is from the World Bank Development Indicators dataset and is adjusted for inflation using the purchasing power parity (PPP) method and collected on an annual basis (World Bank 2012). Unemployment data are also reported annually by the World Bank and measure as percent unemployed of the total labour force.

Ethnic competition theory suggests that high numbers of immigrants in a country can lead individuals to votes for radical right parties, because immigrants are perceived as a threat to economic opportunities (Hypothesis 2). Immigration is measured as the stock of migrants as a percent of the total population. The World Bank reports these figures every five years (1990,1995, 2000, 2005, 2010). Because the frequency of data collection is consistent and comparable across all countries, it is possible to extrapolate values for the missing years in between collected data points using linear (OLS) techniques.

Arguably, immigration can be measured in different ways. Previous studies have used the number of asylum seekers in a country, percentage of foreign born, number of refugees, annual immigration rates, and the number of ethnic minorities (see Wert et al. 2012 for discussion). However, due to the large number of countries and the long time span, other measures of immigration are not available for all countries and all years. Measures of ethnic heterogeneity come from Alesina et al.'s (2003) dataset of "ethnic fractionalization," which is based on all the existing measures (CIA, World Directory of Minorities, plus others) and provides a value per country that is standardized and comparable. In this study, ethnicity (like gender or race) is treated as a slow-moving variable that changes very incrementally over a 20 year time period. Political institutional theory suggests that the type of electoral system and the stability of political institutions effects support for radical right parties (Hypotheses 3 and 4).

Political system is coded as a categorical variable where l=Majoritarian, 2=Proportional, and 3=Mixed. The data are from Bormann and Golder's (2013) Democratic Electoral Systems Dataset, which collects extensive information on electoral systems in 200 countries from 1946 to 2011. Political stability is and index measure of political stability and absence of violence/terrorism as defined by the World Bank Worldwide Governance Indicators. The estimator "captures perceptions of the likelihood that the government will be destabilized or overthrown by unconstitutional or violent means, including politicallymotivated violence and terrorism" (World Bank 2011). The index ranges from - 2.5 (highly unstable) to 2.5 (highly stable). These data are collected from 1996 to 2011. Measures prior to 1996 are not available, which results in dropped observations on the dependent variable when political stability is included in the model. It is not possible to extrapolate values for the early years because at least two data points are needed (start and end point). Still, despite this limitation, the World Bank stability index is the best available comparable measure given the years and number of countries included.

To test the effect of civic participation and trust on voting for the radical right (Hypothesis 5), data were collected from the three waves of the World Values (WVS) and European Values (EVS) Surveys (compiled into an integrated data set by GESIS) conducted in 1990/1991, 1999/2000, and 2008. Data points for the missing years are imputed linearly. Civic participation is the percent of respondents in each country who say they participate in at least one voluntary organization.7 The standard WVS and the EVS ask respondents the following question in each survey wave: "Do you belong to any of the following organizations?" followed by a list of voluntary organizations such as environmental groups, youth group, labour unions, animal rights groups, etc. Respondents are asked to mark all organizations to which they belong but also have the option of selecting "none." This "none" category captures overall participation by subtracting the percentage of respondents who claim to not belong to any voluntary organization from 100. This measure shows a general tendency of civic engagement as opposed to choosing an arbitrary cut-off (e.g. percentage of respondents belonging to more than one versus more that two organizations).

Trust measures the percentage of respondents in the WVS/EVS data who select "yes" to the question "Do you think most people can be trusted?" As with civic participation, gap years are linearly imputed.

In addition to the above variables, a dummy variable for Eastern Europe is included in the full models (Eastern Europe = 1) and country dummies for all 27 countries. Table 2 shows summary statistics and data sources for all the variables in the analysis. Table 3 displays the correlation matrix for all the variables in the analysis. Some independent variables appear highly correlated. In particular, trust and civic participation (r=.74) and trust and GDP (r=.70). As discussed in the previous section, it is not surprising, and rather expected, that civic participation and generalized trust would be positively correlated. Previous studies have also found that trust and wealth are positively related (Howard 2003). To ensure that these correlations do not introduce multicollinearity into the analysis, I examined the variance inflation factor (VIF) of each variable, which indicates the percentage of variation in the independent variable that is explained by the other independent variables. Fox (2008) suggests that VIF values around 10 indicate high multicollinearity. All the variables in the analysis showed a VIF of three or under, which means collinearity does not bias the estimates.

Model description

Most studies examining electoral support for radical right parties exclude countries and elections where such parties garnered no electoral support (Anderson 1996; Givens 2002; Knigge 1998). The problem with this approach is that it focuses only on success cases, and thus introduces bias into the model by over- or underestimating the effect of the independent variables. In other words, the independent variables could be systematically related to the success of radical right parties. Jackman and Volpert (1996) and Golder (2003a, 2003b) recognized that because in many instances radical right parties garner no electoral support or are not represented, the dependent variable is leftcensored at zero. "Because the dependent variable is left-censored in this way, employing ordinary least squares (OLS) carries the risk of generating biased and inconsistent estimates, the magnitude of the bias hinging on the ratio of censored to uncensored observations" (Jackman and Volpert 1996, 513). To adjust for this error, previous studies have used maximum-likelihood estimation that takes into account the probability of being observed - the tobit model (Golder 2003a, 2003b; Jackman and Volpert 1996; Knigge 1998).

Following previous studies, I estimate a tobit model, which employs maximum likelihood estimation for left-censored variables. The estimators from the model can be interpreted as in a linear OLS regression (King 1994), where the "estimated coefficients represent the marginal effect of the independent variables on the underlying support for extreme right parties" (Golder 2003a, 449).8 In a review of the literature on sample selection bias and techniques for adjustment, Winship and Mare (1992) point out that additional adjustment techniques may be too restrictive for smaller samples. The Heckman estimator (Heckman 1979) is commonly used as an estimator in tobit models. The Heckman is a more restrictive version of the generalized tobit model: the estimator assumes that the expected errors of the censored observations are normally distributed. When the normality assumption does not hold, "the maximum likelihood estimates may be worse than simply using the observed sample mean" (Winship and Mare 1992, 342). Furthermore, even if the normality assumption holds, the Heckman estimator may not improve the mean square error of OLS estimates of slope coefficients in small samples" (Stolzenberg and Relies 1990). Because the number of observations is relatively small (N=106 in Models 3-4 in Table 4), the Heckman estimator (or a two step tobit) is not appropriate here.

The second model specification is a pooled cross-sectional time-series design. The dependent variable (support for radical right parties 1990-2012) is longitudinal but the number of observations is too small for panel techniques with a large number of observations per panel and per cluster. In the dataset, there are five to eight elections (observations) per country, which is too small for longitudinal panel analysis. To control for country heterogeneity, I include country dummy variables to run a fixed effects model.

5 Discussion of results

Table 4 shows the results of four Tobit regressions on the voteshare (pvote) received by radical right parties in Europe from 1990 to 2012. The 27 country dummies are included (not shown), and standard errors are in parentheses. Model 1 includes all 27 countries (Austria is the reference category for Models 1-4) and tests the effect of the "usual suspect" variables: economic factors, measured as GDP per capita and unemployment, and immigration, measured as the proportion of migrants as a percent of the total population in each country, as well as a dummy variable for Eastern Europe.9 As Model 1 shows, immigration and the Eastern Europe dummy have a significant effect on voting for the radical right Economic factors do not have an effect that is significantly different from zero on the vote share received by radical right parties in Europe. Whereas the coefficient on unemployment is positive, as predicted in Hypothesis 1, the coefficient on GDP per capita is also positive, which is the opposite of strain theory's expectation.

Economic factors are insignificant in the three models that include data for all European countries. Hypothesis 1 can thus be rejected: economic decline does not contribute to increasing support for radical right parties.10

The significant negative coefficient on the Eastern Europe dummy indicates what is already clear in the descriptive data: Eastern European countries have less successful radical right parties that Western European countries. If a country is located in Eastern Europe, then popular support for radical right parties is 14.4 percentage points lower than if that country is in Western Europe. Because there is a significant difference between Western and Eastern Europe, Model 4 includes interaction effects between the Eastern Europe dummy and other independent variables (discussed in the following sections).

Immigration has a significant positive effect on support for radical right parties: in Model 1, the coefficient on the immigration variable (1.06) indicates that for every percent increase in the proportion of migrants in a country, support for radical right parties increases by a similar amount This effect decreases slightly but remains significant once political (Model 2) and societal (Model 3) factors are taken into account. The evidence provides support for Hypothesis 2: higher immigration increases support for radical right parties in both Western and Eastern Europe, but as the results in Models 4 and 5 show, its effect is limited.

Model 2 adds political factors: electoral system type and stability.11 Both political variables are highly significant Hypothesis 3 proposed that majoritarian electoral systems lower electoral support for small challenger parties, including radical right parties. The negative coefficient on both proportional and mixed categories indicates the opposite: majoritarian electoral systems are more likely to facilitate successful radical right parties than proportional or mixed systems. This result, while counterintuitive, is due to the low variation on the proportional system variable: only 10 percent of all included elections took place under a majoritarian rule system, while 72.5 took place under a proportional system, and 17.5 percent under a mixed system. Only four countries currently have or have had a majoritarian electoral system: UK, Austria, France, and Ukraine from 1990 to 1994. Two of these countries, Austria and France, have the most electorally successful radical right parties in all of Europe. As a result, the political system variable essentially becomes a dummy control variable for Austria and France.. Hypothesis 3 cannot be rejected or accepted: the effect of electoral system types is unclear, but the fact that countries with majoritarian electoral systems also have the most successful radical right parties suggests that differences in electoral systems cannot explain difference in electoral outcomes for the radical right, at least not at the country level. This finding casts doubt on the importance of national electoral rules in determining electoral outcomes for radical right parties in particular and challenger parties in general.

More interesting, however, is the effect of political stability: lower stability (or instability) increases electoral support for the radical right. The effect is considerable (the coefficient is -5.54) but should be interpreted relative to the variable range. Stability is an index variable ranging from -2.5 to 2.5, but as Table 2 shows, the minimum value for the countries in this analysis is -.51 and the maximum is 1.67. A two point increase in stability is huge: it is the difference between the most unstable (Ukraine in 1994) and the most stable country in Europe (Finland in 2002). In terms of support for radical right parties, a two point change on political stability is equal to approximately 11 percentage points in support for radical right parties. This is the difference between a very unstable nation (higher support) and a very stable one (lower support). Political stability is also correlated with a country's economic wealth (r=.51 in Table 3). But GDP cannot explain the variation in the dependent variable, whereas political stability does. The stability variable is capturing something more than just differences in wealth. This is strong support for Hypothesis 4: unstable political situations facilitate opportunities for radical right parties to increase support.

Model 3 includes the social factors: civic participation and trust12 The effect of immigration, the Eastern Europe dummy, stability, and political system remain significant in Model 3. The coefficients on civic participation and trust are not statistically significant The effect, while not significant, is in the expected direction (Hypothesis 5): lower civic participation and trust increase support for the radical right. But because there are significant differences between Western and Eastern Europe, as evidenced by a significant coefficient on the Eastern Europe variable, there is reason to expect that the explanatory variables may have different regional effects between West and East.

Model 4 introduces two interaction terms to account for different effects between Western and Eastern Europe. The two interactions shown are the only statistically significant interaction effects (others not shown). The negative coefficient on the EE dummy*stability variable is highly significant and large (10.2). A one point increase in stability (a large change given the scale), decreases support for radical right parties in Eastern Europe by 10.2 percentage points as compared to Western Europe. Political stability has a much greater effect of reducing support for radical right parties in Eastern than in Western Europe. Calculating the difference between the most and least stable (most stable = 1.2, least stable = -.5) Eastern European countries yields a difference of approximately 18 percentage points on the dependent variable. This means that an unstable political situation is much more likely to help radical right parties win votes in Eastern than in Western Europe.13 Whereas Eastern European countries are on average less stable (mean = .56) than Western European countries (mean = .98), political stability has greater explanatory power in Eastern Europe.14 The result confirms the prediction made in Hypothesis 4: political instability increases support for radical right parties in Eastern Europe more than in Western Europe. For Eastern European radical right parties, a politically unstable environment presents an electoral opportunity.

The most interesting result in Model 4 is the effect of the trust interaction term on support for radical right parties. The coefficient on the EE dummy*trust is negative and statistically significant (-1.07). While the coefficient is small in comparison to the stability interaction variable, the scale of the trust variable is smaller as well. For example, a 10 percent increase in trust, decreases electoral support for radical right parties by 10.7 percent in Eastern Europe versus Western Europe. Considering that support for radical right parties in Eastern Europe is lower than in the West, this is a sizeable effect. Levels of trust are correlated with wealth (see Table 3), but whereas GDP per capita does not explain any of the variation in the dependent variable, trust does. The finding supports Hypothesis 5 and theories of democracy: lower levels of trust contribute to support for radical right parties more in Eastern than in Western Europe.

In addition, once the regional interaction terms are included in Model 4, the effect of immigration is no longer statistically significant.15 Immigration (measured as a stock of migrants) has on average been slightly higher in Western Europe (mean=9%) than in Eastern Europe (mean=7.1%) between 1990 and 2012. Thus, while immigration may contribute to higher support for radical right parties in general, it cannot explain differences in support between West and East.

Model 5 limits the analysis to Eastern European countries. The results confirm the findings in Model 4: political stability has a highly significant effect on voting for radical right parties and the coefficient is almost identical (-10.2 in Model 4 and -10.5 in Model 5). Trust has a significant and negative effect on voting for the radical right in Eastern Europe: increasing social trust decreases support for radical right parties. A difference between Models 4 and 5 is the significance of unemployment in Eastern Europe, but the negative effect is in the opposite of the expected direction: increasing unemployment decreases support for radical right parties. However, given that unemployment did not produce significant effects in any of the previous models, this result should be taken cautiously. The effect, even if significant, is relatively small. The result indicates a potential route for future research: some economic indicators could have significant effects in Eastern but not in Western European countries. The same model (not shown) was run for Western European countries only but produced no significant effects.

In sum, the results of the regression analysis in Models 1-5 answer the two sets of questions posed at the beginning of the article. The first set of questions posed in this article asked if the "usual suspect" factors - economic decline, high unemployment, majoritarian electoral systems, and high immigration - increase support for radical right parties in Western and Eastern Europe. As the findings show, over the last two decades, economic factors have not influenced voting for radical right parties in Western or Eastern Europe. Individuals support or reject radical right parties irrespective of the economic conditions in their countries.

Contrary to political institutional theories, the findings show that electoral system types do not make or break radical right parties. As democratic systems across Europe converge on the proportional model of representation at the national level, the variable loses explanatory value. There is some evidence that electoral rules are more important at the local or district level (Bréchon and Mitra 1992), because radical right parties' support tends to be concentrated in specific regions. This is true of the National Front, the Lega Nord, and Jobbik. But what one gains in the depth of district level comparison, one loses in the breadth of national comparison. Future research examining local electoral outcomes could extend this hypothesis to more Eastern European cases, where such research is still lacking.

Immigration, another commonly cited factor for increasing support for antiimmigrant radical right parties, influences support for radical right parties, but the effect is limited. Higher immigration increases support for radical right parties in Europe only in so far as there are no additional controls for differences between West and East. Once stability and trust are added as interaction terms to account for the different effects of these factors in Eastern Europe, immigration loses explanatory power (see Model 4). As previous studies suggest, higher immigration may be a necessary but not sufficient precondition for successful radical right parties (Art 2011; Rydgren 2007).

To address the second question-are the determinants of support for radical right parties different in Eastern Europe? - the answer is "yes." First, political stability has a greater effect on support for radical right parties in Eastern Europe. Whereas higher stability decreases support for radical right parties in all European countries, the effect is much greater in Eastern Europe. When the governing regime is perceived as unstable in an Eastern European country, a radical right party is more likely to win support than in a Western European country. Second, the social factors examined here (civic participation and trust) have no influence on radical right support across Europe (Model 3). However, in Eastern Europe, lower trust does increase support for the radical right.

East Europeans trust less than their Western counterparts: on average, only 23.3 percent of East Europeans say that most people can be trusted, compared to 43.2 percent of West Europeans, but support for radical right parties is lower in Eastern Europe than in the West. How can this be reconciled? The evidence presented here suggests that just as with political stability, generalized trust matters much more in the East than in the West: small changes in trust affect the electoral fate of radical right parties in Eastern but not in Western Europe. In short, if Eastern Europeans trusted more, then they would support radical right parties less. In Western Europe, however, higher trust does not decrease support for radical right parties. Western Europeans support radical right parties irrespective of how much they trust each other. These findings point to the conclusion that political stability and social trust explain the difference in radical right voting in Figure 1.

6 Conclusion

Radical right parties receive less electoral support in Eastern Europe than in Western Europe, which contradicts the vision of Eastern Europe as "backward" in terms of democratic development and tolerance. The evidence presented here confirms that support for radical right parties in Eastern Europe hinges on a different set of factors than in the West. One way to interpret the greater effect of political instability in Eastern Europe is to think about perceptions of stability in terms of trust: when individuals are no longer convinced that their governments are capable of protecting them during unstable times, they may turn to more extremist, hard-line political parties. Voters may not be driven to support radical right parties due to economic decline per se, but rather due to how they perceive the ability of their governments to effectively manage the effects of economic crises.

A broader implication of the findings is that radical right parties' "immigrant threat" frame may be particularly powerful in countries where the national government's stability comes under question. A political or economic crisis that undermines the political establishment could present an opportunity for an extremist party. The combination of high immigration and sudden external shock may explain some of the spikes in support for radical right parties in parliamentary elections during and after the 2007-2008 economic crisis in countries like Holland, Greece, France, and Austria. The evidence shows that immigration, while important, is not sufficient for explaining differences in the appeal of ethnic nationalism between East and West. Framing of the immigrant threat during key political opportunities is likely far more important than the reality of immigrant inflows alone.

In Eastern Europe, smaller changes in political stability present greater opportunities for radical right parties, but immigration is not a significant factor of radical right voting. Ethnic conflict between indigenous minorities could be more important for Eastern European countries than immigration: during uncertain political times, political parties that blame ethnic minorities for societal ills could gain traction. Unlike immigrants, who are new visible minorities in the receiving country, indigenous ethnic minorities, such at the Roma in Hungary, live in the same country for generations. The most successful radical right parties in Eastern Europe, such as the Hungarian Jobbik, gain political appeal when they scapegoat ethnic groups as the cause of broader economic and political instability. Because indigenous ethnic group stock does not change dramatically in the short time period examined here, it is difficult to predict when ethnic tension will flare to catapult radical right parties into parliament But during politically unstable moments, a political party that is ideologically willing and organizationally able to mobilize on the "enemy from within" frame will likely do well at the polls.

What do the findings here tell us about the future of European politics and society? In Western Europe, the radical right's cooptation of the immigration issue combined with mainstream political parties' slow response to the immigration debate has provided radical right parties an entry into mainstream politics. The result is that centre-right political parties have found themselves in coalitions with the radical right on more than one occasion or have catered to the radial right's demands (Art 2011). Consequentially, West European politics have shifted to the Right over the past two decades (Bakker et al. 2012), which could have dramatic consequences for the future of the European Union. The influential radical right parties in Western Europe (e.g. FPÖ, FN), while retaining their anti-immigration stance, have also been deeply critical of the EU, calling for secession on more than one occasion. Anti-EU sentiments are reflected in voters' attitudes: overall, Europeans are becoming less convinced that the EU is good for their countries. Since the economic crisis of 2008, Eurosceptic attitudes have proliferated among mainstream political parties as well. These trends could threaten European unity in the years to come.

In Eastern Europe, support for the radical right has remained low, but support for the EU is waning in these countries as well. As these countries become further integrated into EU policies and politics, they may find themselves moving further to the Right and away from the once coveted position of an EU member state. There is evidence, for example, that immigration and Euroscepticism increase support for radical right parties in some Eastern European countries (Werts et al. 2012). As in the West, Eastern Europeans' have become more likely to see themselves in national, as opposed to European, terms, and radical right parties have recently gained support in countries like Hungary and Ukraine. Still, Eastern Europe today is not the backward hinterland that some scholars feared it would become. In terms of popular support for exclusionary ethic nationalism, it is the West that appears more backward. The fear for the "new Europe" is no longer about the integration of the East, but rather the disintegration of the West.

Footnote

2 Calculation of changes in party positions between 1999 and 2010 of the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (Bakker etal. 2012) shows a movement of European parties towards the right.

Footnote

3 An individual may, of course, have other reasons for voting for a radical right party aside from the party's nationalist ideology. For example, one may vote for a radical right party out of protest or disillusionment with the mainstream established parties. However, an individual who has no propensity toward nationalist ideas is not likely to vote radical right Thus, while imperfect, measuring nationalist appeal in terms of electoral outcomes captures a general tendency.

Footnote

4 Studies have also examined the electoral threshold level for parliamentary representation as an explanatory variable, but because my aim is to examine differences in electoral support and not whether a radical right party actually succeeds in entering a parliament, I do not include electoral thresholds in the analysis. In addition, there is very little variation in the electoral threshold for parliamentary representation: the range is three to five percent across almost all Western and Eastern European countries. In Eastern Europe, with the exception of Bulgaria, Slovenia, and Ukraine, which have a four, four and three percent threshold for parliamentary representation, respectively, all other CEE countries have adopted a five percent threshold (Rose and Munro 2003). In place of this threshold variable, I propose that a measure of political stability be added as an explanatory variable, because unstable political periods could present more political opportunities for challenger parties. When the threshold variable was included in the models, it had no statistically significant effect on electoral support.

Footnote

5 Including Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, and Malta did not change the results of the analysis, but because none of the countries have ever had an active radical right party, including the data created more zero values on the dependent variable. Belarus was also excluded because it is not a democracy. Moldova was excluded because of a lack of available data.

6 Available at https://manifestoprojectwzb.eu.

Footnote

7 The WVS and EVS are the most comprehensive and comparable surveys on civic participation, but they are not perfect In 1990/1991, the question was not included in Greece. For Switzerland, data are missing in the first two waves, because the surveys were not conducted.

Footnote

8 For a detailed discussion of Tobit models, see King (1994); Greene (2000); and Sigelman and Zeng (1999).

Footnote

9 For easier interpretation, GDP per capita in the models is scaled down = (GDP per capita/1000). This keeps the values essentially the same but scales the variable for more straight-forward comparison with the other independent variables.

10 I also looked at the effect of changes in GDP and unemployment (coded as a change variable) on the dependent variable, but the results were similarly insignificant.

11 It is important to note that the number of observations drops from 165 to 129, because data for the stability variable is only available from 1996 to 2011, which results in dropped values on the dependent variable.

Footnote

12 As in the two previous models, the reduction in the number of observations (N) in Model 3 is due to missing data on independent variables, in this case trust and civic participation.

Footnote

13 Stability was not significant in a model that restricted the sample to Western Europe only.

14 When comparing two restricted models, one for Western Europe and another for Eastern Europe, the coefficient on stability is -10.5*** (2.19) in Eastern Europe and 3.8 (2.9) for Western Europe (coefficient is not significant). The means are for the entire time period, 1990-2012.

15 An interaction term between immigration and the Eastern Europe dummy was not statistically significant

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