Ethno-nationalist populism and the mobilization of collective resentment 1

Transcription

1 The British Journal of Sociology 2017 Volume 68 Issue S1 Ethno-nationalist populism and the mobilization of collective resentment 1 Abstract Scholarly and journalistic accounts of the recent successes of radical-right politics in Europe and the United States, including the Brexit referendum and the Trump campaign, tend to conflate three phenomena: populism, ethno-nationalism and authoritarianism. While all three are important elements of the radical right, they are neither coterminous nor limited to the right. The resulting lack of analytical clarity has hindered accounts of the causes and consequences of ethno-nationalist populism. To address this problem, I bring together existing research on nationalism, populism and authoritarianism in contemporary democracies to precisely define these concepts and examine temporal patterns in their supply and demand, that is, politicians discursive strategies and the corresponding public attitudes. Based on the available evidence, I conclude that both the supply and demand sides of radical politics have been relatively stable over time, which suggests that in order to understand public support for radical politics, scholars should instead focus on the increased resonance between pre-existing attitudes and discursive frames. Drawing on recent research in cultural sociology, I argue that resonance is not only a function of the congruence between a frame and the beliefs of its audience, but also of shifting context. In the case of radical-right politics, a variety of social changes have engendered a sense of collective status threat among national ethnocultural majorities. Political and media discourse has channelled such threats into resentments toward elites, immigrants, and ethnic, racial and religious minorities, thereby activating previously latent attitudes and lending legitimacy to radical political campaigns that promise to return power and status to their aggrieved supporters. Not only does this form of politics threaten democratic institutions and inter-group relations, but it also has the potential to alter the contours of mainstream public discourse, thereby creating the conditions of possibility for future successes of populist, nationalist, and authoritarian politics. Keywords: Nationalism; populism; authoritarianism; radical-right politics; framing; resonance Bonikowski (Harvard University) (Corresponding author bonikowski@fas.harvard.edu.) VC London School of Economics and Political Science 2017 ISSN print/ online. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 101 Station Landing, Suite 300, Medford, MA 02155, USA on behalf of the LSE. DOI: /

2 S182 Populism has become the favoured label for a constellation of radical rightwing political parties and movements in Europe, and more recently, the United States. Even though this term is typically used as shorthand for a number of interrelated features of the radical right, its frequent use implies that populism is either the most important among these components or that it is most effective at distinguishing radical-right actors from their mainstream counterparts. 2 While convenient, the casual use of populism as an analytical category risks misunderstanding what populism is thereby inhibiting the ability to recognize the phenomenon s causes and consequences and downplaying the other coconstitutive elements of radical-right politics, particularly ethno-nationalism and authoritarianism (Mudde 2007). This article will demonstrate that greater analytical clarity about the meaning and conceptual boundaries of populism, nationalism 3 and authoritarianism not only leads to a more complete theoretical understanding of contemporary radicalism, but also enables systematic inquiry into the basis of support for this ascendant form of politics. In particular, I argue that neither changes in the supply of populist, ethno-nationalist and authoritarian claims nor aggregate trends in the popular attitudes mobilized by such politics sufficiently explain the recent successes of radical-right campaigns. Instead, what is needed is attention to the contextual factors that increase the resonance between perennial discursive frames and pre-existing attitudes. 4 By reorienting future empirical inquiry around the concept of resonance long established in political sociology (Snow and Benford 1988; Schudson 1989) but elaborated in recent work (McDonnell, Bail and Tavory 2017) scholars can gain better analytical purchase on why the potent ideational mix of populism, ethno-nationalism and authoritarianism has rallied large numbers of supporters in established democracies behind a radicalright agenda. 5 The three components of contemporary radical politics More precisely defining the constitutive elements of radical-right politics requires engagement with research traditions that rarely intersect. Populism has been the province of comparative scholars of party politics in Europe and political development in Latin America, while nationalism research has been a primarily historical enterprise, and more recently an object of survey analysis, at the intersection of sociology and political science. Authoritarianism, in turn, has occupied students of European history and the developing world, but less frequently those of contemporary democratic politics. With the emergence of the radical right in Western democracies, however, it is no longer appropriate to think of nationalism and authoritarianism as problems belonging to a bygone era or to geographically distant cases, nor is it reasonable to view populism as confined to the fringes of the European and American political fields. If we are VC London School of Economics and Political Science 2017 British Journal of Sociology 68(S1)

3 Ethno-nationalist populism S183 to grasp the origins and implications of Brexit, Trump, Le Pen, Wilders, Orban or Kaczynski, we must leverage the insights of each of these research traditions without conflating their objects of inquiry. Populism, nationalism and authoritarianism are all relevant in the recent upsurge of radical politics, but they are relevant in analytically distinct ways. Indeed, the coincidence of these three elements was among the most valuable, but also the least appreciated, contributions of Mudde s (2007) classic book on the populist radical right (for elaborations, see Golder 2016; Rooduijn 2014). Mudde argues that nativism is at the core of this emerging party family and that it is its combination with populism and authoritarianism that makes the radical right s political position unique. Yet, most subsequent research has conflated these distinct elements, treating them as part and parcel of a coherent ideology of a predetermined set of parties. Mudde s own reliance on nativism in place of the broader category of nationalism (particularly its exclusionary forms) and his static operationalization of populism stem from his interest in defining a relatively coherent party family rather than analysing the ideational systems that connect party mobilization strategies with the cultural and cognitive orientations of their supporters. This party-driven approach ends up prioritizing the demand side of radical-right politics at the expense of a sociological approach [...] that treat[s] the populist radical right as a passive consequence of macro-level socioeconomic developments, as Mudde critically puts it (2007: 4). Ignoring parties is a mistake, to be sure, but so is reducing all aspects of politics to party ideology. In this paper, I intend to bring back a sociological approach to populism, nationalism and authoritarianism one that takes seriously the cultural content and structural context of political preferences while drawing on the wealth of knowledge about radical-right populism in political science. To that end, I will consider the role of each of the three constitutive elements in fuelling the support for radical-right politics and the consequences they may have when such politics become mainstream. In so doing, I will demonstrate that neither populism nor nationalism is confined to the ideological space occupied by the nexus of nativism, Islamophobia, economic isolationism and welfare chauvinism that has become the hallmark of the radical right. Broadening our understanding of populism and nationalism beyond these ideological confines can help us identify the mechanisms that have contributed to the success of the most exclusionary varieties of these phenomena. Furthermore, I will argue with the support of evidence from the relevant literatures that populism and nationalism are not phenomena in public opinion or political discourse. On the contrary, both have figured prominently on the supply and demand sides of politics for decades, which suggests that their recent political effectiveness must be understood contextually. 6 Specifically, these long-standing political repertoires have gained renewed resonance because of the unique confluence of political, economic, cultural and demographic changes amplified in media and political British Journal of Sociology 68(S1) VC London School of Economics and Political Science 2017

4 S184 discourse that have unfolded in Europe and the United States over the past decade and a half, with deeper roots dating back to the 1970s. By targeting political elites and ethnic, religious and racial minorities, opportunistic political actors on the radical right have been able to mobilize unprecedented support among ethnic majorities experiencing an acute sense of collective status threat, whether actual or perceived. The resulting politics of resentment are not only upending the existing political balance of power within countries typically against established parties but they have the potential to alter the very foundations of the political consensus on which liberal democracies depend. By violating established norms of political practice, radical-right actors are calling into question the integrity of democratic institutions, from judicial autonomy to fair elections. In some cases, such normative threats are accompanied by concrete legal strategies for the authoritarian capture of institutions, as has been the case in Hungary and Poland. It is these long-term consequences of the politics of resentment that are potentially the most dangerous. The interaction between populism, ethno-nationalism, authoritarianism and public anxiety may set into motion dynamic cultural processes that will reshape taken-for-granted political beliefs and erode established institutions, thereby creating future conditions of success for anti-democratic politics. What Is Populism? There is an ongoing debate among political scientists studying Latin America, Western and Eastern Europe, and the United States concerning the most appropriate conceptualization of populism. At issue is whether populism is primarily an ideology, a form of political mobilization, or a discursive frame (Alsanidis 2016; Gidron and Bonikowski 2013; Bonikowski and Gidron 2016b). Yet, despite important differences between these three traditions, there is a fair amount of consensus concerning populism s most central features. Fundamentally, populism is a form of politics predicated on the moral vilification of elites and the veneration of ordinary people, who are seen as the sole legitimate source of political power. The specific elites targeted by populists vary depending on the populists ideological predilections. While elected politicians are often the immediate targets, populism just as often focuses on economic leaders, civil servants and intellectuals, who are seen as exercising undue influence on politics in the pursuit of their own self-interest. Even though populists tend to define the corrupt elite in explicit terms, the definition of the people is often less clear (Rooduijn and Pauwels 2011). In principle, anyone who is not a member of the elite is included in this category, as suggested by the frequent usage of first-person plural and vague references to taxpayers, working people, or simply the people in populist campaigns. At the same time, however, more exclusionary forms of populism that is, VC London School of Economics and Political Science 2017 British Journal of Sociology 68(S1)

5 Ethno-nationalist populism S185 those that infuse populism with ethno-nationalist content often employ more restrictive definitions of the polity, based on ethnic, racial, or religious criteria. In such formulations, which Judis (2016) refers to as triadic populism, it is not only elites who are vilified, but also various scapegoated minority groups, who are seen as having co-opted the elites for their own nefarious ends. It is in contrast with these unwelcome groups that the identity of the true people becomes crystallized. Populism has one more feature around which there is some agreement in the literature: its scepticism toward representative institutions. Because established institutions of the state, such as the courts and legislative bodies, are seen as serving the interests of the elites, populism tends to dismiss them (at least in principle if not in practice) in favour of direct contact between leaders and the populace, typically in the form of rallies, referenda, and other modes of plebiscitarian politics. This tendency contains the potential seeds of authoritarianism, because it suggests that power should be concentrated in the executive, which is seen as the most direct embodiment of the political will of a homogeneous polity. In this respect, populism is seen by some as inherently tied to anti-pluralist politics (M uller 2016). Even though these core characteristics are present in most varieties of populism, scholars disagree about populism s ontological status and the level of analysis at which it should be investigated. The source of the quandary is the observation that populism is not a complete ideology, in the same vein, for instance, as liberalism or conservatism, because it does not offer a coherent theory of state-society relations with substantive implications for how governance and policy problems should be addressed. Moreover, few practitioners of populism identify with the label and there are no intellectual advocates of a populist ideology. Instead, populism is at best an oppositional moral framework, which allows for a forceful critique of particular social groups. The question then becomes whether populism is most appropriately understood as an attribute of parties, politicians, political claims, or relations between voters and their representatives. The answers vary across the three traditions to populism research (Gidron and Bonikowski 2013). For some, populism is a thin-centred ideology: a set of interrelated ideas even if limited in scope and coherence that hang together and express a general orientation toward politics (Mudde 2007). Because it is incomplete as a policy perspective, populism is usually combined with a wide range of thicker ideologies, from socialism to ethno-nationalism. Despite its narrowness, however, populism is a perspective to which political candidates and parties subscribe, and thus, it is in these actors core statements of principles party manifestos, campaign platforms, and so on that populism should be observed. It follows then that populism is understood in this tradition as an essential political trait, so that a party or political candidate is either populist or not. British Journal of Sociology 68(S1) VC London School of Economics and Political Science 2017

6 S186 This perspective is subsumed and elaborated by the mobilization tradition, which locates populism not just in ideas, but also in the manner in which political actors interact with voters. This definition of populism involves not only a binary moral logic, but also a number of additional features, including a personalistic political style typical of charismatic leaders, priority placed on voters unmediated access to political candidates, and attempts to include underrepresented groups in the political process. This approach has been particularly effective in research on Latin American populism (Jansen 2011; Levitsky and Roberts 2011; Weyland 2001). Its portability to other settings, however, has been limited by its thick definition of the phenomenon. Outside Latin America, populism does not always depend on personalistic appeals, charisma, or appeals to marginalized groups. The translation of the concept to Europe and the United States, therefore, require the stripping away of some of its ancillary features specific to Latin American politics. To address the comparative and analytical shortcomings of the ideological and mobilization approaches, I have advocated for a more minimalist conceptualization of populism, one that treats it as a form of political discourse (Bonikowski and Gidron 2016b; for a related approach, see Hawkins 2010; Jagers and Walgrave 2007; Poblete 2015; Rooduijn & Pauwels 2011). From this perspective, populism is a political strategy, a way of formulating political claims that is more likely to be employed by the same actors in some circumstances and not others. Rather than treating populism as a property of parties and candidates, it becomes more useful to measure it at the level of political speeches, or even speech elements. This frees populism from the encumbrance of country-specific attributes and it makes it possible to observe populism s dynamics, that is, the mechanisms that increase the probability that political actors will frame their appeals in populist terms in specific circumstances. We can ask, for example, who typically relies on populist claims (political outsiders), when they are most likely to do it (in early stages of campaigns), and how ideology shapes the content of these claims (they are typically economic on the left and focused on nationalism on the right) (Bonikowski and Gidron 2016a). We can also track populism over time to gain a better understanding of trends in its supply-side prevalence. The discursive approach to populism is parsimonious and flexible and I will rely on it in this paper, but it is not distinctive in one sense: it shares with the other two conceptual approaches a similar answer to the question of what populism is not: it is not a highly structured ideology synonymous with nationalism and illiberal democracy. Some varieties of populism may have affinities with these phenomena and, in practice, may be interconnected with them, but there is no inherent reason why this should be so. It follows then that populism is merely one element in radical-right politics, rather than its defining feature. What is more, the structural logic of populism and the predictors and consequences of its prevalence are not limited to the radical right but are observable VC London School of Economics and Political Science 2017 British Journal of Sociology 68(S1)

7 Ethno-nationalist populism S187 across the full ideological spectrum. The challenge for scholars, therefore, is to identify the unique mechanisms that influence populism itself rather than the ideologies with which populism is sometimes associated. Otherwise, if populism is conflated with nationalism, authoritarianism, conservatism, or any other ideology, it risks becoming an analytically vacuous category. Nationalism: how identity binds radical-right supporters By treating populism as the primary feature of the radical right, commentators imply that populists inevitably favour anti-immigrant policies, see Islam as incompatible with Western values, and reject supranational or federal institutions that ostensibly infringe on the sovereignty of nation-states or subnational regions. As a rough description of an empirical pattern, such claims are not far off the mark. What they miss in terms of analytical clarity, however, is that none of these tendencies are inherent to populism (Rooduijn 2014). Instead, they are hallmark features of ethno-nationalism, a distinct ideational phenomenon that has been as crucial for fuelling support for the radical right as populism itself (Golder 2016; Mudde 2007; Rydgren 2017). Given its importance and frequent misrecognition, the role of nationalism (in general, not solely its exclusionary varieties) as a driving force in politics deserves further theoretical elaboration. Much of the identity-based discourse employed by the radical right is consistent with the definition of ethno-nationalism: the idea that legitimate membership in the nation is limited to those with the appropriate immutable, or at least highly persistent, traits, such as national ancestry, native birth, majority religion, dominant racial group membership, or deeply ingrained dominant cultural traits (Brubaker 1992). That most contemporary democracies do not primarily structure their citizenship and social inclusion regimes around such criteria stands in tension with beliefs held by segments of the public and some of their political representatives. For many individuals, that tension is experienced viscerally as an affront to their collective identity as the true members of the national community. This is often interpreted simply as racism, but doing so misses the multidimensionality of ethno-nationalist views. It is true that they often involve racial ideology, but not only and not always. Nativism, xenophobia, religious intolerance and even misogyny, are equally prominent features of ethno-nationalist conceptions of the nation (which suggests that reducing nationalism to nativism alone, as does Mudde 2007, is problematic as well). Furthermore, these tendencies need not be fully articulated. They are just as likely to take the form of inchoate frustrations with multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism and restrictive linguistic norms, whether experienced directly or in mediated form. Moreover, such sentiments are often mired in class resentments that view progressive cultural change as a self-serving project of professional elites that infringes on the dignity of ordinary working people (typically those British Journal of Sociology 68(S1) VC London School of Economics and Political Science 2017

8 S188 belonging to the dominant ethnic group) (Lamont 2002; Williams 2017). While the class dimension provides a connection between nationalism and populism, it does not make these two phenomena coterminous. It would be a mistake, however, to view ethno-nationalism as an isolated ideology that has recently diffused from the fringe of public discourse to the mainstream. Nationalism is not solely, or even primarily, a radical political movement. It is also a set of cognitive frames through which people perceive their relationship to the nation, with the latter being not only an object of identification, but also a deeply meaningful cultural construct (Bonikowski 2016; Brubaker 2004). Beliefs about the nation s meaning shaped in part by particular perceptions of the nation s past and visions for its future are central to people s sense of self and their connections to others around them. At the dawn of nation-state formation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, nationalist leaders explicitly articulated these ideas as an imperative for political selfgovernance by ostensibly homogeneous cultural communities (Gellner 1983). In established nation-states, however, including contemporary Western democracies, nationalism is more diffuse and subtle, taking on the form of latent dispositions that are only periodically activated as political preferences (Billig 1995; Skey 2011). Whether explicit or implicit, one of the central features of national self-understanding is the question of who legitimately belongs to the nation. Ethno-nationalism provides one answer to this question, by prioritizing ascriptive criteria of membership, whereas other, more inclusive forms of nationalism emphasize more mutable, elective attributes, such as subjective identification with the nation or having respect for the nation s laws and institutions. Importantly, shared understandings of nationhood vary not only between but also within national populations, despite the ubiquity of narratives about distinctive national identities composed of shared values and traditions. Instead, the meaning of the nation is continually contested, often violently. Concerns over social and political inclusion serve as flashpoints for such conflicts, but so do disagreements about the nation s (and the state s) rightful role in the world, as in the US anti-war protests of the 1960s and 2000s. Indeed, historians have documented the existence of multiple conceptions of America, some of which are more exclusionary and others more egalitarian, that are relatively stable in content but vie against each other over time for dominance in the public sphere and the policy domain (e.g., Smith 1997). These oscillations have left behind durable imprints on citizenship law and the contours of public debate. Survey-based research provides evidence of similar variation in public attitudes (Citrin, Reingold, and Green 1990; Schildkraut 2010). Recent studies (Bonikowski and DiMaggio 2016; Bonikowski 2017a) demonstrate that such attitudes cohere into four competing understandings of nationhood in the United States, France and Germany. Each consists of a distinct combination of beliefs about the appropriate criteria of national membership, aspects of the nation and the state that are deserving of pride (or shame), and the nation s position vis-a-vis the rest of the world. VC London School of Economics and Political Science 2017 British Journal of Sociology 68(S1)

9 Ethno-nationalist populism S189 Because these competing cultural models of the nation are patterned, stable, correlated with sociodemographic attributes, and rooted in everyday experience, they can be thought of as protracted cultural cleavages that deeply divide members of national communities around fundamental questions of who they are, who they are not, and what their collective future ought to hold. What makes these cultural cleavages particularly powerful is that they can be mobilized into political cleavages (importantly, this is as true of more inclusive forms of nationalism as it is of ethno-nationalism). When the right kind of nationalist discourse in the right sociopolitical circumstances succeeds in resonating with these beliefs, it can channel them into political action, whether in the form of support for political candidates or participation in movement-based protests (Skocpol and Williamson 2012). The power of nationalist mobilization lies not only in its competing articulations of the nation s meaning, but also the fact that these beliefs are deeply held and closely related to personal self-concepts. As a result they involve strong emotional commitments and sharp moral judgments. In light of these insights, the radical right must be seen not solely as populist, but also as engaged in a struggle over the nation s meaning, by way of mobilizing nationalist beliefs in the course of electoral politics (Lubbers and Coenders 2017). The vision offered by many radical-right actors resonates with ethnonationalist tendencies in the population, but it would be a mistake to reduce their brand of nationalism solely to ethnic exclusion. What is at stake in competing varieties of nationalism is not only who gets to be a legitimate member of the nation, but also how important are democratic institutions to the national self-concept and whether the nation should stand alone in the world or engage with the global community. This is why a multidimensional approach to mapping nationalist beliefs is particularly useful. What Bonikowski and DiMaggio (2016) call restrictive nationalism, for instance, combines ethno-nationalism with low levels of pride in state institutions and moderate levels of chauvinism, while creedal nationalism is ethnically and culturally inclusive and displays moderate pride in all aspects of the nation-state. Moreover, those who subscribe to restrictive nationalism are much more likely than creedal nationalists to hold strong anti-immigrant sentiments and to favour protectionist policies. These alternative understandings of the nation were on prominent display during the 2016 Republican and Democratic national conventions, which contrasted Hillary Clinton s hopeful and pluralistic nationalism with Donald Trump s resentful and exclusionary counter-narrative. In this latest contest between competing visions of America, the restrictive nationalist tradition emerged victorious at least based on Electoral College votes. Authoritarianism, or how the radical right governs The final feature often ascribed to so-called populists that deserves its own analytical treatment is authoritarianism, a style of governance that attempts to British Journal of Sociology 68(S1) VC London School of Economics and Political Science 2017

10 S190 circumvent the rule of law and democratic norms in favour of centralized authority and limited political freedom. Authoritarianism is inherently opposed to pluralism in that it views a strong leader as the natural embodiment of a singular will of the people (Linz 2000[1964]). Because the leader is infallible and intuitively knows what the people want, any opposition, whether from civil society or the media, is dismissed (and often persecuted) as fundamentally illegitimate (M uller 2016). The result is the ruling cadre s stranglehold on state institutions, which become tools for suppressing dissent, self-enrichment and the consolidation of power. Democratically elected actors with authoritarian inclinations often pay lip service to democratic institutions but swiftly proceed to undermine them once in power. In his overview of populism, M uller (2016) argues that this occurs through three strategies of governance: the colonization of the state, mass clientelism, and discriminatory legalism. The first mechanism the colonization of the state consists of the takeover of senior positions across the executive branch by regime loyalists who place fealty to the leader above the official mission of their assigned office. This allows the authoritarian leader to extend personal control over the state apparatus and use it for his or her own ends. The cooperation of rank and file civil servants and of other branches of government is then secured through clientelistic patronage, which exchanges power for loyalty. The captured state continues to rely on the rule of law, but enforcement is highly selective: regime supporters receive legal protection, while stigmatized minorities and the political opposition are persecuted and deprived of legal recourse. Similar legal mechanisms can subsequently be used to subvert the electoral process and ensure the regime s long-term maintenance of power. As these strategies are put into place, civil society and especially the media is targeted for repression in order to ensure that challenges to authoritarian rule are stifled. These insights about the three strategies of authoritarian rule are valuable, but in ascribing such tendencies to all populists, M uller (2016) misses the dual point that populist claims need not lead to authoritarian governance and that authoritarianism can rely on a variety of other legitimating discourses besides populism. Even though a number of ethno-nationalist populist candidates, such as Hungary s Viktor Orban, Turkey s Recep Erdogan, and Poland s Jarosław Kaczynski, have gone on to subvert democratic institutions while in power, populism has also been employed by mainstream politicians who operate within the constraints of democratic institutions (Bonikowski and Gidron 2016a). And even when populist movements have radical origins, the resulting political outcomes can be benign with respect to democratic stability. This was true, for instance, of the People s Party in the United States, and it may also be the case for Brexit, though there are some causes for concern in the latter case as well (Trump appears to be more openly authoritarian, at least in aspirations if not, thus far, in practice). Populism and nationalism may serve as potent mobilization strategies that lead to the election of authoritarian leaders, and nationalism may shape the VC London School of Economics and Political Science 2017 British Journal of Sociology 68(S1)

11 Ethno-nationalist populism S191 Table I: Relationship between the supply and demand sides of radical politics Supply (i.e., elite discourse) Stable Increasing Demand (i.e., popular attitudes) Stable Increasing No change. Cannot account for changing outcomes without another intervening factor (i.e., contextual shifts in resonance). Changes in attitudes lead to alignment of public with pre-existing political claims. Pre-existing demand is met by new entrants into political field or discursive shifts among existing political parties. Fringe politics become mainstream, as both supply and demand increase. specific content of authoritarian policies, but ultimately it is authoritarianism itself that presents a unique threat to democracy. Consequently, it is crucial for scholars to identify the conditions under which authoritarianism is likely to successfully capture state institutions (see, for instance, Levitsky and Way 2010). Why now? Supply, demand and resonance If we accept that the radical right employs a combination of populism, ethnonationalism, and authoritarianism, then we can consider the degree to which the use of these political strategies and their support base have changed over time. Doing so can help shed light on why the radical right has experienced a renaissance over the past two decades and why recent years have witnessed some of its largest victories to date, including the democratic backsliding in Turkey, Hungary and Poland, the Brexit referendum, and electoral gains in the United States, Germany, and Austria. One way to tackle this question is to frame it in terms of the supply of radical-right political claims and the demand for them, with the latter understood as the aggregate prevalence of attitudes aligned with populist, ethnonationalist and authoritarian claims-making in a given polity. Indeed, such an approach has multiple precedents in the literature on the radical right (Golder 2016; Mudde 2007; Rydgren 2007) and on populism more generally (Rodrik 2017). If we simplify changes in supply and demand as either stable or increasing over time, the resulting variation can be captured by a two-by-two table (Table I). The four cells represent distinct empirical trends, where supply alone increases, demand alone increases, both increase, or both remain stable over time (cf. Golder 2016). The top-right cell corresponds to a scenario where some segment of the public has long desired radical political change, but it had until recently lacked the political representatives who would champion its interests. British Journal of Sociology 68(S1) VC London School of Economics and Political Science 2017

12 S192 In the second alternative (bottom-left cell), political candidates and parties have relied on populist, ethno-nationalist, and authoritarian claims for some time, but have only succeeded in mobilizing support following a recent shift in attitudes that aligned the public s preferences with the candidates claims. The third scenario (bottom-right cell) suggests that both supply and demand have risen simultaneously, bringing radical politics from the fringe into the mainstream. Finally, a fourth possibility (top-left cell) is that neither the supply of radical politics nor the demand for it have increased over time. While the first three patterns could explain a rise in radical politics, the fourth is incapable of doing so, because one cannot explain change with a constant. If the empirical evidence were indeed consistent with this hypothetical scenario, some other causal factor would need to be introduced into the explanatory model to account for the observed change. Past research on political mobilization (Gamson 1992) suggests one such possibility: what is missing from Table I is an orthogonal dimension representing the degree of resonance between available political frames and corresponding public attitudes. Indeed, resonance that is, a congruence between the content of the message and the predispositions of the audience is necessary for all four scenarios in Table I, since political messages that do not speak to the preferences and experiences of their intended publics are likely to fall on deaf ears. This mechanism, however, would be most plainly observable in the context of stable supply and demand around radical politics, because resonance would be the only variable element in the model. If this were to be the case, it would raise additional questions concerning the theorization of resonance, given the lack of attention to changing structural conditions in classical formulations of the phenomenon (e.g., Snow and Benford 1988). I briefly turn to these issues, before evaluating the scenarios in Table I in light of evidence concerning changes in the supply of and demand for radical politics. In classic work on framing, resonance is a cultural process that shapes a social movement s ability to mobilize supporters around the movement s core message (Gamson 1992). The theory is predicated on the notion of cultural alignment (Schudson 1989), whereby the success of a framing strategy depends on the degree to which the content of a given frame (i.e., the manner in which movement claims are presented to the audience) corresponds to the cultural models prevalent among the target public. This alignment occurs along multiple dimensions (e.g., commensurability with the audiences lived experience, resonance of the frame with folk narratives) and involves multiple stages, including the diagnosis of the social problem in question, a prognostic solution advocated by movement leaders, and motivational arguments that mobilize the public to rally around the proposed solution (Snow and Benford 1988). Framing theory was highly innovative in an era dominated by structuralist approaches and it remains influential to this day as a useful starting point for studying the cultural aspects of political mobilization. For all its subtleties, however, the classic VC London School of Economics and Political Science 2017 British Journal of Sociology 68(S1)

13 Ethno-nationalist populism S193 resonance paradigm oversimplifies the frame alignment process, by assuming that popular beliefs are static and that their activation depends solely on their alignment with a movement message. This ignores the reciprocal relationship between frames and beliefs and does not account for the fact that the same frames can be more or less resonant depending on context, even if public attitudes remain unchanged. Therefore, this classic resonance paradigm may be able to explain the three scenarios in Table I that involve changes in political supply and/or demand, but not the fourth scenario, in which supply and demand are stable amidst changing structural conditions. These shortcomings have recently motivated new work on resonance, which seeks to theorize the phenomenon in a more dynamic and practice-oriented manner. In particular, McDonnell, Bail and Tavory (2017) argue that resonance is not a matter of simple congruence between message and audience, but also requires the appropriate context, within which the frames in question are perceived as solving a relevant problem. Indeed, what is judged to be a relevant problem in the first place is itself also a function of shifting structural conditions. Such contextual effects are particularly powerful when they activate people s emotions, including fear and anxiety, making them more likely to find solutions that justify their feelings (2017: 6). The pragmatist correction to framing theory offered by McDonnell et al. (2017) is aimed primarily at the micro level of everyday situations, but if we assume that such situations are shaped by broader social, political and economic conditions and that the resulting micro-episodes of resonance concatenate into broader cultural and political trends, then it becomes possible to adapt this theory to phenomena such as the rise of radicalright politics in the United States and Europe. In addition to focusing on context, McDonnell et al. s (2017) work posits that resonance can involve feedback effects whereby solutions encoded in frames (and other cultural objects) serve to generate or reinforce the public s recognition of the corresponding problems, in a process reminiscent of the garbage-can model of organizational change (Cohen, March and Olsen 1972). In the case of radical politics, this would suggest a process whereby populist, ethno-nationalist and authoritarian discourse leads those in the target public to connect their experiences (e.g., fears associated with social, cultural, and economic changes) with their pre-existing beliefs (e.g., ethno-nationalism, distrust of elites, scepticism toward democratic institutions), and to support candidates that offer radical solutions to the resulting problem (i.e., minorities, immigrants and politicians being jointly responsible for undesirable social changes). 7 It is important to note that in this account, both the pre-existing beliefs and the content of political talk can remain relatively stable over time; what changes are the conditions within which the message resonates with the audience. In contrast to classic framing theory, then, this mechanism could explain growing support for the radical right even if popular attitudes and politicians framing strategies remained unchanged. British Journal of Sociology 68(S1) VC London School of Economics and Political Science 2017

14 S194 Having established plausible mechanisms that could explain changes in radical-right support, it is now possible to move on to the available evidence. How can we evaluate which of the cells in Table I best represent recent developments in ethno-nationalist populist politics? On the supply side, we would want to know how frequently political actors have employed populist and ethno-nationalist claims over time and to what degree their discourse has reflected authoritarian tendencies. On the demand side, we would want to identify popular beliefs that are particularly likely to be responsive to each of these mobilization strategies. Finally, to examine resonance, we would want to know (a) how the context has changed; (b) whether the issues of core interest to the radical-right have become more salient to its supporters over time; and (c) if so, whether the change in salience can be connected to the contextual changes. The relevant evidence is likely to be spotty at best, but its cursory review can provide some general insights about possible sources of support for radical politics and set the course for future research on the topic. The evidence: supply and demand sides of ethno-nationalist populism In terms of supply, it is fairly clear that populism is not a new political strategy in the United States or Europe (Bonikowski 2017b). Research on campaign discourse in US presidential elections demonstrates a frequent reliance on populist claims among both Democrats and Republicans between 1952 and 1996 (Bonikowski and Gidron 2016a). There are fluctuations to be sure, within and across parties, candidates, and even individual campaigns, but there is no evidence of a secular increase leading up to the 2000s. We know from historical research (Kazin 1995) that radical forms of populism, outside of mainstream political campaigns, have also recurred throughout US history from the days of the People s Party to the present. Across the Atlantic, populism appears to have been widely used in the European Parliament since at least 1999, on both the radical left and the radical right, and here too, there is no evidence of a linear increase in its prevalence (Bonikowski and Gidron 2016a). This conclusion is consistent with studies that demonstrate the rise of the European radical right as far back as the early 1980s (Berezin 2009; Kitschelt 1995; Mudde 2016). Of course, populist discourse has not been equally distributed across European countries. A number of new parties that rely on populist claims emerged during the 2000s on both sides of the political spectrum, in countries like Sweden, Finland and Spain, so that by the mid-2010s most countries in Europe had at least one populist party. Despite the diffusion of populist politics across countries, however, in the aggregate, populism has long been a widely available feature of political discourse among European and US politicians and a viable option for voters across these two regions. VC London School of Economics and Political Science 2017 British Journal of Sociology 68(S1)

15 Ethno-nationalist populism S195 Systematic evidence concerning the supply side of ethno-nationalist and authoritarian politics is less readily available, but there is no shortage of historical examples of both phenomena. In the United States, nativist and xenophobic political movements and campaigns have played a recurrent role in politics throughout the country s history, from the Know Nothings to Nixon s Southern Strategy (Higham 1983[1955]; Smith 1997). More recent examples include the English-only campaigns of the 1980s (Citrin, Reingold, Walters and Green 1990), Patrick Buchanan s 1992, 1996 and 2000 presidential campaigns, and the anti-immigrant movements of the 1990s that culminated in the passage of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (Durand, Massey, and Parrado 1999). In Europe, xenophobic discourse has been a mainstay of radical-right parties since the 1980s (Kitschelt 1995; Mudde 2007) and remains the sole ideological feature shared by these parties in recent years (Ivarsflaten 2008). Authoritarian practices are easiest to diagnose when their proponents are in power, as in the McCarthy era and the Nixon presidency in the United States and the recent examples of anti-democratic governance in Hungary and Poland. Nonetheless, authoritarianism has been acknowledged as an important feature of political discourse on the European right for the past 30 years (Kitschelt 1995). Overt anti-democratic appeals have played a less prominent role in recent US elections, but subtler attempts to delegitimize the political opposition, federal institutions, and more recently, a sitting president, have become a routine mobilization strategy among Republican candidates and elected officials, particularly after the rise of the Tea Party movement (Parker and Barreto 2013). While such claims are not necessarily explicitly authoritarian, they create the conditions of possibility for democratic backsliding by eroding established norms of political discourse and conduct, on which democratic institutions depend. These findings suggest that populism, ethno-nationalism and, to a lesser degree, authoritarianism are not new features of contemporary US and European politics. Indeed, when it comes to electoral outcomes, these three elements of the radical-right s political repertoire were successfully employed in Europe well before the Eurozone crisis, which many analysts, erroneously, interpret as the central precipitating event in the history of populist politics (Mudde 2013; Stockemer 2017). If anything, the immediate aftermath of the crisis saw a temporary decline in the fortunes of the radical right across a number of countries, as voters were more concerned with economic issues than immigration (Golder 2016; Kriesi and Pappas 2015). That pattern eventually reversed with the entry of new parties into the field, which successfully recoupled economic and anti-immigrant claims (Guiso, Herrera and Morelli 2017). In these cases, however, a simple response to precarious economic conditions are not the sole relevant mechanism political diffusion is likely to play an important role as well. As populism and ethno-nationalism have become British Journal of Sociology 68(S1) VC London School of Economics and Political Science 2017

16 S196 mainstays of politics across much of Europe, there is a greater probability that new entrants to the political field will rely on this profitable mobilization strategy (Rydgren 2008). On the demand side, the sociodemographic predictors of radical-right voting are well known and relatively consistent across countries, typically involving a combination of lower education, suburban or rural residence, non-professional (i.e., working or lower middle class) occupational status, native birth, and dominant ethno-racial group membership (Arzheimer 2016; cf. Manza and Crowley 2017). These variables alone, however, do not tell us why voters are attracted to populist, ethno-nationalist and authoritarian appeals. Instead, it is useful to consider the cultural dispositions that make these types of claims attractive. If the supply of radical politics has not grown dramatically in the recent past, perhaps the attitudes correlated with populism, ethno-nationalism and authoritarianism have. Before considering such trends, however, we must identify the attitudes that are likely to be relevant. What might the demand side of populism look like? Answers to this question can at best be tentative, because work on the relationship between public opinion and populism is still in its formative stages. It seems reasonable to argue, however, that there is no such thing as populist attitudes per se (despite the frequent shorthand use of this term [e.g., Akkerman, Mudde and Zaslove 2014; Hawkins, Riding and Mudde 2012]). Everyday people do not rally behind the populist label and few have systematic ideas about the appropriate relationship between elites and the populace. Nonetheless, it is possible to enumerate some related political attitudes that make voters more responsive to populist claims that is, to claims that vilify elites and glorify the people. Not surprisingly, such attitudes typically involve negative judgments of elites and experts, scepticism toward political institutions, and low levels of trust in the government (Akkerman et al. 2014; Hawkins et al. 2012; Oliver and Rahn 2016; Rooduijn 2014). In constructing scales of populist beliefs, some scholars also include the complex of attitudes referred to as authoritarianism (which is distinct from my use of the term in this article) (Inglehart and Norris 2017; MacWilliams 2016), anti-democratic and anti-pluralist attitudes (Akkerman et al. 2014), as well as the strength of national identification (Oliver and Rahn 2016), but like the corresponding supply-side arguments these measures risk conflating populism with other components of radical-right politics. Compared to populism, the treatment of nationalism has been relatively superficial in the literature on the radical right, because of the tendency to reduce the phenomenon to nativism, typically measured simply as antiimmigrant attitudes (Mudde 2007). While certainly relevant, xenophobia does not capture the full extent of meanings attached to the nation by its residents. Indeed, views of immigrants are likely to stem from underlying nationalist cleavages in the population, which makes the latter more fundamentally important for understanding radical-right support (recall my earlier argument that the VC London School of Economics and Political Science 2017 British Journal of Sociology 68(S1)