ABSTRACT
This paper presents a new and more comprehensive model of extreme right-wing anti-immigrant (ERAI) party
voting than has hitherto been tested. Based around recent calls for a more integrated understanding of these
parties’ success we posit three key pathways to ERAI voter mobilization: grievance intensification (individual),
political opportunity (structural) and echo chamber effects or – the ‘unspiralling’ of silence. We test the model
using multilevel analysis of individual and contextual data from the EU member countries at three time points
(1988, 1994 and 2000). We find that support for ERAI parties is linked to individuals’ cultural and economic
grievances against immigrants as well as their feelings of political dissatisfaction. Contextual socioeconomic
conditions, namely increasing unemployment and a large foreign population further increase support for these
parties as does the political environment in terms of the perceived moderateness of political elites. Finally, the
levels of racial hostility in society as a whole also contribute to these parties’ success, with articulation of cultural
rather than materialistic fears about immigrants producing an upswing in their support levels. The findings have
implications for the behavior of political elites in curbing the growth of support for anti-immigrant voting but also
show it to be a more socially diffuse phenomenon that can be addressed only through shifts in the broader socio-
economic and cultural climate of these nations.
INTRODUCTION
The entry of the Freedom Party (FPÖ) into the Austrian government at the beginning of 2000 surprised
even seasoned observers of European politics, and renewed attention to the issue of anti-immigrant parties in
Western Europe. The meteoric rise and even more spectacular end to the fortunes of the Dutch List Pim Fortuyn in
2002 has ensured the topic has remained firmly on the agenda for European polities. The principle question posed
by the growing success of parties such as the FPÖ and its ilk in the Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland and is
why some are becoming better at mobilising popular support, whereas others in the UK, Germany languish in the
electoral doldrums, unable to gain more than even one to two percent of the popular vote. This study addresses this
question in a more comprehensive and systematic manner than previous studies have done by first utilising new
data to test existing explanations, and secondly by specifying and testing a new explanation for the mobilization of
anti-immigrant party support.
The existing literature on this question has presented largely two types of explanation for anti-immigrant
voting: grievance intensification and the political opportunity structure. Proponents of grievance intensification
2
Convention