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because it is possible that the first electoral success of the ERP becomes predictable in
advance by the established parties, conventional politicians, and population at large, due
a combination factors such as pre-election polls and extensive media coverage before
elections. For practical purposes, I use the term ‘established party’ for all parties outside
of the extreme right party family.
I omit the election years before 1955, because most of the established parties of
today were not consolidated enough ideologically in the early post-war years. In the
interpretation of authoritarianism scores of parties, I primarily focus on the post-1970
period because, except for two neo-fascist parties and two British ERPs on the fringe, the
history of a significant number of present-day ERPs goes back to the early 1970s.
Furthermore, it is since the early 1970s when the social-structural changes of the post-
industrial transformation started to change the issues and concerns of the democratic
societies to the electoral advantage of the extreme right. This does not mean that the pre-
1970 scores are to be ignored, however. I acknowledge the historical continuity of the
party ideological positions because most of the established parties have long-standing
political identities.
The party-cases that count as flash deviance (Figure 1-1-1), gradual movement
(Figure 1-1-2), or abrupt movement (Figure 1-1-3) are regarded as credible rightward-
movement ‘forms.’ Once a movement is detected, I determine its ‘type,’ that is,
preemption or accommodation. Sometimes combining the terminology of movement
form and movement type, I refer to the selected cases as ‘flash preemption,’ ‘gradual
accommodation,’ and the like. Naturally, party movements in countries that have not so
far experienced an electoral growth of the extreme right are regarded as preemption. In