49
Overall, all parties of Wallonia seem to be coming closer to the VB in 1991 and
1995 by moving upwards. It seems that even though the existing parties excluded the VB
by creating a ‘cordon sanitaire,’ their emphases on authoritarian issues still increased
during the period when the VB achieved electoral successes at the national level. The
evidence in the combined authoritarianism figures of Flanders and Wallonia demonstrates
a general pattern of accommodation, by a total of seven parties, towards the VB in 1991
and 1995.
[Figure 1-2-12 about here]
CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION
The primary research question of this study can be summarized as ‘Have the
established parties resembled the ERPs ideologically in the established democracies?’
Accordingly, the primary objective is to develop a systematic and cross-comparable
method in order to investigate the continuity and change in the ideological stances of the
established parties in 11 West European democracies. I assume that ideological
resemblance occurs as a result of party ideological movements, particularly, an
established party’s move rightwards. In this regard, I define two types of rightward
movement, preemption and accommodation. Preemption occurs in two ways, either as the
outcome of a different (than an extreme right) party’s continual occupation of the right-
authoritarian policy space (which I refer to as ‘overall preemption’), or the outcome of an
established party’s movement rightward movement in the absence of an electorally
Convention