Berlin/Frankfurt (Oder), 04.05.2013 Bartek Pytlas/Oliver Kossack Measuring the Impact of Radical Right Parties on Spatial and Ideological Shifts within Central and East European Party Systems European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder) Faculty of Social and Cultural Studies Chair of Political Science I: Comparative analysis of political systems, movements and cultures [email protected][email protected]To be presented at: 7 th ECPR General Conference, 4-7 September 2013, Sciences Po Bordeaux The following text is a draft! Please do not circulate, cite or quote without the authors’ permission!
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Berlin/Frankfurt (Oder), 04.05.2013
Bartek Pytlas/Oliver Kossack
Measuring the Impact of Radical Right Parties on Spatial and Ideological
Shifts within Central and East European Party Systems
European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder)
Faculty of Social and Cultural Studies
Chair of Political Science I: Comparative analysis of political systems, movements and cultures
Frame competition is relevant not only on the level of public discourse but also in the area of
policy making, as noted most notably by Frank Fischer (Fischer 1980; Fischer 2003). In both
cases, frames understood as narratives articulated by political actors, guide collective action
as well as help to organize, explain, justify and legitimate political agency. In other words:
„The frame suggests what the issue is about‟ (Gamson 1988: 222). Therefore, the analysis of
frame competition is seen to provide qualitative indices of radical right impact on ideological
shifts within party systems.
Having said that, it is crucial to note that the framing approach has hitherto largely lacked an
established methodological framework that would allow a comprehensible identification of
frames and a reproducible verification of framing mechanisms (Johnston 1995: 217; Johnston
2002; Matthes 2007: 44). As one of the few methodological contributions suitable for
answering the research question in this study, Thomas König points to advantages of the
application of computer assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) for frame
measurement within the discourse analytical method (König 2004a; König 2004b). The
CAQDA is a qualitative method that allows for a standardized, verifiable measurement of
discursive patterns within texts. The analysis is performed by means of text segment coding
and the evaluation of absolute and relative frequencies of the identified codes as well as their
mutual relationship, among other their co-occurrence or textual nearness (Kuckartz 2004;
Kuckartz 2007; König 2004a; König 2004b; Bazeley 2003).
For the qualitative analysis, cases shall be looked upon, where empirical observations
supported by quantitative data pointed to particularly strong accommodative strategies of
major government parties in regard to radical right narratives: Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.
Having previously noted the strong activity of radical right parties along cultural cleavage
lines (cf. Minkenberg 2003; Bornschier 2010), the researched discourse was narrowed down
to party policies related to questions of national identity and values, expected to be most likely
cases for the observation of radical right impact on narrative shifts of mainstream
4 The methodological design, the collected qualitative dataset on radical right frames and its CAQDA analysis
are an extract from the research conducted by Bartek Pytlas for the purpose of his forthcoming dissertation
project.
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competitors. In Poland, the analysis focused on the debates regarding the question of
reproductive rights (abortion) and issues in regard to rights of sexual minorities. In Slovakia
and Hungary, the analysis focused on policies regarding the issues of these states‟
relationships with the Hungarian minority.5 In each country, online news reports shall be
gathered, 6
with the name of the particular party and the description of the issue as keywords.
In all cases therefore – due to the vast size of the sample – the material shall thus only include
statements of radical right parties and their nearest mainstream competitor (LPR and PiS in
Poland; SNS and SMER in Slovakia; Fidesz and Jobbik in Hungary).
The gathered textual data material was coded, mapped and evaluated non-automatically7
using CAQDAS (MaxQDA Version 11.0.1). The text was mapped with marker codings
(descriptors of „year‟ and „actor‟) as well as content codings (first, metaphorical fields
describing particular frames, summarized into clusters such as „catholic traditional values‟,
„martyrology/trauma‟, or „organic nationalism‟; as well as, second, diagnostic meta-frames
warning against a perceived „threat‟ or calling for „protection‟). The codings were then cross-
analysed in regard to their co-occurrence within the text using the MaxQDA analytical tool
„Code-Relations-Browser‟. In the analysis, the paragraph distance between marker and
content frames were set to zero (the co-occurrence of actor and statement needed to take place
only within a single paragraph). The data has then been disseminated by year and recalculated
from absolute to relative numbers using the overall number of statements identified for a
particular year.
5 In Hungary, the analysis shall revolve around the debates on the citizenship status of Hungarian minorities
living in adjactent countries, most notably the debate on the Status Law in 2001, the failed double citizenship
referendum in 2004 and the successful Dual Citizenship Law in 2010. In Slovakia, it will concentrate on debates
in regard to the minority politics of the Slovak state towards the country‟s Hungarian minority, such as the State
Language Law debate of 2009. For a detailed description and analysis of these debates see Pytlas 2013. 6 In Poland, due to search limitations even within the paid archive of the Gazeta Wyborcza, news reports from
the websites of PiS and LPR shall be added to the analysis. In Slovakia, to achieve a comparable size of the
sample, articles from both biggest dailies SME and Pravda shall be included. In Hungary, due to a large
ideological polarization of the media, the analysis of the biggest FIDESZ-associated daily Magyar Nemzet shall
be supplemented by news reports from the Jobbik party organ, Barikad. 7 i.e.: the codes were not applied „blindly“ by sheer automatic string search of keywords within texts, but instead
manually by reading the text material and applying the coding dependently on the context fit of a particular
word, phrase or metaphor.
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Poland
In the case of Poland, the „highly conflicted‟ (Dillon 1996: 26) issue of reproductive rights
appeared on the Sejm‟s agenda already shortly after the onset of the post-communist
transition and remained a pat situation in a conflict between left-liberal and conservative-
nationalist political forces. The law adopted in 1993 (cf. Hennig 2012) constituted a largely
conservative „abortion compromise‟ (kompromis aborcyjny) that, despite several future
attempts (Hennig 2012), has remained basically untouched.8 Also in regard to bills on equality
for same-sex civil partnerships, fierce debates started in 2001, polarized during the years
2005-2007 and failed to end in successful adoption of a binding law (Hennig 2010).
The most prominent radical right narrative in this regard touched upon the question of a threat
to the fabric of Polish identity, Catholic faith, „traditional Polish values‟ and the role of
traditional family as the basic cell of Polish society, seen as a vehicle for transmission of
identity, patriotism and faith (cf. Giertych 2006, quoted in Minkenberg/Pytlas 2012: 218).
Opposition to liberalization attempts in regard to moral politics issues were depicted by the
LPR as counter-modernization rhetoric. Therein, „the West‟ – most notably the European
Union, one of the main, if not the crucial issue owned by this religious-fundamentalist party
(cf. de Lange/Guerra 2009) – were depicted as decadent, debaucherous, immoral and godless,
and therefore incompatible with Poland‟s cultural and historical tradition, threatening its
national identity and sovereignty.
Results presented in Fig. 6 confirm the findings of the quantitative analysis of spatial shifts.
Over time, PiS turned its attention to the issue of moral politics and shifted towards the
application of radical right frames. As the name suggests, in the early years, the party‟s main
issue was law and order (legalist issues such as tightening the penal code, anti-corruption,
death penalty) which rose to importance via corresponding anti-crime measures of a highly
popular President of Warsaw, Lech Kaczyński, future President of Poland. Any references to
national identity were rather clad in the robes of patriotism derived from historical
independence struggles and traditions (PiS 2001 in Słodkowska 2002: 92) and articulated as
real-political raison d´etat. The data confirms this finding, as in the period of 2002-2003
radical right frames relating to Catholic, traditional Polish values, and traditional family are
8 The last amendment that made it through to the third reading was a conservative constitutional amendment
proposed by the PiS/LPR/Samoobrona government in 2007. A liberal amendment submitted in 2012 by Ruch
Palikota did not even make it through the first reading.
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not prominently represented. If at all, they were articulated in singular debates on the issue
especially by the rightmost wing of the party personified by Marek Jurek and Artur Zawisza.9
Fig. 6. Distribution of summarized narratives of „Threat‟ to „Catholic Values‟, „Traditional Polish Values‟ and
„Traditional Family‟ among LPR and PiS, in percent of total party statements in the Polish moral politics
debates.
Source: Authors‟ calculations.
Nonetheless, as again visible in Fig. 6, at least since the 2004 referendum on Poland‟s EU
accession and the 2005 elections, PiS readily started to feature narratives of threat to Catholic,
Polish traditional values and traditional family. In 2005, PiS published a separate document
called „The Catholic Brochure‟ (authored mostly by the aforementioned rightmost fringe of
the party) that described religion, as a „fundamental fact of our national life‟ (PiS 2005: 7) and
the necessity to defend it coming from allegedly raising threat of modern „moral relativism‟
and „revolution aimed at the pillars of our civilization‟ (PiS 2005: 9). In that period, the
salience of the EU-issue helped the hard eurosceptic LPR to repeatedly enter the parliament.
Still, after 2005, the issue lost its salience, giving way to socio-economic issues and the PiS-
induced polarization between „social‟ and „liberal‟ Poland (de Lange/ Guerra 2009: 537;
Minkenberg/Pytlas 2012: 218). In this context, PiS successfully completed its ideological
shift and obtained ownership over the LPR narratives of threat to Catholic values, applying
9 Both politicians left the party in 2007 over the dispute surrounding the failed attempt to introduce a ban on
abortion into the constitution. The politicians later formed the splinter party Prawica Rzeczpospolitej. In 2012,
Artur Zawisza became one of the leaders of the extreme right Ruch Narodowy (National Movement).
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them to their liberal internal counterparts, the Civic Platform, and their voters (Pytlas 2009;
Minkenberg/Pytlas 2012: 219).
With the LPR vanishing from the Parliament and the Polish political life, PiS kept its
religious-fundamentalist profile, now not on the fringes, but in the middle of the party
ideology. Whereas the extent of its use was reduced in the years 2008-2009 by the diminished
salience of this issue, the parliamentary elections of 2011 again reinforced the latent liberal-
traditionalist conflict. The issue salience of religiously derived narratives was further
enhanced by the growing popularity of the left-liberal Ruch Palikota with its anti-clerical and
liberal moral politics stances. As visible in Fig. 6, since 2010 PiS not only upheld, but also
enhanced its positional shift to the religious-fundamentalist right. This finding, assumed also
in the quantitative part of the analysis, clearly confirms the enduring impact of parliamentary
presence of radical right parties on the Polish party system. As of 2013, the liberal-
traditionalist conflict remains one of the most crucial axes of cleavage division in Polish
politics.
Slovakia
In Slovakia, the issue of minority politics has been widely associated with the Hungarian
community living mostly in the southern areas of the country. Due to historical legacies of
Hungarian domination over Slovak lands during the time of the Hungarian Kingdom and
Habsburg Empire, the issue of the relationships between the ethnic majority and minority in
the country has been a crucial issue for the radical right SNS. On a regular basis, Ján Slota
and his party used radical right narratives to depict the Hungarian minority as a „fifth
collumn‟ within Slovak borders. In a radicalized and non-differentiating fashion, he accussed
the Hungarian minority and the Hungarian state of enduring imperialism prolonged from the
Habsburg times and warned about the threat to Slovak sovereignty coming from alleged
hidden irredentist and revanchist goals of the Hungarian minority and the Hungarian state
(Mesežnikov 2008; Pytlas 2013: 173).
After 2006, the social-populist SMER – still ascribing itself to the social-democratic tradition
– intensified its ideological shift towards radical right value positions (Mesežnikov 2008: 31).
In 2003, expert surveys placed SMER nine percentage points below the party mean for
support of nationalism whereas surveys conducted after 2006 saw this indicator rise to 13
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percentage points above the mean (Rybář/Deegan-Krause 2008: 511). This fact is also
confirmed by the CAQDA analysis depicted in Fig. 7.
Fig. 7. Distribution of summarised narratives of „Irredentism‟, „Historical Dominance‟ as well as „Threat‟ to
„Sovereignty‟ among SNS and SMER, in percent of total party statements in the Slovak debates on the
Hungarian minority
Source: Authors‟ calculations.
Since 2006, the ratio of SMER‟s articulation of notions related to Hungarian historical
dominance, irredentism and threat to Slovak sovereignty in debates on the Hungarian minority
has followed the trend of the SNS. In the year 2008 – in the wake of the adoption of the
notorious Slovak Language Law of 2009 (cf. Pytlas 2013: 171-176) – SMER even topped the
ratio of similar SNS statements with over 50% of all articulated party frames in this field.
Before the Hungarian and Slovak elections 2010 and 2011 and amidst the adoption of the
Hungarian Dual Citizenship Law in 2010, the ratio of SMER‟s radical right rhetoric peaked
again. As it turns out, SMER used the frames of the SNS much more punctually and
strategically than PiS in the case of Poland. This is surely partly due to the fact that Fico and
SMER wanted to keep their social-democratic label, also on the European level of party
politics. Nonetheless, the figure provides proof of the impact of SNS on the rhetoric of SMER
in regard to the Hungarian minority issue, traditional for the radical right parties in Slovakia.
Hungary
In Hungary, the question of the Hungarian diaspora living in adjactent countries as a result of
the Trianon peace treaty after World War I constitutes a long-term and crucial part of the
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country‟s foreign policy, or rather its specific, unique facet of nemzetpolitika („nation policy‟)
(cf. Pytlas 2013: 176-181). In contrast to the cases of Poland and Slovakia, Fidesz has pursued
a strong traditionalist stance on this issue at least since their volte-face from a liberal to a
national-conservative party in the mid-1990s (Kiss 2002). In 2001, the first Fidesz
government adopted a legislation known as Status Law, granting the Hungarian diaspora the
status of Hungarian ethnic affiliation, along with numerous social benefits. In a follow up in
2004 – now in the opposition – Fidesz engaged in a referendum to grant dual citizenship to
Hungarians living abroad. The referendum failed as a result of low turn-out, but – especially
due to the campaign of the MSzP against the adoption of dual citizenship legislation –
remained a legitimizing tool for party competition in the field of national politics between the
left-liberal and national-conservative camps (Pytlas 2013: 178).
Jobbik, founded in 2003 as a movement party, has already taken active part in the pro-
referendum debate. After the failed plebiscite, Jobbik accentuated – more or less directly
depending on the context – its radical rhetoric on the revision of Trianon and the re-
unification of Hungary‟s diaspora within the borders of historical Greater Hungary. Thus, as
Fig. 8 shows, historical overlaying narratives referring to the need to abolish the Trianon
treaty gained in importance for the Jobbik especially in the election year of 2010. Another
unique feature visible in Fig. 8 was the extensive use of martyrology narratives (notions such
as historical suffering, humiliation, a „wound‟ torn into the body of the organically imagined
nation) related to the „Trianon trauma‟ experienced by the Hungarian diaspora living outside
the „Motherland‟s‟ borders, again peaking in 2010. In this regard, the 2004 referendum has
been portrayed as a „second‟ or „spiritual‟ Trianon and a further wound torn into the Nation,
this time by the Socialists (cf. Jobbik 18.04.2004; Barikad 22.10.2008). With the growing
street visibility of Jobbik and the Magyar Gárda, together with its success in the 2009
elections to the European Parliament, these notions became much more resonant in the public
sphere – especially among the profound public anti-Socialist mood against the government of
Ferenc Gyurcsány.
Fig. 9 shows the impact of the aforementioned narratives on the ideological shift of Fidesz..
Assumed by the quantitative analysis but still not visible in the survey data, the CAQDA
analysis clearly confirms a considerably strong impact of Jobbik on the TAN-shift of Fidesz
in the electoral year of 2010.
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Fig. 8. Distribution of summarized „historical/mythic‟, „martyrology/trauma‟ and „organic/spiritual‟ national
identity narratives of Jobbik, in percent of total Jobbik statements in the Hungarian debate on dual citizenship
Source: Authors‟ calculations.
The distribution of Fidesz‟ narratives in regard to organic or spiritual imagination of the
Hungarian nation remain stable. This points to the fact, that Fidesz has already in the past
argued strongly along the lines of ultranationalist, organic or cultural ethnic identity of the
Hungarian diaspora in the region. Nonetheless, the rightward shift of Fidesz is noticeable by
their growing co-optation of Jobbik-articulated ultranationalist narratives relating to Trianon
as well as martyrological visions of the suffering of the Hungarian diaspora. Here, Fidesz
together with his satellite party KDNP has – among other – adopted the Jobbik interpretation
of the failed referendum as the „second Trianon trauma‟ brought upon the nation by the
Socialists (Magyar Nemzet 03.05.2010; Orbán 17.11.2011; Orbán 05.05.2012; cf. Pytlas
2013).
Therefore, already prior to its entry into the national parliament only by means of street
visibility and electoral success on the European level, Jobbik had a profound impact on the
ideological shift of Fidesz toward even more rightist positions. Furthermore, the already
virulent polarization of the political scene between national-conservative and left-libertarian
parties has been enhanced not only been fuelled in the socio-economic field, but also
encroached upon the ultranationalist dimension related to „national politics‟. In this matter,
the primary, direct impact of Jobbik has been the introduction of these polarizing narratives
into the public discourse, as well as their adoption and legitimizaton by Fidesz.
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Fig. 9. Distribution of summarised „historical/mythic‟, „martyrology/trauma‟ and „organic/spiritual‟ national
identity narratives of Fidesz, in percent of total Fidesz statements in the Hungarian debate on dual citizenship
Source: Authors‟ calculations.
Concluding Remarks: Radical Right Parties as ignition for identity conflicts?
This study has aimed at analysing and measuring the impact of radical right parties on spatial
and ideological shifts in CEE party systems. It has shown that in order to understand the role
of radical right parties in this regard, there is a crucial need for a comparative approach on
both quantitative and qualitative analysis of the mechanisms of party competition between
radical right and mainstream parties
The findings of the quantitative analysis illustrate a correlation between the presence of
radical right parties in parliament or their viable perspective of such electoral success, and
spatial shifts of mainstream party positions regarding identity politics. The growing
participation of radical right parties in issue competition came with a general shift to the
TAN-end of identity politics among their primary mainstream competitors, visible in Poland,
Hungary and Slovakia. Such a decisive shift of existing parties did not take place in Bulgaria,
but instead a new party emerged there to occupy the ideological space between the center and
the radical right actor (GERB), resulting in a similar rightward movement of the party system
as a whole.
Furthermore, the establishment of radical right parties seems to have an effect on party system
convergence and polarization along the GAL/TAN axis. First, the lack or disappearance of a
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meaningful radical right party on the political scene tends to result in a convergence of
mainstream parties in regard to identity politics. This effect is visible in Bulgaria until 2006,
in Romania in 2010, as well as in Hungary and Slovakia between 2002 and 2006. Second,
next to the finding on convergence, some indications can be additionally observed in regard to
polarization on the GAL/TAN axis after a resulted or expected success of a radical right party.
Growing polarisation vis-à-vis a radical right party is clearly visible in Hungary in 2002 and
in Poland in 2006, whereas in Romania a joint strategy of cordon sanitaire disarms this
dimension.
The CAQDA analysis of qualitative data supports the results of the quantitative analysis. In
Poland, a clear adoption of radical right narratives is observable for the conservative PiS and,
despite a slight trend of convergence after the lost elections, between 2007 and 2009, effect of
LPR parliamentary success for the rightward ideological turn of PiS seems to be long-lasting.
In Slovakia, the analysis also confirms a clear co-optation strategy of SMER and a takeover of
the minority issue from the scandal-weakened SNS. Here, partly due to the trade-off between
their social-democratic self-ascription and their rhetoric, the narrative takeover is rather
punctual and opportunistic, coinciding with thematically related debates or elections. In
Hungary on the other hand, due to the already strong TAN-profile of Fidesz and lack of post-
2010 data, the quantitative analysis depicts only a narrow rightwards shift. Nonetheless, the
CAQDA analysis supports empirical observations of a much stronger accommodative strategy
of Fidesz in regard to Jobbik narratives, mostly concerning their ultranationalist narratives in
the field of nemzetpolitika.
The combined findings of the proposed mixed-method analysis thus suggest that radical right
parties seem to be able to place their issues like ultranationalism, (religious) traditionalism,
restriction of minority rights or law and order on the political agenda and force other parties to
react in order to compete over the electorate on the right fringe. Their impact is most visible
here, as they seem to „ignite‟ conflicts on identity politics, otherwise rather diffused when a
party system is lacking a radical right party, and „force‟ mainstream competitors to react to
these issues. As it turns out, these reactions mostly took the form of accommodative framing
strategies and thus resulted in spatial and ideological shifts towards the TAN-end of the
conflict.
The mixed-method approach applied in the study thus seems to grant us with preliminary
confirmations of radical right parties‟ significant impact on CEE party systems and political
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competition. This fact encourages further research on the topic including a broader range of
countries and other relevant issues resulting in a more detailed and consistent comparative
database in regard to the described phenomenon.
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