What Makes Niche Parties Niche Parties?
Past Election Result, Issue Salience, and the Nicheness of Niche Parties
Kyung Joon Han
The University of Tennessee
Abstract
When do niche parties emphasize their core issues more and intensify their niche party
profiles and when do they weaken their niche party profiles and try to broaden their constituency
base? Using quantitative data on party manifestoes and public opinion in Western European
countries from 1983 to 2012, we find that niche parties bring in a more substantial change in
their nicheness when they were not successful in the past election. However, when niche parties
were not successful in the past election, the direction of the nicheness change, whether niche
parties intensify or weaken their nicheness, is decided by the salience level of issues they focus
on: issue salience increases the degree of nicheness in such a case. Moreover, these effects of
past election outcome and issue salience are found only among radical right-wing parties, not
among ecology parties. The result implies that issue salience plays a critical role in determining
the strategic choice of niche parties. It also implies that there is a significant difference in the
party behaviors between two main niche party families (ecology and radical right-wing parties)
as well as between mainstream and niche parties. Finally, mainstream parties can also play a role
in determining the electoral strategies of niche parties because issue salience is also manipulated
by mainstream parties.
1
Introduction
Two nationalist radical right-wing parties, the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) and the
Italian Social Movement (MSI), had similar historical legacies and political environments, but
took different strategic choices in the late 1980s~early 1990s. Both of them were founded as neofascist parties. They had got only marginal levels of electoral support until the 1980s. 1 However,
they chose different strategies after the long-standing absence of electoral success in the late
1980s~early 1990s. The FPÖ, instead of campaigning on its defense of free market and
economic liberalism, began to focus on a non-economic issue, immigration, and mobilize
xenophobic and nativist ideologies refusing immigration and multiculturalism (McGann and
Kitschelt 2005). In contrast, the MSI, after having oscillated between a moderate faction favoring
the strategy of adaptation to the mainstream political system and a radical reaffirming the party’s
radical predisposition, moderated its party ideology even more in the 1990s and changed its party
name to the National Alliance (Ferraresi 1998; Ignazi 2003). Then, facing similar electoral
challenges, why did the FPÖ strengthen its nativist ideology while the MSI did not? More
generally, what determines the choice of niche parities in Western European countries between
emphasizing their extremist ideologies on non-economic issues and staying as niche parties on
the one hand and broadening their party issues, moderating their extremist ideologies, and finally
transforming themselves to mainstream parties? 2
Understanding the behaviors of niche parties has become important for the following
reasons. First, as niche parties have grown for the last a couple of decades in Western Europe,
the political and policy impacts of the parties have grown as well. Though niche parties have not
1
2
The average vote share of the FPÖ until the early 1980s was only 6.0 percent and that of the MSI was 5.5 percent.
A more detailed concept of niche party will be presented in the next section of this paper.
2
frequently participated in government, they have had indirect effects by affecting the positions
and policies of other political parties. In general, the electoral success of the parties has driven
other parties to shift their positions and policies in the directions of the extremist positions of
niche parties though the shifts are constrained by party competition environments (Williams
2006; Bale et al. 2010; Van Spanje 2010; Spoon, Hobolt, and De Vries 2014; Han 2015).
Second, literature finds that the behaviors of niche parties are different from those of
mainstream parties in a couple of ways. Niche parties are found to follow party supporters’
opinion while mainstream parties go after the opinion of the general public when they adjust
their positions (Ezrow, De Vries, Steenbergen, and Edwards 2011). 3 Also, while mainstream
parties gain more votes by moderating their party positions, niche parties do so by radicalizing
their positions because they are supported by voters who also share extremist views on the core
issues of niche parties (Ezrow 2008). Finally, the party positions of niche parties are less
adaptable not only because niche party leaders are more policy-oriented holding longer electoral
time horizons than mainstream party leaders are, but also because some niche parties,
particularly ecology parties, are dominated by party activists who show strong devotion to
ideological commitment than other parties are (Adams, Clark, Ezrow, and Glasgow 2006;
Schumacher, De Vries, and Vis 2013). Therefore, theories and analyses that explain the
behaviors of mainstream parties may not be able to account for those of niche parties, and
distinct research is needed to comprehend niche parties’ behaviors.
Therefore, we examine what makes niche parties different from other parties. In
particular, niche parties are, as Wagner (2012) defines, political parties that compete primarily on
3
According to Ezrow, De Vries, Steenbergen, and Edwards (2011), it is difficult for mainstream parties to follow
party supporters’ opinion because their supporters are located in the central area of the voter distribution and thus
their opinion is not discernible from the opinion of the general public. In contrast, the median supporter’s opinion is
quite noticeable from the median voter’s opinion for niche parties because their supporters are located at the edge of
the voter distribution.
3
a small number of, particularly non-economic, issues. Then, what makes some niche parties keep
focusing mostly on those issues and others modify their strategies and diversify their electoral
campaign issues? Using political party manifesto data and survey data in Western European
countries from 1983 to 2012, we find the following. First, niche parties bring in a more
substantial change in their nicheness when they were not successful in the past election. Second,
when niche parties were not successful in the past election, the direction of the nicheness change,
whether niche parties intensify or weaken their nicheness, is decided by the salience level of
issues they focus on: issue salience increases the degree of nicheness in such a case. However,
these effects of past election outcome and issue salience are found among only one of the two
niche party families examined in this paper (radical right-wing parties): i.e., the nicheness of
ecology parties is affected neither by the past election result nor by issue salience.
Our findings correspond to the conclusions of broad literature on party politics. First, the
finding that the past election result, particularly electoral deficiency, matters in the strategic
choice regarding the nicheness of niche parties is consistent with literature that finds the effect of
the past electoral deficiency on the party strategies of political parties in general (cf. Janda,
Harmel, Edens, and Goff 1995; Somer-Topcu 2009; Meyer and Wagner 2013). Second, the
finding on the interactive effect of the past election result and issue salience confirms the
intermediating role of issue salience in party competition and the voting behavior (cf. Bélanger
and Meguid 2008; Rovny 2012).
The result implies that there is a significant difference in the party behaviors of two main
niche party families. Therefore, further research is needed to explain what makes ecology and
radical right-wing parties respond to the changes in party competition environments such as the
past election result and issue salience in different ways. The result also implies that mainstream
4
parties can also play a role in determining the electoral strategies of niche parties. Because issue
salience is also manipulated by mainstream parties, mainstream parties can discourage niche
parties from strongly mobilizing certain non-economic issues by, for example, abstaining from
discussing the issues (Meguid 2008).
Niche party and nicheness
As Meyer and Miller (2013) suggest and effectively summarize, literature uses different
concepts of niche parties. While niche parties are political parties that emphasize a few of new,
non-economic issues in Meguid (2008), Adams, Clark, Ezrow, and Glasgow (2006) consider
political parties with extreme ideologies niche parties. The conceptualization of niche parties is
more developed by recent literature: Wagner (2012) proposes that “niche parties are best defined
as parties that compete primarily on a small number of non-economic issues” (Wagner 2012, 547)
and Meyer and Miller (2013) suggest, as their minimal definition of niche party, that niche
parties emphasize policy areas neglected by other political parties.
Regarding which political parties are niche parties, while Meyer and Miller (2013) reject
the idea of fixing a political party to either a mainstream or a niche party and use a continuous
measurement of political parties’ nicheness, other literature places each party (or party family)
into the category of mainstream or niche parties. Meguid (2008) considers ecology and radical
right-wing parties niche parties and Adams, Clark, Ezrow, and Glasgow (2006) add communist
parties to the list of niche parties. Wagner (2012) examines each political party within each party
family and sees whether the parties are niche or mainstream parties and concludes that more than
half of ecology and radical right-wing parties turn out to be niche parties.
5
In this paper, we combine these dissimilar approaches to the concept and classification of
niche party. On the one hand, following Meguid (2008) and Wagner (2012), and also partly
Adams, Clark, Ezrow, and Glasgow (2006), niche parties are defined as political parties that
politicize and mobilize a limited number of non-economic issues and usually maintain extreme
positions on the issues. Empirically, we consider ecology parties and radical right-wing parties,
which are commonly suggested as niche parties by literature, niche parties. Concerning their
focus on a few non-economic issues as a property of niche party, the parties have emerged in
Western Europe focusing on postmaterial, sociocultural issues such as ecology, civic rights,
immigration, and hold strong and extreme ideologies on these issues, alongside putting great
salience on these issues. Although radical right-wing parties are not ‘single-issue parties’ that
mobilize only on the immigration-related subjects of race, xenophobia, and multiculturalism
(Mudde 1999), such topics are a primary focus for many of these parties (Mudde 1996).
Likewise, though ecology parties are more “anti-capitalist than their centrist colleagues and
elements of postmaterialism are blended into the debate on the governance of the economy”, “a
number of redistributive concerns slide into the background or are overruled by postmaterialist
demands” in this process (Kitschelt and Hellemans 1990, 233).
Concerning extreme ideology as another quality of niche party (Adams, Clark, Ezrow,
and Glasgow 2006), these parties hold quite different, more radical views on these sociocultural
issues from other parties, desire to change the status quo, and mobilize political support from
those with extremist ideologies on the issues. Ecology parties are disproportionately
overrepresented among active supporters of social movements on ecology, anti-nuclear, and
peace (Müller-Rommel 1985). In the same way, supporters of radical right-wing parties hold
statistically more restrictive views on immigration and the integration of immigrants than
6
supporters of other parties (Van der Brug, Fennema, and Tillie 2000). Thus, these new political
parties came to hold both extremist ideologies and great salience on sociocultural issues on
which their development had been based. 4
On the other hand, following Wagner (2012) and Meyer and Miller (2013), we assume
that political parties in these two party families have different degrees of nicheness: e.g., though
socioeconomic issues have been only secondary features in the ideologies of many radical rightwing parties (Mudde 2007), there has still been variation in how much the parties focus
exclusively on immigration issues or incorporate other, even socioeconomic, issues into their
main programs. For example, two radical right-wing parties in two Scandinavian countries, the
Danish People’s Party and the Sweden Democrats, show different strategies regarding the choice
between focusing on immigration issues and broadening the party support base (Green-Pedersen
and Odmalm 2008). While the Danish People’s Party mobilized its support mostly based on its
very restrictive positions regarding immigration and dominated the political and mass media
discourse on immigration (Rydgren 2010), the Sweden Democrats did not exploit immigration
issues because they were not mobilized as top political issues by mainstream parties and
consequently not developed as salience political issues (Green-Pedersen and Odmalm 2008). 5
Thus, in the absence of immigration-related issues in the 1990s as top political issues, the
4
For these reasons, radical right-wing parties are defined as political parties that hold negatively extremist positions
on immigration in this paper. Empirically, we follow the list of radical right-wing parties in Norris (2005) who
adopts the same definition of radical right-wing parties.
5
In particular, The Moderate Party, the Swedish right-wing mainstream party, did not bring up the issues much in its
manifestoes or electoral campaigns because it wanted to maintain a right-wing alliance with other centralist parties
(the Liberals and the Centre Party). There were internal divisions between the Moderate Party and other central-right
parties in the alliance over non-economic issues (e.g., nuclear power) in the 1980s that led to the collapse of the
right-wing government in the 1990s. The Liberals clearly had less restrictive positions on immigration and
integration than the Moderate Party as well, so the Moderate Party tried to avoid bringing up the issues and causing
conflicts within the right-wing alliance (Green-Pedersen and Krogstrup 2008).
7
Sweden Democrats, instead of campaigning on insignificant, immigration issues, tried to find an
ideological mix and weakened its anti-immigration stances (Widfeldt 2008). 6
In addition, a political party may shift its nicheness between elections as well. Meyer and
Wagner (2013) also study what makes political parties switch between a niche party profile and a
mainstream party one and find that political parties strengthen their mainstream party profiles
when they lost votes in the past election. Electoral defeat, according to them, drives political
parties to try to broaden their support base by diversifying their electoral campaign issues. We
also study the between-election shift of nicheness of political parties, but our research differs
from theirs in three ways. First, while they study all the party families, we focus only on niche
parties in our analysis because literature suggests that, as was summarized in the previous section,
niche party behaviors are substantially different from those of mainstream parties. Second, we
suggest that whether niche parties intensify their core issues or diversify their programs after
electoral deficiency depends on the salience of the core issues. Finally, we even separately
examine the two niche party families (ecology parties and radical right-wing parties) because the
two party families are embedded in different political environments such as the salience level of
their core issues and party organization (e.g., Schumacher, De Vries, and Vis 2013).
Electoral outcome, issue salience, and nicheness of niche parties
6
In contrast, immigration and integration became salient political issues in the 1990s in Denmark, and mainstream
right-wing parties played a critical role in mobilizing the issues. The right-wing bloc of the Conservative People’s
Party and the Liberals needed the support of the Social Liberals, which held more centrist positions than the two
right-wing parties but did not cooperate with the Social Democrats in the 1980s. Therefore, they tried to avoid
promoting non-economic issues on which the right-wing bloc and the Social Liberals often disagreed (GreenPedersen and Krogstrup 2008). However, as the Social Liberals joined the coalition government with the Social
Democrats in 1993, the right-wing bloc “had no reason to avoid confrontation with the Social Liberals” (GreenPedersen and Odmalm 2008, 372), began to politicize immigration and integration issues, adopted restrictive
positions regarding the issues, and contributed to the rise of the issues as critical political issues.
8
For niche parties, a critical strategic choice they have to make for electoral campaigns is
how much they focus on their core issues. As the FPÖ did in the 1980s, niche parties can
intensify the degree of their nicheness by campaigning more exclusively on a small number of,
usually sociocultural, core issues with their extreme ideologies on the issues because voters
recognize their issue ownership and competence on the issues (Golder 2003). By doing that, they
expect that they can mobilize voters who also put great salience on the issues with radical views
and desire to change the status quo. In contrast, niche parties can weaken the degree of their
nicheness by broadening their electoral agendas and expanding their electoral base, as the MSI
did in the early 1990s. By doing that, they expect that they become free from the image of antisystem or radical parties, compete with other parties on traditional socioeconomic issues, and
appeal to a broader set of voters (Widfeldt 2008).
However, political parties, particularly niche parties, are characterized by “resistance to
change” (Walgrave and Nuytemans 2009, 190) for a couple of reasons. First, Downs (1957)
argues that voters punish political parties whose positions or ideologies are inconsistent over
time because they want to reduce uncertainty about future policies. Second, recent literature on
party brand suggests that social identity constitutes a significant part of partisanship, so voters
punish political parties that abandon their core ideologies and lose their distinct brands (Lupu
2013). Third, the negative impact of a strategy change is more substantial regarding sociocultural
issues because ideology plays a critical role in these issues and any strategy change indicates the
withdrawal of ideological commitment that disturbs party supporters (Tavits 2007). Finally, the
electoral strategies of niche parties, particularly those which have grassroots party structure such
as ecology parties, are more stable because of the policy-seeking behavior of party supporters
(Adams, Clark, Ezrow, and Glasgow 2004; Schumacher, De Vries, and Vis 2013).
9
Nonetheless, literature suggests that past electoral outcomes provide motivation and
information for political parties to adopt new electoral strategies in coming elections. The theory
of adaptive political parties suggests that political parties cannot immediately locate optimal
strategies because they have only incomplete information on voters, so they instead “move
incrementally toward better regions of the space through the use of search algorithms” (Kollman,
Miller, and Page 1992, 929) by evaluating the strategic party behaviors with data available to
them, such as the preferences of voters as an ‘electoral landscape’ (Kollman, Miller, and Page
1998) and/or past election results as ‘learning material’ (Laver 2005). Budge (1994) also
suggests several rules on determining electoral strategies, and one of the rules is evaluating the
previous election: i.e., political parties assess their previous strategies and electoral outcomes
driven by the strategies.
In particular, political parties are motivated to change their electoral strategies when they
were not successful in the past election (Janda, Harmel, Edens, and Goff 1995; Somer-Topcu
2009). Changes in party strategies, such as policy change, party position adjustment, and/or the
expansion of party bases, entail risks because there is uncertainty about public opinion and other
party competition environments. Because “the risks associated with change when the party
increased its vote share are too high to undertake” (Somer-Topcu 2009, 240), political parties do
not want to modify their electoral strategies when they were successful in the past election.
However, electoral failure indicates that “something in the party is broken and needs to
be fixed” (Janda, Harmel, Edens, and Goff 1995, 174). Then, they realize that their electoral
campaigns deviated from voters’ opinion in the past election and try to modify their electoral
strategies for the coming one. Thus, literature finds that political parties are more likely to
10
change their electoral strategies (e.g., party positioning) when they were not successful (e.g.,
vote loss) in the past election than when they were (Somer-Topcu 2009).
Therefore, we hypothesize that the past electoral outcome, measured by the vote share
change in this paper, has an effect on the change of the nicheness of niche parties: i.e., the parties
bring in more substantial changes, whether they intensify or weaken their nicheness, when they
were not successful in the past election.
Past election result hypothesis: The less successful a niche party was in the past election,
the more it modifies its degree of nicheness in any direction.
Then, when niche parties are motivated to change the degree of their nicheness after they
had bad elections, what determines the direction of the change? In other words, what determines
whether they intensify the degree of their nicheness and focus more on their core issues or they
weaken it and broaden their electoral agendas? The decision between the two is not easy because
there are trade-offs between the two. On the one hand, though niche parties can make use of their
issue ownership and issue competence on their core issues by focusing narrowly on the issues
with their extreme ideologies, the strategy can hurt the parties not only by abandoning moderate
voters but also by reducing the opportunity to cooperate with other, particularly central-right,
parties (De Lange 2012). On the other hand, though niche parties gain political legitimacy by
broadening their electoral agendas, moderating their ideologies, and behaving more like
mainstream parties, the strategy may disturb party supporters (Luther 2011).
11
Regarding the dilemma niche parties face, we suggest that niche parties estimate the
electoral efficiency of either focusing mostly on their core issues or broadening their agendas,
and the salience of their major issues plays a critical intermediating role in the estimation.
Literature finds that issue salience held by political parties and voters is an important
determinant of voting behavior. Rabinowitz, Prothro, and Jacoby (1982) find that position
proximity between a voter and an election candidate on an issue increases his/her electoral
support particularly when the voter puts great salience on the issue. In the same way, Bélanger
and Meguid (2008) conclude that though issue ownership helps political parties to gain votes, the
issue ownership effect disappears when the issue is not believed to be a salient issue by voters.
Voters are unfamiliar with an issue and unable to acknowledge differences in positions between
political parties if the issue is not considered a salient political issue (RePass 1971). Even when
they recognize the different positions of political parties on the issue, they do not incorporate
them as a factor for their voting decision because the issue does not alter their utility function on
voting (Selek 2006). Consequently, party position or parties’ issue ownership does not have an
electoral impact if the issue is not considered a salient political issue by political actors, and
political parties do not emphasize an issue when voters do not calculate the issue when they vote
(Rovny 2012).
Therefore, though niche parties have comparative advantage in issues that represent their
core identity, demonstrate their competence, and draw main support from voters (Rovny 2012) 7,
they will not want to compete on the issues if the salience level of the issues is too low to be
incorporated in voters’ utility function. In contrast, when voters put salience on the issues and
7
For example, the supporters of radical right-wing parties vote for the parties not only because they find the
ideological proximity on immigration between them and the parties (Van der Brug, Fennema, and Tillie 2000), but
also because they believe that the parties are the most credible means of changing immigration policies and solving
problems driven by immigration (Golder 2003).
12
consider them in their voting behaviors, niche parties will want to intensify their focus on the
issues and emphasize them in their election campaign to utilize their comparative advantage in
the issues.
The comparison of the behaviors of two radical right-wing parties mentioned in the
beginning of this paper in the late 1980s~early 1990s illustrates that niche parties’ responses to
the electoral challenge depend on the salience level of issues the parties primarily compete on.
Anti-fascist sentiment has been strong in Italy because of the role of the Mussolini regime in the
second World War. 8 Definitely, razzismo (racism) rhymed with fascism (fascism) in Italy
(Veugelers and Chiarini 2002). Thus, though public opinion on immigration has not been more
affirmative in Italy than in other Western European countries, immigration issues have been
mobilized and nativist ideologies were articulated neither by the MSI nor by any other parties in
Italy in the late 1980s~early 1990s (Veugelers 1994). 9 Mainstream political parties did not
develop immigration issues as salient political issues also because of their “preoccupation with
the crisis of Italy's postwar system” (Veugelers 1994, 33). Thus, Italy was one of few cases
where even centre-right parties showed reluctance to bring up immigration issues (Bale 2008)
and “would rather let the immigration issue die down” (Calavita 1994, 323). Consequently,
immigration-related issues such as multiculturalism and nativism were not mobilized as salient
issues by political parties in the late 1980s~early 1990s in Italy.
For this reason, though the MSI tried to exploit anti-immigration programs in the 1987
and 1992 elections, the new strategy did not pay off. Thus, after swinging between a moderate
8
Nonetheless, the MSI, founded as a neo-fascist party, could survive due to its commitment to democratic practices
(e.g., participation in elections) as well as its rejection of militia-style party organization (Ignazi 1998). However,
this political environment had left an uneasy legacy to the party: the party has continued to “oscillate between verbal
radicalism and the desire to be overtly accommodated within the system” since then (Ignazi 2003, 42).
9
For example, the European Value Survey in 1990 shows that 13 percent of Italian people said that they do not want
to have immigrants or people of a different race as their neighbors, and actually slightly fewer people did so in other
Western European countries (11 percent).
13
faction such as Michelini who adopted the strategy of accommodation and a radical one such as
Almirante who rebuilt links with militant groups and reaffirmed the party’s radical predisposition
(Ferraresi 1998), the party, exploiting a new opportunity for a coalition with the Forza Italia,
liberalized more, renamed itself to the National Alliance, and turned to emphasizing the
principles of democracy and capitalist economy in the 1994 election (Ignazi 2003). 10
In contrast, far right nationalism culture was profoundly embedded in the Austrian
society (Art 2011). In addition, because Austria was treated as a victim of the second World War,
fascist nationalism was not prohibited but rather incorporated as a major political cleavage in
Austrian politics and even implanted in other cleavages such as socialism and Catholicism
(Pelinka 1998). Therefore, even when the FPÖ, also founded based on neo-Nazi social groups,
was liberalized in the 1970s and in the early 1980s, 11 the rank-and-file party supporters
maintained their nativist ideology. Then, the nativist party base came to be the main resources
when Haider challenged and overwhelmed the liberal party leadership, reoriented the party’s
main programs, politicized and mobilized new issues such as immigration, added xenophobic
and nativist arguments to the party ideology refusing immigration and multiculturalism, and
successfully attracted many new voters, particularly manual workers (McGann and Kitschelt
2005; Art 2011).
Therefore, incorporating the theories of adaptive political parties and the past election
result as a learning material for the electoral strategy, and the findings on issue salience as an
intermediator between political behavior and political outcome, we suggest that niche parties’
strategic choice between intensifying and weakening the degree of nicheness is determined by
10
Thus, Ignazi (2003) even suggests that the party is now “on the fringe of the contemporary extreme right, on the
threshold of its exit” (52).
11
The party modernized its programs emphasizing free market and economic liberalism in the 1960s. However, it
had been “located at the edge of the political abyss” (Luther 2003, 193) until the mid-1980s due to its internal
division between ‘nationals’ and ‘liberals’ (Luther 2000; Ignazi 2003).
14
the following two mechanisms: first, the electoral deficiency makes niche parties change the
degree of their nicheness, and second, the direction of the change is determined by the level of
issue salience.
Issue salience hypothesis: When niche parties were not successful in the past election,
their nicheness is intensified by the salience level of their core issues.
Data and variables
Cases
This paper includes niche parties in sixteen Western European countries from 1983 to
2012. 12 As was discussed earlier in this paper, literature takes different approaches in defining
and categorizing niche parties. Though some literature rejects the idea of fixing a political party
to either a mainstream or a niche party (Meyer and Miller 2013), we consider particular party
families niche parties because we study how the salience of issues a political party primarily
competes on determines the degree to which the party focuses on the issues and such ‘party
issues’ vary between different party families. While other, mainstream, parties usually do not
compete only on a limited number of issues, we can find two party families that compete
primarily on a small number of non-economic issues with extreme ideologies on them, which are
also commonly regarded as niche parties by literature: radical right-wing parties and ecology
parties. 13
12
The countries are: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands,
Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
13
Only Adams, Clark, Ezrow, and Glasgow (2006) add communist parties to the list of niche parties.
15
Variables
We first test how the vote share change affects the degree of niche parties’ nicheness.
Thus, the dependent variable is the change of the nicheness of niche parties in absolute values
because the direction of the change is not considered (|Δ Nicheness(t)|). 14 The direction of the
change is considered when the issue salience hypothesis is tested (Δ Nicheness(t)). Following
Meyer and Miller (2013), the party nicheness is measured by the degree to which a political
party emphasizes policy areas in its manifesto compared with other parties. Formally, the
nicheness variable is constructed with the following formula:
=
Nicheness
1
N
N
∑ (x
i =1
ip
− X i ,− p )2 ,
(1)
where N is the number of relevant issue dimensions, p is a political party, xip is the party
p’s emphasis on policy dimension i, and Xi,-p is the average emphasis of all other parties
(excluding p) on policy dimension i, weighted by each party’s vote share. 1516
The main independent variable in testing the past election result hypothesis is the vote
share change of niche parties (Δ Vote share(t-1)). The vote share data are from Volkens et al.
(2014). 17 Another independent variable interacts with the vote share change variable when the
issue salience hypothesis is tested: issue salience. Because we conceptualize issue salience on the
voter level, we use an issue salience measurement from survey data: an issue is a salient issue
14
For the purposes of this paper, when a variable indicates a change from the previous period to the current period,
it signifies a change from the previous election to the current election.
15
We use the manifesto data in Volkens et al. (2014) to measure parties’ emphases on each policy dimension. The
category of policy dimensions follows that in Meyer and Miller (2013), but appears in the supplementary appendix
of this paper.
16
The average nicheness scores of radical right-wing parties and ecology parties are 12.3 and 11.4, both of which
are statistically significantly larger than that of other parties (10.9) at the 0.05 level of significance.
17
We also use a dummy variable of vote gain which indicates one when a niche party gained votes in the past
election in order to see whether the simple fact of whether it gained or lost votes also matters in determining the
change of its nicheness.
16
when voters acknowledge the importance of the issue. A series of the Eurobarometer has asked
European people what the most important issues are in their countries. Using the survey, we
measure issue salience with the percentage of people who indicate immigration (for radical rightwing parties) or environment (for ecology parties).
The model also includes the following control variables.
Party-specific control variables
First, a certain vote share change is more critical to small parties than to large parties.
Thus, the overall size of political parties needs to be controlled. Meyer and Wagner (2013) also
find that small parties are more prone to change their niche or mainstream party characteristics
than big parties. Thus, the vote share of niche parties in the past election is included in the model.
Second, it is suggested that when political parties with extremist ideologies cooperate with other
political parties (e.g., government participation) or desire to do so, they may moderate their hard
line positions and incorporate traditional socioeconomic issues in an effort to reduce the
ideological and policy distances between them and their (potential) partners (Bale 2003; Van
Spanje and Van der Brug 2007). Though such a ‘taming effect’ is disproved by some literature
(Akkerman and Rooduijn 2014), we include a variable of government participation (incumbency)
in the past period to control for the taming effect. Third, Meyer and Wagner (2013) find that
young parties are more likely to change their niche or mainstream party characteristics because
old parties are caught in “historically rooted orientations” (Marks and Wilson 2000, 424) more
than young parties are. Thus, the variable of party age (in years) is included in the analysis.
Environmental control variables
17
First, niche parties are sometimes supported by voters who used to abstain from voting
for any political party (Norris 2005). Then, the mobilization of these voters may encourage niche
parties to focus on their core issues more because it is driven by the issues. Thus, we include the
change of the election turnout rate in the analysis. The data are from the Global Voter Turnout
Survey by the International IDEA (Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance). 18 Second,
it is suggested that economic hardness strengthens the class voting behavior, particularly of the
socioeconomic lower class, by increasing the salience of socioeconomic issues (Nannestad and
Paldam 1994; Coffé, Heyndels, and Vermeir 2007). Then, economic downturns may drive niche
parties to campaign on socioeconomic issues. Thus, the GDP growth rate is included in the
analysis, and it is calculated from the GDP per capita data in the Penn World Table (v.7.1).
Finally, the party system that allows the development of minor parties helps the parties focus
only on a small number of issues. Thus, the effective number of political parties is included in
the analysis, and the data are from Armingeon et al. (2012).
Model
Three issues need to be address regarding model specification. First, each party is nested
within an election. Thus, the assumption of independent errors will be violated if there are any
unobserved election-specific factors. To control for these factors, OLS with robust standard
errors clustered by election are used. Second, there can be a concern of the unobserved
differences between political parties. However, an F-test for party-specific effects shows that the
effects do not exist. An F-test for fixed effects fails to reject the null hypothesis at the 0.05 level
that party-specific effects are absent. Finally, a series of autocorrelation function (ACF) tests
18
http://www.idea.int/vt/
18
detect first-order autocorrelation at the 95 percent confidence level for some, particularly radical
right-wing, parties. 19 Thus, the lagged dependent variable is included in the analysis. In addition,
how much niche parties can shift their mainstream or niche profiles can be determined by the
level of their nicheness (Meyer and Wagner 2013). Therefore, the lagged level of nicheness is
included in the model. 20
Empirical results
Before reporting the regression analyses, we first present some descriptive patterns of our
dependent variables between different party families and past election outcomes. First, Figure 1
implies that while radical right-wing parties change the degree of their nicheness more when they
lost votes than when they gained them in the past election, the behavior of ecology parties does
not depend on the past election outcome. 21 Electoral defeats give radical right-wing parties
motivation to change the degree of their nicheness, as an electoral strategy, but ecology parties
do not seem to be motivated by them.
<Figure 1 here>
Also, Figure 2 shows whether there is a particular tendency for niche parties to choose
between intensifying and weakening the degree of their nicheness when they gained or lost votes
in the past election. Figure 2 implies two things. First, there is no particular pattern in the
19
The following autocorrelation function tests were performed: the Breusch-Godfrey test, the Durbin-Watson test,
the Durbin's h-test, and the Ljung-Box Q test.
20
All of the models include country dummies to control for unmeasured country-specific effects.
21
The average absolute values of the nicheness changes between vote gain and vote loss of radical right-wing
parties are statistically significantly different at the 0.05 significance level.
19
direction of the nicheness change between when the parties gained votes and when they lost
votes. On average, while radical right-wing parties weaken their nicheness after they lost votes,
ecology parties intensify it. Second, the differences in the nicheness changes (between vote gain
and vote loss) of neither radical right-wing parties nor ecology parties are statistically significant
at the 0.05 significance level. Thus, the past election result per se does not seem to determine the
direction of the nicheness degree change.
<Figure 2 here>
The past election outcome hypothesis is tested using the absolute value of the nicheness
change as the dependent variable, and the results are presented in Table 1. Models 1 and 2
analyze both radical right-wing parties and ecology parties, but following models examine only
one of the two party families using dummy variables for radical right-wing parties or ecology
parties. 22 Both the vote share change variable (models 1, 3, and 5) and a dummy variable of vote
gain (models 2, 4, and 6) are used to indicate the past election outcome effect.
<Table 1 here>
The results show that three variables determine the absolute value of the nicheness
change of both ecology and radical right-wing parties: the nicheness change in the past election
in the absolute term, the nicheness level in the past election, and the party age. First, Budge
22
For example, all the variables in models 3 and 4 interact with a dummy variable for radical right-wing parties so
that the coefficients indicate the effects of the variables among radical right-wing parties. Also, the incumbency
variable is not included in the models for radical right-wing parties because they have rarely participated in
government.
20
(1994) suggests a policy alteration hypothesis and argues that political parties tend to shift their
positions in the opposite direction from that of the previous election “in response to internal and
external pressures on the leadership” (Budge 1994, 461). Then, niche parties that altered their
nicheness a lot may tend to change them a lot in the opposite direction, as the positive coefficient
of the lagged dependent variable implies. Second, niche parties with great scores of nicheness in
the past election change their nicheness more substantially than other niche parties. We need to
see whether these parties tend to intensify or weaken their nicheness a lot in the next analysis
which tests the factors for the direction of the nicheness change. However, these parties may
have larger room to decrease their nicheness when they already had a high level of nicheness.
Finally, older niche parties bring in bigger changes of their nicheness than younger ones. This
result is not consistent with the finding of Meyer and Wagner (2013), but other literature also
suggests that young niche parties tend to not change their party programs much in order to build
up their party image and brand (Ignazi 2003).
The main independent variable, the vote share change, is statistically significant with a
negative coefficient only among radical right-wing parties: the less niche parties were successful
in the past election, the more they change the degree of their nicheness (whether they intensify or
weaken it). The dummy variable of vote gain also indicates that the simple fact of whether they
lost or gained votes in the past election also matters: they change the nicheness degree more
when they lost votes. However, the degree of ecology parties’ nicheness is not affected by the
past election outcome.
The issue salience hypothesis is tested with the interaction term of the vote share change
and issue salience, and the results are presented in Table 2. Two variables commonly determine
the change of nicheness: the nicheness level in the past election and the effective number of
21
political parties in the party system. First, as was suggested above, niche parties that already held
a high level of nicheness have bigger room to reduce it. Second, the political system that allows
the presence of many political parties also encourages some of them (niche parties) to focus on a
small number of issues.
<Table 2 here>
The results show that the interactive effect between issue salience and the vote share
change is found, again, only among radical right-wing parties. The vote share change variable in
the interaction term is marginalized at -2 percentage point, which is about 20th percentile value of
the variable, so the positive coefficient of the issue salience variable implies that salience of
immigration issues increases the nicheness of radical right-wing parties that lost votes by 2
percentage point in the previous election. However, the statistically significant and negative
coefficient of the interaction term implies that the positive effect of issue salience on the
nicheness of the parties is decreased as the vote share change increases.
The interactive effect is graphically presented in Figure 3. In the first graph in Figure 3,
the vertical axis indicates the coefficients and standard errors of the issue salience variable at
different levels of the vote share change (the horizontal axis). 23 While issue salience makes niche
parties focus on their core programs when they lost votes in the past election, they do not modify
their nicheness despite the high level of issue salience when they gained votes in the past election.
The interpretation of the coefficients implies that when radical right-wing parties lost votes by 2
23
The horizontal axes of the graphs in Figure 3 range from the 10th percentile to the 90th percentile values of each
variable.
22
percentage point, a one standard deviation increase of the issue salience level variable intensifies
the nicheness by one standard deviation.
<Figure 3 here>
Also, Berry, Golder, and Milton (2012) describe what they term the “symmetry of
interaction”: if the vote share change modifies the issue salience effect on the nicheness of niche
parties, the issue salience level must also modify the past election outcome effect on the
nicheness of niche parties. The second graph in Figure 3 shows that the symmetric interaction
effect does indeed exist: the vote share change variable has a negative effect on nicheness when
issue salience is high: i.e., radical right-wing parties that were not successful in the past election
intensify their nicheness when immigration is a salient issue. The issue salience threshold for the
nicheness-intensifying effect of electoral deficiency is about 0.14, and the average issue salience
exceeds this threshold in countries like Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, and the United
Kingdom. When issue salience is low, the parties even weaken their nicheness when they went
through electoral deficiency. The issue salience threshold for the nicheness-weakening effect of
electoral deficiency is about 0.05, and immigration has been such insignificant issues in
countries like Greece, Ireland, and Portugal.
The results suggest the interactive effect of the vote share change and issue salience, but
the effect is found only among radical right-wing parties and not among ecology parties. Is it
because of the difference in the behaviors of the two party families in general? More in-depth
studies are needed, but, for now, we suggest that there can be two plausible explanations for the
different responses of the two party families to the party competition environments (past election
23
results and issue salience). First, ecology parties and radical right-wing parties show extremely
different party organizations in terms of the balance-of-power between party leaders and party
activists: while ecology parties are the most activist-dominated parties, radical right-wing parties
are quite leader-dominated ones (Schumacher, De Vries, and Vis 2013). Ecology parties put
grass roots democracy as their central philosophy, facilitate the participation of party activists in
the party decision-making process, and institutionalize their control over the parties (Poguntke
1987). Contrary to ‘participatory’ ecology parties, many radical right-wing parties are
institutionalized ‘charismatic’ parties, characterized with charismatic leadership and centralized
party organization (Pedahzur and Brichta 2002). Then, because party activists are less responsive
to the changes in party competition environments than party leaders are (Adams, Clark, Ezrow,
and Glasgow 2006), the interactive effect of the past electoral result and issue salience may not
be found among ecology parties.
Second, immigration has been a much more salient issue than environment in Western
European countries, particularly in the period our analysis focuses on (i.e., since the 1980s). 24
Then, there may be a threshold effect in the issue salience effect on nicheness: the issue salience
variable may not have an interactive effect with the vote share change among ecology parties
because of the marginal level of the salience of environment issues.
Conclusion
Though niche parties are small without the experience of government participation in
many countries, their political impacts, particularly their impacts on the party positions and
24
Our issue salience variable also indicates that the average salience score of immigration is statistically
significantly larger than that of environment at the 0.05 level of significance.
24
policies of mainstream parties regarding the core issues of niche parties, are found to be not
marginal. In particular, literature on ecology parties (Spoon, Hobolt, and De Vries 2014) and that
on radical right-wing parties (Van Spanje 2010; Han 2015) find that the growth of niche parties
and their mobilization of extreme ideologies on non-economic issues give pressure to
mainstream parties and drive them to shift their positions regarding the issues toward those of the
niche parties. Thus, the question of what makes niche parties stay as niche parties competing and
focusing primarily on a small number of non-economic issues or convert into mainstream parties
diversifying their electoral agendas and broadening their electoral base is worth to be answered.
In addition, the rise of new political parties mobilizing non-traditional issues is observed in
regions beyond Western Europe as well, such as indigenous parties in Latin America and ethnic
minority parties and radical right-wing parties in Central and Eastern Europe. Some of these
parties have been so successful that their party programs were accepted by other political parties
and government policies. 25 Thus, the need of researching the behaviors of niche parties goes
beyond the area of Western European politics. 26
By finding an interactive effect of the past election result and issue salience on the
nicheness of radical right-wing parties, we suggest that electoral deficiency motivates the parties
to evaluate their electoral strategies, and the salience of immigration issues determines the
direction of the strategy change between niche party and mainstream party profiles. Thus, as long
as immigration stays as a salient political issue, radical right-wing parties will either maintain
(when they gained votes in the past election) or even strengthen (when they lost votes in the past
election) their niche party characteristics and compete primarily on immigration issues.
25
For example, some Latin American governments began to recognize indigenous territorial autonomy and/or
reserve seats in government office for indigenous representatives (Van Cott 2005).
26
More inquires are needed to see if these parties are conceptually equivalent to niche parties in Western Europe,
but some literature on these parties assumes similarity between the two (e.g., Bernauer and Bochsler 2011)
25
The result implies that there is a significant difference in how ecology parties and radical
right-wing parties respond to the past election result and issue salience. Does the difference come
from unlike party organizations or dissimilar salience levels of environment and immigration
issues? Further research is needed to answer for these questions and explain the different party
behaviors of these two party families.
The result also implies that mainstream parties can also shape the behaviors of radical
right-wing parties by manipulating issue salience. Meguid (2008) suggests that the incorporation
of niche party issues into the electoral campaign issues of mainstream parties raises the salience
of the issues. However, our result implies that the increased issue salience will make radical
right-wing parties mobilize their extremist ideologies on immigration more, particularly when
they lost votes in the past election. Then, despite the electoral pressure on mainstream parties to
follow the direction of niche parties, they need to abstain from doing so if they do not want niche
parties to keep mobilizing the issues and their extreme ideologies on the issues.
In particular, though mainstream parties want to adopt immigration issues as salient
electoral issues, preempt the positions of radical right-wing parties, and consequently discourage
their further growth, mainstream parties may not be able to prevent the electoral expansion of
radical right-wing parties in the long run. Han (2014) finds that the active mobilization of their
extremist ideologies on immigration helps radical right-wing parties gain more votes particularly
when public opinion is negative on immigrants. Then, the incorporation of immigration issues by
mainstream parties will drive radical right-wing parties to mobilize their extremist ideologies on
immigration more as well as increase the salience level of immigration issues, as was found in
this paper, and both the radicalization of radical right-wing parties and the increased salience
level of immigration issues will help the parties gain more votes in the long run, as was found in
26
Han (2014). Consequently, mainstream parties cannot achieve their original goal of depressing
the support for radical right-wing parties by using the ‘accommodative strategy’ (Meguid 2008).
27
<Table 1> Testing the past election result hypothesis
Model (DV=|∆Nicheness ( t) |)
1
All
Political parties
|∆Nicheness ( t-1) |
Nicheness ( logged, t-1)
∆ Vote share( t-1)
2
Radical right-wing parties
Party age( logged, t)
∆ Turnout ( t-1)
GDP growth ( t)
Effective number of parties ( t-1)
Constant
R2
Number of observations
5
6
Ecology parties
0.36***
0.46***
0.37***
0.44***
(0.14)
(0.13)
(0.12)
(0.11)
(0.11)
(0.11)
2.72*
2.76*
2.02
2.59*
3.99**
4.00**
(1.44)
(1.43)
(1.33)
(1.45)
(1.54)
(1.56)
-0.04
-0.25**
(0.06)
Incumbency ( t-1)
4
0.37***
Electoral gain ( t-1)
Vote share( t-1)
3
0.43***
-0.11
(0.11)
(0.09)
-0.55
-1.08*
-0.61
(0.34)
(0.63)
(0.42)
0.02
0.02
0.04
0.02
0.01
-0.02
(0.05)
(0.05)
(0.05)
(0.05)
(0.05)
(0.04)
0.02
0.01
-0.55*
-0.54*
(0.47)
(0.47)
(0.33)
(0.30)
0.62**
0.62**
1.69***
1.51**
0.81**
0.82*
(0.29)
(0.28)
(0.61)
(0.62)
(0.37)
(0.37)
0.04
0.04
-0.36***
-0.24*
-0.0002
-0.02
(0.05)
(0.05)
(0.13)
(0.13)
(0.0564)
(0.06)
0.05
0.07
0.24
0.19
0.10
0.11
(0.06)
(0.06)
(0.17)
(0.16)
(0.06)
(0.06)
-0.12
-0.11
0.15
0.23
-0.15
-0.14
(0.08)
(0.07)
(0.23)
(0.24)
(0.10)
(0.10)
-6.75*
-7.21*
-10.05**
-11.56**
-10.24**
-10.49**
(3.94)
(4.02)
(4.36)
(4.83)
(4.09)
(4.22)
0.3187
134
0.3286
134
0.4811
134
0.4287
134
0.4889
134
0.4907
134
Note. Standard errors are in parentheses; ***p<.01; **p<.05; *p<.1.
28
<Table 2> Testing the issue salience hypothesis
Model (DV=∆Nicheness ( t) )
1
2
3
Political parties
All
Radical rightwing parties
Ecology
parties
∆Nicheness ( t-1)
0.02
0.31***
0.05
Nicheness ( logged, t-1)
(0.11)
(0.04)
(0.10)
-7.19***
-19.29***
-8.48***
(1.89)
(1.99)
(1.91)
0.06
-1.04***
-0.07
(0.09)
(0.17)
(0.15)
-0.37
17.14***
-3.50
(2.57)
(3.10)
(3.72)
-0.61
-9.82***
0.46
(0.83)
(1.21)
(1.03)
-0.03
-0.06
-0.15
(0.10)
(0.06)
(0.14)
∆ Vote share( t-1)
Issue salience( t-1)
∆ Voteh share( t-1) x Issue salience( t-1)
Vote share( t-1)
Incumbency ( t-1)
-0.50
0.01
(0.33)
(0.54)
-0.32
-0.94***
-0.54
(0.39)
(0.31)
(0.65)
0.12*
-0.01
0.04
(0.06)
(0.10)
(0.08)
-0.03
0.26
-0.01
(0.06)
(0.19)
(0.06)
Effective number of parties ( t-1)
0.25***
0.35***
0.28***
(0.08)
(0.09)
(0.08)
Constant
16.88***
45.47***
21.04***
(5.03)
(4.27)
(6.22)
0.4890
60
0.7373
60
0.7032
60
Party age( logged, t)
∆ Turnout ( t-1)
GDP growth ( t)
2
R
Number of observations
Note. Standard errors are in parentheses; ***p<.01; **p<.05; *p<.1.
29
<Figure 1> Past election outcome and the average absolute value of the nicheness change
Note: The difference in the absolute values of the nicheness changes between different election outcomes (vote gain
and vote loss) is statistically significant at the 0.05 significance level among radical right-wing parties, but not
among ecology parties.
<Figure 2> Past election outcome and the average value of the nicheness change
Note: The nicheness change difference between different election outcomes (vote gain and vote loss) is statistically
significant at the 0.05 significance level among neither ecology nor radical right-wing parties.
30
<Figure 3> Past election outcome, issue salience, and the nicheness of radical right-wing parties
Note: Solid lines are coefficients, and shaded areas indicate 95 percent confidence levels. The coefficients and
confidence levels are calculated with the results in model 2 in Table 2.
31
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Supplementary Appendix
<Table S1> Policy dimensions
M anifesto data variable
Policy dimension
Foreign
Defence
Interior
Justice
Finance
Economy
Labour
Education
Health
Agriculture
Environment
Social Affairs
per101: Foreign Special Relationships: Positive
per103: Anti-Imperialism
per107: Internationalism: Positive
per109: Internationalism: Negative
per104: M ilitary: Positive
per201: Freedom and Human Rights
per203: Constitutionalism: Positive
per301: Decentralization
per303: Governmental and Administrative Efficiency
per605: Law and Order
per608: M ulticulturalism: Negative
per201: Freedom and Human Rights
per203: Constitutionalism: Positive
per303: Governmental and Administrative Efficiency
per605: Law and Order
per402: Incentives
per401: Free Enterprise
per404: Economic Planning
per406: Protectionism: Positive
per408: Economic Goals
per410: Productivity
per413: Nationalization
per504: Welfare State Expansion
per701: Labour Groups: Positive
per506: Education Expansion
per504: Welfare State Expansion
per706: Non-Economic Demographic Groups
per703: Agriculture and Farmers
per416: Anti-Growth Economy
per503: Social Justice
per604: Traditional M orality: Negative
per705: Underprivileged M inority Groups
Source: Meyer and Miller (2013)
i
per102: Foreign Special Relationships: Negative
per106: Peace
per108: European Community: Positive
per110: European Community: Negative
per105: M ilitary: Negative
per202: Democracy
per204: Constitutionalism: Negative
per302: Centralization
per304: Political Corruption
per607: M ulticulturalism: Positive
per202: Democracy
per204: Constitutionalism: Negative
per304: Political Corruption
per414: Economic Orthodoxy
per403: M arket Regulation
per405: Corporatism
per407: Protectionism: Negative
per409: Keynesian Demand M anagement
per412: Controlled Economy
per415: M arxist Analysis
per505: Welfare State Limitation
per702: Labour Groups: Negative
per507: Education Limitation
per505: Welfare State Limitation
per501: Environmental Protection
per603: Traditional M orality: Positive
per606: Social Harmony
per706: Non-Economic Demographic Groups