Augusta DellÕOmo: Welcome to Right Rising a podcast from the Center for Analysis of the Radical Right. I'm your host Augusta DellÕOmo. Today I'm joined by Alessio Scopelliti, a doctoral candidate in the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies at the University of Bristol. He's here with us today to talk about the programmatic flexibility of radical right political parties. Alessio, thank you so much for being here. Alessio Scopelliti: Thank you for having me. AD: Alessio, I wanted to start with how we think about the radical right in terms of political parties. And often we think about them as having these rigid programs, policy that they advocate in order to win support. But you and I both know that any political party has to evolve. And in the past years of radical right development, are we seeing changes in the programs of the radical right? AS: Well, when we are trying to explore what these political parties, the specific political parties are trying to say, we usually use in political science, these economic perspective where we have trying to understand what is the demand side and the supply side that relate to each other, this then how political parties adapt year after year, the case by the case, even sometimes, to the needs of the demand side, which correspond to the needs of the people. And therefore the supply side is basically the program of these political parties and what they are promises, what they want to deliver to the electorate. Before I start saying something more specific on the changes in the programs of the radical right wing electoral give up a broader picture of what we're actually looking for when we try to understand this kind of flexibility. And we when I was doing my literature review, I basically found two main theories which were addressing this topic, which are the salience theory and the spatial theory. So when we're talking about the salience theory, we're basically looking for the emphasis. And by the emphasis, I mean, how much a specific topic matters for a party. Let's say, what is its priority or what this political party thinks it's the priority for the country where this party is competing. And with this understanding, we can also try to explain what is the party's ownership, or I would say about a certain issue, which means for instance, if there is a political party ÒParty A,Ó which in its electoral in its terms, or in its manifesto in its program in its programs, it dedicated most of its space to promises on how to fight illegal immigrations. And then we have a ÒParty BÓ another party, which is more concerned about climate change, therefore, about environmental issues, then in this case, we can see that if party A will join the government, it is more likely that the next government will provide policies in fighting illegal immigration thinking that this is the priority for the country. And thinking that eventually that climate change environmental issue, it's more like secondary order topics. So which is not relevant for the party F and for for the country in in general. And finally, the demands were speaking before they will have the perspective. The perception, especially that party A is the genuine expert about immigration, while party B is actually the genuine expert about environment. So this is when we are trying to understand what is the emphasis how much emphasis parties put in certain topics. But then other scholars, they've tried to go beyond on how much emphasis parties on certain topics, and they are more interested about the position, which means which side they stand for a certain topic, and let's say the way they will, how the parties will try to handle the issue. So again, for instance, if we have a party A which during the electoral campaign, it mostly provides values about the traditional family, then if this party will join the government, it is less likely that that government will propose progressive policies in favor of marriage or adoption by same sex couples. Right. So we have these two fundamental point of view to take into consideration the emphasis and the position. And now when we're looking for the flexibility of the radical right parties, more specifically in the manifestos. For instance. We tried to list them two main dimensions with which is an economic dimension and the cultural dimensions which are both really important and trying to understand what these political parties actually say and what they have said in the last decades. And chronologically speaking, we have several theories trying to understand what these parties say in the early 90s. For instance, for each there was this theory of the winning formula, which was combining culturally authoritarian positions with economically rightist position so, economically speaking these radical right parties, they were in favor of neoliberal economic systems with anti-tax and anti-redistribution policies. However, since then, some other studies have demonstrated a certain kind of decline in the neoliberal preferences and radical right parties out now, they're starting to be more in favor of a centrist economic position or even towards a welfare chauvinism position. For instance, if I link it with my research, one of my case studies is the Rassemblement national, which used to be called the Front National. So the French National rally now, and I could observe by analyzing the manifesto over the years from the 80s sound till the last national French national election, actually, yeah, the national election we saw, which was in 2017, I could observe that in the early 80s, this party was had really strong positions towards a narrowly liberalism perspective, but then in the early 2000s, it shifted to a moderate position. And finally in 2017, the National rally had a really strong position towards a welfare chauvinism. So in terms as I said before, in terms of position, we can see that political parties radical right parties in this case, they can change over the decades. But again, the economic dimension is quite controversial, I would say because, for instance, Cas Mudde in the early 2000s, he claimed that although radical right parties, they tend to support forms of welfare chauvinism. They also tend to employ in neoliberal rhetoric, especially in their in their narrative, such as the limitation of public subsidies. And this is another issue for us, like as political scientists try to understand try to find proper data sources, you know, to explain it to explore what this party say. So if we only decide decide to focus only on political manifestos, for instance, it might be reductive. So we must extend other data sources like for instance, trying to understand the political narrative of a party trying using sources like the official press organ of the party, which was quite used in in the in the 80s, or the 90s, as well as in the 2000s. More recently, we can also try to understand this narrative by analyzing the official account of these political parties, like on Twitter or Facebook and other online platforms. Or we can try to understand that the rhetoric of the party through the analysis of of public speeches, so economically speaking, so the economic dimension is still quite controversial, trying to understand what this parties they actually say and how they are changing over the years, it's quite ambiguous sometimes. On the other hand, when we are looking to the cultural dimension, we have a pretty good agreement in the academic literature, I mean, the cultural dimension, it is perceived as the core ideology of these parties with an ardent position towards Immigration and Multiculturalism. So the radical right parties, they usually refer to values like national sovereignty and ethnic homogeneity, for instance. But again, as I said, we look at the position but we can look also the emphasis these parties is put in their manifestos. And again, going back to with my research, my second case study, which is the League, which used to be called as the northern League, but now it's just the league. And this to remind that this political party use, it was funded actually as a regular party. But nowadays, when we are looking for trying to put a label let's say to this political party, we usually say that this is an activist party radical right part because it puts at the core of its supply side, the protection of nativist interests. Nevertheless, it shouldn't be forgotten that this approach about the cultural dimension has changed over the years. By that I mean, for instance, that it was only during the annual meeting in 1986, when the the previous leader Umberto Bossi. He argued during this meeting, that these that the party needed to put more emphasis on the ethnic issues among regions in Italy rather than exclusively focusing on economic or social issues in order to call for more independence for Padania for this northern region, which was called Padania in order to be independent from the rest of the country. So, again, we have to be really careful trying to understand how much emphasis this party said might be a signal of the change of their supply side. But of course, also the position. It's important as well. So in this sense of thing, they're both really important to take into account in order to understand the supply side of radical right parties. AD: Alessio thatÕs super helpful, especially as you're sketching out that there's primarily economic or cultural drivers that that cause these these major shifts in the whether it's manifestos or the programs of these political parties. But I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit about what pushes them to make these changes? Do they all change in the same way? What is it that drives political parties from your research to pursue whether it's a more economic change or a more cultural change, which pushes them into these two avenues? AS: Again, the current literature it's it doesn't find an agreement, let's say in order to explain, which are the main the let's say the factors behind this programmatic flexibility of these parties, I would like to shift the attention rather than trying to understand the the economical reason or the cultural reasons I mean, there are several theories, which we probably will address later, regarding the new cleavage theories, talking about new topics, new ideological conflicts that are affecting the current Western European party systems, and of course, including also the radical right parties, which they are the first representants of this new cleavages, but yet, philosophically speaking, I would say the main disagreements are trying to understand which are the factors behind these changes, rather than the topic is more a discussion about the processes behind these changes. And starting with the first one, which was proposed mostly by Lipset and Rokkan in the lay in the late 60s, which is sort of a bottom up approach, where basically political parties, they are an institutionalized expression of unorganized conflicts that are basically latent in society. So for instance, take into consideration one of the most traditional and most important salient actually classical cleavage. In European party systems, if the left versus right scale, or the conflict between employers versus workers, then this kind of conflict is it doesn't really exist, let's say in the social realm. So we have people who have these antagonists values, these antagonist needs, and they fight against each other, and then this needs. So starting from the social realm, they go, they are interpreted in from by actually, organization of people, which are political parties, and then they are finally the object of the conflict in a society. So again, it's it is a bottom up approach, because the initiative, let's say, it's coming from the bottom from the demand side and go into the supply side to the top. The second approach, which was proposed, mostly by Giovanni Sartori, as a critic to this bottom up approach is the top down approach. So it's a reverse process where the initiative, let's say, it's taken by the political parties, and in this case, the party is not the consequence of the conflict. But rather than actually before it, it is the conflict that receives its identity from the party. So with this approach, let's say that we have organized group of people that they identified that really is a cleavage that needs to be perpetuated and addressed in society. And they, let's say fuel the conflict, they fuel this ideology, and they find consensus by driving and shaping this new conflict that we will eventually have an impact in the in the party system and the competition among political parties. Talking about more now, the topic of how radical right parties have changed over the years, over the decades, actually, I would say, so I'm more specialized in Western European for as Western countries, I would say that this talking about more in aggregate data, it shows that the radical right part, the radical right party family as a wall tend to move towards the same direction eventually. So in terms of position, they are more polarized towards currently they're more polarized towards nativist ideology and a welfare chauvinist ideology. In terms of emphasis, I would say that the radical right parties they dedicate more space to the cultural dimension than the economic one, because even if they are trying to address the economic dimension, the economic dimension is usually resolved with cultural the cultural dimension with a cultural narrative. For instance, if you're losing a job opportunity, then we can resolve this problem not like changing the labor market or providing more incentives in order to facilitate the labor market for instance, but we will, for instance, block immigration, there will be a stronger immigration controller we are going to expel illegal immigrants. And this is a way it's a cultural strategy to solve an economic issue. AD: I really like Alessio the way that you just described it as that these are these are welded together, right? The separating them out into just economic or cultural is is sometimes not useful when we're thinking about how these programs are really involving and that they're often tied together. So, I'd like to know a little bit about as a reacher researcher, how you're actually able to track these parties flexibility? AS: Thank you for the question. So basically, with my research and mostly rely on the cleavage theory, as I said, and the cleavage theory is basically a theoretical model that has been used and is actually still used nowadays, by scholars on competitive party systems, political parties and voting behavior. This kind of model this model is usually applied to answer several research questions like trying to understand whether a national party system change over the years, what is party strategy and whether they adapt over the the key issue, structuring their social and political context and also trying to explore to understand the links between voters and political parties. In few words, the cleavage model a cleavage structure in basically it's it's an ideology is an ideological conflict that is created by historical events or major events, so or even called us historical junctures, that basically creates social and political lines within societies, which divide citizens into different groups with different social needs or political interests. And this cleavages can determine many factors like as I said, voting behavior or countries party systems or even the type of political parties that are created and they then compete against each other in a in a certain country. Now, the cleavage theory has been addressed by several eras, there have been several followers about this theory, and it has even been improved and also trying to understand what conflict can be defined as a cleavage, right. And I must refer also from the contribution from Bartolini and Mair in the early 90s, that they successfully provided the more conceptual clarity on what is a cleavage and when a certain conflict can be, can be defined as a cleavage. And there are three main aspects that are necessary that are really important, and they are interrelated with each other. And they are fundamental in order to define a social conflict as a cleavage structure. And these are the empirical aspects a normative aspect and an organizational aspect. So the empiric aspect is more related on, as I said, before trying to find in the social realm, these differences, so it's more related in trying to find a way these social, social demographic characteristics that distinguish people in two different groups. This is the case for instance, when we are thinking about the classical cleavage urban versus rural, then we will look at those people who are living in an urban area, and those people that are living in a rural area, and then we can see that these two populations, they can have different needs and political goals that a country should achieve in the future and for their lives, lifestyles.T hen there is a normative aspect, and which means that beyond the existence of these social demographic characteristics that differentiate individual in this antithetical groups, there must be also a common set of values or ideas that provide a sense of collective belonging for this group. So there must be a sort of ideas and values that identify these two groups and find this ideological conflict between these two different two different types of groups of people. And finally, there is the organization aspect, this is another fundamental element because we cannot have a cleavage if there isn't these elements, let's say a sort of organizational expression, which can be through a political party can be through a trade union. So churches it can so it can it can comes from civil society and so on. This is fundamental because the cleavage is an organized phenomenon. So it needs a political party. So mostly, it needs an organization of people in order to drive this conflict and in order to be used and try to answer to these needs. And where then, eventually, these political parties compete against each other. So drawing from this amount of literature I have thought that in order to understand the flexibility for parties is not enough, trying to understand their supply side, let's say, trying to understand how internally a political party decided to shift its position or emphasis over the years. So of course, the supply side is an important part. So which I call those as the internal flexibility trying to understand if over the decades, this political party has changed, although the cleavage theory as these implicit assumption that political parties once they are funded over a certain cleavage, they cannot change side by definition, but in my research, I've tried to demonstrate the opposite I try to explain that actually a party can change, but this is not enough that we need also to understand the political context if this one has changed. So, we have to see the demand side or the context of flexibility and this is explained through by analyzing the empirical aspects and normative aspects. So in this way, we can see if there is actually a polarization within society over a certain topic, and trying to see if a certain social demographic characteristic split the society into different sides, I mean, if a certain group of people have a certain kind of opinion, and another group of people have another a different opinion, which is differentiated only by the specific social demographic characteristic. And finally, there is also the organizational aspect, which must be explored, which I call the external flexibility. So which is something that is beyond the control of the party, which means that people should be driven to vote for the party, by different attributes, for instance, or in the case of the League, the League, it was a party that was funded on the regionalist cleavages saw the cleavage between the center versus the periphery, it is a kind of a cleavage, where you have locals with different ethnic group or they have a different language, or even a different religion, which are in conflict with the center, which is the dominant culture of a country. So in this case, I could notice from my analysis, for instance, trying to understand the voting behavior that's in the 80s, most of the people that used to vote for the league, which was, as I said, called the Northern League, they used to be in favor of the periphery, they felt more attached to the village or to the region. However, this was in the 80s. But in the last election in 2018, now, the more a person is attached to its region to its village or city, the less likely this person will will vote for the party. So in this sense, we can see that there has been a change. And, of course, this kind of difference happened. It was also clear when the party the League decided to change its name, it was the Northern League, and now it is the League which we which means that it's trying to propose itself in a more a national perspective, let's enter into represent all the national interest of the people and not only so Italians coming from the northern regions. Now, I try to understand this kind of flexibility. But with my research, I am mostly interested in not only trying to understand how the classical cleavages have changed in this radical right parties, but also trying to understand how these parties have have changed over the years over a new cleavage structure, which is the transnational cleavage. AD: Well, Alessio, I'm going to just prompt you and ask you about the transnational cleavage, because one of the things that I found so interesting thing about what you've been discussing is it really focuses on the internal mechanisms, politics, demographics, cultural, economic shifts of the specific states the political parties are operating in. And but one of the big shifts that scholars have really noted and I think even just everyday observers of the far right has seen is that these groups are really starting to look very externally that they're not just internally driven. So I'd love for you to talk a little bit more about transnational cleavage in the way that, you know, maybe some of these groups are changing their programs based on perhaps what they're seeing other radical right parties do and find success in, in areas outside of their domestic context. AS: Yeah, of course. So when we're talking about the transnational cleavage, I am relying mostly on the contribution by Hooghe and Marks today to these are the two scholars that theorized this new cleavage structure and basically the transnational cleavage is a sort of processes a new is a new cleavages a new divide the word net, basically national governments, they voluntarily delegated their authority from the National to the international level, with the assumption that say that this kind of transfer of sovereignty would have facilitated the engagement with global issues, such as environmental issues, terrorism, economic or migration crisis, or even in terms of geopolitical balances with other superpowers countries like in terms of international relations with the United States, Russia and China and so on. I decided to focus more on the transnational cleavage, which identify as one of the branches of the new cleavage theory. By that I mean, that's the new cleavage theory, I would say a plethora of of different studies which were addressing this topic that believe that the current political parties, and the current party systems European party systems are affected by the advent of new cleavages, and identify them. I think that the new transnational cleavage is a better example or better cleavage or to explain the current political context that we're witnessing nowadays. Because of its multi-dimensional nature, I would say. So, in my research in my in my dissertation, I labeled these transnational claims this new cleavage structure as an institutional cleavage, because of its origin, it was determined by the advent by the signature of the of the Maastricht Treaty in 1993. So, it has an institutional region this kind of conflict, and we can see similar patterns. So I differentiated other new cleavage theories like an economic one which is defined with which refer to the from the work from Hans Peter Kriesi he and his colleagues about the the conflict between the losers versus winners of globalization. And again, another cultural new cleavage, which refers to the cultural backlash, theorized by people Ronald Ingelhart. Now, going back to this additional cleavage, to the transnational cleavage, I think that this cleavage, it has an institutional origin, so it was defined by this Maastricht treaty. However, it has a multi-dimensional nature because from this institutional conflict, we have different logics of conflict, which are think there is the first one is institutional, of course, it is related to, let's say, the more broader idea or dream of, of the Federalist European Union. So having about the political European integration process where they have on the one side, the Federalists, pro-Europeans, and on the other side, those that claim back the national sovereignty, then there is an economic conflict here as well, in terms of its nature, which is a clash between a neoliberal system which was the original idea of these common market that's used to be a European project, it started as an economic project and European economic integration process where with the a common market, the open of boundaries, and also mobilization of workers within these European territories. So we have on the one side, the new cleavages those that stands for sense of market is met versus those that have a more sense of welfare chauvinism. So a more sense of protectionism for the economy of their national countries. And finally, there is a cultural, cultural logic of conflict with European project, because there'll be integration projects project has started with the idea to create, first of all, to have a sort of agreement in the friendship between people. So trying to create a multicultural identity. Indeed, there is this idea to to build an European sovereign, transnational identity. So we have this sort of conflict between multiculturalism versus nativism. So those people that they recognize themselves as Europeans and those that on the other side, they recognize themselves, firstly, from their national identity. Now, having in mind that the transnational play which can have these multi-dimensional nature might be also a way to explain why in European politics literature, we had a plethora of studies on trying to define what is Eurosceptic. I mean, there are so many, many definitions. There is an hard Eurosceptic or soft Euroscepticism. Also on the other side, sort of pro-European pro-European is like a Federalist, European authoritarian, European or even in terms of ethnicity. So ethno Federalist, Europeanism. So there are different ways to define what is a Eurosceptic or pro-Europeanist is which I think of the term made by these different dimensions in a sense, for instance, the authoritarian, Eurosceptic or pro-Europeanism is, it depends which side you're looking at. It could be a political party, which is in favor of a political integration or a cultural multiculturalism, actually, and I'm sorry, it is in favor of the economic integration. So it must be totally integrationist for its country but it doesn't want a political integration. This was we could Say the case of the United Kingdom, maybe for for some for some aspects. And, again, I think that these, the transnational cleavage is is worth it to be analyzed, because I think that the transnational cleavage is how they will pronounce probably is the zeitgeist of the European politics. I think that most of the western European party systems, they will clash about this topic. And we already witnessed that from, from different, different opportunities in different elections, talking about more than European level, for instance, we could notice that for the first time with with the last European election, we had higher rates of people who went to vote to the election. And currently in the European Parliament, we have a really strong clash between those parties that are allied because they have a pro-European project and those that are more critical with the European integration project. But we have this kind of clash, not only the European level, but also the national level. I mean, in the last French and Italian electoral campaigns, for instance, in 2017, in France, we have this clear conflict between Emmanuel Macron and Marie Le Pen who were clashing to each other about the European issue. I mean, it was the transnational cleavage was addressed in the national level, it was the main driving issue in tension that shaped the voting behavior on that on that time. And we had a similar case also in Italy, for instance, where for the first time from the election, in Italy in 2018, we had for the first time, the government which was completely have Eurosceptic it was an alliance between the Five Star Movement and the in the Liga and this one was the first, it was the first contact cabinet. And it was a clear, populist, Eurosceptic parties and government I'm sorry, and this was the really first time having an Italian government, which was clearly Eurosceptic. And finally, oh, even where I'm living now, in in the UK, we had there has been another election the last year. And the main topic was, again, the transnational cleavage. On one hand, you have the Labour Party, which was more ambiguous about the Brexit referendum if we're doing another one, or maybe not so respect to the, the the will of the people that say, well, on the other hand, the Conservative Party won that election, because they were very clear on which kind of message they wanted to deliver the election, which was to get Brexit done. So again, I am sorry. So again, I think that the transnational cleavage is fundamental for European politics. AD: Alessio, I'm absolutely convinced, based on what you've just said that the transnational cleavage is going to be this this big frontier and how we're thinking about the changes in the far right. So I wanted to thank you so much for coming on the podcast. And for our listeners who want to know more about you and find more about your work, or is your work online? Where can they connect with you and read more about the kinds of research that you're doing? AS: Yeah, of course, I try to be as much active as I can online with Twitter or LinkedIn mostly. But if you want to be in touch with me, for future project, or report or interviews, you can just come to me by email. And I'm also quite active with the CARR organization. So thank you very much again for inviting me. AD: Fantastic. Thank you so much for coming Alessio. This has been another episode of Right Rising. We'll see you all next time.