posted on 2015-03-05, 14:48authored byStijn van Kessel
This article provides an explanatory framework for the electoral performance of populist parties, using the Netherlands as a case study. The Netherlands is an ideal case, as several populist parties have entered the political scene in recent years with varying levels of electoral success. The most notable cases are the List Pim Fortuyn and Geert Wilders' Freedom Party. Whereas the former party did not sustain, Geert Wilders has, so far, managed to remain an important force in Dutch politics. The article argues that the performance of populist parties is dependent on a combination of causal conditions: the availability of the electorate, the responsiveness of established parties and the supply of credible populist challengers. As will be argued, especially this latter factor is vital to the (long-term) performance of populist parties. Further research should, therefore, not refrain from taking the agency of populist parties themselves into account.
History
School
Social Sciences
Department
Politics and International Studies
Published in
Perspectives on European Politics and Society
Volume
12
Issue
1
Pages
68 - 88
Citation
VAN KESSEL, S., 2011. Explaining the electoral performance of populist parties: the Netherlands as a case study. Perspectives on European Politics and Society, 12 (1), pp. 68 - 88.
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Publication date
2011
Notes
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Perspectives on European Politics and Society on 04 Apr 2011, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/15705854.2011.546148