The turning point in Geert Wilders’ path to Dutch electoral triumph (if not power) is now thought to have been the decision by the leader of the conservative VVD party to open the door to Wilders’ party as a coalition partner. It was at this moment that many voters calculated that they might as well vote for Wilders as for the VVD.
More and more rightwing leaders across western Europe are making the same decision to accommodate the far right in coalition as a way of keeping their own parties in power. The fact that this tactic completely backfired for the VVD’s Dilan Yeşilgöz, (her party ended up in third place) contains an important lesson that extends beyond the Netherlands.
We have entered a new phase for far-right politics in western Europe. Far-right parties are no longer languishing at the margins of politics, where they can be ignored or used by the (rightwing) political establishment. Not only is the far right now part of the political mainstream, it is an increasingly dominant part of it.
With ideas that originated on the far right, particularly on immigration, having already become mainstream across Europe, it has become almost impossible for conservative leaders to keep excluding far-right parties from government. Not without reason, many conservative voters fail to understand why parties that sound very similar to theirs, albeit with a more populist framing, are considered beyond the pale for coalition formation. They want their parties to govern in strong rightwing coalitions, rather than weak centrist ones. They want governments consisting of parties that share their views on the issues they care most about (stricter immigration controls, more law and order, less Europe).
We saw this play out last year in Sweden, where a majority of the supporters of two of the coalition parties preferred the far-right Sweden Democrats over the centre-left Social Democrats, and we see it now again in the Netherlands, where a revolt has broken out within Yeşilgöz’s party because she again rejected the idea of joining a rightwing government in which she would serve under Wilders.
How did we get here? Far-right parties such as the Austrian Freedom party (FPÖ) and the National Front (FN) in France started to achieve electoral breakthrough in western Europe at the end of the 20th century. But although several entered national parliaments, most were still relatively small, attracting only single-digit electoral support. At the beginning of the 21st century, many far-right parties achieved their political breakthrough. After this we saw another phase take root, as far-right ideas were brought into mainstream discourse by other parties, including some centre-left parties such as the Danish Social Democrats. As this happened, the far right itself was effectively becoming part of the political mainstream.
In the 1990s, only one national government in western Europe included a far-right party – the Northern League, in the first Berlusconi government in Italy. In this century, far-right government participation has become an increasingly common occurrence. Far-right parties have either joined or propped up national governments in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland. In several countries, these parties are so normalised that coalitions with them no longer require any special justifications.
In previous decades, far-right parties in western Europe always participated in national governments from a position of weakness, either as junior partners or as external support parties. They were often electorally small and politically inexperienced, mainly using government participation to become fully normalised rather than to push through their political programme. This is why, for example, the Sweden Democrats are willing to support a rightwing minority government, even though in terms of seats in parliament they are bigger than any of the government parties. Consequently, these western European coalitions have rarely attacked the liberal democratic system in the way that far-right governments have been doing in central and eastern Europe, most notably in Hungary and Poland.
But two important things have changed in recent years. First, particularly since the so-called refugee crisis of the mid-2010s, most rightwing parties have not just adopted the nativist discourse of the far right, but also its policies. This is best illustrated by the European People’s party (EPP), the largest political group in the European parliament, which is home to most of the largest rightwing parties in Europe. The EPP’s 2019 manifesto discussed the issue of immigration under the heading “A Europe that preserves our way of life”, and Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, even tried to give a similar job title to the commissioner (and vice-president) in charge of immigration. As rightwing parties have shifted even further to the right, for many of them, the far right has become a “natural” coalition partner.
Second, because of, rather than despite, the mainstreaming and copying of their issues and political framings by traditional parties, far-right parties have continued to grow electorally. In fact, today, far-right parties poll first in Austria, Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland – and a far-right party is the biggest rightwing party in Sweden. At the moment, the far right leads only one national government in western Europe, Giorgia Meloni’s Italian coalition, which consists of her Brothers of Italy, the dominant party; the far-right League; the right-populist Forza Italy, leaderless since the demise of Silvio Berlusconi; and the largely irrelevant centre-right Civics of Italy. The next Dutch government could follow suit, with the Austrians not far behind.
Of course, even three swallows don’t make a far-right summer yet. Italy is still an exception, and Wilders may fail to build his coalition. Moreover, in several western European countries, far-right parties remain fairly marginal (as in Iceland and Ireland) or far removed from dominating the right bloc (as in Portugal and Spain). But in a growing number of countries, mainstream rightwing politicians can no longer simply assume that they will lead, let alone dominate, coalitions with the far right.
It is therefore crucial that they start to rethink their priorities and strategies for alliance building. Under which conditions do they join a far-right party in government? What are their red lines? And, most importantly, how are they going to enforce these red lines as a junior partner?
While liberal democracy remains the legal framework in both the EU and its member states, and continues to enjoy broad popular support in its societies, we can no longer simply assume its ideological hegemony and political control. In today’s Europe, liberal democratic values such as pluralism and minority rights must be asserted rather than assumed. And they must be defended and strengthened, not just against the increasingly dominant far right, but also against the radicalised political mainstream that has largely normalised it.
Cas Mudde is the Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF professor in the school of public and international affairs at the University of Georgia
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