The Effect of Increased Visibility on Radical Right Parties’ Electoral Gains
Start time: 15:00 / End time: 16:30 / Date: 05 Dec 2022 Open to: Any UOL students / Any UOL staff Type: Seminar Cost: This is a free event, however, please register via the Eventbrite link provided Contact: For more information contact Dr Luca Bernardi at Luca.Bernardi@liverpool.ac.uk The rise of radical-right parties across democracies has prompted researchers to investigate the sources of their success. Factors such as the economy, immigration or identity politics are the usual suspects in this research stream. We know less about factors that contribute to the sustained growth of radical-right parties after an initial breakthrough. One argument holds that these parties benefit especially from the visibility that they gain when they win elections. Specifically, greater visibility likely normalizes such parties and increases the chances that voters consider voting for right-wing parties, facilitating their subsequent electoral success. Testing this argument, however, is particularly challenging due to the endogenous relationship between electoral success and increased visibility. Since visibility is usually proxied by media interest, the challenge is to determine whether media coverage fosters electoral success or the reverse. To avoid this problem of endogeneity, an alternative approach involves the use of parliamentary entry as a signal of normalization of radical-right parties. Parliamentary representation, however, offers not only greater visibility but also material support to parties – which can both help them expand their electoral base. Therefore, material perks that come with parliamentary representation render isolating the sole effect of visibility on electoral success especially difficult. The present study attempts to isolate the unique effect of visibility and overcome these empirical limitations by focusing on the two-round system as applied in legislative and local elections in France. We use election data from 1978 to 2019 at the constituency level and leverage the quasi-random nature of runoff qualification in the French electoral system to gauge the effect of the presence of radical-right parties that barely crossed the threshold – and hence gained visibility without necessarily winning the election – on radical-right success in the closest next election. This study contributes to the broader literature on the conditions that explain the electoral success of radical-right parties Click on "Create a calendar file" and your browser will download a .ics file for this event. Microsoft Outlook: Download the file, double-click it to open it in Outlook, then click on "Save & Close" to save it to your calendar. If that doesn't work go into Outlook, click on the File tab, then on Open & Export, then Open Calendar. Select your .ics file then click on "Save & Close". Google Calendar: download the file, then go into your calendar. On the left where it says "Other calendars" click on the arrow icon and then click on Import calendar. Click on Browse and select the .ics file, then click on Import. Apple Calendar: The file may open automatically with an option to save it to your calendar. If not, download the file, then you can either drag it to Calendar or import the file by going to File >Import > Import and choosing the .ics file.About the event
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