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Voting Radical Right in Western Europe

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This book begins with an interesting puzzle. A pretty constant 15% of the public support radical right parties is in Austria, France and Germany, but electoral outcomes vary considerably, from about 5% to over 25% in one election. Gives examines these three countries at length, and then tacks on a discussion of Denmark in Chapter 7.

Her central argument is that the Radical Right has more problems attracting voters and winning seats in countries whose political systems encourage voters to vote strategically. For example, the two-stage election system in France makes it hard for a Radical Right party to win any seats in the second round. These parties may win votes in the first round as voters protest incumbents, but the voters will abandon them in the decisive second round. In Germany, Radical Right parties might pick up some seats in the party-preference vote but they can't win any seats in the constituency votes. In contrast, the grand coalition between the two biggest parties encouraged Austrians to cast protest votes for the Radical Right, and this eventually propelled the Freedom Party into government.

The focus of this book is on hypothesis-testing, and not a summary of Radical Right parties or their history. Givens does provide some capsule histories, each one based mostly on an interview with a single leader from each party. For fuller accounts of these parties, see Kitschelt's _Radical Right in Western Europe_. However, Kitschelt emphasizes economic and social changes, which leaves room for Givens' argument about electoral systems and party strategy.

Givens' argument is credible, but partial, as you might expect from a hypothesis-testing exercise such as this one. It's also remarkably short, only 156pp, with lots of figures and tables.