Antunes S., « The nationalist vote in times of economic crisis : when economic » (ST 3)

Antunes S., « The nationalist vote in times of economic crisis : when economic » (ST 3)

Sandrina Antunes (Université of Minho, Portugal)

Discutant : Lieven de Winter (Université catholique de Louvain, Belgique)

When the first signs of economic crisis hit Europe, no one would expect that extreme rights political parties, on the one hand, and nationalist political parties, on the other, would gain such popularity in such a short period of time. More particularly, when it comes to regional nationalist political parties, when the Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie (N-VA) came into power in Flanders in 2004 as a minority political party in government and the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) set up a minority government in Scotland in 2007 ; we couldn’t predict how far they could go at the expense of the economic crisis. In fact, as we look into regional and federal elections’ results, what we see is the N-VA going from 4,8% of the votes in 2003 to 13,6% at the regional elections of 2009 and reaching 30% of the votes at the federal elections of 2010. Very seemingly, in Scotland, what we see is the SNP starting with 32,9% of the votes at the regional elections of 2007 and hitting the floor with 45,4 % of the votes at the regional elections of 2011. Moreover, as we look into opinion polls, what we acknowledge is a sudden rise of popularity of these nationalists’ political actors to the detriment of major traditional political parties such as the Flemish Christian Democrats (CD&V) and the Flemish Liberals (Open Vld) in Flanders or the Scottish Labour Party (SLP) and the Scottish Liberals Democrats (SLD) in Scotland. On the more theoretical side, major explanations are difficult to discern or, at least, seem to be unable to respond completely on its own separate terms. Therefore, whereas some scholars would stress the inability of opposition political parties to respond, on due time and with effectiveness, to the disruptive effect of economic threat and social instability (Gallagher 2009) ; other scholars would rather stress the inability of matured democracies to address the challenge of lack of economic growth (Kurlantzick 2013) in order to protect the quality of democratic principles (Diamond and Morlino 2004) from a nationalist assault. In a very distinctive manner, in this paper, we will highlight the relationship that can be established between the ability of regional nationalists to “use” the context of economic crisis to induce regional citizens into their political plan so they finally reach the legal threshold to endorse a new sate reform. In other words, we will argue that regional nationalists have been able to benefit from the psychological impact of a general context of economic crisis over people’s minds in order to exert political sympathy, that is, political support without resorting to full ideological conversion and without showing any concern of its consequences for the quality of democracy. According to Ervin Staub (2010), this political behavior could be defined as a blind form of patriotism that would manifest itself into two complementary ways. First, by an intense identity alignment with the group, now perceived as a regional patrie, in opposition to the national or the regional other. Second, by an uncritical support for the political party, which would be best capable to display the most effective policy solutions to secure the economic survival of their territorial community, especially in times of economic crisis. Although the identity dimension goes hand in hand with the policy dimension, this paper will focus on the “perceived” policy outputs, using identity references as a complementary element to the analysis. In this paper, we will privilege a qualitative methodology. We will be looking at policy measures conveyed by regional nationalists in regional party manifestos and policy programs since 2004, for the Flemish case, and since 2007, for the Scottish case. Additionally, in order to identify citizens’ gradual support towards nationalists’ policy solutions, we will complement our analysis with opinion pools collected in Flanders and in Scotland during that same period of time. When it comes to methods, we will apply a comparative analysis and a case study research, as we believe that it will enrich our analysis and will help us to confirm our hypothesis.

Section thématique 3 : Crise des partis, crise de la démocratie ?
Session 2 : vendredi 11 avril 2014, 13h30-16h00