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2022 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

39. Can Right-Wing Populist Parties Solve the “Democratic Dilemma”?

Author : Martin Althoff

Published in: The Palgrave Handbook of Populism

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

For democracies it is a serious problem that a large part of society does not vote and that this large part is made up primarily of socially disadvantaged people. By concentrating on this group of the population with their election programs and their rhetoric, right-wing populist parties were able to achieve considerable electoral successes. It could be argued that right-wing populist parties are an important democratic corrective because they give the socially disadvantaged a voice again and encourage them to vote. Surprisingly, it has not yet been systematically researched whether the election success of right-wing populist parties has a positive influence on voter turnout. In order to fill this research gap, a dataset was created which depicts the national parliamentary elections in 20 Western and 11 Eastern European countries in the period from 1960 to 2018. A number of analyses have shown that right-wing populist parties have no clear influence on voter turnout. The phrase that right-wing populist parties represent some kind of important democratic corrective cannot be confirmed on the basis of the data in this study.

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Title: Can Right-Wing Populist Parties Solve the “Democratic Dilemma”?
Author: Martin Althoff
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Book: The Palgrave Handbook of Populism
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-80802-0

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-80803-7

Copyright Year: 2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80803-7_39