Institutional and Socio-Economic Determinants of the Radical Right-Wing Vote

Subnational Approach to the Electoral Fortunes of the Norwegian Progress Party

The paper seeks to explore the impact of local level political opportunity structures on the electoral success of the radical right. Briefly, the concept of political opportunity structure refers to the degree of openness of a particular political system and the external institutional or socio-economic constraints and opportunities that it sets for political parties. The scholars have been increasingly interested in the institutional and socioeconomic determinants affecting the radical right-wing vote, but the emphasis has largely been on the cross-country comparison.

Although the support for the Norwegian Progress Party has fluctuated considerably during the thirty years of its existence, it is one of the most prominent entrepreneurs of the West European radical right party family if the success in national elections is taken as a measure. At the local level, however, the Progress Party did not break through until 2003, when it got mayors elected in 13 municipalities. Since the success in the local elections has fallen behind the national ones, our further interest lies in exploring if the institutional and socioeconomic determinants affecting the radical right-wing vote vary across the different types of elections. Comparative analysis on four elections (the municipal elections of 1999/2003 and the parliamentary elections of 2001/2005) is conducted where 433–435 Norwegian municipalities are treated as the units of analysis. Multiple regression is used to explain the impact of five political opportunity structure variables, i.e. electoral institutions (district magnitude), party competition (effective number of parties), electoral behaviour (turnout) and socio-economic conditions (immigration and unemployment), on the ability of the Progress Party to gather votes across the municipalities.