Vote-Seeking, Vote-Losing: How “Accommodationism” in Europe Has Failed to Defeat Far-Right Parties

The European Parliament building in February 2020. Elections will take place from July 6-July 9 this year. CC-BY-4.0: © European Union 2020—Source: EP.

The Economist has called 2024 “the biggest election year in history.” Over four billion people in 76 countries will vote across all six inhabited continents. Elections have already occurred in some of the world’s most populous nations, including Pakistan (population: 240 million) and Indonesia (population: 270 million).

A range of crucial elections will be held in Europe this year. In addition to nine domestic elections, citizens across the European Union’s 27 member states will vote for the European Parliament elections in June 2024. EU member states elect representatives to serve as Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) every five years. Although the candidates elected run as members of national parties, they normally join transnational coalitions if elected, where they perform a range of crucial functions, including determining the EU’s budget, passing laws, and oversight. The degree of competition in domestic elections varies: both the Russian and Belarussian incumbents have been accused of electoral fraud. In other states, however, mainstream parties face serious challenges from the populist right, largely due to popular support for their strong anti-immigration policies. As they prepare for the 2024 elections, mainstream parties can draw lessons from the recent successes and failures of their counterparts across Europe.

These failures have sparked concern because the rise of radical right parties can often erode democracy. Common tactics of these parties include centralizing power by eliminating checks and balances and weakening civil society. In 2022, a European Parliament-adopted report warned that Hungary, probably the most prominent success story of European right-wing populism, was no longer a full democracy. The Law and Justice Party (PiS) in Poland imitated its tactics during its tenure in government from 2015 to 2023, sparking concern about democratic backsliding. A German court has found evidence that Alternative for Democracy (AfD), another populist right-wing party, has “anti-constitutional goals.” Some commentators have also criticized the populist right for offering “illusory solutions” to crucial problems.

Geert Wilders, the right-wing populist whose party won a plurality in the Dutch House of Representatives in November 2023. Photo by Roel Wijnants.

On November 22, 2023, Party for Freedom (PVV), a right-wing political party, won a plurality of seats in the Dutch House of Representatives. The victory of PVV and its leader, Geert Wilders, is the most recent example of the failure of mainstream European parties to appeal to those disenchanted with the political system. PVV’s success illustrates the ineffectiveness of one particular strategy used by these parties: accommodation, in which these parties endorse policies originally championed by more extreme parties to better appeal to their supporters.  

After former Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s government collapsed due to a disagreement over migrant policy and new elections were scheduled for November, Rutte’s party, the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) made immigration a focal point of its campaign. Having already spent years blaming asylum seekers for a crippling housing shortage, commentators, noting the the increased use of harsh rhetoric on immigration by VVD members in media appearances, argued that the VVD hoped this language would gain the votes of PPV loyalists. One academic study noted that “the VVD and CDA [another mainstream Dutch political party] have consciously aimed to woo voters skeptical about immigration and multiculturalism.”

The election results indicate the failure of that strategy. Some have argued that rather than drawing support from Wilders, this strategy increased his appeal by making immigration as the crucial issue of the election, a policy area where PPV has the strongest credentials. As one Dutch satirical website said, the VVD “ran a terrific campaign, unfortunately just not for our own party.”

Similar efforts to gain the support of far-right voters, which help integrate and legitimize positions originally seen as extreme, are not exclusive to the Netherlands: mainstream parties have adopted increasingly strong rhetoric and policies, particularly on immigration, in Denmark, Sweden, Germany, and France. Austria, in 2000, was the first country where this policy convergence led to a formal alliance: a center-right party formed a coalition government with far-right parties. Although Austria’s experiment with far-right governance proved short-lived, the growing power of the far-right in Europe has prompted political establishments across Europe to revise their rhetoric and policies to appeal to voters. 

A recent academic study, which examines European electoral results from 1976-2017, suggests that the the adoption of accommodative strategies in response to the success of the far right fails to convert voters, concluding that “voters are on average more likely to defect to the radical right when mainstream parties adopt anti-immigration positions,” due to the normalization of policies previously seen as unacceptable. The study provides an illustrative quote from Jean-Marie Le Pen, the former leader of one such party in France, who says that voters “prefer the original to the copy.” Making political and rhetorical concessions to radicals does not reduce their appeal. Taking more extreme positions to neuter the far-right seems to do nothing. Yet these policies continued unabated: a tough French immigration law, proposed by centrist president Emmanuel Macron, symbolized an ideological shift towards the far-right. The bill, criticized by the French left, passed in December with their support. Across Europe, mainstream parties have put their faith in a misguided strategy. 

Yet the exact same feature of European politics that helps far-right parties—multi-party systems—can also contribute to their marginalization. PVV is a plurality, not a majority: to govern, it requires the support of another party. The use of cordon sanitaires, in which mainstream political parties agree to deliberately exclude parties deemed too radical from governing coalitions, remains the only policy certain to prevent far-right parties from taking power, as they are rarely able to obtain an outright majority of legislative seats. In Poland, an ideologically diverse coalition united against the PiS won a majority of parliamentary seats and its leader, Donald Tusk, became prime minister even as PiS, who have been the target of fierce criticism due to what some consider politicized judicial reforms, limitations on press freedom, and policies such as banning abortion, received a plurality, 35% of votes. 

However, cordon sanitaires can also backfire. It depends on political will, a virtue beyond many politicians, and for voters to witness the deliberate exclusion of a certain party, particularly one which explicitly identifies as an “outsider” party, by a distrusted establishment can increase rather than decrease their support. Both have occurred in Germany: mainstream parties, having historically refused to share power with the AfD, the far-right party a German court warned had “anti-constitutional goals,” have begun to collaborate with them on a local level; The Economist has reported that “the isolation of the AfD has reinforced its narrative of being the only alternative to a failed establishment” whose policies have left less than a quarter of Germans optimistic about the future. Recent polling indicates that the AfD is now the second-most popular party in Germany. Although a recent scandal has prompted mass protests, in which hundreds of thousands have participated, against the AfD and some point to an unexpected loss in recent regional elections and a slight decline in support as proof of a growing electoral backlash, it is too soon to conclude that this new scandal has seriously impacted its support.

There is no easy solution. Anti-immigration sentiment, which is a defining feature of far-right politics throughout Europe, is consistently popular—ensuring that these parties will meet with some success, barring self-inflicted wounds such as that which may have damaged the AfD. In the fragmented, multi-party political systems present throughout Europe, even some support is enough to afford a considerable amount of power. Yet attempts to co-opt their voters seem to have failed: imitation does not earn votes. Cordon sanitaires remain effective but limited, risking increasing alienation. Under this current trend and strategic pitfall, European democracies will continue to struggle with far-right parties.

Conrad Hutchins (CC ’26) is a staff writer at CPR majoring in political science and minoring in history.