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  • Of Note:Institutions, Populism, and Immigration in Europe
  • Ben Cahill

Cnventional wisdom holds that anti-immigration populism is on the rise in Europe. Waves of immigrants from North Africa and Eastern Europe, fear of economic dislocations under European Union enlargement, and the struggles to integrate Muslim immigrants have breathed new life into anti-immigration platforms. Outcomes ranging from the meteoric rise of controversial Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn to the French rejection of the EU Constitution have been chalked up to a European slide toward xenophobia. The trouble with this inductive analysis is that electoral institutions in Europe have lent anti-immigration policies an outsized role in public discourse. As a result, public opinion on immigration is often misinterpreted, and its significance overstated.

Recent electoral results in Europe fail to prove that anti-immigration parties are making significant gains. Results for parties explicitly opposed to immigration have been mixed. In Austria's October 1st elections, the Freedom Party (formerly led by Jörg Haider) won only 11.2% of the vote, and Haider's new party, the Alliance for Austria's Future, barely met the minimum threshold for seats in parliament.1 The Freedom Party's electoral tally declined sharply from its 1999 high of 25% and the extreme right in Austria is clearly losing ground, although immigration politics continue to dominate political debate. Sweden's Sverigedemokraterna party, which favors tougher immigration laws, captured less than 3% of the national vote in September's general election.2 Its ideological counterpart in Denmark, the Dansk Folkeparti, has fared better; it governs in a broad coalition and has succeeded in pushing through some of Europe's strictest immigration policies. Despite these indecisive electoral results, the common perception is that populist appeals to limit immigration will win votes in Europe. These assumptions may be linked to the role of institutions.

In 2002, the xenophobic politician Jean-Marie Le Pen finished second in France's presidential election. His virulently anti-immigration platform appealed to a concentrated minority of voters—a group large enough to propel him to a second-round runoff but far too small to carry him to national victory.3 Le Pen's story is important—and not unique to France—because it illuminates the peculiar way in which politicians with narrow appeal can reframe public debate on important policy issues. [End Page 79]

Although he benefited from France's runoff system, the fact that Le Pen's success was limited illustrates another important aspect of European politics—the constraints faced by "issue" parties and politicians. Parliamentary systems with proportional representation naturally allow marginal parties to gain an electoral foothold. These parties may be capable of moving issues from the periphery to the center of public debate, drawing supporters away from rivals and even forcing shifts in party agendas. But anti-immigration populism remains at the margins for mainstream parties who must balance a range of voter concerns. Peripheral parties can afford to spend all their political capital on narrow issues, with little effect on policy but greater effects on political rhetoric.

France's rejection of the EU Constitution prompted a series of pessimistic analyses that echoed the post-2002 fear of a slide toward populism. Enlargement of the EU remains a source of genuine immigration concerns for many Europeans. The "plombier polonais" became a cliché that nevertheless captured an undercurrent of anxiety in France. But as with Le Pen's success in 2002, the French "no" vote was often misinterpreted. Voters rejected the EU Constitution for a myriad of reasons, including anti-elitism and frustration with the Chirac regime. Immigration concerns mattered, but did not dominate. A political referendum in and of itself tends to magnify and distort voters' preoccupation with a single issue. Referenda present specific proposals for approval or rejection, but they fail to indicate how much voters care about the issue at hand relative to other concerns. The results often inspire overwrought interpretations.

There is no doubt that immigration issues matter greatly to many Europeans. Today, the principal source of concern is no longer immigration from the former Soviet republics and the Balkans, but rather the economic and cultural difficulties of integrating Muslim immigrants. However, as the debate unfolds...

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