Article Institutional and Discursive Opportunities for Extreme-Right Mobilization in Five Countries GIUGNI, Marco, et al. Abstract Inspired by spatial theories of political behavior and by work on the impact of immigration on national identity, in this article we propose an explanation of the extreme right's claim making based on the interplay of three factors: national models of citizenship, the dynamics of political alignments and party competition, and the strategic/organizational repertoires of the extreme right, in particular the electoral strength of extreme-right parties. Confronting a number of hypotheses derived from this theoretical framework with original data on the extreme right's claim making in five European countries (the Netherlands, Britain, France, Germany, and Switzerland), we show how political-institutional and cultural-discursive opportunities account for differences in the extent, forms, and content of xenophobic and extreme-right claim making. Our study shows that national configurations of citizenship affect in significant ways the mobilization of the extreme right, both directly and indirectly. More precisely, our two-country comparison confirms the hypothesis that the claim making of the extreme right depends on a specific [...] Reference GIUGNI, Marco, et al. Institutional and Discursive Opportunities for Extreme-Right Mobilization in Five Countries. Mobilization, 2005, vol. 10, no. 1, p. 145-162 Available at: http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:84641 Disclaimer: layout of this document may differ from the published version. INSTITUTIONAL AND DISCURSIVE OPPORTUNITIES FOR EXTREME-RIGHT MOBILIZATION IN FIVE COUNTRIES* Marco Giugni, Ruud Koopmans, Florence Passy, and Paul Statham† Inspired by spatial theories of political behavior and by work on the impact of immigration on national identity, in this article we propose an explanation of the extreme right’s claim making based on the interplay of three factors: national models of citizenship, the dynamics of political alignments and party competition, and the strategic/organizational repertoires of the extreme right, in particular the electoral strength of extreme-right parties. Confronting a number of hypotheses derived from this theoretical framework with original data on the extreme right’s claim making in five European countries (the Netherlands, Britain, France, Germany, and Switzerland), we show how political-institutional and cultural-discursive opportunities account for differences in the extent, forms, and content of xenophobic and extreme-right claim making. Our study shows that national configurations of citizenship affect in significant ways the mobilization of the extreme right, both directly and indirectly. More precisely, our two-country comparison confirms the hypothesis that the claim making of the extreme right depends on a specific political opportunity structure formed by the combination of discursive opportunities deriving from the prevailing model of citizenship and by the political space made available by mainstream parties for far-right mobilization. This article compares the mobilization of the extreme right in five European countries (the Netherlands, Britain, France, Germany, and Switzerland). The focus is not only on protest activities such as public demonstrations or violent confrontations that characterize social movements but more broadly on the contentious intervention of far-right actors in the national public domain. Our central task will be to explain variations in xenophobic claims and, more generally, in the mobilization by extreme-right actors across the five countries of our study. By xenophobic claims we mean strategic intervention, either verbal or nonverbal, in the public domain “by groups who react to and mobilize against the presence of migrants and ethnic groups, demanding that the state enforce measures that exclude such groups from social, political, and cultural rights” (Statham 1997: 14). The definition of the extreme right is less straightforward and proves to be a particularly difficult task. Most of the attempts at defining and classifying the extreme right that we find in the literature deal with parties. The proposed typologies are usually based on the ideology of the extreme-right parties and on the * This article was written as part of our collaboration on the MERCI Project (Mobilization on Ethnic Relations Citizenship and Immigration), a five-country comparative research initiative. A book based on this research, entitled Contested Citizenship, (Koopmans, Statham, Giugni, and Passy, forthcoming) will be published by University of Minnesota Press. We thank Thom Duyvené de Wit for his collaboration on the Dutch data gathering and, more generally, for his valuable comments and ideas over the years. The study was supported by the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB), the British Economic and Social Research Council, and the Swiss National Science Foundation. † Marco Giugni is lecturer and researcher in the Department of Political Science, University of Geneva, Ruud Koopmans Professor of Sociology at the Free University in Amsterdam, Florence Passy is Assistant Professor at the Institut d’études politiques et internationales, University of Lausanne, and Paul Statham is Research Director, Centre for European Political Communication, University of Leeds. Send all correspondence to Marco Giugni, Département de science politique, Université de Genève, Uni-Mail, 1211 Genève 4, Switzerland © Mobilization: An International Journal 10(1): 145-162 145 146 Mobilization issues they address (Backes and Moreau 1993; Betz 1993; Elbers and Fennema 1993; Griffin 1993; Hainsworth 1992; Ignazi 1994; Kitschelt 1995). Ethnocultural biases and prejudices are perhaps the common denominator of all those actors categorized as far-right. Thus, in line with our general framework, we stress the ethnic elements of the discourse and mobilization of the extreme right, which is a collective actor that conveys an ethnocultural conception of the national identity. This is a view that points to cultural difference as a major barrier toward integration and stands opposed to the idea of the nation as a political and civic community (Koopmans and Statham 1999a). This perspective, to be sure, does not exhaust the extreme right’s various ideological and discursive elements and certainly does not do justice to its complexity. Yet, it focuses on its distinctive characteristics with respect to the political field of immigration and ethnic relations. By doing so, it allows us to link the claims made by extreme-right actors with the prevailing configurations of citizen. The success of extreme-right parties varies strongly across countries. Yet, previous work has tended to overlook these cross-national differences in favor of a focus on the conditions that have facilitated the emergence of extreme-right parties in general. Furthermore, previous work on the extreme right has focused on parties—and therefore electoral strength—and has stressed two main sets of factors: demand-side factors and supply-side-factors. The former refers to the conditions that have led to the creation of a social and cultural “reservoir” to be exploited by far-right political organizations, such as value change and structural cleavages related to the modernization process (e.g., Betz 1993; Flanagan 1987; Ignazi 1992; Minkenberg 1992). The latter points to political and institutional aspects such as the structure of the electoral system, the responses of established actors, and the dynamics of party alignment, demarcation, and competition (e.g., Betz 1993; Kitschelt 1995; Kriesi 1999; Koopmans 1996; Schain 1987; Thränhardt 1995), which may provide the extreme right with a political niche to be exploited. When it comes to explaining the rise and mobilization of extraparliamentary extremeright actions (e.g., racist and xenophobic violence perpetrated by skinheads or other groups of apparently disaffected youth), the literature is much smaller, as very little systematic research has been done regarding this aspect. To find a theoretical framework to explain this form of right-wing extremism, we must resort to the social movement literature, where we find two competing explanations: one that focuses on grievances and ethnic competition, and the other that stresses opportunities and institutional frameworks (Koopmans 1996).1 Briefly put, grievance theories see the causes of extreme-right violence in the discontent arising from the presence of foreigners and asylum seekers, and therefore a response to growing pressures caused by increasing immigration. In contrast, opportunity theories stress the role of political elites and institutional approaches in shaping the mobilization of extreme-right actors.2 Here we attempt to combine political-institutional and cultural-discursive factors within a revised political opportunity approach. In addition to political-institutional variables, which must be considered when explaining collective mobilizations, we look at the impact of national configurations of citizenship as a relevant political opportunity structure for the extremeright claim making. Broadly stated, our main thesis is that the collective definitions of citizenship in the five countries studied provide different sets of discursive opportunities, which determine the degree of visibility, resonance, and legitimacy of xenophobic claims and extreme-right actors. This, in turn, affects how political-institutional variables such as political alignments, party competition, and the presence of political entrepreneurs who channel extreme-right demands into the political system shape extreme-right claim making. Following a spatial model of political behavior, we argue that a crucial role in this respect is played by the political space made available to the mobilization of the extreme right by the policy positions of mainstream parties on issues pertaining to immigration and ethnic relations. Thus, the extent and forms of claim making by extreme-right actors stem more from the competition among parties in the institutional arenas than from the competition among ethnic groups, namely the native majority group and minority groups of various immigrant origins. We Mobilization of the Extreme-Right in Five Countries 147 Figure 1: A Theoretical Framework for the Analysis of Xenophobic and Extreme-Right Claim Making National configurations of citizenship 1 5 3 Strategicorganizational repertoires Political alignments and party competition 4 Xenophobic and extreme-right claim making 22 confront our argument with original data on the claim making (i.e. the contentious intervention in the public domain) of extreme-right actors in the five countries during the 1990s. A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING XENOPHOBIC AND EXTREME-RIGHT CLAIM MAKING Figure 1 gives the basic features of a theoretical framework for analyzing xenophobic and extreme-right claim making. We see xenophobic and extreme-right claim making as determined by the interplay of three factors. First, the opportunities and constraints set by national configurations of citizenship influence the extent and forms of the claim making by the extreme right (arrow 1). In defining the prevailing model of citizenship in a given country, we focus on two dimensions: (1) the individual equality dimension, or the national community’s formal criteria of inclusion or exclusion; and (2) the cultural difference dimension, namely, the cultural obligations imposed on outsiders to become members of the community (Koopmans and Statham 1999b; Koopmans et al. forthcoming). In the policy area of immigration and ethnic relations, these two dimensions refer to citizenship rights as a crucial factor for determining the ways in which migrants are incorporated into the receiving countries (Brubaker 1992; Castles 1995; Favell 1998; Smith and Blanc 1996; Schnapper 1991; Soysal 1994). On the formal side, we distinguish between ethnic-cultural and civicterritorial criteria for granting citizenship rights. Brubaker (1992) considers Germany and France as the archetypal examples of these two ways of defining the criteria of inclusion in the national community. On the cultural side, citizenship rights may imply the assimilation of newcomers to the dominant (national) culture or the recognition of ethnic difference. If we combine these two dimensions, we obtain four ideal-typical conceptions or models of citizenship. In the assimilationist model, migrants face a closed national community and 148 Mobilization must downplay their ethnic difference in order to adapt to the norms and cultural codes of the host society. Germany and Switzerland are two notable examples. In the universalist model, it is relatively easy to obtain citizenship, but ethnic-based identities must be given up in order to accept the norms and values of the republican state. France is the most often cited example. In the multicultural model, migrants have easy access to citizenship and at the same time their right to ethnic difference is recognized. Britain and the Netherlands are two examples in Western Europe. Finally, in the segregationist model, the recognition of difference is coupled with an ethnic conception of citizenship. This may lead in certain circumstances to differentialist or even segregationist policies toward minority groups. South Africa under the Apartheid would be an obvious example. Xenophobic and extreme-right claims should be facilitated where they “resonate” better with the prevailing configuration of citizenship and where they are more legitimate, in the sense that they have a greater degree of acceptability in the public domain. For example, halting all immigration or favoring nationals over foreigners on the job market—two typical demands of the extreme right—might be more viable demands in a context characterized by restrictive migration policies. We say this because, in this context, these kinds of claims are likely to be more visible, more resonant with the collective definition of the nation, and more legitimate. In contrast, it might be more difficult to address similar demands in a state that has a republican, rights-based policy style. The same holds—perhaps to an even greater extent— for countries that have a pluralist approach vis-à-vis cultural rights. Second, xenophobic and extreme-right claim making are affected by certain aspects belonging to the institutionalized political system and to the political process. Two factors seem particularly relevant in this respect: the structure of political alignments and the dynamics of party competition, which includes the demarcation strategies of established parties (arrow 2). As a number of authors have stressed, these supply-side factors are crucial because they determine the political space available to emerging and “outsider” parties for increasing their electoral strength (e.g., Betz 1993; Kitschelt 1995; Kriesi 1999; Koopmans 1996; Schain 1987; Thränhardt 1995). In addition, they are crucial aspects of the institutional opportunity structure for the mobilization of extreme-right actors outside the parliamentary arena. The main argument of this article is that configurations of citizenship and political institutions combine to form an opportunity structure that constrains and channels the claim making in the field of immigration and ethnic relations (arrow 3). An important way in which configurations of citizenship and the dynamics of party alignment and competition are interrelated is through the incorporation of the ideological components of the prevailing configuration of citizenship or the collective definition of national identity into programs of established parties, and more generally into the prevailing discourse of the polity (Koopmans and Statham 1999a). This is likely to create a different mix of opportunities for extreme-right actors to the extent that established parties occupy the potential political space and adopt preemptive strategies toward the extreme right. The third and final factor in our theoretical framework is represented by the strategic/ organizational repertoires of the extreme right itself (arrow 4). Here we refer to the extreme right’s different forms of political mobilization : either an important party engaged in the electoral struggle or extraparliamentary mobilization (i.e., a social movement). These are two strategic options available to extreme-right actors to make their claims to the political authorities (Koopmans 1996). If one option can be adopted, the other becomes less viable and therefore is less often used. As we shall see, this aspect is particularly relevant for explaining the action repertoires of the far right. The political space for radical and violent actions expands or shrinks depending on which organizational form is prevailing in a given country or other context. Of course, the organizational form is in turn influenced at least partly by the national configurations of citizenship and by the dynamics of political alignments and party Mobilization of the Extreme-Right in Five Countries 149 competition. On the one hand, just as the prevailing configurations of citizenship enable or constrain the extraparliamentary mobilization of the extreme right, it also determines the opportunities for the emergence of a strong far-right party (arrow 5). On the other hand, such opportunities also depend on the strategies and behaviors of other parties, especially established parties (arrow 6). Which direction this will take and, more generally, which predictions we can make on the basis of this theoretical framework about the extent and forms of the claim making by the extreme right is something we address in the next section. THE SPECIFIC OPPORTUNITY STRUCTURE FOR EXTREME-RIGHT CLAIM MAKING Students of social movements have had a tendency to specify political opportunity structures at a too general level, without taking into account the characteristics of particular issue fields and collective actors. For example, Kriesi et al. (1995) explain cross-national variations in the extent and forms of the mobilization of new social movements through certain characteristics of the political system, which grant different degrees of institutional access and yield different levels of repression. Yet, opportunity structures vary from one issue field to another as well as among collective actors. Therefore, we need to define a set of political opportunities that are specific to the field of migration and ethnic relations. We do so by stressing the impact of citizenship and migrant integration regimes. However, at least in the case of the native response to immigration given by the extreme right, the specific opportunity structure also results from more “traditional,” institutional factors such as the dynamics of party competition. Here we propose to conceptualize the specific opportunity structure of the extreme right as a combination of two dimensions, which depend on the three factors outlined above. These three factors determine the extent and forms of xenophobic and extreme-right claim making in two basic ways. On the one hand, they provide different sets of discursive opportunities, which can be either strong (or favorable, that is, when extreme-right actors and claims are highly visible, resonant, and legitimate) or weak (or unfavorable, that is, when extreme-right actors and claims have a lower degree of visibility, resonance, and legitimacy). On the other hand, they provide a larger or narrower political space for the emergence of such claims. The combination of these two dimensions yields four distinct opportunity structures for the mobilization of the extreme right, shown in figure 2. Figure 2. Specific Opportunities for Right-Wing Mobilization Political Space Large Strong Narrow Institutionalization Radicalization Populism Marginalization Discursive Opportunities Weak Mobilization 150 The first type we may call institutionalization (or institutionalized right-wing mobilization). It results from strong discursive opportunities and a large political space. In this situation, chances are higher that there will be a strong far-right party, for the established parties, especially those on the right of the political spectrum that are in closer competition with the extreme right, leave uncovered a large part of the political space, which can thus be exploited by the latter in electoral terms. The crucial aspect here is perhaps the differential degree to which established political parties have occupied anti-immigrant positions within the public discourse. If this has not occurred, extreme-right parties have better chances to be electorally successful. The presence of a strong party, in turn, is likely to reduce the share of extraparliamentary mobilization and lead to moderate forms of claim making. However, given the higher degree of visibility, resonance, and legitimacy of xenophobic and extreme-right claims, the overall level of mobilization is expected to be high. At the other extreme, we have the case we call marginalization (or marginalized rightwing mobilization). Here the far-right actor encounters neither favorable discursive opportunities or a political space that allows it to emerge as an important actor. As a result, we expect it to display a low level of mobilization, but at the same time a radical action repertoire. The remaining two cases represent intermediate situations. The type resulting from the combination of strong discursive opportunities and a narrow political space we call radicalization (or radicalized right-wing mobilization). As its name suggests, here the extreme right expresses itself primarily through extraparliamentary mobilization, for the narrow political space is unfavorable to the emergence of a strong party. Furthermore, the action repertoire should be radical, partly due to the very absence of a strong party and party due to the poor opportunities on the institutional side. Given the higher degree of visibility, resonance, and legitimacy, however, the overall level of mobilization should be rather high, as compared to the previous situation. Finally, if weak discursive opportunities combine with a large political space, we have a situation of populism (or populist right-wing mobilization). The large political space should favor the emergence of a strong far-right party, but the weak discursive opportunities would tend to mitigate its mobilization. Furthermore, because very radical and outright racist claims have little visibility and resonance, a more moderate type of right-wing populism mobilizing anti-immigrant sentiments is likely. Our research goal is to explain cross-national variations in the extent and forms of xenophobic and extreme-right claim making according to placement of our five countries in this typology. We do so starting with the overall presence of the extreme right in the public domain. First, however, we need to explain our data. DATA RETRIEVAL We confront our hypotheses with data from a research project on the mobilization on ethnic relations, citizenship, and immigration.3 Data retrieval is based on one national newspaper in each country (NRC Handelsblad for the Netherlands, The Guardian for Great Britain, Le Monde for France, the Frankfurter Rundschau for Germany, and the Neue Zürcher Zeitung for Switzerland). These are all independent newspapers of public record with a nationwide scope of coverage and readership. All of them are broadsheet newspapers with a reputation for consistent and detailed coverage of the field of migration and ethnic relations. From these newspapers, the main news sections of every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday issue were sampled and coded.4 We define a claim broadly as any strategic intervention (verbal or nonverbal) made on behalf of a collectivity and visible in the public domain which bears on the interests or rights of other collectivities (i.e., having a contentious nature). These include: (1) protest actions and collective mobilizations (street demonstrations, petitions, confrontational and violent actions, Mobilization of the Extreme-Right in Five Countries 151 and so on), (2) speech acts (public statements, written reports, media-addressed events in general, and the like), (3) political decisions (laws, administrative acts, judicial decisions), (4) repressive measures by the state against extreme-right and ethnic-minority actors. In this article, political decisions and repressive measures are not taken into account because those kinds of interventions are made only by state actors, not extreme-right actors. We coded all claims pertaining to the following issue fields: immigration, asylum, and aliens politics; minority integration politics (including citizenship); and antiracism and xenophobia. These claims define the political field of immigration and ethnic relations.5 In addition, we coded all claims by ethnic minorities, regardless of their relation to this field. Finally and most importantly for our present purpose, we coded all claims by extreme-right actors, including those not pertaining to the immigration and ethnic politics. For each claim retrieved we coded a number of relevant variables. The most important are: the location of the claim in time and place, the actor who makes the claim, the form of the claim, the content of the claim, the target of the claim, and the object of the claim. The coding was done following a semi-open system of codelists which allowed us to obtain as much detail as possible on the variables of interest and at the same time provided a structured scheme of data collection. In particular, the codelists concerning the content of claims have been left open and coders asked to add new codes each time they encountered a new type of claim. The information contained in the raw variables has been summarized in a set of variables to be used in cross-national comparisons. The analyses presented here are based on these summary variables and cover the 1992-1998 period. In addition to the claims data, we gathered information allowing us to empirically place the five countries in the typology of configurations of citizenship. This allows us at the same time to avoid one of the main weaknesses of the political opportunity approach to social movements, namely the lack of an empirical measure of the “independent variable,” i.e. political opportunity structures. Concerning the measure of citizenship models, we have gathered systematic information on a series of indicators for each of their two dimensions (the formal criteria and the cultural obligations). A score between 0 and 1 was assigned on each indicator, according to whether it went in the direction of an ethnic or of a civic conception of citizenship (formal dimension), and in the direction of a pluralist or of an assimilationist (or monist) view of the cultural obligations (cultural dimension).6 As our purpose here is not discuss in detail these indicators, we limit ourselves to summarize the main results (see Koopmans et al. forthcoming for a more detailed analysis). As we can see in table 1, the five countries of our study are clearly distinguished in terms of their prevailing configuration of citizenship. The Netherlands, Britain, and France clearly are closer to the civic pole of the individual-equality dimension. Germany and especially Switzerland are more ethnic-based. On the cultural-difference dimension, Britain and especially the Netherlands are more pluralist than Germany and (especially) Switzerland, which Table 1: Overall Summary Scores for the Two Dimensions of Citizenship Individual equality dimension Cultural difference dimension Average score Netherlands 0.83 0.76 0.80 Britain 0.71 0.31 0.51 France 0.67 -0.59 0.04 Germany -0.19 -0.20 -0.20 Switzerland -0.58 -0.85 -0.72 Notes: Results are expressed on a scale ranging from -1.00 to +1.00. On the individual equality dimension, code -1.00 corresponds to the ethnic pole and code +1.00 to the civic pole. On the cultural difference dimension, code -1.00 corresponds to the monist pole and code +1.00 to the pluralist pole. Average scores are computed by adding the scores on the two dimensions and then dividing by 2. Mobilization 152 Table 2: Average Discursive Positions by Established Parties in Immigration and EthnicRelations Politics Highest average position of established party Lowest average position of established party Range between highest and lowest position Netherlands Britain France Germany 0.68 0.77 0.76 0.91 -0.05 -0.44 0.38 -0.39 0.73 1.21 0.38 1.30 Switzerland 0.75 (0.75) -0.25 (-0.07) 1.00 (0.82) Notes: Includes all forms of claims. Takes into account actors having participated as first actor only. Results are expressed on a scale ranging from -1.00 to +1.00. Code -1.00 corresponds to antiminority, racist, and xenophobic claims. Code 0 corresponds to neutral, ambivalent, and technocratic claims. Code +1.00 corresponds to prominority, antiracist, and antiextreme-right claims. Figures between parentheses for Switzerland consider the Swiss People’s Party as belonging to the extreme right. have a more monist view. France more or less stands in between. If we combine the scores for the two dimensions, we can see that the Netherlands and Britain correspond to the multicultural model of citizenship, France to the universalist model, and Germany and Switzerland to the assimilationist model. OVERALL PRESENCE OF THE EXTREME RIGHT IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN Concerning discursive opportunities, we can expect the extreme right to be stronger in counries in which an ethnic definition of the nation prevails. We argue that an extreme-rightist position toward immigration and ethnic issues resonates with the ethnocultural conception of citizenship and national identity. This should provide more opportunities for this type of claim, which would be more legitimate in such a context. Yet, far-right actors, in addition to carrying an ethnic-based notion of citizenship, also stress a monist view of the cultural obligations attached to it, as when they point to the fact that migrants should adapt to the habits and customs of the host society, not the other way around. In contrast, in countries where the definition of the nation contains important civic-political elements as well as a pluralist view of minority-cultural rights, extreme-right claims are less visible, resonant, and legitimate in public discourses. Thus, with regard to discursive opportunities yielded by the prevailing configuration of citizenship, we expect the presence of the extreme right in the public domain to be higher in Germany and Switzerland (assimilationism), inter-mediate in France (universalism), and lower in Britain and the Netherlands (multiculturalism). One way to determine empirically the extent to which members of the polity incorporate ethnocultural elements of the national identity is to look at their politics of immigration.7 We assume that the higher the proportion of antiminority, racist, and xenophobic claims, the greater the incorporation of ethnocultural elements in the polity and, as a result, the narrower the political space available to the far right. Yet the political space available to extreme-right parties also depends on other factors, such as the electoral system and the specific strategies of established parties. Thus, the crucial aspect here is whether established parties, which are in electoral competition with extreme-right parties, cover the electoral terrain of the extreme right in public discourses. The most important aspect for our present purpose is the average position of established parties and the political space they leave to far-right actors in the five countries. Table 2 summarizes this information in a straightforward way. The first two rows respectively give the most “proimmigrant” and the most “anti-immigrant” position. The third row gives the range between these two positions, which represents the political space for the extreme right. As we can see, Germany provides the narrower political space to far-right parties. The Mobilization of the Extreme-Right in Five Countries 153 Table 3: Predictions About the Extent of Claim Making by the Extreme Right Netherlands Britain France Germany Switzerland Discursive opportunities Low Low Intermediate High High Political space Intermediate-high Low High Low Intermediate-low Intermediate Very low High Intermediate Intermediate Overall Table 4: Share of Claims by the Extreme Right in the Public Domain Parties Other organizations and groups Unknown actors Other and unknown actors together Total N Netherlands 5.0 Britain 1.0 France 18.3 Germany 2.0 Switzerland 5.4 2.3 1.9 2.5 6.5 3.2 2.3 0.1 0.8 6.0 0.8 4.6 2.0 3.3 12.5 4.0 9.2 2,484 3.0 1,345 21.1 3,231 14.1 8,341 8.9 1,676 Notes: Includes all forms of claims. Claims of the extreme right may also deal with issues outside the field of immigration and ethnic relations. lowest average position of an established party (in this case, the CSU—Christian Social Union) has an important “anti-immigrant” stance, as the score is quite negative compared to the other countries except Britain. Most importantly, the range between the most “proimmigrant” party (the PDS—Party of Democratic Socialism) and the most “anti-immigrant” one (the CSU) is the widest among the five countries. The political space for the extreme right is also quite narrow in Britain, where the lowest average position (the Conservative party) is even more negative than in Germany and the range between the most “proimmigrant” party (the Labor Party) and the most “anti-immigrant” one (the Conservatives) is nearly equally large. At the other extreme, France provides the most favorable context for the emergence of the extreme right, as the lowest average position (the RPR—Rally for the Republic) is the most positive among the five countries and, above all, the range between the most “proimmigrant” party (the Communist party) and the most “anti-immigrant” one (the RPR) is the smallest. The resulting political space available to the far right is particularly large. Finally, Switzerland and the Netherlands represent intermediate cases. The range between “promigrant” (the Swiss Socialist Party and the German Greens) and “anti-immigrant” parties (the SVP—Swiss People’s Party and the Dutch VVD—People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy) is neither the highest nor the lowest.8 Thus, with regard to the political space, we expect the presence of the extreme right in the public domain to be highest in France, lowest in Germany and Britain, and at the intermediate level in Switzerland (intermediate-low) and the Netherlands (intermediate-high). Table 4, which shows the extreme right’s claim making in the five countries, allows us to see whether these predictions are correct. The table reports the percentage of claims in our sample in each country that were racist or extreme-rightist.9 It also distinguishes the extreme right between parties from other organizations, groups, and unknown actors (which most of the time were coded from xenophobic or violent actions with no actor reported). The first conclusion that we can draw from these results is that they confirm that grievance theories 154 Mobilization have little explanatory power with respect to the mobilization of the extreme right. Based on various sources, we constructed for each country a summary indicator of objective conditions that would arguably serve as the basis for xenophobic and extreme-rightist grievances. This indicator is based on three measures: the share of population of migrant origin, the immigration rate, and the unemployment rate. The ranking or our five countries according to this indicator is the following (from the “worst” to the “best” situation): Switzerland (35), Germany (27), the Netherlands (23), France (22), and Britain (18). Comparing this ranking with the row in table 4 showing the total share of extreme-rightist claims, we observe a clear lack of correlation. Second, these findings confirm our hypotheses concerning the combined effect of discursive opportunities and the political space available to far-right actors and claims. With more than twenty percent of total claims, the extreme right has been much more active in France than in the other four countries. Indeed, its presence in the French public domain is more than twice as large as in Switzerland and the Netherlands, where—as expected—it is at an intermediate level. In addition, at an intermediate level, though higher than in these two countries, the far right in Germany seems to take advantage of the strong degree of visibility, resonance, and legitimacy of its claims in that context. Finally, as expected, the extreme right seems particularly week in Britain, where it was involved only in three percent of the claims. These findings also point to a crucial difference in the distribution of claims across the two main forms that the extreme right can take. According to our theoretical framework, national configurations of citizenship and the political process among parties impinge upon the strategic/organizational repertoires of the extreme right, namely, the choice between party organization or extraparliamentary mobilization (including unorganized, spontaneous actions), i.e., the social movement form. The extreme right in western Europe, both in its traditional and new variants, has usually been channeled into parliamentary party politics. The extent to which this is likely to occur varies strongly across countries and depends in part on the interplay between the dominant conception of the nation and the dynamics of party alignment, competition, and demarcation. As we can see in table 4, parties play a large role in Switzerland, the Netherlands, and above all France, in Britain and especially in Germany the opposite is true. In this regard, we observe nearly perfect correlations among the predictions deriving from the political-space model and the distribution of claims by extreme-right parties. The same also holds true for the correspondence among the predictions of the discursiveopportunity model and the distribution of claims by other extreme-right organizations and groups, although to a lesser extent. If we look at row four, which collapses row two (other actors) and row three (unknown actors), we get a clearer picture of the relative shares of the partisan and the nonpartisan forms of extreme right in the five countries.10 The party form dominates claim making in France, while the social movement form largely prevails in Germany, the two countries that are opposites in terms of political space. Compared to the presence of far-right parties, extraparliamentary mobilization is also important in Britain. Finally, Switzerland and the Netherlands are characterized by a rather homogeneous distribution of claims across the two forms. While this distribution largely reflects the political space made available by the positions of established parties in immigrant politics, when we look at the relative presence of the party and social movement forms of the extreme right, we should also take into account the different electoral strength of far-right parties in the five countries. It is likely that parties are more often present in the public domain when they have a strong institutional representation, for they have both more opportunities to address the public and more political responsibility to do so. In electoral terms, these parties are very strong in France, relatively strong in Switzerland, weak in Germany and the Netherlands, and very weak in Britain. Based on various sources, we have calculated the average percentage of votes received by extreme-right parties in the five countries during the 1990s. The results are the following: 12.2 in France, 8.4 in Switzerland (excluding the Swiss People’s party), 2.5 in the Netherlands, 2.1 in Germany, and Mobilization of the Extreme-Right in Five Countries 155 less than 1.0 in Britain. This might further strengthen their strong involvement in claim making in France and contribute to explaining their stronger presence than expected in Switzerland. ACTION REPERTOIRES We have seen in a previous section that there are two competing explanations of racist and extreme-right violence. Grievance theories assume that the more intense the objective condition or problem (for example, a large foreign population or increasing flows of immigrants), the stronger the grievances and hence the more radical or violent the collective response. Opportunity theories, in contrast, assume that violence increases to the extent that alternative opportunities, which may be used to articulate collective interests—for example, a strong extreme-right party—are lacking. More specifically, political opportunity theorists have linked cross-national variations in the action repertoires of social movements to differences in the institutional opportunity structures (e.g., Kitschelt 1986; Kriesi et al. 1995; Tarrow 1998).11 As stated in the theoretical section, our aim is to account for extreme-right action repertoires as determined by discursive opportunities and the available political space. Concerning discursive opportunities, we expect the extreme right to be more radical in the context of assimilationism and more moderate in the context of multiculturalism. In the former situation, the extreme right is a more legitimate actor than in the latter. As a result, xenophobic and radical far-right groups find a more favorable terrain for their actions compared to situations when the extreme right is completely marginalized. Universalism, in this respect, provides an intermediate case. Thus, as far as public resonance and political legitimacy are concerned, we can make the following predictions about the action repertoires of the extreme right: radical in Germany and Switzerland, moderate in Britain and the Netherlands, and at an intermediate level in France. As the figures in table 4 suggest, the political space for the extreme right is quite limited in both Germany and Britain, somewhat larger in Switzerland and the Netherlands, and quite large in France. This means a more closed opportunity structure in the former two countries and a more open in the latter, with the other two falling in between. As a result, we expect the action repertoire of the extreme right to be radical in Germany and Britain, moderate in France, and intermediate in Switzerland (intermediate-radical) and the Netherlands (intermediate-low). In addition to discursive opportunities and political space, there is a third aspect of the specific opportunity structure that seems to play a crucial role: the electoral strength of the extreme right. Here we follow Koopmans (1996) in establishing a relationship between extreme-right radicalism and the presence of a strong far-right party. In this view, racist and extreme-right violence is lower where extreme-right parties are stronger, and vice versa. The use of violence is a costly strategy because it risks repression and moral sanctions. Therefore, when alternatives that are more viable exist, the amount of violence should diminish. The presence of a strong extreme right party provides such an opportunity. If this view is correct, we should observe a negative correlation between the presence of important extreme-right parties and the levels of racist and extreme-right violence. Given the electoral strength of the extreme right in the five countries under study, we predict a radical action repertoire in Germany, Britain, and the Netherlands, a moderate one in France, and an intermediate one in Switzerland. If we combine the hypotheses derived from each of these three aspects, we obtain the overall predictions shown in the fourth row of table 5, which summarizes the discussion about action repertoires. The action repertoire of the extreme right is expected to be very radical in Germany, radical in Britain, moderate in France, and at an intermediate level in Mobilization 156 Switzerland and the Netherlands. Table 6 allows us to confront these predictions with our data. It gives the distribution of extreme-right claims according to the action repertoire. We distinguish between three main forms of action: public statements, conventional political actions (meetings, judicial action, direct-democratic action, and petitions), and protest actions (demonstrative, confrontational, and violent protests). The results largely confirm our expectations. Germany clearly has the most radical extreme right, followed at a distance by Britain. At the other extreme, the French far right is the most moderate one. Finally, Switzerland and the Netherlands stand somewhere in between, but closer to Britain than France. Incidentally, we may note the particularly high proportion of confrontational protests in the Netherlands. This seems to be a peculiarity of political mobilization in this country, as Kriesi et al.’s (1995) data point in the same direction. Importantly, these findings show the limits of the traditional political opportunity approach. If, for example, Kriesi et al.’s (1995) model would predict the most radical repertoire in France and the most moderate in Switzerland, the largest share of violent protests occurred in Germany and, furthermore, the French extreme right displays a more moderate action repertoire than in any other country. Instead, an approach that stresses the specific opportunities for the extreme right has more explanatory power, for our results indicate that the extreme right behaves in a completely different way than, for example, the new social movements studied by Kriesi et al. (1995). Clearly, their findings cannot be generalized to all social movements. Thus, the political opportunity structure must be specified for each movement or at least movement sector separately. Table 5: Predictions About the Action Repertoire of the Extreme Right Netherlands Britain France Germany Discursive opportunities Moderate Moderate Intermediate Radical Radical Political space Intermediatemoderate Radical Moderate Radical Intermediateradical Radical Radical Moderate Radical Intermediate Intermediate Radical Moderate Very radical Intermediate Electoral strength of extreme-right parties Overall Switzerland Table 6: Action Repertoire of the Extreme Right Public statements Conventional political actions Meetings Judicial action Direct-democratic action Petitions Protest actions Demonstrative protests Confrontational protests Violent protests Total N Notes: Bold figures refer to totals. Netherlands 45.6 1.8 1.8 52.6 6.1 22.4 24.1 100% 228 Britain 42.5 12.5 2.5 7.5 2.5 45.0 5.0 5.0 35.0 100% 40 France 72.0 11.7 10.1 1.3 0.3 16.2 6.6 2.9 6.7 100% 683 Germany 12.3 6.7 4.1 1.7 0.9 81.0 12.0 12.4 56.6 100% 1175 Switzerland 62.1 8.3 2.1 0.7 4.1 1.4 29.6 3.4 4.1 22.1 100% 145 Mobilization of the Extreme-Right in Five Countries 157 The crucial factors here seem to be the presence of a strong, established, extreme-right party and, above all, the political space available for the mobilization of the far right. On the one hand, there is a clear negative correlation between electoral strength and the proportion of protest actions: the lowest share of protests occurred in France, which is also the country with the strongest extreme-right party and the highest in Germany, which does not have a strong party. Britain and the Netherlands, which are also characterized by weak far-right parties, display an important unconventional mobilization as well. Finally, Switzerland is an intermediate case, both in the electoral strength of extreme-right parties and in the share of protest actions. On the other hand, if we focus on violent protests, the ranking of the five countries on the indicators of political space (see table 2) follows exactly that of the amount of xenophobic violence. Thus, the incorporation of ethnocultural and immigration issues into public discourse reduces opportunities for extreme-right emergence and at the same time tends to radicalize its action repertoire. Finally, we see once again that grievance theories are of little help and offer at best only a limited explanation of racist and extreme-right violence in our five countries. The correlation between violent protests and our summary indicator of objective conditions with respect to immigration is far from perfect. True, France, which ranks very low on the objective conditons, has the most moderate extreme right, but the correspondence stops there and the distribution of violent protests in the other countries does not reflect the objective pressure coming from migration. THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE EXTREME RIGHT TO CLAIM MAKING ON IMMIGRATION AND ETHNIC RELATIONS Thus far, we have considered all extreme-right claims, regardless of thematic focus. We will now restrict our focus to claims about immigration and ethnic relations in order to assess the extreme right’s contribution. We want to know whether the factors that generally determine extreme-right claim making (i.e., its overall presence in the public domain) also account for its claim making in the more specific political field of immigration issues and ethnic relations. Table 7 presents the share of extreme-right claims on immigration and ethnic relations by issue field. The upper section refers to the entire field of immigration and ethnic relations and shows the presence of all types of extreme-right actors in the first row. In the second row, political parties are excluded from the pool of actors. The lower section focuses on the two more-institutionalized issue fields: immigration, asylum, and alien politics (third row) as well Table 7: Share of Extreme-Right Actors in Claim Making in Immigration and ethnic-relations politics by Issue Field Netherlands Britain France Germany Switzerland Immigration and ethnic relations politics 6.8 2286 2.7 1313 10.2 2388 10.4 6432 7.0 1365 Immigration and ethnic-relations politics– excluding extreme-right parties 4.2 2286 1.8 1313 2.6 2388 9.2 6432 3.2 1365 Immigration, asylum, and aliens politics 1.0 1125 0.6 486 3.2 882 0.6 2586 3.9 787 Minority integration politics 1.0 630 0.2 479 11.6 465 0.6 710 6.0 234 All political fields More institutionalized issue fields Notes: Includes all forms of claims. Number of cases (N) in italics. Mobilization 158 as minority integration politics (fourth row). The less-institutionalized antiracism and xenophobia issue field is excluded from this section of the table. If we first look at the entire field, we can conclude that our hypotheses about the overall presence of the extreme-right in the public domain (see table 3) to a large degree also hold for claim making in the more specific field of immigration and ethnic relations. France still ranks first and Britain last. The results for the other three countries are somewhat less consistent, but in general, they confirm the prediction of an intermediate to low level of mobilization. Yet, the level of mobilization of the German extreme right is stronger than expected and its presence is stronger in the immigration political field than overall. This is largely because there is a higher proportion of general, unspecific xenophobic claims made outside the institutional arenas by German extraparliamentary groups.12 As we have seen earlier (see table 4), the level of mobilization diminishes dramatically in France if we exclude extreme-right parties, most notably the Front National. At the same time, this shows once again that the strength of this party is detrimental to the mobilization of other far-right organizations and groups, not only in general but also when it comes to issues pertaining to immigration and ethnic relations. More generally, countries like France and—to a lesser extent—Switzerland that have significant far-right parties leave a narrower space for the extrainstitutional mobilization of the extreme right. If the distribution of extreme-right claims across our five countries looks quite different depending on whether we include parties or not, it also varies according to which of the two more institutionalized issue fields we consider. Two findings deserve mentioning in this respect. First, the mobilization of the extreme right concerning immigration, asylum, and alien politics (first row in the table) is higher in France and even more so in Switzerland than in the other countries. Second, mobilization in the field of minority integration politics is particularly high in France, relatively high in Switzerland, and low in the other three countries. These findings may be interpreted in two ways, considering the variable strength of farright parties in the five countries. The presence of the extreme right in the two more institutionalized issue fields (immigration, asylum, alien politics, and minority-integration politics) is stronger where far-right parties are stronger. This might be because these parties make more policy-oriented claims as compared to other extreme-right organizations and groups. In other words, their institutional position leads them to focus on specific policy issues rather than making unspecific xenophobic claims. This is particularly true for the minority integration issue field that often represents the focal point of political debates in matters of immigration and, above all, tends to polarize the position of parties and that of extreme-right parties in particular. CONCLUSION A country’s prevailing conception of citizenship is seen as one of the factors that explains the emergence of the new radical right (e.g., Kitschelt 1995; Kriesi 1999); but, in general, this view remains underdeveloped in existing accounts, which usually focus on political and institutional variables. Recent social movement research has begun to inquire into the impact of collective definitions of the nation and membership in the national community on extremeright mobilization. Koopmans and Statham (1999a), for example, have explained the differential success of the extreme right in Germany and Italy with the role of ethnic and civic conceptions of nationhood. Here we followed this line of reasoning in order to account for cross-national variations in extent and forms of claim making by the extreme right in the public domain, both within and outside the field of immigration and ethnic relations. In addition to citizenship and immigrant-integration regimes, we must also consider certain aspects of the institutional political system and of the political process. Importing insights from spatial theories of political behavior, we have proposed a theoretical framework for Mobilization of the Extreme-Right in Five Countries 159 understanding xenophobic and extreme-right claim making, arguing that such variations are, to a large extent, determined by the interplay of three factors: national configurations of citizenship, the dynamics of political alignments and party competition, and the strategic/ organizational repertoires of the extreme right, in particular the electoral strength of extremeright parties. Confronting a number of hypotheses derived from this theoretical framework with our empirical data, we were able to show how political-institutional and cultural-discursive opportunities account for differences in the extent, forms, and content of xenophobic and extreme-right claim making. Combining these cultural and spatial dimensions, we have singled out four distinct opportunity settings for the mobilization of the extreme right: institutionalization, which favors the emergence of a strong far-right party, a large presence in the public domain, and a moderate action repertoire; marginalization, where the extreme right is not represented by a strong party, displays a low level of mobilization, but at the same time a radical action repertoire; radicalization, where the extreme right expresses itself primarily through an important and radical extraparliamentary mobilization; and populism, which is more difficult to characterize due to the contradiction of different elements of the opportunity structure. Based on the assessment of the prevailing configurations of citizenship, which provide different sets of discursive opportunities to extreme-right actors and claims, and the empirical measure of the political space available to this type of actor, we were are able to place the five countries of our study within this typology. France best exemplifies the case of institutionalization, Britain that of marginalization, Germany that of radicalization, and the Netherlands that of populism. Switzerland yields a hybrid situation in this respect (also illustrated by the ambivalent position of the SVP with regard to the extreme right), one that locates somewhere between the French and German cases, but closer to the latter. Our analysis points to the importance of distinguishing between the two principal organizational forms through which extreme-right interests and identities emerge in the public domain: parties and social movements. This distinction is not important simply for descriptive reasons, but because the electoral strength of far-right parties becomes a factor that explains the rise of xenophobic and extreme-right violence outside the institutional arenas. Most importantly, our analysis suggests that processes of social and cultural change do not impinge directly upon the public articulation of collective interests and identities. More specifically, contemporary right-wing extremism is not a direct reaction to the fundamental change in culture and values that has occurred in Western Europe. It rather depends on the politicization of new cleavages or the repoliticization of existing ones. It also relates to the saliency of certain policy areas that become the main political terrain for mobilization by extreme-right organizations and groups. Immigration is certainly among the most important of such areas today. The amount and forms of claim making by the extreme-right largely depends on the political space made available to them by other collective actors within this political field. In this regard, the policy positions of mainstream parties on immigration and ethnic relations represent an important aspect of the discursive opportunity structure for the mobilization of extreme-right and xenophobic actors. The latter find more access to the public domain to the extent that established actors (i.e., mainstream parties) do not “colonize” their political space. In the case of extraparliamentary groups, the very presence of a strong farright party is itself part of this opportunity structure. In the end, the presence and forms of the extreme right in Western Europe depends more on institutional and discursive opportunities than to the level of grievances in society. At best, objective and subjective grievances are a necessary but insufficient condition for its emergence. In brief, the political space made available through the political process, rather than the dynamics of ethnic competition, account for claim making of the extreme right in Western Europe. Mobilization 160 NOTES 1 See Belanger and Pinard (1989), Olzak (1992), and Olzak and Nagel (1986) for those ethnic competition theories that are more closely related to the discussion of extreme-right mobilization. 2 Grievances theories have lost much of their popularity among students of social movements and have largely been discarded. Most explanations of social movement mobilization and contentious politics today follow an opportunity approach. However, in the literature on ethnic relations, racism, and the extreme right in particular, it remains the dominant perspective (referring to such explanatory factors as anomie, unemployment, status anxiety, and so forth). Furthermore, if one considers explanations of xenophobia found in the popular press and commonsensically voiced in popular discourse, grievance, discontent, and disintegration theories are even more salient. 3 We refer to the MERCI project (Mobilization on Ethnic Relations, Citizenship, and Immigration) that focuses on these five West European countries: Germany and Britain (researched by Ruud Koopmans, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung, and Paul Statham, University of Leeds), France and Switzerland (Marco Giugni, University of Geneva, and Florence Passy, University of Lausanne), and the Netherlands (Thom Duyvené de Wit, University of Amsterdam). See Koopmans et al. (forthcoming) for a summary of the main results of the study. 4 Previous work on social movements and contentious politics has proved the robustness of protest-event analyses as a way to measure movement mobilization (e.g., Kriesi et al. 1995; Olzak 1989; Tarrow 1989; Tilly et al. 1975; see also Rucht et al. 1998). Doubts were raised as to possible biases, in particular as regards the newspaper source, sampling, and the coding procedure. Newspapers may yield both selection and description biases (McCarthy et al. 1996). First, selection biases could be important when one looks only at social movement actions and protest events, as the publication of events is influenced by their size, radicalness, and novelty, as well as by the issue attention cycle (Danzger 1975; McCarthy et al. 1996; Snyder and Kelly 1977). However, we are interested not only in protest events, but in all forms of actions, including speech acts and political decisions. The selection bias is likely to be less important for these kinds of events. Furthermore, we take newspapers as the vehicle for the debates occurring in the public domain. Therefore the filter made by newspapers allows us to assess the degree of access of social and political actors to the public domain. Second, description biases should not be too strong insofar as we are coding the actors’ stated goals and not the journalists’ judgments or analyses of the event at hand. Comparisons made with additional newspapers for the cases of Britain and Germany suggest that description biases are limited (Koopmans and Statham 1999b). Newspapers are thus arguably a good source for the coverage of news of national scope and significance, i.e., those which we are herein particularly interested (Koopmans 1998). Third, regarding the issue of sampling, some have criticized the use of a nonrandom sample, especially the choice to take only the Monday issue of the paper (Barranco and Wisler 1999) Since we took every second newspaper issue, biases due to sampling should be much less relevant in our case. Our sample is more comprehensive than one based on the Monday issue and is not biased toward events occurring during the weekend. Finally, potential intercoder reliability problems to a large extent were avoided as we checked every single event in our data set and corrected for possible coding errors or variations from one coder to the other. 5 The category of immigration, asylum, and alien politics includes claims pertaining to the regulation of immigrant entry (including policies to prevent immigration), immigrant residence rights and their voluntary or involuntary return. In addition, it includes issues of access to work and welfare for groups that do not (yet) have full residence rights (nonrecognized asylum seekers and refugees, illegal aliens, and temporary labor migrants). The category of minority-integration politics includes claims that pertaining to the integration of resident migrants in the host society (e.g. minority rights and participation, discrimination, and unequal treatment, minority social problems, and ethnic relations). The category of antiracism and xenophobia includes claims pertaining to these issues and the fight against them, both in institutional and noninstitutional contexts. It also includes general xenophobic claims. 6 The indicators on the formal dimension refer to the acquisition of nationality, social and residence rights, political rights, and antidiscrimination measures. The indicators on the cultural dimension refer to the school system, the military system, the public media system, religious practices, political practices, labor market practices, and citizenship practices. The assessment of the various indicators reflect the situation in 2002. Our indicators for the cultural dimension focus on the question of the recognition of Islam. We opted for this specific mainly for two reasons. On the one hand, it was very problematic to have a more general assessment for all types of ethnic or religious groups. On the other hand, Islam today is at the center of public discourses and policy measures with respect to the politics of ethnic difference. Scores have been assigned on a five-point scale (0, 0.25, 0.50, 0.75, 1). On the formal dimension, the value 0 was assigned to those indicators with the maximum degree of ethnic-based conception of citizenship, the value 1 to those indicators with the maximum degree of civic-based conception of citizenship, and the intermediate values accordingly in between. Similarly, on the cultural dimension, the value 0 was assigned to those indicators with the maximum degree of pluralist view of the cultural obligations, the value 1 to those indicators with the maximum degree of an assimilationist view of the cultural obligations, and the intermediate values accordingly in between. 7 To do so, we first computed the average discursive positions of all political parties on issues pertaining to immigration and ethnic relations on a scale going from -1 (for all claims whose realization implies a deterioration in the rights or position of migrants and claims that express, verbally or physically, a negative attitude with regard to immigrants or a positive attitude with regard to xenophobic and extreme-right groups or aims) to 1 (for all claims whose realization implies an improvement in the rights and position of migrants and claims expressing, verbally of physically, a positive attitude with regard to immigrants or a negative attitude with regard to xenophobic and extreme-right groups or aims). This provides us with a general indicator of the position of claims with regard to the Mobilization of the Extreme-Right in Five Countries 161 rights, position, and evaluation of immigrants and ethnic minorities (and of those who mobilize against them). Both verbal and nonverbal claims are taken into account to determine their position. Neutral or ambivalent claims get code 0. 8 In the case of Switzerland, we also give positions by considering the SVP as an extreme-right party (shown between parenthesis in the table). The SVP was originally a center-right agrarian party, but has recently moved to the right, especially in the German-speaking part of the country, and has often taken a particularly tough position against immigrants and asylum-seekers. In this case, the most “anti-immigrant” party in Switzerland is the FDP—Free Democratic Party. 9 It is important to point out that the distributions shown in this table are based on the assumption that the amount of claims by actors other than the extreme right outside the field of immigration and ethnic relations is the same, since they have been coded only for extreme-right actors. 10 In doing so, we assume that most unknown actors are other organizations and groups rather than parties. Given that parties are usually reported as actors by newspapers, this assumption seems plausible. 11 Again, Kriesi et al.’s (1995) approach would predict a radical action repertoire of the extreme-right in France, an intermediate-radical one in Germany, an intermediate-moderate one in the Netherlands, and a moderate one in Switzerland (Kriesi et al. 1995: 44), to which we may add an intermediate-moderate repertoire in Britain (due to the combination of closed formal institutional structures and an inclusive prevailing strategy of the authorities). In this perspective, the closed opportunities available to social movements in France, in terms of institutionalized access to the political system and in terms of propensity of the authorities toward repression, contrast with the openness existing in Switzerland. Germany, Britain, and the Netherlands in this respect are intermediate cases. As a result of these differences in the general opportunity structures, the claim making of the extreme right should be quite radical in France, moderate in Switzerland, and somewhere in between in the other three countries. 12 Often the extreme right marks its presence in the field of immigration and ethnic-relations politics by pronouncing general anti-immigrant statements or acting violently against immigrants. As we can see in the table, this kind of behavior varies greatly from one country to the other. Unspecific xenophobic claims are very frequent in the Netherlands (62.8% of all claims by the extreme right), in Britain (62.9 %), and especially in Germany (84.5%), while they are less often used in Switzerland (35.4%) and especially France (19.7%). As a result, the share of extreme-right claims dealing with antiracism and xenophobia also varies across countries (97.0% in Germany; 89.1% in the Netherlands; 88.6% in Britain; 66.4% in France; and 53.1% in Switzerland), which explains the difference between the distributions concerning the whole political field and those taking into account only the two more institutionalized issues fields. REFERENCES Backes, Uwe, and Patrick Moreau. 1993. Die extreme Rechte in Deutschland. München: Akademischer Verlag. Barranco, José, and Dominique Wisler. 1999. “Validity and Systematicity of Newspaper Data in Event Analysis.” European Sociological Review 15: 301-322. Belanger, Sarah, and Maurice Pinard. 1989. “Ethnic Movements and the Competition Model: Some Missing Links.” American Sociological Review 56: 446-457. Betz, Hans-Georg. 1993. “The New Politics of Resentment: Radical Right-Wing Populist Parties in Western Europe.” Comparative Politics 25: 413-427. Brubaker, Rogers. 1992. Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Castles, Stephen. 1995. “How Nation-States Respond to Immigration and Ethnic Diversity.” New Community 21: 293-308. Danzger, M. Herbert. 1975. “Validating Conflict Data.” American Sociological Review 40: 570-584. Elbers, Frank, and Meindert Fennema 1993. Racistische Partijen in West-Europa. Leiden: Stichting Burgerschapskunde. Favell, Adrian. 1998. Philosophies of Integration. Houndmills/Basingstoke: McMillan. Griffin, Roger. 1993. The Nature of Fascism. London: Routledge. Hainsworth, Paul. 1992. “Introduction. The Cutting Edge: The Extreme Right in Post-War Western Europe and the USA” Pp. 1-28 in The Extreme Right in Europe and the USA, edited by Paul Hainsworth. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Ignazi, Piero. 1992. “The Silent Counter-Revolution.” European Journal of Political Research 22: 1-30. ———. 1994. L’estrema destra in Europa. Bologna: Il Mulino. Kitschelt, Herbert. 1986. “Political Opportunity Structures and Political Protest: Anti-Nuclear Movements in Four Democracies.” British Journal of Political Science 16: 57-85. 162 Mobilization Kitschelt, Herbert (in collaboration with Anthony J. McGann). 1995. The Radical Right in Western Europe. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Koopmans, Ruud. 1996. “Explaining the Rise of Racist and Extreme Right Violence in Western Europe: Grievances or Opportunities?” European Journal of Political Research 30: 185-216. ———. 1998. “The Use of Protest Event Data in Comparative Research: Cross-National Comparability, Sampling Methods and Robustness.” Pp. 90-110 in Acts of Dissent, edited by Dieter Rucht, Ruud Koopmans, and Friedhelm Neidhardt. Berlin: Sigma. Koopmans Ruud, and Paul Statham. 1999a. “Ethnic and Civic Conceptions of Nationhood and the Differential Success of the Extreme Right in Germany and Italy.” Pp. 225-251 in How Social Movements Matter, edited by Marco Giugni, Doug McAdam, and Charles Tilly. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Koopmans, Ruud, and Paul Statham. 1999b. “Challenging the Liberal Nation-State? Postnationalism, and the Collective Claims Making of Migrants and Ethnic Minorities in Britain and Germany.” American Journal of Sociology 105: 652-696. Koopmans, Ruud, Paul Statham, Marco Giugni, and Florence Passy (forthcoming). Contested Citizenship. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Kriesi, Hanspeter 1999. “Movements of the Left, Movements of the Right: Putting the Mobilization of Two New Types of Social Movements into Political Context.” In Continuity and Change in Contemporary Capitalism, edited by Herbert Kitschelt, Peter Lange, and Gary Marks. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kriesi, Hanspeter, Ruud Koopmans, Jan Willem Duyvendak, and Marco Giugni. 1995. New Social Movements in Western Europe. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. McCarthy, John D., Clark McPhail, and Jackie Smith. 1996. “Images of Protest: Dimensions of Selection Bias in Media Coverage of Washington Demonstrations, 1982, 1991.” American Sociological Review 61: 478-499. Minkenberg, Michael. 1992. “The New Right in Germany: The Transformation of Conservatism and the Extreme Right.” European Journal of Political Research 22: 55-81. Olzak, Susan. 1989. “Analysis of Events in the Study of Collective Action.” Annual Review of Sociology 15: 119-141. ———. 1992. The Dynamics of Ethnic Competition and Conflict. Stanford, CA: Standford University Press. Olzak, Susan, and Joane Nagel, eds. 1986. Competitive Ethnic Relations. Orlando, FL: Academic Press. Rucht, Dieter, Ruud Koopmans, and Friedhelm Neidhardt, eds. 1998. Acts of Dissent. Berlin: Sigma. Schain, Martin. 1987. “The National Front in France and the Construction of Political Legitimacy.” West European Politics 10: 229-252. Schnapper, Dominique. 1991. La France de l’intégration. Paris: Gallimard. Smith, David M., and Maurice Blanc 1996. “Citizenship, Nationality and Ethnic Minorities in Three European Nations.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 20: 66-82. Snyder, David, and William R. Kelly. 1977. “Conflict Intensity, Media Sensitivity and the Validity of Newspaper Data.” American Sociological Review 42: 105-123. Soysal, Yasemin Nuhoglu 1994. Limits of Citizenship. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Statham, Paul. 1997. “Migration Policy, Public Reactions and Collective Action around Ethnic Difference: Lessons from the Southern European Case of Italy.” Paper presented at the Conference of the European Sociological Association. Essex, UK, 27-30 August. Tarrow, Sidney. 1989. Democracy and Disorder. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ———. 1998. Power in Movement. Second edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thränhardt, Dietrich. 1995. “The Political Uses of Xenophobia in England and Germany.” Party Politics 1: 323-345. Tilly Charles, Louise Tilly, and Richard Tilly. 1975. The Rebellious Century, 1830-1930. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.