Redefining the Nation: Center-Right Party Outreach Toward Ethnic Minorities in Western Europe.

Abstract

Why do mainstream center-right parties in Western Europe seek the votes of immigrants at some time and not others? What are the implications of party strategies for immigrants’ future political incorporation? Dominant explanations focus on these parties’ use of immigration and race issues to attract anti-immigrant rather than immigrant voters. Yet considerable spatial and temporal variation in center-right party strategy toward ethnic minorities challenges this view. The explanation offered in this dissertation is that rather than treat all ethnic minorities the same, center-right parties distinguish between those with citizenship and those without, and this difference drives their outreach strategies. Specifically, they may pair exclusive positions toward non-citizens with inclusive stances toward citizens. Yet in retaining core voters by antagonizing non-nationals, these parties forfeit the support of future ethnic minorities citizens, thus introducing a second, inter-temporal trade-off in addition to the broadening versus mobilizing dilemma. The severity of both trade-offs varies with the ratio of ethnic minority citizens to non-citizens. Moreover, these trade-offs are not fixed; parties may seek to mitigate them through electoral outreach and policy. Statistical analysis of party positions from the Comparative Manifesto Project combined with data on naturalization rates from Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the UK, from 1970-2010 show that changes in this citizenship ratio best account for variation in center-right party outreach despite differences in institutional, competitive, and economic conditions. It is when the number of citizens relative to the number of foreigners is growing that center-right parties seek to redefine the nation.