In more and more countries radical right parties are cannibalizing parties of the mainstream right. Many christian democratic, conservative and liberal parties of the right have adopted policy stances of the radical right to gain votes, but this has only strengthened the radical right. The Dutch elections of 22 November are a case in point, but the trend is visible in many other countries. Tarik Abou-Chadi (Nuffield College, Oxford) joins me to discuss the counterproductive strategies of the mainstream right. We first talk about German poltics, most notably the surge of the AfD and the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht.

Background reading:- Does accommodation work? Mainstream party strategies and the success of radical right parties, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/political-science-research-and-methods/article/does-accommodation-work-mainstream-party-strategies-and-the-success-of-radical-right-parties/5C3476FCD26B188C7399ADD920D71770- The centre-right versus the radical right: the role of migration issues and economic grievances, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369183X.2020.1853903- Comparative vote switching: A new framework for studying dynamic multi-party competition, https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/726952

Music: Dexter Britain (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0), www.dexterbritain.com