Exclusionary Populism in Austria, Italy, and Switzerland

Abstract

SINCE THE LATE 1980S, A NEW BREED OF RADICAL right-wing parties and movements has gained considerable political ground in a number of liberal democracies. Several characteristics distinguish them from the more traditional parties: reliance on charismatic leadership; the pursuit of a populist strategy of political marketing with a pronounced consumer (that is, voter) orientation; and an appeal to popular anxieties, prejudices, and resentments. Typically, new populist parties and movements have marketed themselves both as uncompromising defenders of the rights and interests of the common people and as the only true representatives and promoters of 'genuine democracy.'At the same time, they espouse an ideology that is perhaps best described as a type of exclusionary populism.(1) At its core is a restrictive notion of citizenship that holds that genuine democracy is based on a culturally, if not ethnically, homogeneous community; that only longstanding citizens can be full members of civil society; and that society's benefits should accrue only to those who, either as citizens or at least as taxpayers, have made a substantial contribution to it.(2) The spirit of this common doctrine has found poignant expression in the notion of one's 'own people first' and the call for 'national preference.'In its more extreme cases, exclusionary populism takes the form of cultural nativism. The contemporary radical right couches its exclusionary agenda in the language of traditional liberalism, advancing the notion of 'rights' - of 'ethnic people,' to a 'culture,' but also to individual safety - that address 'deepseated and understandable fears about the erosion of identity and tradition by the globalizing (but only partially homogenizing) forces of modernity.'(3) In almost all cases, exclusionary populism follows the 'post-racist' turn introduced by the French intellectual new right. The nouvelle droite took leave of the traditional focus on inequality while affirming 'the incommensurability of different cultures.' The goal was to preserve 'collective identities (and inter-communitarian differences) at all costs.'(4)Rather than promcting notions of ethnocultural superiority, the aim of exclusionary populism is to protect 'the own' society, culture, and way of life against alien intrusion and contamination.(5) In contemporary right-wing discourse, this means, above all, safeguarding and defending the achievements and gains of European culture and civilization against challengers ranging from American popular culture to Islam.Just why popular politics of exclusion have been particularly successful in Western European countries and regions - Norway and Denmark, France, the Flemish part of Belgium, Austria, the northern part of Italy, and Switzerland - is an intriguing question.(6) These areas are not only among the most affluent, but they also have some of the lowest levels of unemployment in Western Europe. For example, in 2000, the annual average unemployment rate in Switzerland was 2.0 per cent; in Austria it was 5.8 per cent, the lowest since 1992 and considerably below the European Union (EU) average. In northern Italy, by the end of 2000, it was below five per cent in the northwest and significantly below four per cent in the northeast (compared to 10.0 per cent for Italy as a whole). When severe labour shortages threatened to derail the economic boom, companies located in these communities, together with regional employers associations, responded with an aggressive campaign to attract foreign workers from eastern Europe and the developing world. Expectations are that two decades hence immigrants will account for 15 per cent of the population of the Italian northeast.(7)The situation in northern Italy is one of the most striking examples of a secular trend that has begun to affect all West European countries. Even in Austria, which experienced a rather swift and dramatic rise in unemployment in the 1990s, industry and employers associations are increasingly vocal in their demands to government to open the country's doors to more foreign specialists to fill the rapidly growing number of vacancies, particularly in the information technology sector. …

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