Terrorism’s effect on Europe’s centre- and far-right parties

Abstract

European far-right parties have enjoyed mixed success in the past few years. The primary elements in many of these parties’ policy platforms centre on security, terrorism, and foreign persons. Naturally, these platforms are designed to attract electoral support that these actors can parlay into governing positions. Our study offers an important test to ascertain how voters respond to terrorist attacks with respect to centre- and far-right parties. We contend that far-right parties are to likely benefit from terrorist attacks more than centre-right parties. The results from more than 30 European countries, spanning 1975–2013, affirm our hypothesis. The implications for partisanship, governance, and terrorism are explored in this paper as well.