Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Potentially Problematic Parties in Government: A Study of the European Extremism.

本项目研究西欧主流政党对极端主义政党采取的联盟和政策策略。它解决的问题包括：主流政党何时以及为何选择与极端主义政党联合，这些决定如何影响政策？该项目将大大扩大我们对欧洲政治极端主义的认识，这一现象对民主实践和政策制定具有影响。对于学术界来说，该项目有三个主要的智力贡献。首先，本项目汇集了大量关于联盟决策和政策决策的文献，形成了一个主流政党行为模型。其次，它建立在最近的研究基础上，这些研究表明，主流政党是极右翼政党成败的主要决定因素。最后，通过使用第一手来源证据和内容丰富的数据收集，该项目超越了标准问题。关注极右翼的选举成功、公众舆论和立法将有助于决策者、记者和其他观察人士更好地了解政治极端分子对政府的参与。主要的研究任务有两个方面：访谈，其次是数据收集和编码。将对荷兰和奥地利的议会议员和其他政治行为者进行采访，这两个国家的极端主义政党一直是执政伙伴（正式或非正式）。将分析来自17个西欧国家的近400份政党宣言，以了解政党政策立场的长期变化。最后，在立法数据中加入民意和极端分子投票份额的数据，以呈现一个全面的图景。重要的更广泛的影响来自收集数据的方法。这个项目的宣言编码方法为广泛使用的宣言收集技术提供了另一种选择，因为它关注的是政党立场的内容，而不仅仅是方向。因此，所采用的编码技术可以鼓励对特定政策领域感兴趣的学者采用类似的深入方法。这项研究还将大大增进我们对极端主义政党及其在欧洲的影响的了解。了解主流政党与极端主义政党合作的原因和方式，将有助于决策者开展外交工作。

This project investigates the coalitional and policy strategies that mainstream parties in Western Europe adopt with respect to extremist parties. It addresses questions such as: when, and why, does the mainstream choose to work with extremist parties in coalition, and how do these decisions affect policy? The project will significantly expand our knowledge of political extremism in Europe, a phenomenon which has implications for democratic practices and policy-making. For the scholarly community, the project has three main intellectual contributions. First, this project brings together the extensive literature on coalition decisions and policy decisions in a model of mainstream party behavior. Second, it builds on recent work that presents mainstream parties as a major determinant of far-right party success or failure. Finally, the project moves beyond standard questions by using primary-source evidence and content-rich data collection. The focus on far-right electoral success, public opinion, and legislation will help policy-makers, journalists, and other observers better understand political extremists' involvement in government. The major research tasks are two-fold: interviews, followed by data collection and coding. Interviews will be conducted with members of parliament and other political actors in the Netherlands and Austria, two countries where extremist parties have been governing partners (officially or unofficially). Nearly 400 party manifestos from 17 Western European countries will be analyzed for over-time variation in parties' policy positions. Lastly, data on public opinion and extremist vote share will be added to the legislation data, to present a comprehensive picture. Important broader impacts come from the method by which the data is collected. This project's method of manifesto coding offers an alternative to the widely-used manifesto collection technique, as it focuses on the content, not only the direction, of party positions. Thus, the coding techniques employed could encourage scholars interested in a particular policy area to adopt a similar in-depth method. This research will also substantially enhance our understanding of extremist parties and their influence in Europe. Discovering why and how mainstream parties collaborate with and oppose extremist parties will help policy-makers in diplomatic work.