© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The World Association for Public Opinion Research. All rights reserved.
‘What Causes People to Vote for a Radical Right Party?’ A Rejoinder to van der Brug and Fennema
Address correspondence to Professor Ruud Koopmans, Vrije Universiteit, FSW/SCW, De Boelelaan 1081 c, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands, E-mail: r.koopmans@fsw.vu.nl
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The article by Van der Brug and Fennema reviews a number of recent works on what they call anti-immigrant parties or what we have called extreme-right parties. We would like to briefly reply to some of the insightful criticisms that the authors have made with regard to our book Contested Citizenship (Koopmans, Statham, Giugni, & Passy, 2005). The topic of this book, it should be emphasized, is much wider than just a cross-national comparison of extreme-right mobilization, as it focuses on all forms of political claims making related to issues of immigration and integration, including also the mobilization of immigrants, antiracist movements, as well as mainstream political discourse. Van der Brug and Fennema's criticism is addressed only at Chapter 5 of our book, which discusses the impact of institutional and discursive opportunity structures on the claims making by the extreme right, radical right, or anti-immigrant right, whatever one wants