| In recent elections in various democracies right-wing populist parties, or anti-immigration parties as they will be referred to here (following Fennema, 1997), have attracted enormous support, most notably in Austria, Italy, Flanders, Norway, Switzerland, Canada, and the Netherlands. In other electoral systems, such as Germany, Sweden, Greece, Britain and Wallonia, this type of party has to date only attracted marginal support. Van der Brug, Fennema and Tillie (2005) developed a model that explains differences in aggregate support for these kinds of parties very well (adjusted-R2=0.83). One of the explanatory variables in this model is whether voters perceive an anti-immigration party as a legitimate and credible political actor. The most successful anti-immigration parties have managed to acquire an image of legitimacy and credibility, at least among the group of voters who are their potential supporters. This prompts the question why some of these parties are seen as credible and legitimate, whereas others are seen as not credible and not legitimate? However, little is known about the factors that determine these public images of anti-immigration parties. This PhD project will fill this void by exploring image formation of leaders of anti-immigration parties. Most citizens never see any politician in real live, so public images of anti-immigration parties and their leaders must derive from how they appear in the media. An important part of the study will therefore focus on the amount and type of media attention for these types of politicians. The study focuses on the public images of leaders rather than parties, because the public images of these kinds of parties are intimately connected to the public image of their leaders, and it are the leaders who are visible in the media, not their parties. The project will focus on the case of the Netherlands, where the Centrumdemocraten (CD) headed by Hans Janmaat failed to establish more than a marginal position, while the List Pim Fortuyn (LPF) received 17 percent of the votes in the national elections 2002. The study will not be restricted to the publicly mediated images of Fortuyn and Janmaat, because idiosyncratic peculiarities of these two politicians would inhibit the generalizability of the study and it would restrict the study to the period until 2002. Therefore, the project will include other politicians who have been widely visible in the media as proponents of fierce restriction of immigration. Depending on who will form new parties, and who will campaign in the 2007 election, the study will include the following politicians: Fortuyn s successor Olaf Stuger, Marco Pastors, Hilbrand Nawijn as well as Geert Wilders and Rita Verdonk. The latter two have never been formally associated with an anti-immigration party yet, but they have been widely visible in the media as proponents of fierce restriction of immigration. The project will employ quantitative as well as qualitative data to explore the role of mass media in image formation of leaders of anti-immigration parties. One part is based on a quantitative study on the basis of panel data and content analysis of the news, to test media effects in the campaigns for the 2007 Dutch national elections. In the second phase, it will explore the origins of perceptions of politicians who have rallied support on the basis of the immigration issue, by means of focus group discussions. The focus groups will consist of citizens who voted for the LPF in 2002. Recordings of politicians who have rallied support on the basis of the immigration issue will serve as stimulus materials to stimulate focus group discussions. These discussions pertain to what the participants consider to be (not) appealing about the way these politicians appear in the media. |
