Changing Winds: An Analysis of Right-Wing Political Rhetoric

In the study of political rhetoric, research has not yet established connections between exogenous influencing factors and the tone taken towards the “outgroup” by extreme right political parties. This paper addresses the issue of the effect of a nation’s political environment on rightwing party rhetoric. National environment relates to various indicators, both economic and immigration-related, that are used as independent variables. Rhetoric against the “outgroup”, defined as any non-native group in a nation-state, is measured through a series of codings from election data from 12 European postwar democracies. I find statistically significant results for my hypothesis that a decline in economic conditions is related to an increase in anti-outgroup rhetoric. These results suggest that some rhetoric in rightwing parties’ platforms relies on increasingly negative portrayals of the outgroup, with possible implications that rightwing parties utilize this rhetoric to appeal to the median voter.