| OCR Text |
Show 7 appeal to groups of voters that may crosscut-and undermine-traditional patterns of partisan alignment" (Meguid 2008, 4). This characteristic assumes a certain level of attractiveness and success of the niche parties in that they are able to draw voters and votes away from mainstream parties. Meguid's first two characteristics are reminiscent of Inglehart who argued: The once-dominant Left-Right dimension based on social class and religion is increasingly sharing the stage with a Postmodern politics dimension. Although support for environmental parties has grown in many Western societies, there has also been a right-authoritarian reaction at the opposite pole of the Postmodern Politics dimension. Right-wing extremist parties, such as le Pen's National Front, have been gaining votes by appealing to anti-foreign sentiments. This appeal has been particularly effective among blue-collar workers who formerly voted for parties of the Left. (1997, 248) Meguid's third, and final, characteristic is that niche parties eschew comprehensive policy platforms in favor of prioritizing a few issues (2008, 4). Despite agreement among "new politics" researchers that niche parties compete on noneconomic or new dimensions, they disagree on other aspects. Wagner, for example, challenges one aspect of Meguid's definition. While not explicitly part of Meguid's definition, Wagner disagrees with her assessment that niche parties are new (i.e., young) parties. Wagner, in contrast, suggests niche parties can have a long history in European party systems (2011, 849). 2 Mudde, in agreement with Wagner, also suggests that niche parties have been around throughout the latter part of the twentieth century. Originally, the designation was attributed to agrarian parties, then antitax parties, green parties, and most recently anti-immigrant parties (1999, 183). While not all of Mudde's examples qualify as noneconomic, the point was to illustrate the debate over the age of niche parties. 2 Wagner is envisioning possibilities where existing parties change to become more niche-like or emphasize noneconomic issues, so the issues are ‘new' but the party may not be. |
