Book Review: Research Handbook on Political Partisanship

this conception, economic position-taking (“greed”) by radical right parties is accidental and plays no role in explaining their success. Using expert surveys and primary material, her list of radical right parties includes the “usual suspects”, and some borderline cases (e.g., PPDD in Romania). Taking a dimensional view of party competition, and following Meguid (2008), she argues that the fortunes of the radical right depend on the success of the programmatically non-proximate ethno-liberal parties. Her focus on parties with an ethnic appeal (e.g., SMK-MKP in Slovakia) or parties with a liberal-multicultural appeal (e.g., SZDSZ in Hungary) differentiates Buštı́ková’s contribution from other supply-side theories that focus on the reactions of the mainstream (e.g., isolation or radicalization) to explain the success of radical right parties. In terms of demand-side factors, the size of the minority group to be accommodated appears essential. However, group size has a non-linear effect. While a minority group needs to be present to allow the ethno-liberal party to mobilize on their behalf, the strength of the radical right is not proportional to the size of the minority group. When the minority group is large, mainstream parties mobilize on policy hostility against minority accommodation, and crowd out radical right parties, whowill find it difficult to carve out a niche for themselves. The type of group to be accommodated is mainly limited to ethnic minorities, perhaps the only “cleavage without adjective” in the East European region, although refugees are mentioned in passing. After introducing and developing her theoretical framework, she presents three empirical chapters, which test the argument both using party-level election results and individual-level surveys. The cross-national analysis (chapter 3; also see Buštı́ková [2014]) shows that support for the radical right increases after an ethno-liberal party’s vote share increases and it is included in a coalition. In chapters 4 and 5, Buštı́ková describes two case studies, selected due to differences in the proportion of the minority group relative to the dominant group: Hungarians in Slovakia, and exclusively Russian speakers in Ukraine. In both contexts, she collected individual-level surveys on attitudes towards minority accommodation. The analysis shows that the success of both the Slovak National Party (SNS) and Svoboda in Ukraine has been driven by hostility against policies aimed to accommodate the Hungarian and the exclusively Russian-speaking minorities. Whereas SNS became successful in terms of entering parliament multiple times and joining the government, Svoboda’s success remained short-lived, due to mainstream parties mobilizing on policy hostility against exclusively Russian speakers. Despite the appeal of a time-changing factor to explain the success of radical right mobilization, the sequential view of the theory of reactionary mobilization is limited in at least two regards. Firstly, the analysis is highly focused on electoral competition and ignores mobilization by social movements and protest dynamics. The exclusion of protest is especially striking since in the region, and specifically in Ukraine, the protest arena is much more the home of radical right mobilization than electoral politics. The role of protest remains unexplored, despite its potential interaction with electoral politics in affecting the outcomes Buštı́ková examines (e.g., by galvanizing support for parties like Svoboda). Secondly, by focusing exclusively on domestic actors, the theory ignores the role of transnational institutions like the European Union. Anti-EU mobilization remains a critical element of the appeal of radical right parties in post-accession Eastern Europe. This is a regrettable omission, as Euroscepticism in this region is most likely the result of policy hostility (De Vries, 2018), the rise of which might be explained by a backlash dynamic similar to the one the theory describes. Overall, Extreme Reactions is an important book, on a highly relevant question. The originality of the argument that Buštı́ková puts forward distinguishes her work in one of the fastest-growing literatures. Although she tests the argument in Eastern Europe, the sequential view of radical right mobilization is universal and potentially relevant outside of this region as well. I recommend this book to those interested in radical right mobilization, party competition, or East European politics.