Finland is currently living out one of Europe’s worst fears, and Tiina Syrjälä is not happy about it. The far-right Finns Party currently plays a key role in running the country, and the Finnish voter is blunt: “They’re racist,” she says.
For decades, many European nations have gone to extreme lengths to avoid this scenario. In Germany and France, mainstream political parties still cooperate to box out far-right parties, preventing them from gaining power despite their growing popularity. Among Germans fearful of their Nazi past, the rise of the right-wing Alternative for Germany party is seen as an existential crisis.
But the view from this industrial town, where the Finns Party took first place in 2023 national elections, offers an intriguing portrait that suggests such worries haven’t played out as expected.
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Many Western democracies are worried about far-right parties becoming so popular that they get into government. But some are finding that letting them in is a good way to bring their support back down to earth.
Even among the Finns Party’s potential supporters, there is now a lack of enthusiasm. Being a part of the government has not gone well for them, and in recent elections their support fell by half.
“They have done some good things, and they have done some bad things,” says retiree Matti Asplund as he sits in the city’s quiet market square on a cool, drizzly morning.
Mark Sappenfield/The Christian Science Monitor
In Finland as well as in Denmark and the Netherlands, the far right has gained power in recent years, but the results have fallen short of worst-case scenarios. They have not left the countries unchanged, and each case is different. But together, they point to several key trends – from the importance of a commitment to the rule of law among other parties to a realization that ignoring voters for far-right parties only makes the situation worse.
Keeping these parties out of government can also play into their hands. In government, they find the road much rougher.
“There is a lot to learn from the Finnish case,” says Jon Järviniemi, a Ph.D. student at the University of Helsinki who has studied populist movements. “When a radical-right party becomes a part of the establishment, its policy and support is tested.”
The Finns Party has run into trouble for policies beyond the bread-and-butter issue of strict migration. The top issue in Finnish politics is the cost of the welfare state. The Finns Party’s spending cuts have not been popular.
It’s good that “they’re trying to make people get to work, but I don’t like how they do it,” says Mr. Asplund. “They go too far.”
Martti Peippo, who is out for a walk with his dog, Eeto, says voters don’t appreciate what the leader of the Finns Party, Finance Minister Riikka Purra, is trying to do. “Many people don’t see the big picture,” he says.
Mark Sappenfield/The Christian Science Monitor
Even so, the musician criticizes the government’s cuts to the arts.
Last year’s “Year of the Election,” when more than half the world voted, showed a clear trend: voters turning against incumbent governments. Now the Finns Party is feeling that sting.
“When you are in government, it becomes difficult to blame the elite,” says Mr. Järviniemi. “Campaign promises end up being unrealistic, and that leads to a loss of support.”
“Strictest asylum policy ever”?
That scenario played out recently in the Netherlands. There, the far-right Party for Freedom finished first in 2023 parliamentary elections, winning 12 more seats than its closest competitor (37 to 25). The coalition government it formed with other conservative parties lasted less than a year.
Leader Geert Wilders pulled the party out in early June as polls showed support plummeting. He could not deliver on his aggressive promises to install the “strictest asylum policy ever.”
This is a perpetual problem for many far-right parties. Either they evolve and become somewhat more moderate (as has happened in Italy), they take over the entire apparatus and become autocratic (as in Hungary), or they run into the frustrations of democratic government.
“The Party for Freedom had been part of the opposition, so the only thing they could do was criticize,” says Gerrit Voerman, a political scientist at the University of Groningen. “Now for the first time, they had to show they could govern.”
For Mr. Wilders to assemble his coalition in the first place, his partners forced him to make promises to protect the Dutch Constitution. This might seem obvious, but no coalition partner had ever before felt the need to explicitly demand it – a sign of their determination to uphold the rule of law. For example, Mr. Wilders argues that Islam is not a religion but a totalitarian ideology and is therefore not protected by freedom of religion laws. He needed to abandon that demand for others to work with him.
Professor Voerman didn’t see Mr. Wilders’ partners trying to undermine him from the start. “His coalition partners also wanted stricter immigration policy, that’s why [they] opened the door to Wilders in the first place,” he says. “But things go slow in a coalition government.”
Outflanking the Danish far right
In Denmark, the center-left Social Democrats took their own bold step to deal with the rise of the far right. They dramatically changed policies. In 2015, the far-right Danish People’s Party (DPP) won 21% of the vote and joined a ruling coalition. In response, Mette Frederiksen “moved the Social Democrats to the position of the mainstream right, and even to the right of them” on immigration, says Rune Stubager, a political scientist at Aarhus University.
The idea was “tough but not crazy immigration policy.” At the same time, Ms. Frederiksen moved left on economic issues, strengthening the welfare state. Both moves are about “targeting traditional working-class voters” – those who feel increasingly alienated by “elitist” mainstream parties.
The result was the virtual collapse of the DPP, which won only five seats in 2022. Meanwhile, Ms. Frederiksen has been prime minister since 2019 – winning reelection in 2022.
Professor Stubager finds a stable 12% to 14% of voters wanting stricter immigration reforms. “You’re not going to be able to limit support for these parties if you don’t implement some of the policies they’re advocating,” he says.
Importantly, the DPP and the Finns Party have a more moderate background than the Alternative for Germany, which has a clear radical wing that flirts with Nazi-era rhetoric. But the Danish, too, once tried to build their own “firewall” to keep the DPP out.
In 1999, Denmark’s then-prime minister told them: “No matter how hard you try, you will never be housebroken.”
“It didn’t work, in the sense of keeping voters away from them,” says Professor Stubager. “It backfired.”
