Recent research suggests that radical right parties’ preferences for redistribution have evolved both in terms of salience and content in Western Europe. In some cases, within an anti-immigration frame some parties try to mobilize voters on the issue of redistribution by advocating pro-welfare positions. However, some radical right parties seem to still promote their original “winning formula”, which entails right wing positions on redistributive issues. This paper looks at the evolution of radical right parties’ preferences on redistribution. We explain variation in the extent to which welfare state expansion becomes important for radical right parties over time and across Western Europe. We rely on the hypothesis that the driving force behind this process is the competition of radical right parties with mainstream left parties for the votes of blue-collar and routine service workers. Based on a salience-based comparison of manifestos of radical right parties between 1980 and 2014, we find that some radical right parties have adopted preferences for welfare expansion. Based on three case studies (FN, FPÖ, and SVP), we show that notwithstanding the level of preferred redistribution, all parties promote an exclusive framing of welfare preferences, which we label exclusive solidarity.
