Assessing the impact of radical right populist parties : the case of a mainstream populist party

To what extent do radical right populist parties influence the policy-making? While the literature on populism and radical right populist parties is abundant, very few authors have addressed this question. Yet it is essential to apprehend the influence of these parties since, on the one hand, they more and more gain access to power and since, on the other hand, they are often described as a threat to democracy. This article proposes to investigate this aspect of the literature in political science by assessing the influence of a most likely case – the Swiss Schweizerische Volkspartei (SVP) – on policy-making in the law and order area. Drawing on a typology of influence and mobilizing the process tracing method, the analysis indicates that the SVP is able to influence law and order policies, at different stages of the process. The article shows that populism contributes to be influential at the early stages of the policy-making but that direct democracy tools are key to be influent until the decision-making stage. In an attempt to generalize the findings, this suggests that other cases of radical right populist parties face more difficulties to influence the entire policy-making process.