Rising from the Ashes of Electoral Defeat : Reversal of Vlaams Belang’s Electoral Fortune in the Light of Supply-Side Explanation

Abstract

Within the last few years, radical right-wing parties gained relevance in some European countries, shifting the position of marginal political rebel to being a serious competitor of the mainstream parties� To explain the emergence and volatile fortune of this party family, we resort to supply-side explanation, and we analyse the case of the Flemish Vlaams Belang (VB) which suffered severe electoral defeat in 2014, to be reborn five years later� The analysis is based on the existing data concerning party platform, shift in electoral support, campaign spending, and the findings from individual in-depth interviews conducted with people from party headquarter — ABSTRAKT —