Elite Interviews with Representatives from Political Parties: The League, Italy, Flemish Interest, Belgium, the Finns Party, Finland and the Swiss People’s Party, Switzerland, 2019-2021

The data consists of transcripts of elite interviews conducted by team members in the period October 2019-July 2021.The parties selected for investigation are all seasoned populist radical right parties which are well established within their party systems: the Lega per Salvini Premier (League – League for Salvini Premier); the Vlaams Belang (VB – Flemish Interest); Perussuomalaiset (PS – the Finns Party); and the Schweizerische Volkspartei/Union démocratique du centre (SVP/UDC – Swiss People’s Party). The selection offers variation in terms of the parties' national setting (federal vs. unitary systems; EU vs. non-EU countries), foundational characteristics (ex-nihilo organisations, such as the VB, vs. converted parties, such as the League, PS and SVP), and executive experience (all parties except VB). At the intra-party level, our sample covers three areas for each party. We have compared locations where support has traditionally been strong (e.g. Lombardy, Antwerp, Satakunta, Zurich) with others in which the parties have grown more recently and/or with more difficulty (e.g. Emilia-Romagna, East Flanders, Central Finland, Geneva). Therefore, in our selection of areas at the sub-national level we have sought to include both typical and less typical cases, allowing us to reveal diverging cultures and narratives within each party. This has helped us to provide a holistic picture of the varied ideological and organisational features of these parties at the local level, allowing detailed comparisons to be made. The research team conducted 125 original semi-structured elite interviews (EIs) with (leading) national and local party representatives and executives. Of these 93 are included here (i.e. interviews with respondents who have agreed that their transcript can be deposited with Reshare). The interviews were conducted with representatives from each of the four parties, with a well balanced mix of national representatives (MPs, national leaders, etc.), regional representatives (e.g. regional councillors), and local representatives (council representatives, Mayors etc.). Interviews were mainly used to identify and explain the reasons behind the fostering of the mass party organisational model by populist radical right parties, which can shape our understanding of party organisational development more generally. We deployed a thematically common interview schedule through which interviewers elicited accounts of organisational practice. Although based on an original set of questions we had devised ourselves, our exploration was inspired by previous scholarly work, specifically Susan Scarrow’s (2015) conceptualisation of the roles members fulfil inside and outside party organisations, and Richard Katz’s (2005) list of incentives parties have to retain a large membership. From the evidence collected we identified the party-building strategies of the party elites and the reasons for investing in and socialising the grassroots. We also interpreted similarities and differences between the parties under investigation.