We don’t need no education? Education policies of Western European populist radical right parties

Abstract Populist radical right parties (PRRPs) have become more mainstream, increasing their relevance in European politics. While a lot is already known about them, there are still gaps in our knowledge. This article addresses one such gap by studying Western European PRRPs’ positions on education policy. It focuses on the salience of education in election manifestos, substantive positions that parties hold, and in how far these positions reflect their core ideology. Constructing a novel framework based on core ideologies and three dimensions of education policies, including an often-neglected content dimension, the article presents results from a qualitative content analysis of 15 manifestos. The results show that education policy is relevant for PRRPs, albeit to varying degrees, and that their policies are informed by their core ideologies. The findings have important implications for understanding education policy dynamics in liberal democracies as PRRPs fundamentally challenge normative foundations of Western European education systems.

governments. In other words, PRRPs are moving 'into the mainstream' (Akkerman et al. 2016) -a process which is expected to result in ideological moderation and a broadening of the political platform. In parallel, PRRPs are today the most studied party family in political science (Mudde 2017). However, while previous studies have told us a lot about their policy positions, including in the fields of immigration (e.g. Mudde 2007;Zaslove 2004), welfare policies (e.g. Ennser-Jedenastik 2018, 2022), environmental policies (Forchtner and Lubarda 2022) or gender (Akkerman 2015), there are still gaps in our knowledge especially regarding their policy preferences in some specific sectors. One of these gaps is the focus of this article, namely Western European PRRPs' positions on education policy (but see: Giudici 2020).
In general, education policy has been a somewhat neglected issue in political science for a long time (Busemeyer and Trampusch 2011;Gift and Wibbels 2014). Recent studies have emphasised the increased salience of education policy both regarding public opinion (Busemeyer et al. 2020), but also party politics (Ansell 2010;Busemeyer 2009;Busemeyer et al. 2013;Garritzmann and Seng 2016). While there are indications that on questions of educational expansion partisan differences become more limited over time (Jakobi 2011), there are clear results pointing to persisting partisan competition regarding other aspects of education (Busemeyer et al. 2013;Garritzmann and Seng 2016). However, PRRPs play a rather minor role in the literature on education policy so far, mainly highlighting that parties at the end of the political spectrum pay less attention to education policy (Ansell, 2010;Busemeyer et al., 2013;Jungblut, 2016). Thus, we do not know much about what kind of education policies PRRPs prefer. Similarly, a historical case study of the far right in France and (West) Germany suggests that although it seems to be in 'opposition to almost every aspect of the post-war education system' , 'we still lack knowledge about what it wants to replace them with' (Giudici 2020: 137).
At the same time, having more knowledge on the educational policies of PRRPs is relevant for at least three reasons. First, the mainstreaming or inclusion-moderation thesis (Akkerman et al. 2016) implies that parties participating in elections over time, such as Western European PRRPs, will broaden their profiles to be more relevant to the majority of voters. Given that education is often described as a crowd-pleaser policy (Ansell 2010) and that educational systems have always served as tools for the state to mould popular political values (Paglayan 2022), it can be argued to be an especially relevant policy area in this process. Second, while there is a lack of research regarding the supply side of educational politics, meaning that we do not know what policies PRRPs offer, there is extensive research on the role of education regarding the demand side of politics. Many studies target social policy preferences of PRRP voters, and research has shown that education is an important predictor for individuals' positions and voting behaviour (Ivarsflaten and Stubager 2012;Stubager 2008). Finally, political science literature has been surprisingly blind regarding the content of education. The liberal education systems we find in Western Europe are generally characterised by critical thinking, open-mindedness, development of personal autonomy, respect, as well as multicultural education and education for democracy (Halstead 1996). These values contrast with some of the ideological underpinnings of the PRRP family, which makes them more likely to challenge the normative foundations of education systems. Indeed, a case study from Britain shows that the radical right tends to support a monocultural rather than multicultural approach to education (Cole 1992).
This study therefore sets out to investigate two questions: (1) How salient is education policy in the election manifestos of PRRPs? (2) What positions do PRRPs hold regarding education policies, and to what extent do these positions reflect the core ideology of the parties?
In order to investigate these questions, we construct a novel conceptual framework in which we combine the core ideology of PRRPs and three conceptual dimensions of educational policies: A redistributive dimension, a governing dimension and a content dimension. By including the content dimension, we go beyond existing research on partisan preferences, allowing us to explore a neglected topic of educational policies. We then employ a qualitative content analysis of 15 party manifestos of Western European PRRPs produced at the height of far-right mainstreaming (Mudde 2019), namely towards the end the 2010s. The analysis focuses on all levels of education, except childcare given that this issue has tight connections to labour and family policies and not just education policy (Neimanns and Busemeyer 2021). Moreover, our study will focus on comparing PRRPs from different countries and will not entail comparisons to other party families. This should not be understood as an assumption that PRRPs' education policy positions are distinctly different from other party families. We focus solely on PRRPs to address the empirical gap in the literature. However, we will briefly discuss in the conclusion whether the observed preferences differ from other party families.
Our results show that PRRPs do care about educational policies, albeit to a varying extent. PRRPs seem particularly concerned with the content of educational policies, though they also emphasise what we refer to as the redistributive dimension and to a lesser extent the governing dimension. The results suggest that policy positions are largely in line with the three ideological roots of PRRPs, namely nativism, authoritarianism, and populism. In other words, our results show that education policy is important for PRRPs and that their preferences are relevant to understand education policy-making dynamics. The following section presents our conceptual framework and develops empirical expectations. This is followed by an overview of data and methods used in the study, after which we will present our findings. Finally, we will discuss the findings and provide some concluding thoughts and avenues for future research.

The populist radical right and salience of educational policies
Existing literature on PRRPs and education policies is limited and mainly concerned with education expansion/limitation or spending (e.g. Ansell 2010; Garritzmann and Seng 2016;Jungblut 2016). The common denominator in these studies is the claim that the far-right has few positions on this matter. It is suggested that partisan positions are formed as an inverse U shape, where the traditional mainstream parties 'own' the issue of education and the extreme parties on the right (and left) are issue-ignorers (Ansell 2010;Busemeyer et al. 2013;Jungblut 2016). However, none of the previous studies has done a detailed mapping of what kind of positions PRRPs hold, particularly in recent years as these parties are moving into the mainstream. Instead, they have compared them to other mainstream party families (e.g. Social Democrats, Liberals, Christian Democrats, etc.), which means that these parties may be somehow 'shadowed' by the 'issue owners' .
The observation that some PRRPs have started to move into the mainstream is often argued to coincide with a broadening of their policy profile. Adopting policy position on issues beyond their common core might be related to office-seeking strategies as parties in office would have to 'legislate in many policy domains' (e.g. Akkerman et al. 2016: 15). It may also be seen as a strategy to improve the party's electoral appeal, particularly when the agenda changes, as well as avoid factionalism and problems of illegitimacy (Jupskås 2015). We therefore expect that the salience of education policy varies based on a party's involvement in mainstream politics. Thus, indicators such as prior participation in government and long-term representation in parliament, should be linked to a more encompassing set of preferences on education policy.

The populist radical right and educational policy positions
In order to develop a theoretical framework for assessing PRRPs' positions regarding education policy, we build on extensive research on PRRPs ideology and research addressing partisan preferences on educational policies. The framework is anchored in the 'partisan hypothesis' (Hibbs 1977) meaning that we emphasise that parties' preferences are driven by their ideological background. However, this does not mean that voter preferences do not matter in shaping party positions as we also discuss in the analysis.

Conceptualising educational policies
A key challenge when investigating PRRPs' positions on education policy in Western Europe is that there are variations in the institutional setups of education systems. Different systems have developed along different paths and in distinct institutional contexts (Busemeyer 2015). It is, therefore, necessary to develop a generic theoretical framework that facilitates comparisons despite institutional-and contextual differences. This, combined with the fact that we do not know much about the parties' positions, necessitates a framework with broad dimensions of education policy. This article therefore distinguishes between three central dimensions: (1) A redistributive, (2) a governing and (3) a content dimension.
Most of the existing research regarding partisan preferences on education is concerned with the redistributive dimension, most notably the distinction between education expansion and education limitation (Ansell 2010;Busemeyer 2015;Garritzmann and Seng 2016;Jakobi 2011). Traditionally, expansion of education refers to expansion or improvements of educational provision, while educational limitation can refer to limiting the state's expenditure on or access to education (Garritzmann and Seng 2016). Some argue though that today's partisan battles over access to education are less linked to the question of educational expansion as it has become more of a consensus position (Jakobi 2011;Meyer et al. 1992) and education policies often are regarded as 'an archetypical crowd-pleaser' (Ansell 2010: 136). Instead, education limitations will manifest in other forms of exclusion, such as increased privatisation, increased stratification or the introduction of fees. Similarly, educational expansion is not necessarily only about increased spending, but could also imply providing educational opportunities to those formerly excluded by decreasing stratification (Busemeyer 2015: 44). While some scholars differentiate between segregation and funding when looking at redistributive effects of education, we subsume both under the umbrella of redistributive policies in which the logic shifts from providing vs. preventing access to differentiation within a system (Gingrich 2011). In other words, the redistributive dimension is developed based on a traditional understanding of expansion and limitation, but it also includes broader issues, such as the availability of education and the different systems' capacity for inclusiveness.
The governing dimension refers to the overall organisational structure of the education sector and the extent to which this sector should be autonomous. In short, it refers to the right of institutions to function according to their normative and organisational principles and behavioural logics (Olsen 2009). Both Gingrich (2011) andJungblut (2016) argue that partisan preferences regarding (higher) education policy include a second dimension, namely how tightly or loosely coupled the relationship between the education sector and the state should be. At the core of this dimension is the distinction between centralisation and decentralisation. The educational sector can either be governed through centralisation, which is characterised by the strengthening of the state and its central bureaucracy, or it can be characterised by decentralisation, which aims to spread power to other groups including educational providers, parents, or local municipalities (Bray 2013;Gingrich 2011). Empirical research shows the political consequences of (de-)centralisation in school systems as it can empower different types of stakeholders (Gingrich 2011), be associated with different educational outcomes (West et al. 2010), and used to exclude or include certain groups in political decision making (Bray 2013).
While the governing dimension is focussing on where and by whom decisions regarding education policy are made, the content dimension is concerned with what kind of norms, values and knowledge the educational systems should be based upon, cultivate and transmit. One key distinction is between liberal and conservative (or even illiberal) forms of education, in which the former emphasises individualism, pluralism and critical thinking, while the latter is more concerned with traditionalism, authority and discipline. This content dimension is usually expressed in the curriculum, as well as by looking at how parties describe the teachers' and students' roles, and their relationship in the classroom. The argument is that the teacher's field of responsibility (e.g. grading the behaviour of pupils), as well as the interaction between teachers and pupils (e.g. stand up and greet the teacher) shape classroom experience and instil values in pupils also outside of the formal curriculum. Political science literature has been surprisingly blind towards the content dimension, and so far, there are hardly any in-depth studies that address partisan preferences on this (but see Cole 1992). However, this dimension is highly relevant when studying PRRPs as these parties are expected to politicise the content of education (Giudici 2020), which the more established parties have not previously done to this extent -at least not in the post-war period.

Conceptualising populist radical right ideology
The existing research on PRRPs has found that the parties share three core ideological features: nativism, authoritarianism, and populism (Minkenberg 2001;Mudde 2007;Rydgren 2007). Nativism, or organic ethno-nationalism (Rydgren 2007), is an ideological feature that favours the 'natives' and views 'non-native' elements (both persons and ideas) as threatening to the homogenous nation-state (Mudde 2007). The idea is that 'the nation-state should remain as culturally and ethnically homogenous as possible', and this implies 'very strict assimilationist, anti-immigration policies and profound criticism of multiculturalism' (Jungar and Jupskås 2014: 219). Moreover, in recent years, PRRPs tend to portray themselves as defenders of Christianity against a Muslim threat (Zúquete 2008), which is not necessarily linked to religious ideologies, but instead derives from their nativist ideology (Schwörer and Romero-Vidal 2020).
Authoritarianism refers to 'a belief in a strictly ordered society, in which infringements of authority are to be punished severely' (Mudde 2007: 23). According to Altemeyer (1981: 147-148), 'the right-wing authoritarian believes authorities should be trusted to a relatively great extent, and that they are owed obedience and respect' . The distinction between the deserving and undeserving is crucial for authoritarians (Otjes et al. 2018) and they are predisposed to control the behaviour of the latter through punishment (Altemeyer 1981: 153). Politically, PRRPs tend to oppose post-material values, such as autonomy and self-expression, and favour law and order and traditional family values (Ignazi 1992).
How to conceptualise populism is more contested (Betz 1994;Taggart 2000). Populism can be regarded as a political style (Moffitt and Tormey 2014) or discourse (Aslanidis 2016), but also as a 'thin ideology' (Stanley 2008), which regards society to be separated into two antagonistic groups, 'the pure people' and 'the corrupt elite' (Mudde 2004). The distinction between the groups is based on a different moral status; 'The people' is seen as pure and authentic, while 'the elite' is not (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017). Populist appeals to the people 'can take the form of the denial of expert knowledge, and the championing of "common sense" against the bureaucrats, technocrats, representatives or "guardians of our interests"' (Moffitt and Tormey 2014: 391). The valorisation of 'common sense' (Canovan 2002) often leads to a general mistrust in university-educated elites and experts.
While the three core ideological features are often associated with specific issues such as immigration, they are likely to influence other policy areas as well. For example, several scholars have emphasised how the nativist ideology of PRRPs is linked to a welfare chauvinist agenda (de Koster et al. 2013), law and order (Koning and Puddister 2022) and animal politics (Backlund and Jungar 2022). Indeed, Otjes et al. (2018) found that a significant part of PRRP's economic policies can be derived from the three core ideological features. The question is whether this also applies to educational policies.

Populist radical right positions on education policy: what can we expect?
How can we expect PRRPs to influence the redistributive dimension, the governing dimension, and the content dimension of educational policies? The redistributive dimension is linked to the availability of education and the different systems' capacity for inclusiveness and social mobility. The nativism of the populist radical right targets the 'non-natives' , and the cultural nationalism of Western European PRRPs specifically targets 'non-native groups' . This, in combination with welfare chauvinism (Ennser-Jedenastik 2018) leads to an expectation that PRRPs will favour the 'natives' in the education systems, and at the same time, exclude or limit the availability for 'non-natives' .
As for the authoritarian component of PRRPs' ideology, we expect that the parties are likely to be pro-differentiation, support free school choice and be in favour of increased privatisation as such policies are likely to reinforce traditional social hierarchies between classes and educational groups by giving more power to the parents. Moreover, policies such as being pro-differentiation or school choice are especially attractive to PRRPs because they also address their nativist concerns by contributing to ethnic stratification between non-natives and natives according to their school tier or school type. Finally, we also expect that the authoritarian root of these parties will make them likely to favour policies aimed at controlling the actions of the educational institutions through fiscal means, including punishing them with decreased funding if they are not functioning in line with PRRPs overarching goals, which can be understood as a tool for disciplining schools to follow PRRPs' policy preferences.
Given the populist ideology and its scepticism towards (academic) elites and professional expertise, we also expect that the populist part of the ideology will lead parties to expand vocational educational and training (VET) while limiting higher education (HE). Although we do acknowledge that PRRPs might promote VET for purely instrumental reasons (i.e. it serves the working-class profile of many of PRRPs' electorates), such policies fit well with the populist ideology in the sense that VET is considered a 'proper' education that is concrete and leads to 'real' jobs especially in comparison to HE. However, it is important to note that the support for VET can depend on the status quo of the education system in each country and how satisfied parties are with the current situation. Still, parties that are satisfied with the status quo will likely use their manifestos to highlight the areas and sectors that are most important to them, and in this regard, parties can be expected to favour VET.
Another preference driven by populist ideology is the aim to preserve local and smaller schools. While the redistributive effect of such a policy might be limited, it is still relevant in this dimension as it represents the willingness for increased public spending for the provision of a public good in a specific locality even if it might not be cost-efficient. Such a policy speaks not only to an electorate in areas with low population density (e.g. rural areas), but also gives the opportunity for more differentiated educational provision in more densely populated areas.
Regarding the governing dimension, authoritarianism is expected to translate into policy proposals in favour of centralisation. Centralisation gives state authorities more control over educational institutions. Jungblut (2016: 337) argues that anti-establishment parties, including PRRPs might favour centralisation of higher education, as they 'distrust' higher education institutions 'to steer themselves' partly due to weak support among academics. As previously mentioned, control is closely linked to the punishment of 'rulebreakers' . This can also be the case when steering the education sector; the institutions which do not follow the government guidelines or expectations can expect to be punished, for example through decreased funding.
Contrary to authoritarianism, populism can point in a different direction and lead to the opposite expectation, namely increased decentralisation. After all, populists are profoundly sceptical towards elites. Within the governing of the education sector, this can imply that the parties are sceptical towards professional expertise; the people know what is best, not the experts. As a result, PRRPs distrust the 'experts' and prefer 'the people' , that is, the teachers or the institutions, to steer themselves. The parties' scepticism towards experts and elites can also imply that they favour less bureaucracy in schools and the sector in general, as bureaucratic tasks often consist of reporting or documentation requirements.
Nativism can also be expected to influence the governing dimension. According to the nativists, the educational sector should be governed in such a way as to strengthen the majority culture and to minimise the impact of foreigners and foreign influence. For example, they are likely to oppose the establishment of non-Christian based schools (e.g. Islamic schools in particular) and reduce the number of foreign students. Moreover, and in line with their nativist-informed Euroscepticism, they are likely to oppose Europeanisation of the educational sector.
Regarding the content dimension, nativism leads to an expectation that these parties will favour nationalism and the worldview of the 'natives' instead of diversity and multicultural education. This implies that education systems should facilitate the assimilation of 'non-natives' . Authoritarianism leads to an expectation of strict rules, discipline, and control within the education system. Central within the aspect of 'control' is punishment and the distinction between the 'deserving' and 'undeserving' . Within the education systems, we expect that the 'undeserving' can be translated into the pupils who are considered lazy, causing problems, or simply not following rules, and thus should be punished. Authoritarianism also represents opposition to post-material values, such as autonomy and self-expression -and we expect PRRPs to rely on moral conservatism rather than post-materialist values and that pupils should rely on authority rather than reason. This should also include a support for traditional gender roles and a critical position to LGBTQI-related issues on the curriculum (Akkerman 2015). Finally, populism with its anti-intellectual aspects should make PRRPs favour education that focuses on practical skills and has an instrumental view on education, meaning it should be useful for concrete vocations. Populist ideas may also result in favourable references to physical activity, although for PRRPs with a fascist and Nazi-legacy the emphasis on physical activity might to a greater extent reflect nativism (i.e. protecting the viability of the nation). Table 1 summarises our expectations.

Methods, data and cases
In order to investigate our research questions, we conduct a comparative case study of 15 PRRPs in Western Europe, employing a qualitative content analysis of the education section of party manifestos. The qualitative content analysis allows us to provide detailed information about each party's preferences as presented in their election manifestos. A quantitative content analysis was considered, but because of the interest in mapping substantive positions rather than relative emphasis, a qualitative approach was the better option. Relying on the Comparative Manifestos Project (now MARPOR) was also considered, but because this dataset limits education policies to education expansion and limitation, it was not suitable for answering our research questions. The study relies on data from election manifestos, as 'the only collective policy statement that parties as such ever make' (Budge 2001: 211), making them particularly suitable for analyses of partisan preferences. While we focus on partisan positions in election manifestos, we are aware that not all policy positions will be spelled out in manifesto as education policy debates might touch issues that are not included in these documents. However, we follow the argument that positions outlined in manifestos are of greater importance to parties (Budge 2001). With a few exceptions, 1 we analyse manifestos published between 2017 and 2019. Since Germany and Switzerland are federal states, and education policies are mainly decided at the state/canton level, both manifestos from the largest state/canton (North Rhine-Westphalia and Zürich) and the national level were included. To enable comparison across cases, while at the same time avoiding conceptual stretching, it was important to investigate parties that operate in somewhat similar contexts. The liberal education systems we find in Western Europe 2 were thus a natural starting point. This region is particularly interesting since the ideological underpinnings of PRRPs are likely to challenge the normative liberal foundations of these education systems. Further, we used the PopuList-dataset (Rooduijn et al. 2020) to identify relevant parties labelled as populist and radical right choosing the dominant party in each country. Table 2 presents the selected countries, parties, and years of the manifesto.
The coding was conducted based on a pre-developed coding scheme (Bauer et al. 2014). 3 The three dimensions described in the theoretical framework together with the core ideological features of PRRPs formed the basis of the scheme. However, given that PRRPs may promote policies that cannot be linked to core ideological features, we also included other open categories as part of the scheme. The coding was done exclusively, meaning that each line was coded into only one node. A single coder coded the material, and an intra-coder reliability test was conducted three months after the initial coding. Krippendorff 's alpha was calculated at .82 (Krippendorff 2019).

Findings and discussion
We want to focus initially on our first research question and present an overview of the salience of education policy. As previously mentioned, only the parts explicitly focussing on education were analysed, so there might be single statements in other sections of the manifestos that also relate to education. As Figure 1 shows, there are significant variations regarding both the absolute number of words dedicated to education and the relative importance of this policy area. The number of words varies considerably ranging from 86 (DF) to 5610 (PS). The mean absolute length over the entire sample is 1662 words.
Since the manifestos of the parties vary considerably in their total word count, the absolute number of words is only a rough indicator of the importance, a much more precise measure is the length of the education section standardised by the total length of the manifesto. The relative length of the education sections varies from 1.3% (VB) to 6.6% (PS). Thus, even when controlling for difference in length, we can still see significant differences between parties. As a robustness check, we collected the number of quasi sentences coded with an education code (506 & 507) from the MARPOR dataset and calculated the relative length of the education section using this data. The ranking of parties in relation to one another, as displayed in the online appendix, is very similar to our findings presented above. Figure 1 highlights two key aspects regarding our first research question. First, the importance of education policy differs between PRRPs, and second, some PRRPs, such as PS or FrP, dedicate a substantial amount of their manifesto to education. This puts earlier arguments about being issue-ignorers (e.g. Ansell 2010; Jungblut 2016), into perspective highlighting that not all PRRPs are uninterested in education policy and that there are cross-country differences. What drives these differences is not entirely clear. However, factors such as prior participation in government and long-term representation in parliament, which are key indicators of normalisation, seem to matter. Both years in parliament and government participation are positively correlated with absolute and relative issue salience, though the association between years in parliament and relative salience is extremely weak (see Table A1 in the online appendix). Well-integrated parties like FrP, PS and FPÖ, which all have been in government, have quite developed education policies. Newer and more ostracised parties like SD and UKIP have a less developed educational platform. At the same time, there are a few parties that do not fit the expectation of the mainstreaming thesis: DF has hardly said anything about education policies despite having been the support party of all right-wing governments since the early 2000s and, conversely, the AfD devotes a substantial part of the manifesto to educational policies despite being relatively new and still completely ostracised by the other parties. Thus, explaining why some parties devote more attention to education clearly deserves further exploration.

The redistributive dimension
Regarding redistributive aspects of education policies, the general pattern is that there are a few examples of nativism within this dimension: only three parties express that the proportion of foreigners or immigrants in schools/classes should be limited. Authoritarianism is more prominently represented and only PVV has no position regarding this. Policies here are mainly related to grants or scholarships and include some sort of 'punishment' of the students who do not complete their studies within the standard time. Several policies that can be linked to ideas coming from New Public Management, such as increased privatisation, more choice and more differentiation are also prominent here. The latter especially is a policy that most parties promote in their manifesto and is often used to challenge comprehensive school systems. Furthermore, five parties have policies regarding free choice of school and/or policies that aim to increase parents' freedom of school choice. Finally, five parties explicitly support increased privatisation within the education system. While these policies do not have a direct redistributive effect like grant schemes, they create an education system that allows for stratification within the system, which in turn can contribute to the cementation of social differences. Thus, these policies have a clear effect on the redistributive potential of education.
Except for VOX and DF, all parties have populist policies within the redistributive dimension. A common feature among these parties is that they want to prioritise or expand VET systems as an alternative to HE. Most of these parties also highlight that within HE, studies that are aimed at 'meeting the needs of the society' and/or natural or technical sciences should be prioritised. A second position related to populism that is supported by four parties regards policies that aim to preserve small schools and/or policies that aim to reduce class or school size. While the redistributive effect of such a policy might be limited, we still see it as a relevant position as it represents the willingness for increased public spending for the provision of a public good in a specific locality even if it might not be cost-efficient. Overall, as Table 3 illustrates, populism and authoritarianism are highly reflected within the redistributive dimension, while nativism is less prominent.
The empirical results regarding the redistributive dimension highlight three aspects. First, the profile of PRRPs regarding redistributive aspects focuses mainly on the authoritarian and the populist root. Also, when Table 3. overview of the parties' positions on the redistributive dimension. looking at the redistributive profile of the different parties independent of the three ideological roots, we can see that they are mixed. This is in line with more general findings on socio-economic preferences of PRRPs which can combine social protection for 'natives' with greater limitations of services for 'outsiders' (Röth et al. 2018). Second, educational differentiation seems to be an issue which is supported by many of the parties. Since changing the entire educational system of a country might be too demanding or costly, allowing for more differentiation could be a strategy to create pockets inside the educational system which are more in line with PRRPs' values and present opportunities for their electorate to 'shield' their children. Finally, PRRPs also show populist tendencies on this dimension especially in their strong support for VET. The populist aspect herein is that VET is portrayed as a more relevant and practical form of education especially compared to HE. As access to HE is still strongly correlated with the educational background of parents (Lucas 2001) and people with lower education background are more likely to support populist values (Kaltwasser and Van Hauwaert 2020), this position can be seen as a vote-seeking strategy.

The governing dimension
The governing of educational institutions is the dimension with the lowest number of codes. Six parties have statements coded as nativism related to the relationship between the state and the educational sector. Five parties have statements related to scepticism towards the EU, European integration (such as the Bologna Process), and/or international students.
There are a few examples of statements regarding 'centralisation' that could be linked to authoritarianism. First, AFD-N wants to control the themes on which research is conducted. More specifically, they state that federal and state governments should no longer provide special funds for gender research. Second, UKIP wants to give teacher training courses a radical overhaul, as they should re-focus on 'training educators to use successful traditional teaching methods that focus on facts and excellence rather than post-modern, deconstructive, and relativistic methods' . On the other hand, three parties, FPÖ, SVP-N and FRP, include specific statements regarding increased autonomy of educational institutions: FPÖ and FRP claim that the state must decide the general policy framework of the education system, while most day-to-day decisions should be regulated by the school. The SVP-N, meanwhile, wants the sovereignty of the cantons over elementary schools to be a cornerstone in the education system. These positions should also be considered in the context of the aforementioned preferences for free choice of school and differentiation in education, as they could be strategies to create pockets inside the educational system which present opportunities for PRRPs' electorate to 'shield' their children. Based on the populist part of the parties' ideology they were expected to favour less bureaucracy. Eight parties include statements that aim to reduce bureaucracy within the education system. A summary of the key findings is illustrated in Table 4. As the table shows, there are some examples of both populism and nativism, within this dimension, but it is also clear that parties are not particularly concerned with this dimension.
Governing of educational institutions seems to be the least prominent aspect of PRRPs' educational preferences. There are comparatively few preferences related to this dimension, particularly for the authoritarian root, and most positions are related to the populist ideology (e.g. a reduction of bureaucracy). Given that questions of educational governing are in general of rather low salience for the electorate (Busemeyer et al. 2020), it is not surprising that this seems to be the least developed dimension for PRRPs. In line with their preference for national history, culture, and language on the content dimension (see below), PRRPs are in favour of national autonomy in education policy and against Europeanisation or internationalisation. Finally, there seems to be some disagreement on the question whether education systems should be centralised or de-centralised. This reflects a tension like the one described in the content dimension below, where centralisation and authority in preventing teaching certain values is coupled with de-centralisation by giving parents more influence over educational content and provision.

The content dimension
The content dimension contains the highest number of codes in the material. Most parties have statements coded as nativism within this dimension, which include policies that aim to promote national values, language, culture, or history in school. For example, PS states, 'We consider it important that schools promote Finnish values and culture and emphasise the importance of Finnishness' . All parties, except LN and DF, also have statements regarding authoritarianism. Nine of the parties are concerned with stricter discipline in schools and restoring teachers' authority in the classroom. There are also several examples of attempts at controlling behaviour through punishment, such as forcing bullies to change schools, that the illiterate should not be allowed to graduate, or that truancy, apathetic mentality, lack of discipline, bullying, or violence at school must be punished appropriately. SVP-N, AFD-NRW and FRP also mention behavioural assessments. Further, six parties state that pupils with special needs should be taught separately. Many parties also have statements related to moral conservatism. One recurring theme among them is that parenting should not be outsourced to the schools, and there is a wish to preserve parents' rights regarding the teaching of moral issues. For example, VOX states that they want to create a PIN code and an express authorisation so that parents can give consent to any activity concerning teaching of an ethical, social, moral or sexual topic. A second recurring theme among seven of the parties is that they are critical towards 'liberal' ideas, such as gender studies, 'liberal' sex education, feminist ideas or issues regarding climate change. UKIP, SVP-N and SVP-Z further reject 'political indoctrination' of gender confusion and climate alarmism.
All parties, except DF and VOX, have policies coded as populism within the content dimension. The parties' policies within this area can be summarised in four different but somehow related categories. The first category consists of policies related to a focus on practical skills, learning through doing and is based on the underlying idea that education should be useful (i.e. lead to a specific job). For example, SVP-N states that they 'combat the advancing academisation of education' . The second category includes policies that aim for increased physical activity in schools. The third category has statements that imply a stronger focus on natural sciences, and technology. The fourth category is related to the idea that the education system should create 'critical human beings' who can think independently. Table 5 summarises the key findings. Nativism, authoritarianism, and populism clearly reflect the policy positions within this dimension.
The content dimension seems to be the most relevant for PRRPs as they have most preferences on this dimension. This underlines the importance of the content of education for the party family and the strong links between its three ideological roots and their education policy preferences. Given that Western European education systems have a strong foundation in values such as critical thinking, open-mindedness, or multicultural education (Halstead, 1996), it is not surprising that PRRPs put forward several positions that challenge these values by shifting the content of education. Regarding the role of nativism, the focus on national history, culture and language presents a clear challenge to multicultural and integrative aspects of education. At the same time, highlighting authority and discipline in school challenges the idea to educate critical thinkers. This somewhat contradicts some of the preferences stemming from the populism root. The claim to educate more 'critical thinkers' or 'independent human beings' must be contextualised by taking into consideration the role of PRRPs as challengers of the established educational values in Western Europe. In this context, educating people to be critical does not necessarily mean challenging authority, as visible in the Table 5. overview of the parties' positions on the content dimension. pro-authority preferences, but rather needs to be understood as educating people to challenge the foundational values of the educational system. The importance of preferences challenging 'liberal' ideological ideas, such as teaching climate change, gender equality, gender identity, or sexual education, highlights that the concept of educating critical thinkers has very clear boundaries for PRRPs, and that certain aspects of critical thinking are actively opposed and limited through authoritarian positions. Like the preference for differentiation in education that is expressed on the redistributive dimension, PRRPs are in favour of parental authority regarding values in education. This enables their electorate to gain veto power over educational content even if they fail in changing the content for the entirety of the system. Finally, the preference for practical skills as well as natural science and technology reflects the same populist root as the preference for VET education on the redistributive dimension. Taken together with the preferences for physical activity in schools, these positions highlight that for PRRPs education mainly has a practical and applied value. This can reflect both a critical predisposition towards more academic education as well as an education policy that is oriented towards the lifeworld of an electorate which is often lower educated and thus can also have a more positive outlook on practical aspects of education.

Party variation on policy positions
The previous section showed the results for each of the three dimensions of educational policies. Figures displaying the overall salience of policies in each dimension can be found in the online appendix. In Table 6, we provide an overview over the parties and the positions they hold on all three dimensions. Like previous results on the salience of educational policies, PS and FRP have the largest number of positions, while DF and VOX only have a very limited education policy agenda. Seven of the fifteen parties have less than ten positions. Some parties cluster their positions on certain dimensions. For example, AFD-N, PS, PVV and SVP-N have at least 50% of their positions on the content dimension, while FPÖ and LN have more than 50% of their positions on the redistributive dimension. No party has a strong focus on the governing dimension. These results underline the diversity among PRRPs when it comes to the importance of education policy as such, but also which part of education policies is most important for them. Looking at the link between the ideological roots and the policy dimensions, one can observe that on the redistributive dimension, authoritarianism and populism are the most important roots while nativism only plays a minor role. Moreover, while authoritarianism seems to be the source for preferences against more redistribution, populism seems  to relate to policies with a more mixed profile (see also Table A2 in the online appendix). On the governing dimension nativism and populism are the most important roots with the former favouring more centralised control, while the latter more decentralised control. Finally, all three ideological roots are important for understanding policies on the content dimension. Here, nativism and authoritarianism pull in a more illiberal direction, while populism brings about more mixed policies.

Conclusion
This article addressed a central gap in the literature on PRRPs in Western Europe, namely their educational policies. More specifically, we explored the extent to which education policy is on the PRRPs' agendas and whether these agendas are informed by their three core ideological features. The results show that PRRPs do pay attention to educational policies in their manifestos. Although some parties only devote a bit more than one percent to education, others use more than six percent of the text to elaborate their preferences. PRRPs focus particularly on the content dimension but do also emphasise aspects related to the redistributive and governing dimension. Our findings provide some empirical support for the mainstreaming-thesis in the sense that PRRPs that are more integrated in the party system are more likely to have a comprehensive educational policy platform. Further research is needed to unpack additional factors that influence the relevance of education policy, including for example the importance of educational policies in the political debate. However, our results already challenge earlier claims in the literature regarding the supposed lack of attention of PRRPs to education policy (e.g. Ansell 2010; Jungblut 2016).
Our results also show that PRRPs favour education policies that promote national culture, cultivate discipline, and emphasise practical rather than academic skills. As such, the preferences that PRRPs hold are clearly in line with their key ideological features of nativism, authoritarianism, and populism. To be sure, some PRRPs have a much more comprehensive educational policy platform than others, yet all parties hold positions consistent with core ideologies. Populism and authoritarianism seem most important when looking at the redistributive dimension, whereas populism and nativism are influencing the governing dimension. On the content dimension, however, all three ideological features are crucial, emphasising the importance of including the content dimension when studying educational policies of this party family. Although not all indicators of education policy preferences can be easily located according to an underlying dimension (see Table A2 in the online appendix), our results suggest that PRRPs' policies are clearly promote illiberal content and less redistribution. Regarding the governing dimension, the policy position is more mixed: some policies point towards centralisation (i.e. those related to nativism and authoritarianism), while others point towards decentralisation (i.e. those related to populism).
These findings have several important implications. Most importantly, the preferences derived from their ideological roots make PRRPs stand in opposition to several of the foundational values of Western European education systems such as open-mindedness, equality, respect, or personal autonomy (Halstead 1996). However, this does not mean that PRRPs only hold positions that no other party families would support. on the contrary, some of the positions that we found in our data, such as favouring privatisation, segmentation or upholding morally conservative values, might resonate with Conservative or Christian-Democratic parties that support authoritarianism in education (Ansell 2010;Gingrich 2011;Jungblut 2016). However, the combination of the three ideological roots and the resulting policy profiles make educational preferences of PRRPs unique and in some aspects also more radical than today's mainstream conservative parties (for a similar argument regarding gender policies see Akkerman 2015).
In their opposition to many of the fundamental values of Western European education systems, PRRPs combine two strategies. First, they hold preferences that fundamentally challenge central values enshrined in education systems and suggest alternative normative foundations. This speaks to recent arguments that education systems' initial emergence and expansion through the state sought mainly to mould political values of citizens (Paglayan 2022). Similar arguments have been raised in the curriculum studies literature wherein the importance of the content of education as a tool to form a 'good society' has been highlighted (Carr 1998). In our context we would argue that since education shapes the preferences and perceptions of citizens, PRRPs try to influence the values that are taught to tomorrow's voters.
Second, they combine this anti-system strategy with preferences that provide parents more veto opportunities regarding educational content. This can be seen as a populist-informed strategy to protect their core constituencies from unwanted educational interventions by empowering parents vis-à-vis teachers and the educational system. Given that PRRPs also show preferences for stronger central authority when advocating for their alternative values that should replace unwanted normative aspects in education, this strategy produces some ideological tension or inconsistency (for a similar tension regarding the judiciary see Mudde 2007). PRRPs seem to be in favour of centralised authority when they can decide on the content that is spread through education but have decentralisation as a second-order preference. This helps to ensure that the values that PRRPs build their ideology upon continue to be transmitted to future generations which in turn can help secure PRRPs' future electoral survival. This is in line with findings from a recent study that highlights the importance of the social environment of a school for the values that are being transmitted while also indicating that the effect of education reforms on these values is mediated through the agency of actors in the school (Gingrich 2019). This reiterates both the potential need for more control over schools and the shielding effect that more school autonomy can have.
For scholars of education policies, the combination of increased salience of education policies, the distinct platform, and growing political relevance of PRRPs across Western Europe calls into question earlier findings highlighting increased partisan convergence in this policy area (Jakobi 2011). Some of the positions that PRRPs propose might even resonate with other parties that hold more traditionalist values. For example, the opposition to openly discussing gender identity or sexuality in schools would be in line with preferences of some more conservative members of Christian-democratic parties (Henninger 2022). The result that the content of education is becoming more politicised also speaks to recent debates in U.S. education policy, where, among others, questions about the teaching of critical race theory have led to several conservative policy initiatives aimed at regulating content of education (Teitelbaum 2020). Similar debates related to the role of gender studies in education occurred in Hungary. Thus, by opening a political debate on the content of education even without having a majority, PRRPs might shift the political debate on selected values underpinning educational systems.
For scholars of the (populist) radical right, our analysis emphasised that PRRPs actively adopt frames and labels that are part of the mainstream discourse. The best example in our analysis is their position in favour of critical thinking, which is one of the fundamental underpinnings of Western European education systems. The idea of critical thinking is in the context of PRRPs often linked, however, to questioning some form of a mainstream and thus becomes an expression of opposition to fundamental values in liberal Western European education. This form of 'liberal illiberalism' (Moffitt 2017) can help making their positions more acceptable for voters. However, this also dilutes the meaning of these labels and opens political competition on the question of who holds the definitory power over what is, for example, considered as a desired expression of critical thinking in education.
Our study has some limitations stemming from its research design, which also highlight potential avenues for future research. First, our data is cross-sectional, as we focussed on providing a broad overview of Western European PRRPs' preferences on educational policies. This makes it impossible to track, for example, in how far PRRPs expand their educational portfolio throughout their lifespan. A longitudinal approach may provide additional evidence for and mechanisms of mainstreaming processes (Akkerman et al. 2016). Second, our study focussed on Western Europe to have a common context in which parties are compared. Expanding the analysis to, for example, Central Eastern Europe would allow us to study how the educational policies of PRRPs are influenced by (a recent history of ) state-initiated indoctrination within this sector (Gawlicz and Starnawski 2018) and governments led by PRRPs. Expanding beyond Europe might be helpful to disentangle the effects of the different ideological features such as populism and nativism on education policies. A recent study on Argentina and Chile, for example, highlights the relevance of populist political leaders for education reforms which led to fundamental re-orientations in the education systems (Guevara et al. 2018). Finally, our study was based on election manifestos. While manifesto studies are an established approach to trace partisan preferences, manifestos only present one snapshot of party politics, namely positions advertised during elections. What these positions mean for day-to-day policy making can be a different question (Jungblut 2017). Thus, future research should consider including a broader set of policy documents as well as interviews with policymakers to track how PRRPs approach education policy once they are in parliament or government. While research suggests that this party family has had limited influence on educational policy outputs thus far (Ciornei et al. 2022), this may very well change now that PRRP politicians (e.g. Lega and SVP) for the first time have been appointed ministers of education.

Notes
1. Denmark does not operate with manifestos, so DFs programme of principles and the election brochure were included. PVVs most recent manifesto was only one page, so the manifesto from 2012 was used instead. 2. Western Europe is defined as the European countries located west of the Balkans, excluding countries that were behind the Iron Curtain or part of Yugoslavia and small states (less than 1.5 million inhabitants). 3. An overview of all analysed manifestos can be found in the online appendix.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).