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 Nikki Haley's "what about slavery?" statement reminds us that the 2024 campaign is one of ethnic outbidding--specifically, white nationalist outbidding.  I have been writing about ethnic outbidding for quite some time, in my own academic work, and then applied to the US especially in the age of Trump.  To be clear, the concept is not mine.  It was most clearly articulated by Donald Horowitz--that when multiple politicians or parties compete for support from an homogenous group in a heterogeneous society, they will be tempted/pressured to outbid each other in their promises to be the best defender of that group.*  In 2016, Trump was best positioned to win this auction, this competition for ever more extreme voters, as he was willing to say anything, including banning Muslims, and, yes, his personality feeds into it as he always wants to top other folks.  After the 2020 election, Fox News felt pressure from its right, as it initially recognized Trump's defeat, but started to lose market share to OAN and other far right outlets.In the 2024 race, the competition to be the best white nationalist (I tend to prefer white supremacist but YMMV) is so evident with non-white candidates like Nikki Haley and Tim Scott appealing to the white vote.  Many have noted the irony or hypocrisy of those running to lead the Party of Lincoln getting all soft on slavery.**  Haley once was on the right side of history, lowering the confederate flag from government buildings when she was governor of South Carolina.  But that was before Trump changed the permission structure of Republican politics.  Now, to compete at the national level, one must establish one's white nationalist bona fides by being pro-confederacy.  [Save me the BS about state's rights, as SC's secession and pretty much every other one was based on the selective state's right to support the institution of slavery and oppose the rights of non-slave-holding states to regulate their own borders].  To be clear, ethnic outbidding refers to pressures and temptations--the fear of losing white voters to other candidates or the temptation to pander to extremist voters to get a leg up on more moderate candidates.  Candidates and parties still have agency. They have a choice to make, often a tough one, but they can choose to go another way at some cost.  Fox could have been willing to risk losing some market share to far right outlets.  Nikki Haley could have risked losing some share of the electorate to others, with the hope that she could corner the market of reasonable Republicans (if such a beast still exists).  The challenge is that we know that the most enthused voters show up at primaries, and those tend to be those on the extremes.  But in this time of increased threat of autocracy, there is an opportunity for a Republican to take a stand.  This is not just wishful thinking or idealism--the white nationalist vote is going to Trump.  Whatever is left will go to DeSantis and others who fit the bill--white "Christian" men.  Nikki Haley could be the candidate that grabs other voters.  Again, she has agency, she has a choice to make, and, until this week, she had somewhat of an advantage with her background--not just being a person of color (perhaps in denial about that) and a woman, but someone who had pulled down the confederate flag in a previous job.  She had the credentials to try to be the savior of the GOP.  And Haley tossed it away.  Out of weakness. Due to cowardice.  She simply is not going to win an outbidding race against Trump or against the other dudes in the race.  So, we can blame the structure of the American politics--the winner take all process where small numbers of voters in primaries set the agenda--but we cannot let these politicians off.  They have responsibility for their stances.  We got here because of GOP weakness and temptation.  In 2016, GOP candidates didn't attack Trump directly because they wanted his voters--the deplorables that Hillary Clinton so aptly called them.  In 2024, the cowardice has a physical element to it--that Trump supporters have threatened violence.  But cowardice it still is--to run for Presidency and sell out whatever values one has and ultimately endanger oneself and one's family.  Again, Haley may think of herself as white, but she isn't to to white nationalists to whom she is pandering.  Indian-Americans may not be at the top of their hate list, but I am pretty sure Great Replacement Theorists worry about South Asians replacing white folks, just as they worry about Jews, Black Americans, Muslims, etc.  Structure and agency are in play here--we need to hold accountable the politicians who pander to the worst instincts in people and we need to remember that Trump and Haley wouldn't be doing this stuff if it did not work, if there was not an audience for it.* This is not just an American thing, of course, as Horowitz was inspired by the Sinhalese case in Sri Lanka.  These days, Canada is having a bit of the outbidding dynamic as the Conservative Party of Canada feels pressured by a small far right party run by, well, an idiot.  That case illustrates it is not just pressure but temptation.  The temptation to split off voters from the heterogeneous party.** You don't have to be an historian to know that the two parties switched their positions/places on the rights of African-Americans to be free and to vote, but it doesn't hurt.  Follow Kevin Kruse on social media to get the basics as he has responded extensively to the whole "hey, the Dems were the party of racism" stuff.  It is called partisan realignment for a reason--the parties and voters realigned in response to the response to the civil rights movement.

The outbidding model of ethnic party competition predicts that ethnic parties adopt radical strategies to maximize support among voters of an ethnic group. In contrast, this article argues that ethnic parties have a wider range of strategies at their disposal. Integrating recent findings, ethnic party strategies are defined by the criteria of appeal and policy position as 'static bidding', 'ethnic underbidding', 'ethnic outbidding', 'lateral bidding', 'lateral underbidding' and 'lateral outbidding'. Empirically, a comparison of strategies adopted by ethnic parties competing for votes of the Hungarian and Bosniak minorities in Serbia shows variance of strategies within and across groups despite an environment conducive to outbidding and while holding institutional context factors constant. Factors causing this variance are explored through content analysis of 18 semi-structured interviews with ethnic party elites. An explanation that links strategies to parties' goals and the incentives of the structure of intra- and inter-ethnic competition is suggested for further research.

The outbidding model of ethnic party competition predicts that ethnic parties adopt radical strategies to maximize support among voters of an ethnic group. In contrast, this article argues that ethnic parties have a wider range of strategies at their disposal. Integrating recent findings, ethnic party strategies are defined by the criteria of appeal and policy position as 'static bidding', 'ethnic underbidding', 'ethnic outbidding', 'lateral bidding', 'lateral underbidding' and 'lateral outbidding'. Empirically, a comparison of strategies adopted by ethnic parties competing for votes of the Hungarian and Bosniak minorities in Serbia shows variance of strategies within and across groups despite an environment conducive to outbidding and while holding institutional context factors constant. Factors causing this variance are explored through content analysis of 18 semi-structured interviews with ethnic party elites. An explanation that links strategies to parties' goals and the incentives of the structure of intra- and inter-ethnic competition is suggested for further research. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright holder.]

 The entire idea of ethnic outbidding is that one is pushed by competition to ever more extreme promises.  In 2016, Trump was pushed by Cruz and others to ban Muslims, for instance, to prove that he was a better defender of white "Christians" and all that.  Ethnic outbidding is a well understood dynamic built from studying cases where multiple contenders for an homogeneous party each make extreme claims.But, Steve, Trump doesn't face any competition from his own party.  That's right, his last significant opponent dropped out, and Nikki never really tried to outflank Trump to his right anyway.  Yet now Trump is promising bloodshed if he loses and has gone from calling all Mexicans rapists in 2016 to saying that refugees aren't human: ""They're not people, in my opinion." He later referred to them as "animals.""  I have to admit that the conventional poli sci tools can't account for this.  While Gary J (who was at UCSD during my time there) long ago argued that politicians are always running scared, always acting as if there is competition even when they have a safe seat, I think something a bit less rational is going on here. Here I go from amateur scholar of American politics to amateur psychologist.  Trump is an insecure narcissist who is always seeking louder and louder applause.  Notice that his most threatening rhetoric comes at his rallies.  Does he need these rallies?  No, as a pseudo-incumbent with followers threatening opponents with violence, Trump could run for Presidency without every leaving the golf course.  Sure, the rallies may be useful for some grifting, but he kept on doing his rallies mid-pandemic and again more rallies sans competition because he gets high off of the adulation.  He could just play his old hits--build a wall, ban Muslims, etc, but he wants the crowds (the mobs) to be loud and enthusiastic, so he finds new applause lines and pushes them when they get the desired reaction.This is, of course, a guess, but I think a sound one.  The alternative is that he thinks that threatening yet ever more violence and ever more dehumanizing racist rhetoric will either cause more people to vote for him or deter folks from voting for Biden.  As someone who has mostly relied on rational choice assumptions, I simply don't think they work here.  There is a risk of outflanking oneself as greater extremism may turn out the extremists but turn off those who are not so extreme but dislike Biden or want more power for the GOP or want yet another supreme court seat.There may be some crafty strategist manipulating Trump, but the way his claims tend to escalate when speaking off the cuff suggests otherwise.  It suggests a search for lines that will hit, causing the crowd to react, which then gives Trump the fix he needs.  It is not just all adderall. To be fair, he is right about one thing--there will be more violence.  Trump incites violence, so this is both a cause and a prediction.  The blood is and will be on his hands, on Fox's, and on the GOP's. 

Focuses on the political process, dividing the Estonian drive for independence into 3 stages to discuss the increasing relaxation of the political constraints on outbidding to radical nationalists. The conclusion examines the impact of Estonia's policies on ethnic relations and discusses the implications for domestic and international policy. (Original abstract-amended)

Ethnic outbidding, where parties adopt ever more extreme positions to capture electoral advantage, has become an increasingly common practice among ethnic parties. As economic issues have often served as a catalyst for ethnic tension, increasing levels of economic inequality should lead parties to adopt more extreme positions in an attempt to outbid one another. Furthermore, as their economic and ethnic platforms will appeal to the same ethnically defined constituency, ethnic outbidding should be more effective where inequality is high. Using a sample of over 150 ethnonational parties in Europe between 2011 and 2017, this paper finds that inequality is linked to increasing ideological extremism along a number of policy dimensions. Employing local-level voting data for Romania and Slovakia, we show that higher inequality makes adopting a more ideological extreme position a more successful electoral strategy, especially where economic issues are ethnically salient.