Liechtenstein Castle, home of the Princes of Liechtenstein | Johannes Simon/Getty Images Liechtenstein’s populists gain ground Fringe groups increased their number of parliamentary seats in Sunday’s elections.

Liechtenstein may be small but the microstate is not immune to the populist forces sweeping across Europe: In elections Sunday, two fringe groups increased their number of seats in parliament, although they fell short of wrenching control from the incumbent parties that have ruled since World War II.

The four-year-old right-wing populist Independents (DU) came away with the biggest electoral victory, boosting its share of the vote to 18.4 percent — 3 percent higher than in the last election in 2013. The center-left, anti-monarchy group Free List came away with a 1.5 percent increase, to 12.6 percent.

But the ruling coalition is likely to remain in the hands of the two economically liberal, pro-monarchy majority groups — the national-conservative Progress Citizens’ Party, which maintained a majority of 35.2 percent despite losing nearly 5 percent, and the Christian democratic Patriotic Union, which took 33.7 percent.

“In the end, the results are a win for the DU, but not by as much as they had probably hoped,” said Wouter Veenendaal, an assistant political science professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

While few opinion polls were carried out prior to Sunday’s elections, the Independents had appeared to be in a position to force their way into the coalition, reflecting dissatisfaction in Liechtenstein following the economic downturn that began in 2008.

“That’s a populist party that in many ways is comparable to other right-wing parties in Europe — they’re sometimes xenophobic, they tend to go against the political elite, their style is confrontational,” Veenendaal said. “I would expect them to grow because there’s been a lot of disenchantment with the elite, and perceived corruption.”

The Independents’ ideology is similar to that of the Progressive Citizens’ Party and the Patriotic Union but its style is brasher, he added.

Liechtenstein, an Alpine principality of around 37,000 people, has a dualist political system shared between the current monarch, Prince Hans-Adam II, and the government. The nation was a favorite tax haven until it was forced to scrap its banking secrecy laws in 2009, under pressure from the U.S. and EU.

Sunday’s results confirmed the population’s staunch support for Liechtenstein’s monarch, which is considered to be the most powerful in Europe, with the ability to dismiss or dissolve the government, veto the results of nationwide votes and approve judicial appointments.

In a referendum in 2012, 76 percent of Liechtenstein’s people rejected a proposal to limit the royal family’s political powers, after voting in favor of extending them nine years earlier, the BBC reported at the time.

The only group voicing strong opposition to Liechtenstein’s monarchy is the Free List party, which cropped up in the 1990s but has never taken more than 15 percent of the vote.

“They have been very active in criticizing the monarchy,” Veenendaal said. “But the monarchy is so close to the identity of Liechtenstein — Liechtenstein is the name of the prince’s house — so most people really do not tolerate criticism.”