The Rise Of The Far Right In Europe

The results of the last European Elections of 2014 confirmed the rise of right and far right 'populist' parties across the EU. The success of a range of parties, such as Denmark’s Dansk Folskeparti, Slovenia’s Slovenska demokratska stranka, France’s Front National, Greece’s Golden Dawn, the United Kingdom Independence Party, Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement in Italy and the Austrian FPÖ, has been perceived as a political wave which is transforming the face of the European Parliament, and challenging at some level the hegemony of the 'big four' well-established European political forces that lead the Strasbourg’s assembly: the ALDE, EPP, S&D and Greens/ALE. As 'populism' has become a major issue in many EU countries, this collection aims to provide a critical understanding of related trends and recommend ways in which they can be challenged both in policy and praxis, by using the gender-race-ethnicity-sexual orientation intersectionality approach. This international volume combines extensive transnational comparative data analysis, as well as research at discursive, attitudinal and behavioural levels.

Jean-Yves Camus and Nicolas Lebourg’s critical look at the far right throughout Europe reveals a prehistory and politics more complex than the stereotypes suggest and warns of the challenges it poses to the EU’s liberal-democratic order. These movements are determined to gain power through legitimate electoral means, and they are succeeding.

As long as far-right parties—known chiefly for their vehement opposition to immigration—have competed in contemporary Western Europe, many have worried about these parties’ acceptability to democratic voters and mainstream parties. Yet, rather than treating the far right as pariahs, major mainstream-right parties have included the far right in 15 governing coalitions from 1994 to 2017. Parties do not care equally about all issues at any given time, and Kimberly Twist demonstrates that far-right parties will agree to support the mainstream right’s goals more readily than many other parties, making them appealing partners. Partnering with Extremists builds on existing work on coalition formation and party goals to propose a theory of coalition formation that works across countries and over time. The evidence comes from 19 case studies of coalition formation in Austria and the Netherlands, countries where far-right parties have been excluded when they could have been included and included when the mainstream right had other options. The argument is then extended to countries where coalitions are less common, France and the United Kingdom, and to cases of mainstream-right adoption of far-right themes. Twist incorporates both office and policy considerations in her argument and reimagines “policy” to be a two-dimensional factor; it matters not just where parties are located on an issue but how firmly they hold those positions.

The first comprehensive and truly pan-European study of populist radical right parties in Europe.

Across Europe, radical right-wing parties are winning increasing electoral support. The Dark Side of European Integration argues that this rising nationalism and the mobilization of the radical right are the consequences of European economic integration. The European economic project has produced a cultural backlash in the form of nationalist radical right ideologies. This assessment relies on a detailed analysis of the electoral rise of radical right parties in Western and Eastern Europe. Contrary to popular belief, economic performance and immigration rates are not the only factors that determine the far right's success. There are other political and social factors that explain why in post-socialist Eastern European countries such parties had historically been weaker than their potential, which they have now started to fulfill increasingly. Using in-depth interviews with radical right activists in Ukraine, Alina Polyakova also explores how radical right mobilization works on the ground through social networks, allowing new insights into how social movements and political parties interact.

European challenges call for European responses. The spread of extremist and xenophobic attitudes and the proliferation of right-wing political movements are challenges confronting all of Europe. This book provides a conceptual framework for comparing right-wing radicalism in Europe and offers country-specific data on the right-wing radicalism and extremism. It constitutes a solid base of knowledge on the current situation in ten European countries (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Hungary, Italy, The Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom). Key topics include the success stories of right-wing radical political parties, the strength of their movements, the existence of sub-cultural milieus of the radical right and of corresponding factors that influence the rise of the radical right in Europe.

This volume offers a comparative survey of Far Right parties across Europe, examining in particular their changing political rhetoric. The contributors look at the development of two distinct forms of party development and discourse: The Haiderization and The Berlusconization model.

This book has three aims. Firstly, it explores the extreme right in order to assess its ideological meaning and its political expression. Beginning with a discussion of the meaning and usefulness of the Left-Right distinction, it deals with the varying significance of the term 'right' and discusses the appropriateness of the competing terms: 'radical', 'new', 'populist', and 'extreme right'. The book argues that the traditional neo-fascist party has been supplanted by a new type of extreme right party, unrelated to fascist ideology, but nevertheless opposed to the fundamental values of the democratic political system. The book's second aim is to carry out an in-depth analysis of the post-war evolution of the extreme right of each country in Western Europe. The analysis highlights their lineage from pre-war fascist regimes or movements, their different partisan expressions in the post-war period, their ideological profile, their party's relationship with other actors in the party system, the socio-demographic and attitudinal profile of their voter-base, and finally the conditions which have favoured or inhibited their development. Finally, the book discusses in detail more recent trends within the West European extreme right and outlines a conceptual framework for explaining the success or failure of each political party. The volume, extensively revised, expanded, and updated from its original widely acclaimed Italian edition, will be essential reading for all those working on parties and movements in Western Europe.