Jasper Muis

Causes and consequences of the rise of populist radical right parties and movements in Europe

This article reviews three strands in the scholarship on the populist radical right (PRR). It covers both political parties and extra-parliamentary mobilization in contemporary European democracies. After definitional issues and case selection, the authors first discuss demand-side approaches to the fortunes of the PRR. Subsequently, supply-side approaches are assessed, namely political opportunity explanations and internal supply-side factors, referring to leadership, organization and ideological positioning. Third, research on the consequences of the emergence and rise of these parties and movements is examined: do they constitute a corrective or a threat to democracy? The authors discuss the growing literature on the impact on established parties’ policies, the policies themselves, and citizens’ behaviour. The review concludes with future directions for theorizing and research.

Radical right populism

One of the key preoccupations of scholars of contemporary politics is the political backlash of social unease about immigration and cultural diversity. In particular, support for populist radical right (PRR) parties and movements has swelled in previous decades, which has triggered extensive political and scholarly debate (Backes and Moreau, 2012). Whether we like it or not, many citizens support parties and movements that promote xenophobia, ethno-nationalism and anti-system populism (Rydgren, 2007). This review provides an overview and assessment of the scholarship on the PRR in Western European democracies. First, we briefly discuss the definitional debate about what constitutes the PRR family. Second, we review the literature on supply-side explanations for the fortunes of PRR parties and movements. Third, we discuss research on the consequences of the emergence and rise of PRR parties and movements. Do they constitute a corrective or threat to democracy (cf. Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, 2012)? There is now a growing literature that tackles this question in an empirical manner (Immerzeel and Pickup, 2015). The review concludes with a discussion of the future directions that theorizing and research could take. We narrow our scope to the PRR in contemporary Western European democracies. Nevertheless, the theories, findings and suggestions for future work could also be applicable to comparable cases elsewhere, such as the Tea Party in the United States (Parker and Barreto, 2014; Williamson et al., 2011) and PRR parties and organizations in Eastern Europe (Allen, 2015; Minkenberg, 2015; Pirro, 2015). Until today a strict labour division seems to divide sociologists from political scientists, with each discipline focusing on the non-electoral and electoral channel, respectively (Rydgren, 2007). Social movement protests have generally been dominated by ‘the left’, while ‘the right’ mainly uses the electoral channel to voice its discontent, instead of taking to the street (Hutter, 2014; Van der Meer et al., 2009). Consequently, social movement scholars tend to overlook the most important contemporary actors mobilizing against the consequences of globalization and immigration: the populist radical right (Hutter and Kriesi, 2013). As Caiani et al. (2012: 4) put it: ‘while political party studies provide more and increasingly sophisticated analyses of radical right parties, social movement studies ... has been slow to address the “bad side” of social movement activism’. Only when sociologists widen their perspective to the electoral channel, are we able to fully grasp the implications of abstract This article reviews three strands in the scholarship on the populist radical right (PRR) in Western Europe. It first assesses political opportunity explanations for the fortunes of the PRR. Second, it discusses internal supply-side approaches, referring to leadership, organization and ideological positioning. Third, research on the consequences of the rise of these parties and movements is examined: do they constitute a corrective or threat to democracy? The review concludes with future directions for theorizing and research.

Online discontent: comparing Western European far-right groups on Facebook

ABSTRACT Far-right groups increasingly use social media to interact with other groups and reach their followers. Social media also enable ‘ordinary’ people to participate in online discussions and shape political discourse. This study compares the networks and discourses of Facebook pages of Western European far-right parties, movements and communities. Network analyses of pages indicate that the form of far-right mobilization is shaped by political opportunities. The absence of a strong far-right party offline seems to be reflected in an online network in which non-institutionalized groups are the most prominent actors, rather than political parties. In its turn, the discourse is shaped by the type of actor. Content analyses of comments of followers show that parties address the political establishment more often than immigration and Islam, compared to non-institutionalized groups. Furthermore, parties apply less extreme discursive practices towards ‘the other’ than non-institutionalized groups.