Manuela Caiani

Social Movements and Europeanization

Are social movement organizations euro-sceptical, euro-pragmatic, or euro-opportunist? Or do they accept the EU as a new level of governance to place pressure on? Do they provide a critical capital, necessary for the political structuring of the EU, or do they disrupt the process of EU integration? Social Movements and Europeanization includes surveys of activists at international protest events targeting the European Union (for a total of about 5000 interviews); a discourse analysis of documents and transcripts of debates on European politics and policies conducted during the four European social forums held between 2002 and 2006 and involving hundreds of social movement organizations and tens of thousands of activists from all European countries; about 320 interviews with representatives of civil society organizations in six EU countries (France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Spain, and Italy) and one non-member state (Switzerland), and a systematic claims analysis of the daily press in selected years between 1990 and 2003. The empirical research shows the different paths of Europeanization taken by social movements and civil society organizations. (authors abstract)

ONLINE NETWORKS OF THE ITALIAN AND GERMAN EXTREME RIGHT

This article applies instruments of social network analysis to a study of communication networks within the Italian and German extremist right. Web links between organizational websites are used as a proxy. Indeed, extremist groups increasingly use and abuse the Internet for their propaganda and their recruitment, and also for their internal communication. The analysis includes both political parties and non-party organizations, even violent groups. In a macro-, micro-, and meso-analysis, the various specificities of the two national political sectors are demonstrated and linked to the offline reality. The Italian network appears to be very fragmented, highly diversified, and difficult to be coordinated (‘policephalous network’), whereas the German network is denser and much more concentrated on a few central actors (‘star structure’). These differences are mainly due to political opportunity structures in the two countries. Additionally, whereas the Italian network structure allows for the construction of a typology of sub-groups of organizations, the German communicative structure seems to be more erratic and less coordinated. The article also highlights the function of websites which are not related to any specific group. Indeed, these are of special importance for the far right as a political arena which is usually banned from the dominant societal discourses (if not even legally forbidden). Considering this, new modes of communication can be of greater use for extremist groups than for more traditional political actors.

European and American Extreme Right Groups and the Internet

How do right-wing extremist organizations throughout the world use the Internet as a tool for communication and recruitment? What is its role in identity-building within radical right-wing groups and how do they use the Internet to set their agenda, build contacts, spread their ideology and encourage mobilization? This important contribution to the field of Internet politics adopts a social movement perspective to address and examine these important questions. Conducting a comparative content analysis of more than 500 extreme right organizational web sites from France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States, it offers an overview of the Internet communication activities of these groups and systematically maps and analyses the links and structure of the virtual communities of the extreme right. Based on reports from the daily press the book presents a protest event analysis of right wing groups’ mobilisation and action strategies, relating them to their online practices. In doing so it exposes the new challenges and opportunities the Internet presents to the groups themselves and the societies in which they exist. (authors abstract)

The Dark Side of the Web: Italian Right-Wing Extremist Groups and the Internet

Focusing on extreme-right organisations in Italy, this article addresses the specific use of the Internet by extremist groups and its potential role for the formation of collective identity, organisational contacts and mobilisation. The analysis includes both political parties and non-party organisations, even violent groups. Through the combination of Social Network Analysis (SNA) of web linkages amongst approximately 100 organisations, with a formalised content analysis of those websites, we argue that various forms of usage of the Internet by right-wing organisations are indeed on the rise, with an increase not only in the number of extremist websites but also in the exploitation of the Internet for diffusing propaganda, promoting ‘virtual communities’ of debate, fundraising, and organising and mobilising political campaigns. The various specificities of the usage of the Internet by extreme-right organisations are demonstrated and linked to offline reality.

The Europeanization of Public Discourse in Italy

European integration has raised hopes and concerns about its effect on the distribution of power among different actors, and in particular on the role of the civil society. Focusing on the Europeanization of public discourse in Italy as a case study, this article addresses the specific problem of the formation of supranational public spheres. On the basis of content analyses of daily press and interviews, we argue that various forms of Europeanization of the public discourse are indeed on the rise, with a growing presence not only of purely European actors but also of European targets and frames. Europeanization appears to have been traditionally a ‘top-down’ process: in fact the more Europeanized is a policy, actor, target or issue scope, the less civil society actors seem to have access to the public sphere. However, some changes across time emerge, with the development of (conflictual) forms of ‘Europeanization from below’.

The transnationalization of the extreme right and the use of the Internet

Like many other political actors, the extreme right is currently expanding beyond national borders, and, as with any civil society organization, the Internet is assuming a growing role in achieving this goal. To date, however, this topic is understudied. In this article, aiming to empirically filling this gap, we shall explore the new tactics of the extreme right in Europe and the USA in the context of transnational politics. Namely, we investigate the degree and forms of extreme right transnationalization (in terms of mobilization, issues, targets, action strategies, and organizational contacts) and the potential role of the Internet in these developments. The analysis combines qualitative and quantitative data derived from 54 interviews with representatives of extreme right organizations in six European countries (Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, and Spain) and the USA with a formalized Web content analysis of 336 right-wing websites. We will compare different types of right-wing groups which compose the radical right family (from political parties to associations), underlining the main differences and similarities across groups and across countries.

In the Name of the People: The Euroscepticism of the Italian Radical Right

Abstract In this article, we analyse Euroscepticism as a common trait of current radical right-wing formations. Public opinion in Italy has become increasingly polarized on the issue of European integration, and largely Eurosceptic. Thus, it is relevant to understand whether there is an ideological opposition to the European Union (EU) in Italy, both inside and outside the Parliament, which, in the future, could capture the malaise of the citizens and grow within the political system. Particularly, we explore differences and similarities between the parliamentary and the extra-parliamentary right. We show that the ways in which they perceive and (negatively) represent the EU through frames is strikingly similar, despite the fact that these organizations do not really cooperate and are even in competition with each other. Ultimately, despite many factors being mature for issue mobilization and the creation of an EU cleavage in Italy, the success of this process largely depends on the ability of the radical right organizations to come to terms with their ideological background, give priority to this emerging cleavage and establish more synergies with each other.

Talking Europe in the Italian Public Sphere

Italy has been considered an Euro-enthusiastic country. On the basis of claims analysis as well as semi-structured interviews with key political actors, this article presents a more nuanced image. Permissive consensus has in fact been eroded in Italy too: although support for the principle of European integration remains high, specific policy choices of European Union institutions are criticized together with the perceived ‘democratic deficit’. In fact, the increasing competences at the EU level have contributed to a politicization of the debate on European integration, with different actors constructing different images of economic, social and political Europe.

Radical right-wing movements: Who, when, how and why?

Despite the increasing academic interest in the radical right (Mudde, 2016, and as Figure 1 shows), which has accompanied its recent success all around Europe, research on the topic is still ‘biased’ towards some types of organizations and forms of political action (Goodwin, 2012; Hutter and Kriesi, 2013). On the one hand, as other articles in Sociopedia.isa have pointed out (e.g. Muis and Immerzeel, 2016), the literature on the radical right has been focused mainly on political parties, elections and electoral behaviour (e.g. Carter, 2005; Ignazi, 2003; Norris, 2005), paying little attention to the non-partisan milieu and cultural phenomena that surround (and often support) the success of radical parties. On the other hand, the scholarship on social movements has often neglected right-wing radicalism (for some exceptions, see Caiani et al., 2012; Koopmans et al., 2005; Leeson et al., 2012; Minkenberg, 2011; Mudde, 2007; Rydgren, 2005, 2007). As noted by Della Porta (2013), right-wing extremist movements have been examined mainly within studies of political violence and terrorism, and are associated with socioeconomic or political pathologies (e.g. breakdown theories, relative deprivation), whereas work on social movement, emphasizing actors’ strategic choices and the contextual opportunities for mobilization, has been more interested in analysing left-wing radicalism. This dichotomy also holds true for research on the radical right in East Central Europe, which has concentrated mainly on explaining the emergence and electoral contours of post-Soviet countries’ radical right populism (e.g. Auers-Kasekamp, 2013; Hanley et al., 2008; Kovács, 2013; but for some exceptions, see Minkenberg, 2015; Mudde, 2005). Moreover, although there are numerous empirical studies within the field of political violence and terrorism investigating the causes and conditions of the emergence of extremism (among others, Della Porta, 2013), the attention to radical right-wing movements is less than that paid to other types of (extremist) organizations (e.g. Islamic religious organizations). A abstract This article provides an overview of the existing research on the causes of radical right-wing movements, a topic often neglected in the literature in comparison with the academic attention paid to radical right political parties and elections. It illustrates individual, organizational and contextual explanations for the emergence and mobilization (including violence) of right-wing movements in Europe and beyond, providing comparative empirical studies and data as illustration. The article concludes by discussing possible future directions for right-wing movement research.

Nationalism and Populism in Radical Right Discourses in Italy and Germany

Populism is, besides nationalism, one of the common components of today’s radical right politics. In fact, populism and nationalism are often conflated when assessing radical right identity formation, ideology and discourses. This article sheds light on the relationship between nationalism and populism by empirically investigating the presence and forms of populist (people vs. elites) and nationalist (ethno-national people vs. others) frames in the discourse of radical right parties and movements in Italy and Germany. By applying a frame analysis to written documents (election flyers, party programmes, newspapers) produced between 2013 and 2016, as well as current website material (press releases, newsletters, blogs) of selected radical right organisations, this article examines how nationalism and populism interact, overlap and potentially clash. We look at how populist and nationalist frames structure the radical right’s definition of “us” and “them” and its diagnoses, prognoses and motivations for action. We find that radical right-wing forces increasingly combine populist with nationalist frames, but the forms of populism on the radical right depend on the national political context and on the type of organisation—for parties, populism has become a central feature of their discourse; social movements exhibit only a peripheral conceptualisation of populism.