The Fast Rise of Populist Radical Right Parties: Evidence from the Alliance for the Union of Romanians

To test this hypothesis, the thesis analyses the discourse of two populist radical right parties in Western Europe: The National Front (now known as National Rally) of France, and the Party for Freedom of the Netherlands. This analysis has two parts: The first tests part of my hypothesis: that Europeans’ encounter with Islam in Europe has (1) revealed the non-universal nature of European secularism to Europeans, and (2) demonstrated the secularisation of Christianity into ‘culture.’ The second consists of Critical Discourse This thesis seeks to understand the role of religion in the discourse of Western Europe’s populist radical right parties. Populist radical right parties have made extraordinary electoral gains in a number of Western European nations. Many of these parties call for a return to Christian and/or Judeo-Christian values, and for the Christian and/or Judeo-Christian identity of their respective nations to be respected and preserved. Muslims, in particular, are singled out by the populist radical right as a threat to Western Christian values and identity. Yet these populist radical right parties do not appear to be advocates of a religious doctrine or way of life; rather, they most often frame themselves as defenders of secularism. This is curious: if populist radical right parties in Western Europe are secular, when then has Christian or Judeo-Christian identity become such an important aspect of their discourse? Building on sociologist Rogers Brubaker’s observation that populist radical right parties in Western Europe are not genuinely religious, but rather Christian identitarian in orientation, this thesis contends that populist radical right parties use religion in their discourse in order to exclude Muslims from European society, and to protect their respective secular nationalisms. Therefore the primary question asked in this thesis is: why is religion used as a tool to differentiate ‘the people’ from ‘the other’ in the discourse of the populist radical right in Western Europe? The thesis proposes a hypothesis: Western Europeans’ encounter with Islam in Europe has (1) revealed the non-universal nature of Western European secularism to Europeans, and (2) demonstrated the secularisation of Christianity into Western European ‘culture.’ This recognition that Christianity has been secularised into ‘culture’ has allowed secular Europeans to identify themselves – and their nation and ultimately Western civilisation – as Christian or Judeo-Christian. These effects have precipitated the formation of Christianist secularism, a type of Christian identitarian politics which perceives contemporary European culture to be ‘Christianity secularised.’ A group of populist radical right parties in Western Europe, then, have embraced Christianist secularism, which they use to define their respective national identities in religio-civilisational terms, i.e. as (Judeo-)Christian. In doing so, they are able to exclude Muslims from their society, on the grounds that Islam is an alien religion which – unlike Christianity and possibly Judaism – has not and cannot be secularised into ‘culture'. Analysis of three selected texts produced by the respective leaders of the National Front and Party for Freedom, Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders, produced during the 2012-2017 period. The Critical Discourse Analysis seeks answers in the selected to the following questions: (1) does the discourse display the key elements of Christianist secularism? (2) How is Islam constructed in the discourse? (3) How is Christian identity used to exclude Muslims from European society?

[Three decades of populist radical right parties in Western Europe: So what?] The populist radical right constitutes the most successful party family in post-war Western Europe. Many accounts in both academia and the media warn of the growing influence of populist radical right parties, the so-called right turn of European politics, but few provide empirical evidence of it. This article by Cas Mudde provides a first comprehensive analysis of the alleged effects of the populist radical right on the people, parties, policies and polities of Western Europe. The conclusions are sobering. The effects are largely limited to the broader immigration issue, and even here populist radical right parties should be seen as catalysts rather than initiators. Despite their limited impact there is still reason to believe that the populist radical right parties might increase their influence in the near future. But even in the unlikely event that these parties will become major players in West European politics, it is unlikely that this will lead to a fundamental transformation of the political system. The populist radical right is, according to Mudde, not a normal pathology of European democracy, unrelated to its basic values, but a pathological normalcy , which strives for the radicalisation of mainstream values. Publication history: Translation of the article “Three decades of populist radical right parties in Western Europe: So what?” from European Journal of Political Research , volume 52, number 1 2013 (DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6765.2012.02065.x ). (Published 18 April 2016) Citation: Mudde, Cas (2016) “Tre decennier av populistiska radikalhögerpartier i Västeuropa”, in Det vita fältet III. Samtida forskning om högerextremism , special issue of Arkiv. Tidskrift för samhällsanalys , issue 5, pp. 67–91. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.13068/2000-6217.5.3

In the contemporary political era, ‘populist’ parties have experienced a heightened degree of electoral prominence and success throughout a great number of Western liberal democracies. In particular, populist radical right parties have been especially successful, increasing their support and rising from the political fringes to holding positions of power. As these parties settle into being a permanent fixture of contemporary politics, it is necessary to better understand how they function. Specifically, the thesis contends that the role populism plays within populist radical right parties is not sufficiently understood. As such, this thesis asks, to what extent are so-called ‘populist’ parties actually populist? What role does populism play in the facilitation of these parties’ broader ideological agendas? And to what degree do these agendas differ between parties in different Western liberal democratic contexts? Situated in the fields of political theory and comparative politics, the thesis explores these questions by examining populist radical parties from the supply-side. It does so from a multi-typological perspective, defining populism as a thin-centred ideology and a discourse, which in-groups and out-groups between the ‘people’ and the ‘elite’, and propagates themes of crisis. Following in the ideational tradition, these features necessarily function alongside a ‘host’ ideology. Using a mixed quantitative content and qualitative research method, the thesis examines the extent to which these features are present and the role that they play in facilitating agendas in two populist radical right parties, operating in different Western liberal democracies: in Australia, One Nation (ON) and in the Netherlands, the Party for Freedom (PVV). The analysis found that both ON and the PVV were most prominently nativist, rather than populist. This was evidenced by the predominant ethno-cultural process of in-grouping and out-grouping, between a Judeo-Christian ‘people’ and a minority ethnic ‘other,’ and the high frequency of nativist policies in their policy documents. But while their nativism was the primary focus of the parties, the populist dimensions of the parties should not be underplayed and should be considered significant and fundamental to the parties’ overall agenda. Specifically, it found that themes of crisis, as a constituent feature of populism, were quantitatively and qualitatively significant for each party, and that themes of crisis facilitated each parties’ core, nativist political goals. In examining the supply-side presence of crisis in the case studies, the analysis was able to develop a greater appreciation for populism’s overall role in the parties that are most commonly associated with the term. The empirical examination of crisis from the supply-side is the first of its kind, and supports the theory that crisis is not merely a demand-side, external trigger for the populist radical right, but sits at the centre of the antagonistic relationship between the ‘people’, the ‘elite’ and the ‘other’. The findings also suggest that populist radical right parties will modulate their key agendas, depending on political context and issue salience. For example, where the PVV generally conformed to received wisdom of the populist radical right party family, motivated primarily by post-materialist concerns, ON tended to balance their post-materialist focus with material issues. It also found that ON was comparatively more populist than the PVV, in part because of this balancing of material and post-material matters. The overarching aim of this thesis is to forge a greater understanding of populist radical right parties, arguably the most prominent and successful populist party family of the contemporary era. Through this analysis, the thesis provides a fresh perspective on these parties and the role that populism plays within them.

In recent years more and more studies have pointed to the limitations of demand-side explanations of the electoral success of populist radical right parties. They argue that supply-side factors need to be included as well. While previous authors have made these claims on the basis of purely empirical arguments, this article provides a (meta)theoretical argumentation for the importance of supply-side explanations. It takes issue with the dominant view on the populist radical right, which considers it to be alien to mainstream values in contemporary western democracies – the ‘normal pathology thesis’. Instead, it argues that the populist radical right should be seen as a radical interpretation of mainstream values, or more akin to a pathological normalcy. This argument is substantiated on the basis of an empirical analysis of party ideologies and mass attitudes. The proposed paradigmatic shift has profound consequences for the way the populist radical right and western democracy relate, as well as for how the populist radical right is best studied. Most importantly, it makes demand for populist radical right politics rather an assumption than a puzzle, and turns the prime focus of research on to the political struggle over issue saliency and positions, and on to the role of populist radical right parties within these struggles.

In this article, Stockemer and Normandin test whether recent developments in the populist radical right’s messaging, such as the strategic introduction of gender equality in these parties’ political discourse and their evolution towards economic chauvinism, has changed women’s and men’s propensity to vote for the populist radical right. Using data from the eighth wave of the European Social Survey (ESS), the authors find that two traditional explanations for the gender gap in voting for the populist radical right have lost their explanatory power. First, their results indicate that the ideological moderation hypothesis no longer applies; that is, anti-immigration sentiment and a rightist ideology are currently as much of a reason to cast their ballot for the populist radical right for female voters as they are for male voters. Second, they no longer find support that economic dissatisfaction is a stronger driver for men than for women to vote for the populist radical right. Rather, their results indicate the contrary. In addition, they find that education is more of a bulwark against supporting the populist radical right for women. Finally, their results illustrate that older men are more likely to vote for the populist radical right than older women.

Although the populist radical right is generally seen as a particularly masculine and misogynist phenomenon, several of its parties have female leaders. The most prominent is Marine Le Pen, president of the French National Rally (formerly the National Front) and unofficial leader of the European populist radical right. Using insights from intersectionality theory, we posit that Marine Le Pen, as a female populist radical right politician, faces qualitatively different media coverage than both her female and her radical right counterparts. In this study, we analyze her media framing in two French (Le FigaroandLe Monde) and two U.S. (New York TimesandWall Street Journal) newspapers, focusing on the application of gender and populist radical right frames. We find that the “harder” populist radical right frame dominates the “softer” gender frame in all four newspapers, but, paradoxically, the combination of the two frames leads to overall less biased coverage of Marine Le Pen compared with both other female and other populist radical right politicians. In the conclusion, we discuss some of the consequences of the findings for the broader study of female politicians, most notably, theories of intersectionality and the double bind for women in leadership.

Whose democracy is it anyway? (Maryniak 2002: 107) Introduction Although the populist radical right is not antidemocratic in a procedural sense, as argued in chapter 1, core tenets of its ideology stand in fundamental tension with liberal democracy. Various authors have discussed this tension, although mostly at an abstract level without much reference to concrete positions of the parties in question (e.g. Betz 2004; Decker 2004; see also Lipset 1955). To understand the nature and scope of this tension, we must examine the societal and systemic consequences of the three key features of the populist radical right: nativism, authoritarianism and populism. The following sections will discuss the populist radical right parties' views on nativist democracy, authoritarian democracy, and populist democracy, respectively. In the conclusion the populist radical right view of democracy will be constructed and compared to the key features of liberal democracy in general, and the way they are implemented in contemporary European countries in particular. This exercise should also help provide a clearer insight into the key question on the mind of many authors and, indeed, readers: how dangerous are populist radical right parties for liberal democracy? Nativist democracy: it's our country! The key concept of the populist radical right is nativism, the ideology that a state should comprise “natives” and that “nonnatives” are to be treated with hostility. Like all ideologues, nativists are torn between the ideal and the practice, the dream and the reality.

The aim of this study is to analyse the posts made by Victory Party (Zafer Partisi / ZP) leader Ümit Özdağ from his personal account on the X platform with reference to some of the concepts that populist radical right ideology produces discourse around. In this context, the analysis of Özdağ's X posts within the framework of the general discourse of the populist radical right is important for understanding how the populist radical right discourse is reproduced locally. In this study, the method of critical discourse analysis was applied to discuss the ideological meaning of the discourses formed around the concepts. In particular, the concepts of immigrants/refugees, Islam and nation have been selected with reference to the discourses put forward by the populist radical right-wing movements on the rise in Europe, and Özdağ's X posts have been analysed through these concepts. The analysis has been conducted on the concepts of immigrants/refugees, Islam and nation. Özdağ's discourses largely overlap with the populist radical right ideology on migrants and refugees. However, Özdağ's discourse differs from the general discourse of the populist radical right on Islam and the nation at certain points. On the issue of Islam, Özdağ, unlike Western right-wing populists, criticises the cultural practices of Muslims rather than categorically rejecting Islam. By highlighting Turkish nationalism, Özdağ reproduces anti-immigrant discourses within this framework. While the populist radical right has recently produced discourse through civic nationalism rather than discourse based on ethnicity, some of Özdağ's X posts evoke ethnic nationalism.

Clanek analyzuje volebni podporu středových populistických stran v Ceske republice. Na zakladě dat z narodnich volebnich studii a s využitim vybraných teorii volebniho chovani nejde volebni podporu těchto stran vysvětit pomoci tradicnich konfliktnich linii, ale pťedevsim pomoci hodnoceni valencnich charakteristik.

Charismatic leaders are often assumed to drive the electoral success of populist radical right parties. Yet, little attention is given to how voter evaluations of leaders influence individual voting behavior. To our knowledge, no systematic and comparative tests of this empirical question exist. In this paper, we test to what extent voters’ support for populist radical right parties is fueled by leaders' appreciation. In order to examine leader effects on the populist radical right vote, we rely on an original dataset pooling 29 National Election Studies from ten established West European parliamentary democracies (1985‐2018). Our analysis finds that: (1) voters’ evaluation of party leaders is significantly associated with voting for populist radical right parties; (2) leader evaluations are more important than left‐right self‐placement when it comes to voting for the populist radical right, and (3) leader effects are more important for populist radical right voters than for other voters.

Populist radical right parties are considerably more popular in some areas (neighbourhoods, municipalities, regions) than others. They thrive in some cities, in some smaller towns, and in some rural areas, but they are unsuccessful in other cities, small towns, and rural areas. We seek to explain this regional variation by modelling at the individual level how citizens respond to local conditions. We argue that patterns of populist radical right support can be explained by anxiety in the face of social change. However, how social change manifests itself is different in rural and urban areas, so that variations in populist radical right support are rooted in different kinds of conditions. To analyse the effects of these conditions we use unique geo‐referenced survey data from the Netherlands collected among a nationwide sample of 8,000 Dutch respondents. Our analyses demonstrate that the presence of immigrants (and particularly increases therein) can explain why populist radical right parties are more popular in some urban areas than in others, but that it cannot explain variation across rural areas. In these areas, local marginalization is an important predictor of support for populist radical right parties. Hence, to understand the support for the populist radical right, the heterogeneity of its electorate should be recognized.

Migration is a central topic in the populist radical right (PRR) discourse, usually perceived within the frames of the politicization of immigration in Europe. Departing from the centrality of distrust in such discourse, we advance the argument that PRR parties strategically use nostalgic narratives to make assertions on both inward and outward migration as an elite-blaming strategy, thus mobilizing paradoxes—presence–absence, crowded–empty, deserving–undeserving—through a sentimental longing for a better past. Italy, Spain, and Portugal have long been countries of emigration that, in the last few decades, have become countries of immigration, too. In Italy, a populist radical right party (Fratelli d’Italia) is in government, and Spain and Portugal, not long ago regarded as exceptions in Europe’s populist radical right sweep, have seen a rapid mainstreaming and growth of these movements (Vox and Chega), now consolidated as the third-biggest parties in terms of parliamentary representation. By analyzing party manifestos of recent general elections (2022, 2023, and 2024), we shall posit that the populist radical right discourse in Southern Europe layers ideas of overlapping, protracted crises threatening the future of the nation and its people against the backdrop of a glorified past that unifies a ‘virtuous’ population. Nostalgia conveys distrust channeled towards specific actors, thus creating an intelligible discursive framework for grievances and their populist radical right rationale. Mobility takes a central place in the politics of nostalgia, as particular e−/im-migration narratives emerge vis-à-vis ethnonational concerns emphasizing a widening gap between a hopeful past and a woeful present.

Neoliberalism and right-wing populism go hand in hand. (Butterwege 2002: 918) All the great patriots and nationalists in Europe are merely Trojan horses of Big Business. (Thompson 2000: 98) Introduction The academic literature on the populist radical right puts strong emphasis on the alleged neoliberal economic program of the party family. According to numerous authors, neoliberal economics is an essential feature of the parties' ideology and success. At first sight, it is not surprising that the populist radical right is linked to neoliberal economics. After all, contemporary understanding of “the right” in (empirical) political science is first and foremost in economic terms, standing for a trust in the market over the state, i.e. neoliberal economics (see also 1.5). Few scholars have provided substantial empirical evidence for the alleged neoliberal content of the socioeconomic programs of the populist radical right. In fact, as is so often the case in the field, the claim is just assumed to be correct and broadly accepted. However, systematic analysis does not substantiate these claims; even in their early days most populist radical right parties at best expressed neoliberal rhetoric without fronting a consistent neoliberal program . Could it be that the populist radical right parties were just trying to fit the neoliberal Zeitgeist of the 1980s? Does the populist radical right actually share a coherent and collective (socio)economic program? And, if so, is this a core feature of their ideology?

In Western Europe, populist radical right parties are calling for a return to Christian or Judeo-Christian values and identity. The growing electoral success of many of these parties may suggest that, after decades of secularisation, Western Europeans are returning to religion. Yet these parties do not tell their supporters to go to church, believe in God, or practise traditional Christian values. Instead, they claim that their respective national identities and cultures are the product of a Christian or Judeo-Christian tradition which either encompasses—or has produced—secular modernity. This book poses the question: if Western European politics is secular, why has religious identity become a core element of populist radical right discourse? To answer this question, Morieson examines the discursive use of religion by two of the most powerful and influential populist radical right parties: The French National Front and the Dutch Party for Freedom. Based on this examination, he argues that the populist radical right has capitalised on a cultural shift engendered by the increasing visibility of Islam in Europe. Western Europeans’ encounter with Islam has revealed the non-universal nature of Western European secularism to Europeans, and demonstrated the secularisation of Christianity into Western European ‘culture.’ This, in turn, has allowed secular French and Dutch citizens to identify themselves—as well as their nation and, ultimately, Western civilisation—as Christian or Judeo-Christian. Seizing on this cultural shift, the author contends that the National Front and Party for Freedom have built successful and similar brands of reactionary politics based on the notion that contemporary secularism is a product of Europe’s Christian heritage and values, and that therefore Muslim immigration is an existential threat to the core values of European politics, including the differentiation of politics and religion, and of church and state. ‘Religion and the Populist Radical Right: Secular Christianism and Populism in Western Europe’ will be of interest to scholars and researchers working on the intersections of Political Science, Sociology, and Religion. It will also appeal to the general audience interested in the relationship between populism in Western Europe and religious identity as it is written in an accessible style.

This chapter reviews scholarly works on the determinants of populist radical right support and social identity, outlines our social identity approach to blue-collar worker support for the populist radical right, and provides preliminary tests of our theoretical claims. The first section of the chapter provides a broad overview of the literature on the determinants of populist radical right support with an emphasis on the importance of policymaking processes, policy outputs, and policy outcomes. The second section reviews the literature on social identity. The third section outlines the three-stage theory explaining blue-collar worker support for the populist radical right. The fourth section conducts preliminary tests of each stage in our theory: the effect of political and economic contexts on national identity; the effect of national identity on issue salience; and the effect of issue salience on populist radical right support.