The West European Radical Right as a Collective Actor: Modeling the Impact of Cultural and Structural Variables on Party Formation and Movement Mobilization

Abstract

Conceptual and comparative empirical approaches in the analysis of contemporary Western European right-wing radicalism tend to focus on ideological criteria alone or concentrate exclusively on right-wing radical parties, thereby omitting manifestations of right-wing radicalism beyond the realm of party politics. This paper attempts to broaden the conceptual debate by combining a discussion on ideological criteria for an analytical concept of right-wing radicalism with the question of its organizational structures. The main point is that a country's opportunity structures, including institutional and cultural variables as well as the structure of party competition, largely determine the organizational manifestations. However, within each country, various organizational and ideological variants exist. Therefore, a major hypothesis to be presented is that in established democracies, movement type activities and related high levels of militancy and even right-wing violence (ideological extremism) tend to decline in the face of stable and well-organized right-wing radical parties and their entrenchment in the electorate.