Three decades of populist radical right parties in Western Europe: So what?

Abstract

[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