Populist radical right parties and their leaders openly despise expertise: they often parade their ignorance and inexperience by developing, in electoral terms, propaganda depicting them shoulder-to-shoulder with ordinary citizens (“the People”) – as distant as possible from accultured, intellectual cosmopolitan elites. Mainstream political parties have, especially in recent years, often championed recourse to unelected experts… Continue reading “Expertise in politics: boon or bane?”
Unlike radical right-wing populism in Western Europe, Australia’s “Hansonism” is largely a one-woman show, almost completely dependent on Pauline Hanson’s personality and appeal. She has been called a “mischievous troublemaker, an “embarrassment” to the country, and just a plain racist. The referent of these diatribes is neither France’s Marine Le Pen nor Rocío Monasterio, the… Continue reading “Australia’s Own Brand of Radical Populism”
The 2019 European Parliament Elections provided an important case where the far-right Alternative for Germany Party (AfD) performed electorally well. However, we argue that there is a core tension within the AfD’s party strategy. This tension lies at the regional level, with a clear split ideologically within the party between Western and Eastern Germany. We… Continue reading “East v. West? The Internal Battle within the Far Right in Germany”
From the Inaugural CARR Conference For three days, the Richmond University in London was not only the site of insightful and thought-provoking presentations during the inaugural CARR conference, but also an opportunity to engage in some of the most relevant debates in the field. Its pervasiveness, reinforced in the recent European Parliament elections, allows the… Continue reading “Is the radical right really anti-climate? Some evidence from Hungary”
Consensus over the EU’s future will be more difficult with a more pluralistic EU. The European Parliament (EP) 2019 elections are incredibly important for the future of the EU, as they will form the next five years of the EU legislative agenda alongside electing the next EU Commission President. The European Parliament Elections take place… Continue reading “Your Guide To The 2019 European Parliament Elections”
Populist parties on both the radical right and left of the political spectrum in Europe have made considerable electoral gains over the last decade, but they have done so using notably different approaches. We draw on recent election data to show the extent to which the radical right has tended to outperform the radical left since the… Continue reading “Why has the populist radical right outperformed the populist radical left in Europe?”
It can be difficult to separate the alleged watchdogs of freedom from the bloodhounds of the populist radical-right discourse. On June 6, 2017, Sweden’s national holiday, charges were filed with the Swedish international prosecution office against “a number of individuals in key positions inside Sweden’s government administration, media and in the country’s political establishment” engaged… Continue reading “How the Swedish Radical Right Hijacked Human Rights”
Attacking the symptom (i.e., the populist radical right) is not going to do the trick – not in Spain, not in the rest of (western) Europe. Last week’s parliamentary election marked a turning point in post-Franco Spanish politics. For the first time since Spain’s transition to democracy in the late 1970s, a party clearly… Continue reading “Saviours of the nation? – on the breakthrough of the radical populist right in Spain”
The Austrian populist radical right party FPÖ is consistently deciding on policies that are disadvantageous for the working class – yet the party can count on workers’ votes in elections. The same is true across Europe, and has been for a while. How can we explain that workers seem to be inclined to vote… Continue reading “The Radical Right Chewbacca Defence: Why it does not matter if the radical right is lying to the working class that voted them into power”
Much has been written lately in regard to the electoral ‘rise’ of the populist radical right across European politics. Whilst it is true that the populist radical right has gained considerably in recent national parliamentary elections that span the refugee crisis (2015–2018) and outperformed centre left social democratic parties considerably. Much less attention has been… Continue reading “Beyond the Populist Radical Right: Centre Right Party Electoral Success on Immigration in the 21st Century”