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During recent decades, radical right parties have been surging
in popularity in many nations, gaining legislative seats,
enjoying the legitimacy endowed by ministerial office, and
entering the corridors of government power. The popularity of
leaders such as Le Pen, Haider, and Fortuyn has aroused
widespread popular concern and a burgeoning scholarly
literature. Despite the interest, little consensus has emerged
about the primary factors driving this phenomenon. The core
puzzle is to explain why radical right parties have advanced in
a diverse array of democracies – such as in Austria, Canada,
Norway, France, Italy, New Zealand, Switzerland, Israel,
Romania, Russia, and Chile - while failing to make comparable
gains in similar societies elsewhere, including in Sweden,
Britain, and the United States.
To understand this phenomenon, the book sees party competition
as a regulated electoral marketplace, where the rules shape both
electoral ‘demand’ and party ‘supply’. On the demand-side,
Radical Right suggests that the growth of political disaffection
and partisan dealignment in contemporary democracies make it
easier for supporters to defect, at least temporarily, from
mainstream parties. The rising salience of cultural
protectionism, in a backlash against globalization and
population migration, has altered public opinion, providing
sporadic openings for new parties. But these developments are
common across contemporary societies so they are insufficient by
themselves to account for the varying fortunes of the radical
right. We need to understand how ‘demand’ interacts with
‘supply’, namely how parties respond to the electorate when
crafting their values and building their campaign organizations,
within the constraints set by the broader institutional rules.
This book expands our understanding of support for radical right
parties through presenting an integrated new theory which is
then tested systematically using a wealth of cross-national
survey evidence covering almost forty countries, facilitating a
broader perspective than ever before.
Radical Right is designed for anyone interested in electoral
studies and voting behavior, comparative politics, political
behavior and institutions, political parties, public opinion,
political sociology, political psychology, sociology, and
European politics.
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