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This contribution makes the case for a shift in boundaries between the (populist) radical right and the extreme right, arguing for the systematic use of the term ‘far right’. The significance of a deliberately generic but fundamentally meaningful concept such as ‘far right’ is motivated by the growing links between illiberal-democratic (‘radical right’) and anti-democratic (‘extreme right’) collective actors. This begs considering the conceptual grounds for differentiation among far-right collective actors, their underlying dynamics, and why it is important to look at what they do to tackle this phenomenon in practice—that is, to extrapolate their ideological essence and their varying allegiances to democracy. The complexity of far-right politics questions the long-standing conceptual distinctions internally defining it. The use of an umbrella concept may thus enhance precision in the discussion of this phenomenon, at the same time highlighting the unfolding of a new phase in nativist politics.

The populist use of tropes such as conspiracy theories plays an increasingly important role in their politics. Populism and conspiracy theories present a number of common traits – Manichaeanism, a sense of victimhood, and an ambivalence towards representative politics – and populists’ use of conspiracy theories is politically purposeful. Targeting a conspiring elite serves to vilify real or fictional opponents and/or shield populists from hostile attacks. Looking at three cases of populists in government – Orbán in Hungary, Trump in the United States, and Chávez in Venezuela – we examine the definition of conspiring elites (who), the circumstances under which conspiracy theories are propagated (when), and the ultimate purpose of conspiratorial framing (why). We demonstrate how populists in power use conspiracy theories to demonise and delegitimise their opponents, to promote or prolong a sense of crisis, and to rally support while distracting from possible failure. The populist use of tropes such as conspiracy theories plays an increasingly important role in their politics. Populism and conspiracy theories present a number of common traits – Manichaeanism, a sense of victimhood, and an ambivalence towards representative politics – and populists’ use of conspiracy theories is politically purposeful. Targeting a conspiring elite serves to vilify real or fictional opponents and/or shield populists from hostile attacks. Looking at three cases of populists in government – Orbán in Hungary, Trump in the United States, and Chávez in Venezuela – we examine the definition of conspiring elites (who), the circumstances under which conspiracy theories are propagated (when), and the ultimate purpose of conspiratorial framing (why). We demonstrate how populists in power use conspiracy theories to demonise and delegitimise their opponents, to promote or prolong a sense of crisis, and to rally support while distracting from possible failure.

The first year of COVID-19 confirmed the standing of the populist radical right in Italy. While sitting in opposition at the national level, Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy and Matteo Salvini's League shared common criticism of the Conte II government but experienced diverging trajectories in terms of popularity. The first had enjoyed growing support since the 2018 general election, whereas the second lost out after leaving the government coalition in 2019. These changes can be partly attributed to the different agency of their leaderships. Looking at the League's performance at the helm of key regions affected by the pandemic, moreover, its governors elaborated different responses to the crisis, which ostensibly reflect the varying allegiances and visions animating the internal life of the party. Overall and collectively considered, the Italian populist radical right broke even during the first year of COVID-19, but the crisis exposed the first cracks in Salvini's leadership.

In recent years, Central and Eastern Europe have furnished several examples of illiberalism in power. The most prominent and consequential cases are Fidesz, which has ruled in Hungary since 2010, and Law and Justice (PiS), which has ruled in Poland since 2015. In both cases, illiberal governments have embarked upon an extensive project of political reform aimed at dismantling the liberal-democratic order. We examine the nature, scope, and consequences of these processes of autocratisation. We first argue that illiberal changes are ideologically founded and identify how both populism and nativism figure in the policymaking of illiberals in power. We then show how these practices emerge from a common “illiberal playbook”—a paradigm of policy change comprising forms of forging, bending, and breaking—and elaborate on the notion that illiberal governments are using legalism to kill liberalism. The fine-grained approach that we employ allows us to distinguish between different rationales and gradations of illiberal policymaking, and assess their implications for the rule of law, executive power, and civil rights and freedoms. In recent years, Central and Eastern Europe have furnished several examples of illiberalism in power. The most prominent and consequential cases are Fidesz, which has ruled in Hungary since 2010, and Law and Justice (PiS), which has ruled in Poland since 2015. In both cases, illiberal governments have embarked upon an extensive project of political reform aimed at dismantling the liberal-democratic order. We examine the nature, scope, and consequences of these processes of autocratisation. We first argue that illiberal changes are ideologically founded and identify how both populism and nativism figure in the policymaking of illiberals in power. We then show how these practices emerge from a common illiberal playbook - a paradigm of policy change comprising forms of forging, bending, and breaking - and elaborate on the notion that illiberal governments are using legalism to kill liberalism. The fine-grained approach that we employ allows us to distinguish between different rationales and gradations of illiberal policymaking, and assess their implications for the rule of law, executive power, and civil rights and freedoms.

What explains far-right mobilisation in the protest arena? After decades of growing electoral support and policy influence, the far right is experiencing an increase in grassroots mobilisation. Scholars of social movements and political parties have devoted little attention to the determinants of far-right protest mobilisation in Europe. In this article, we bridge previous research on the far right and social movements to advance hypotheses on the drivers of far-right protest mobilisation based on grievances, opportunities and resource mobilisation models. We use an original dataset combining novel data on 4,845 far-right protest events in 11 East and West European countries (2008–2018), with existing measures accounting for the (political, economic and cultural) context of mobilisation. We find that classical approaches to collective action can be fruitfully applied to the study of the far right. Cultural grievances, notably concerns about immigration, as well as the availability of institutional access points in contexts characterised by divided government increase far-right protest mobilisation. But far-right protest mobilisation also rests on the organisational resources available to nativist collective actors, that is, the network in which they are embedded, their visibility in the media and elected officials. These findings have important implications to understand far-right success in advanced democracies. They show that far-right mobilisation in the protest arena not only rests on favourable circumstances, but also on whether far-right actors can profit from them. More broadly, the study links party politics and social movement research to grasp the far right's modes of political contestation, locating research on this phenomenon at the intersection of political sociology and comparative politics. What explains far-right mobilisation in the protest arena? After decades of growing electoral support and policy influence, the far right is experiencing an increase in grassroots mobilisation. Scholars of social movements and political parties have devoted little attention to the determinants of far-right protest mobilisation in Europe. In this article, we bridge previous research on the far right and social movements to advance hypotheses on the drivers of far-right protest mobilisation based on grievances, opportunities and resource mobilisation models. We use an original dataset combining novel data on 4,845 far-right protest events in 11 East and West European countries (2008–2018), with existing measures accounting for the (political, economic and cultural) context of mobilisation. We find that classical approaches to collective action can be fruitfully applied to the study of the far right. Cultural grievances, notably concerns about immigration, as well as the availability of institutional access points in contexts characterised by divided government increase far-right protest mobilisation. But far-right protest mobilisation also rests on the organisational resources available to nativist collective actors, that is, the network in which they are embedded, their visibility in the media and elected officials. These findings have important implications to understand far-right success in advanced democracies. They show that far-right mobilisation in the protest arena not only rests on favourable circumstances, but also on whether far-right actors can profit from them. More broadly, the study links party politics and social movement research to grasp the far right's modes of political contestation, locating research on this phenomenon at the intersection of political sociology and comparative politics.

First published online: 19 July 2020 The article focuses on the transformation of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) after the 2016 Brexit referendum. It describes how, after securing its chief political demand, UKIP opened up to grassroots far-right politics and assesses whether this strategy involved a concomitant shift towards a more radical discourse. Against a backdrop of organisational change, the findings refine the notion that a far-right turn within its ranks led to a significant shift in the (online) communication of the party towards issues like immigration, Islam, and gender. Indeed, these issues were mostly ‘outsourced’ to the cultural wing of the party, War Plan Purple. The article therefore critically links changes in UKIP’s organisation with shifts in online communication, adding new insights into the unorthodox politics and forms of mobilisation of the far right.

This contribution is conceived as a resource on the state of European populist parties before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. It reports on cross-national comparative findings generated by data collected from 30 European countries as to the state of populist parties in one calendar year (2019) and provides an extensive qualitative overview of the national cases. The article shows that while populist parties are preponderantly on the right, there is a significant degree of ideological variation among European populism. The data show significant diversity in their electoral performance but also that populist party participation in government is no longer a marginal phenomenon. The article ultimately elaborates on the various types of positions on European integration – from soft/hard Euroscepticism to lack thereof – and discusses the implications of their affiliation in the European Parliament.

The article focuses on a neglected aspect of populist mobilisation, i.e. non-electoral participation (NEP), and elaborates on the extent to which populist party voters engage politically outside the polling station. The study addresses the question that populist parties and movements of the left and right originate from distinctive political experiences, and drive different forms of engagement with politics. The hypotheses are tested on NEP, based on populist party vote, social values and issue preferences relying on a unique cross-national survey. The findings significantly broaden our understanding of populist mobilisation and refine a number of notions related to the different logics of participation of the left and right. While challenging common understandings of populism as inherently distrustful and apathetic, and protest as an exclusive practice of the left, the study critically places NEP at the heart of populism in general, and populist right politics in particular.

Widely recognised as a populist party within a context of mutating populism, ideational approaches have taken only a marginal role in the analysis of the issues of the Movimento 5 Stelle (5 Star Movement, M5S). The article elaborates on the supply side of the M5S and shows how its populist frame has been able to incorporate ideological features attributed to the ‘new politics’ of the libertarian left as much as the ‘new populism’ of the radical right. Such a peculiarity is conceptualised in terms of polyvalent populism – a variant of populism that rests on concomitant ideological discordance, newness, and radicalness. The theoretical argument is complemented by the analysis of Beppe Grillo’s political supply over the span of his ‘long decade’ between political activism and the electoral breakthrough of the movement party. The analysis also demonstrates that those contentious issues that have often caused public clamour and offered room for convergence between the M5S and the Lega on a shared governmental platform (2018) were already part of Grillo’s discourse – though often unspoken in official programmatic documents.

The scholarship on the far right has often interpreted nativist organizations as straddling the conceptual space between party and movement. These groups contest elections in order to gain representation in office, yet they also seek to mobilize public support to engage contentious issues like social movements. Despite theoretical commonalities, very little empirical research has focused on far-right “movement parties” as collective actors operating both in the protest and the electoral arenas. The article redresses this inconsistency by exploring the organizational and strategic configuration of two far-right collective actors—the Hungarian Jobbik and the Italian CasaPound. Deploying original interviews with high-ranking officials, the analysis enhances our understanding of the internal “supply side” of the far right as well as empirical knowledge on hybrid organizations that emerge from grassroots activism and successively organize to pursue the electoral option.

The literature on the far right is trying to connect with social movement studies. Scholars from different social scientific backgrounds are increasingly acknowledging that extra-parliamentary grassroots activism is part of the alliance and conflict structure of nativist collective actors. The recent rise in far-right street politics – or, precisely, its re-emergence with seemingly different clothes – should encourage the study of the inter-relations between party and non-party collective actors. As a case in point, the far right not only includes political parties geared towards elections and public office but also social movements or ‘networks of networks’ that aim to mobilise public support, and a conglomeration of subcultural groups and groupuscules. By putting forward a three-part metric to analyse mobilisation factors at the macro, meso, and micro levels, this piece and the Special Issue it introduces bring the (inter-)relations between far-right parties, movements, and subcultures frontstage, and elaborate on nativist collective action across different arenas of contention.

The Movement for a Better Hungary (Jobbik) qualifies as one of the most successful far-right organisations in contemporary Europe. Through its swift rise in popularity and entry to parliament, the 'movement party' has been able to alter the Hungarian public discourse, existing patterns of party competition, additionally exerting effects on the government's policy agenda. At least part of these effects should be attributed to Jobbik's popularity among the youth; its overrepresentation among those aged below 30 is, by now, an established fact within national politics. The article argues for a broader understanding of youth participation in far-right politics and sets two principal research goals. First, to reconstruct the breeding ground of far-right youth activism at the grassroots level, by unveiling potential links between the subcultural, social movement, and party arenas. The study will chart far-right milieus in Hungary and their overlap with Jobbik: thus, it will introduce supply-side factors that contributed to its popularity among the youth. Second, we seek to investigate Jobbik's appeal through the role of different elements used to justify joining a particular movement. The article uses primary data drawn from interviews and focus groups with students, and in-depth interviews with leaders of Jobbik.

The European Union has been recently exposed to the multiple shocks of the Great Recession, the migrant crisis, and Brexit. Populist parties have been, either directly or indirectly, considered the principal beneficiaries of these crises in light of their Eurosceptic profiles. In this introductory article, we lay out the conceptual and analytical tools necessary to identify populist Eurosceptic actors, and systematically tackle the under-explored link between populist Eurosceptic framing and the unfolding of the different European crises. While we provide a framework to assess (alleged) changes in the framing of these parties, we also contend that these parties may have released effects in the political process by conditioning shifts in the positions on Europe of their mainstream competitors. In doing so, we define a set of possible interactive scenarios.

Multiple crises shook the European Union (EU) during the past decade. First, the economic and financial crises that unfolded since 2008 shook the foundations of the European project and its monetary union. Then, the inflow of migrants and asylum seekers into Europe in 2015 questioned the EU’s ability to jointly respond to common political issues. More recently, Brexit came across as the corollary of a prolonged legitimacy crisis. These crises have not only affected the course of European integration but also provided novel issues for political competition within the EU member states. At the party-political level, populist anti-establishment parties have traditionally listed among the principal interpreters and drivers of criticism towards ‘Europe’. In this article, we empirically address the changing Eurosceptic frames adopted by populist parties during these crises and speculate on the reverberation of these frames in respective party systems. For this purpose, we focus on two cases: Italy and the Netherlands. Both countries present instances of populist parties of different ideological persuasions within traditionally Europhile contexts. At the same time, both countries have been affected to very different extents by the recent crises, allowing us to examine how populist parties have responded to different political opportunities.

Populist radical right (PRR) parties are typically critical of European integration. They deem the EU an elitist project and consider European integration a threat to national sovereignty. In practice, however, PRR parties’ positions on the EU have varied across countries and periods. Our article assesses whether, and how, PRR parties have changed their ‘EU-pessimist’ discourse following the outbreak of the Global Financial Crisis. The crisis has ostensibly provided scope for PRR parties across Europe to bolster their EU-pessimism and place more emphasis on socioeconomic frames. We analyse the evolution of the PRR’s discourse in five countries. The article shows that, although PRR parties have generally brought the crisis into their discourses, they have responded to it in different ways, displaying varying degrees of EU-pessimism. These responses were partly informed by the opportunities provided by their contexts, but ostensibly more so by the strategic considerations of PRR party leaderships.

The chapter analyses the fortunes of the Movement for a Better Hungary (Jobbik) through social movement theory. While displaying elements of both continuity and discontinuity with pre-existing Hungarian far-right milieus, Jobbik epitomises the rise of a self-standing and ‘long overdue’ phenomenon. The political process approach taken in this chapter particularly emphasises elements pertaining to the agency of the far right, reinstating the relevance of collective actors in mobilising resources and elaborating on a new master frame amid specific circumstances. In the specific case at hand, however, the defining role attributed to political opportunities is partly questioned.

Far-right organisations offer an ideal common ground to bridge the scholarships on social movements and party politics. Indeed, they can be often interpreted as ‘movement parties’, i.e. hybrid collective actors spurring from the protest arena and translating social movement practices in the arena of party competition. This contribution enhances our understanding of the contemporary far right by focusing on the neglected links between movements and elections within the broader context of contention. The article assesses and refines propositions about such interactions through the adoption of a specific framework, ultimately showing that the Hungarian Jobbik consistently subscribed to the linkage mechanisms discussed.

At the height of the humanitarian crisis of 2015, the countries along the so-called Western Balkan route presented diverging opportunities for mobilisations in support of migrants. We interpret these opportunities as sequential and, thus, interwoven at the cross-national level. The adverse context presented by the Hungarian case essentially offered a favourable opportunity for mobilisations in neighbouring countries like Serbia. The turning point was intelligibly offered by the erection of fences first along the Hungarian-Serbian and then along the Croatian-Hungarian border—ultimate displays of a long-term war against multiculturalism waged by the Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán. Therefore, while prospects for solidarity movements have been de facto exhausted in Hungary, mobilisations went on for longer in neighbouring countries. Despite the different opportunities provided by their contexts, solidarity movements along the Western Balkan route articulated similar collective action frames; their assessment of the problem, proposed solutions, and motivations delivered comparable themes throughout migratory flows into their countries. We reconstruct the sequentiality of these mobilisations and their similar frames by means of original interviews with collective solidarity actors.

This article offers comparative findings of the nature of populist Euroscepticism in political parties in contemporary Europe in the face of the Great Recession, migrant crisis, and Brexit. Drawing on case studies included in the Special Issue on France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom, the article presents summary cross-national data on the positions of parties, the relative importance of the crisis, the framing of Euroscepticism, and the impact of Euroscepticism in different country cases. We use this data to conclude that there are important differences between left- and right-wing variants of populist Euroscepticism, and that although there is diversity across the cases, there is an overall picture of resilience against populist Euroscepticism.

The recent electoral performances of the Bulgarian Ataka, Hungarian Jobbik, and the Slovak National Party seem to confirm the pervasive appeal of the populist radical right in Central and Eastern Europe. Unlike their Western counterparts, these parties do not stem from a ‘silent counter-revolution’. Populist radical right parties in the region retain featuressui generis, partly in relation to their historical legacies and the idiosyncrasies of the post-communist context. After distinguishing between pre-communist, communist and post-communist issues, this article discerns commonalities and differences in the ideology of the three parties by a content analysis of the party literatures. The analysis shows that populist radical right parties in Central and Eastern Europe are fairly ‘like minded’, yet they do not constitute an entirely homogeneous group. While a minimum combination of ideological features reveals that only clericalism and opposition to ethnic minorities are shared by all three parties, a maximum combination would extend this to irredentism, anti-corruption and Euroscepticism.

In May 2014, EU citizens will vote in the most important European Parliament elections to date. With the new powers allocated to it by the Lisbon Treaty, the new European Parliament will shape EU policies in many important areas and will elect the President of the Commission. However, public confi dence in the EU has fallen to historically low levels - to a great extent due to the fi nancial crisis and its aftermath - and the participation rate in European Parliament elections has dropped steadily since the fi rst call for a direct vote in 1979. This raises fundamental questions about its political and democratic legitimacy. This Forum examines the economic agendas of the main political parties vying for power and the potential outcome of the May elections, including the role that radical and anti-euro parties are likely to play in the campaign and in the next Parliament. © 2014 ZBW and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.