The Populist Radical Right in European Elections: 1979-2009

Description

The resurgence of populist radical right parties in European democracies has been one of the most scrutinized and thoroughly documented political phenomena in the past four decades. So far, the bulk of the existing comparative research on populist radical right parties has been mainly concerned with first-order elections in Western Europe, less so with European elections. European integration and Euroscepticism are crucial features of the populist radical right however. Most parties of the populist radical right take a negative stance towards the European Union, and the European Parliament is also an arena that allows if not encourages cross-national co-operation. This chapter examines populist radical parties in European elections across all Western and Eastern member states, factors of variation in their electoral support and how European elections are linked to the national election cycle. Based upon Mudde's (2007) definition of the populist radical right, this chapter suggests a brief account of the presence of this party family in European parliament since 1979, together with a political mapping of its location in the collaborative space within the European arena. The second section looks more specifically at the status and role of EP elections within the national election cycle, and addresses the issue of regularity and change in the existing inter-relations between European and national first-order elections across EU-member states.

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