The Rise and the Fall of the Extreme Right in Europe: Towards an Explanation?

Extract

In the last two decades, the extreme right has experienced a dramatic rise in electoral support in many West European democracies, achieving more parliamentary and even governmental power. Despite extensive interest in this phenomenon and a myriad of academic publications about it, both in sociology and political science, little consensus has been reached about the reasons for the observed growth of right-wing extremism. Three books; The Extreme Right in Western Europe by Elisabeth Carter, Extreme Right Parties in Western Europe by Piero Ignazi and Radical Right by Pippa Norris, try to overcome this lack of consensus through up-to-date analyses of the current situation of extreme right-wing parties in Western Europe and (in Norris’ case) even beyond. All three authors try to go beyond the existing analyses which mainly concentrate on socio-demographic characteristics of extreme right voters. However, they focus on partly different research questions and, consequently, are based on slightly different research designs.