Rydgren.Soc.RadRt

The Sociology of theRadical Right

Jens Rydgren

Department of Sociology, Stockholm University, S-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden;email: jens.rydgren@sociology.su.se Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2007.33:241–62First published online as a Review in Advance onFebruary 21, 2007 The

Annual Review of Sociology

is online athttp://soc.annualreviews.org This article’s doi:10.1146/annurev.soc.33.040406.131752Copyrightc

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2007 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved0360-0572/07/0811-0241$20.00

Key Words

ethnic relations, extreme right, nationalism, political sociology,populism

Abstract

During the past two decades, the radical right has reemerged asan electoral force in Western Europe, as well as in other stabledemocracies such as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Asidefrom discussing the ideology of this party family and how it re-lates to older forms of right-wing radicalism and extremism, such asfascism, this review deals with the question of how the emergenceof radical right-wing parties can be explained and why such par-ties have been considerably more successful among voters in somecountries than in others. Possible explanations are grouped into twoparts: The ﬁrst consists of so-called demand-centered explanations,that is, explanations that focus on changing preferences, beliefs, andattitudes among voters. The second consists of so-called supply-sideexplanations,thatis,explanationsthatfocusonpoliticalopportunity structures and party organizational factors.

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INTRODUCTION

During the past two decades, the radical righthasreemergedasanelectoralforceinWesternEurope, as well as in other stable democraciessuch as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.Since the early 1980s, parties such as theFrench Front National, the Belgian VlaamsBlok, the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), theItalian Lega Nord, and the Danish People’sParty, among several others, have establishedthemselves in their respective party systems,sometimes with voter shares exceeding 20%. Austria (2000) and Italy (1994 and 2001) haveformed governments involving the FreedomPartyandtheLegaNord,respectively.Hence,forthefirsttimesinceWorldWarII,theradi-calrightconstitutesasignificantforceinWestEuropean democracies (Betz 2001, p. 407). This development has revived the inter-ests of social scientists in the radical and/orextreme right. Much like the social scientistsin the 1950s and 1960s, who tried to under-stand the rise of interwar fascism in Europe(e.g., Arendt 1951, Lipset 1981) and early postwar right-wing radicalism in the UnitedStates (Bell 2002b, Shils 1956), contempo-rary social scientists have been intrigued by the question of why millions of voters livingin liberal democracies give support to radicalright-wing parties that promote xenophobia(and sometimes racism), ethno-nationalism,sociocultural authoritarianism, and antisys-tem populism. Moreover, the reemergence of a strong radical right has provoked sociolog-ically significant questions because it contra-dictsseveralofthecorehypothesesofpostwarpolitical sociology, such as Lipset & Rokkan’s(1967) freezing hypothesis (which failed topredict the emergence of new party families)and Inglehart’s (1977) postmaterialist theory (which predicted only new left-liberal partiesand movements) (cf. Veugelers 1999). This review consists of three parts. Thefirst part deals with how the party family of new radical right-wing parties can be de-fined. What are its characteristic ideologicaland programmatic features? How does it re-late to older forms of right-wing radicalismand extremism, such as fascism? The remain-ing two parts deal with how the emergenceof radical right-wing parties can be explainedand why such parties have been considerably more successful among the voters in somecountries than in others. The first of theseparts reviews so-called demand-centered ex-planations: explanations that focus on chang-ing preferences, beliefs, and attitudes amongthe voters. The last section discusses supply-side explanations: political opportunity struc-tures and party organizational factors.

WHAT IS RADICALRIGHT-WING POPULISM?

The literature on the new radical right lacksconsensus on core deﬁnitions and ideolog-ical characteristics of this new party family (cf.Fennema1997,Mudde1996a),despitethenear consensus on which parties should be in-cludedinthepartyfamily.Thisiscertainlynota satisfying situation; thus, I devote this sec-tion to the ideology of the new radical rightand to deﬁnitions of this party family. This isnotaquestionmerelyofsemantics;itisanim-portant step in understanding the parties andexplaining their emergence. The new radical right-wing parties sharean emphasis on ethno-nationalism rooted inmyths about the distant past. Their programis directed toward strengthening the nationby making it more ethnically homogeneousand by returning to traditional values. They generally view individual rights as secondary to the goals of the nation. They also tendto be populists in accusing elites of puttinginternationalism ahead of the nation and of putting their own narrow self-interests and various special interests ahead of the interestof the people. Hence, the new radical right- wing parties share a core of ethno-nationalist xenophobia and antiestablishment populism.In their political platforms this ideologicalcore is embedded in a general socioculturalauthoritarianism that stresses themes such as

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law and order and family values (Rydgren2005a; see also Minkenberg 2001). Below, Iaccountfortheseideologicalcorethemes,butﬁrst I discuss the two constituting conceptsof the deﬁnition—“radical” (or extreme) and“right-wing”—as well as how this new party family differs from other (and older) forms of right-wing extremism, such as fascism.

Radical

In what manner are the new radical rightparties radical, or even extremist (as many scholars would have it; see, e.g., Mudde 2000,Eatwell 1994)? According to Powell (1986,p. 359), an extremist party “represents a de-mand for major transformation of the society,eithertowardssomefuturevisionorbacktoanidealizedpast.Suchdemandsdivergefromthegeneral, current policy consensus.” Accord-ing to this definition, the new radical rightcan in most instances be considered exam-plesofextremistparties.However,itmayalsobe useful to consider Lipset & Raab’s (1970)morespecificdefinitionofpoliticalextremismasantipluralismormonism.The“operationalheartofextremism,”tofollowtheargumentof Lipset & Raab (1970, p. 6), “is the repressionof difference and dissent, the closing down of the market place of ideas. More precisely, theoperationalessenceofextremism,ormonism,is the tendency to treat cleavage and ambiva-lence as

illegitimate

.”Political monism of the extreme right isexpressed in two ways: as a rejection of thedemocratic political system and/or a rejectionof universalistic and egalitarian, sometimescalled democratic, values. We should heredistinguish between two different subtypesof right-wing extremism, namely the parlia-mentary and the nonparliamentary. Whereasthe latter is opposed to the constitution, theformer is only hostile toward the constitution(see Mudde 2000, p. 12). It is common toreserve the use of the term right-wing ex-tremism exclusively for the nonparliamentary type, which has chosen to take action outsidethe parliamentary arena, whereas the parlia-mentary type, which participates in publicelections and aspires to win representation within democratic political institutions, isreferred to as radical right (see, e.g., Eatwell2000, pp. 410–411; Zaslove 2004b, p. 66).Furthermore, the new radical right does notusually oppose democracy per se (as an idea),although they typically are hostile to rep-resentative democracy and the way existingdemocratic institutions actually work. In fact,these parties argue that they represent truedemocracy (in contrast to the sham democ-racy characterizing contemporary WesternEurope).Hence, although the radical right-wingparties reject cleavages and division lines within “the people”—they are typically an-tiparty parties (Ignazi 1996, Mudde 1996b)—they are extremists primarily because they re- jectpluralistvalues.Despitetheradicalright’sacceptance of procedural democracy, its idealsociety is ethnocracy, which in many waysrunscountertothepluralisticvaluesofliberaldemocracy (Betz 2005, Minkenberg 2000).

Right

One common way to distinguish between leftand right is to view the former as egalitarianandthelatterasnonegalitarian(Bobbio1996)ortheleftasuniversalisticandtherightaspar-ticularistic(see,e.g.,Eatwell2004).Twoprob-lems with this distinction, of course, are thatit is unclear on what policies parties should be judged and that parties can, for instance, benonegalitarian and universalistic at the sametime. More speciﬁcally, we may deﬁne a party as left or right according to its position on so-cioeconomic politics, which concerns the de-greeofstateinvolvementintheeconomy(i.e.,economic socialism versus economic liberal-ism), or on its positions on sociocultural poli-tics,whichrelatestovalue-ladenissuessuchasnational identity, law and order, immigrationpolicy, abortion, and so on (i.e., socioculturalliberalism versus authoritarianism). The newradical right is right-wing primarily in the so-ciocultural sense of the term.

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