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Political and ideological normalization: quality of government, mainstream-right ideological positions and extreme-right support

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2021

Christos Vrakopoulos Open the ORCID record for Christos Vrakopoulos [Opens in a new window]
Christos Vrakopoulos*
Affiliation:
Department of Politics, Languages and International Studies, University of Bath, Bath, UK
*
E-mail: c.vrakopoulos@leeds.ac.uk, chris.vrakopoulos@gmail.com
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Abstract

This article aims to explain the variation in the electoral support for extreme-right parties (ERPs) in Europe. The extant literature on the far-right party family does not answer this question specifically with regard to the extreme-right variants for two main reasons. Firstly, theories did not expect the electoral success of these parties in post-war Europe due to their anti-democratic profiles and association with fascism. Secondly, despite the fact that they acknowledge the differences between the parties under the far-right umbrella – namely, the extreme and the radical – they normally do not take these differences into account, and if so, they focus on the radical-right parties. This article shows that electoral support for ERPs is associated with low quality of government and highly conservative mainstream-right parties. The former creates political legitimization for anti-democratic parties and the latter ideological normalization of extreme right.

Keywords

extreme-rightquality of governmentparty competitionmainstream-right
Type
Research Article
Information
European Political Science Review , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , February 2022 , pp. 56 - 73
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of European Consortium for Political Research

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