Depleting democracies: Radical right impact on parties, policies, and polities in Eastern Europe

By Michael Minkenberg and Zsuzsanna Végh

Depleting democracies provides an analysis of the radical right’s interactions with mainstream parties and the effect they have on setting political agendas in sensitive areas such as minority policies and asylum regulations. It asks to what extent the radical right has changed the quality of democracy in Eastern Europe: does its electoral strength, its capacity for political blackmail and its coalition potential actually translate into impact?

The book compares three groups of countries that are distinct in terms of the relevance of radical right parties: Bulgaria and Slovakia; Hungary, Poland and Romania; and the Czech Republic and Estonia. It follows a mixed-methods approach, combining quantitative analysis of survey data with qualitative, comparative analysis of archival material and other texts to determine the causal role radical right parties play in influencing parties, policies and ultimately democratic quality in the seven countries.

Depleting democracies advances theory on radical right actors in the political process and contributes to empirical research across the region. Its results are particularly relevant to the debate on democratic transformation and the effects of radical right parties.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Release date: May 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9781526160171

Book preview

Depleting democracies

Global Studies of the Far Right

Series editors: Dr Eviane Leidig, Dr William Allchorn, Dr Ariel Alejandro Goldstein

We are living in an unprecedented moment of uncertainty and chaos. The edifice of the old liberal order is starting to crack and a new, illiberal order is appearing on the horizon. The complexity and seriousness of these changes is such that now more than ever scholars are needed to weigh in on – and make sense of – these ‘shifting sands’.

This series showcases innovative research from established and early career scholars working on the far right, providing fresh insights on emerging trends and themes within this field of study. It features high-quality single-authored books and edited volumes.

The series is multi-disciplinary, taking in the fields of political science, cultural studies, communication studies, sociology and international relations. More importantly, it aims to be broad in geographical scope, looking at both the Global North and the Global South, as we see new illiberal and authoritarian populist actors increasingly across the globe.

Editorial board: Gerardo Aboy Carlés, Lenka Buštíková

Lenka Buštíková, Manuela Caiani, Sarah De Lange, Bernhard Forchtner, Iselin Frydenlund, Sandra McGee Deutsch, Andreas Önnerfors, Lincoln Secco, David Stroup, Cathrine Thorleifsson, Fabian Virchow, Sahana Udupa

Forthcoming titles:

Bernhard Forchtner (ed.) Visualising far-right environments: Communication and the politics of nature

Irma Kinga Allen, Kristoffer Ekberg, Ståle Holgersen and Andreas Malm (eds) Political ecologies of the far right: Fanning the flames

Depleting democracies

Radical right impact on

parties, policies, and polities in

Eastern Europe

Michael Minkenberg and Zsuzsanna Végh

MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © Michael Minkenberg and Zsuzsanna Végh 2023

The right of Michael Minkenberg and Zsuzsanna Végh to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Published by Manchester University Press

Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL

www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

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ISBN 978 1 5261 6018 8 hardback

First published 2023

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Contents

List of figures

List of tables

Acknowledgments

List of abbreviations

Introduction

1Conceptualizing the radical right and its impact: from politics to policies to polity

2Cases and contexts: countries and parties, culture and politics

3Position shifts: radical right impact on mainstream parties

4Policy shifts: radical right impact on policies regarding minority and asylum issues

5Polity shifts: the radical right and democratic quality in the region

Conclusion

Appendix

References

Index

List of figures

  1.1Modeling the impact of radical right parties: overview

  1.2Modeling the impact of radical right parties: patterns and outcomes

  2.1Share of immigrants in Eastern Europe, 2005, 2010, and 2015

  2.2East European public opinion and immigration, 2005, 2010, and 2015

  2.3Xenophobia in Eastern Europe, 1999/2000 and 2008

  3.1Spatial shifts in the Slovak party system: GAL-TAN positions (2002–2016)

  3.2Spatial shifts in the Slovak party system: party positions on ethnic minorities (2006–2016)

  3.3Spatial shifts in the Bulgarian party system: GAL-TAN positions (2002–2016)

  3.4Spatial shifts in the Bulgarian party system: party positions on ethnic minorities (2006–2016)

  3.5Spatial shifts in the Hungarian party system: GAL-TAN positions (2002–2016)

  3.6Spatial shifts in the Hungarian party system: party positions on ethnic minorities (2006–2016)

  3.7Spatial shifts in the Polish party system: GAL-TAN positions (2002–2016)

  3.8Spatial shifts in the Polish party system: party positions on ethnic minorities (2006–2016)

  3.9Spatial shifts in the Romanian party system: GAL-TAN positions (2002–2016)

3.10Spatial shifts in the Romanian party system: party positions on ethnic minorities (2006–2016)

3.11Spatial shifts in the Czech party system: GAL-TAN positions (2002–2016)

3.12Spatial shifts in the Czech party system: party positions on ethnic minorities (2006–2016)

3.13Spatial shifts in the Estonian party system: GAL-TAN positions (2006–2016)

3.14Spatial shifts in the Estonian party system: party positions on ethnic minorities (2006–2016)

  5.1Process model: radical right parties’ impact on democratic quality

  5.2Liberal democracy scores in Eastern Europe (2000–2020)

  5.3Egalitarian democracy scores in Eastern Europe (2000–2020)

  5.4Exclusion of social groups in Eastern Europe (2000–2020)

  5.5Equality of social groups in respect of civil liberties in Eastern Europe (2000–2020)

List of tables

  1.1In-group/out-group criteria in right-wing radical discourse (following the concept of group-focused enmity)

  2.1Number of asylum applications in Eastern Europe (2000–2018)

  2.2Ethnic homogeneity in Eastern Europe, in percent

  2.3Ethnic pluralization and the radical right in Eastern Europe (1990–2015)

  2.4Major radical right parties in the seven countries

  2.5Electoral scores of East European radical right parties in national parliamentary elections (first round and lower chamber where applicable) and radical right government participation in selected countries, in percent (2000–2020)

  2.6Context factors, radical right strength, and party interaction in Eastern Europe (2000–2016)

  3.1Party positions on ethnic minorities in Slovakia (2006–2016)

  3.2Party positions and issue salience in the Slovak party system in 2016

  3.3Party positions on ethnic minorities in Bulgaria (2006–2016)

  3.4Party positions and issue salience in the Bulgarian party system in 2016

  3.5Party positions on ethnic minorities in Hungary (2006–2016)

  3.6Party positions and issue salience in the Hungarian party system in 2016

  3.7Party positions on ethnic minorities in Poland (2006–2016)

  3.8Party positions and issue salience in the Polish party system in 2016

  3.9Party positions on ethnic minorities in Romania (2006–2016)

3.10Party positions and issue salience in the Romanian party system in 2016

3.11Party positions on ethnic minorities in the Czech Republic (2006–2016)

3.12Party positions and issue salience in the Czech party system in 2016

3.13Party positions on ethnic minorities in Estonia (2006–2016)

3.14Party positions and issue salience in the Estonian party system in 2016

3.15Radical right impact on mainstream party positions

  4.1Radical right impact on minority- and asylum-related policies in Eastern Europe (2000–2016)

  5.1Development of democratic quality as measured by the liberal democracy index (LDI) in Europe, selected countries (1990–2020)

  5.2Development of democratic quality as measured by the egalitarian democracy index (EDI) in Europe, selected countries (1990–2020)

  5.3Democracy development in Eastern Europe and radical right relevance (2000–2020)

  5.4Cross-tabulation of the radical right’s government participation and democratic quality

  5.5Cross-tabulation of the radical right’s electoral strength and democratic quality

  5.6Position shifts, policy shifts, and democratic quality in seven East European countries

A4.1Most important initiatives and executive action influenced by the radical right in policy areas affecting minorities and asylum-seekers (2000–2016)

A5.1Development of democratic quality as measured by the LDI in Europe (1990–2020)

A5.2Development of democratic quality as measured by the EDI in Europe (1990–2020)

A5.3Radical right relevance, impact, and democratic quality in Eastern Europe (2000–2020)

Acknowledgments

This book results from an extensive research project on the role and impact of the radical right in post-communist Eastern Europe that started in 2016 and was funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation (Grant No. 10.16.2.003PO). The research was conducted at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder) with the core team including Michael Minkenberg as principal investigator, and Zsuzsanna Végh and Anca Florian as researchers. The project aimed to assess the extent to which the operation of the radical right across Eastern Europe can negatively impact on the quality of democracy in this region. More specifically, the research concentrated on institutional and party politics such as cordon sanitaire arrangements, the positions and policy-making of radical right and mainstream parties on issues of identity politics, and those pertaining to national and ethnic minorities, refugees, and asylum-seekers. The empirical focus covers three sets of countries (Bulgaria and Slovakia; Romania, Hungary, and Poland; and Czech Republic and Estonia) which are investigated with a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches (mixed methods) in the time span from the beginning of the new century and the final preparations of the countries’ EU accession until the so-called refugee crisis (2000–2016).

Some parts of the project have already seen the light of day; early versions of Chapter 3 were presented at the Friedrich Ebert Foundation’s and the Southern Poverty Law Center’s 15th International Workshop on Right-wing Extremism in New Orleans in 2018 and at the 2018 General Conference of the European Consortium of Political Research (ECPR) in Hamburg. The revision of the ECPR conference paper appeared in International Political Science Review 2021, vol. 42(5), pp. 649–71 (co-authored with Anca Florian and Malisa Zobel). Findings from Chapter 4 were presented at the 2022 ECPR General Conference in Innsbruck, and an early version of Chapter 5 was discussed in late 2019 at Columbia University’s Comparative Politics Seminar in New York. The initial conclusions fed into a conference concluding the research phase of the project, which took place in Cluj, Romania, in July 2019 in cooperation with the Babeş-Bolyai University and with the participation of leading experts from the field of radical right research in Eastern Europe.

Several of them accompanied the project from its inception to its conclusion and we owe them special thanks, in particular Cas Mudde, Andrea Pirro, Bartek Pytlas, and Radu Cinpoeş. We are also immensely grateful to numerous colleagues who lent us their support and helped us make sense of the intricacies of their countries, in particular Oľga Gyárfášova, Artur Kopka, Anna Krasteva, Miroslav Mareš, Grigorij Mesežnikov, Mila Moshelova, Rafał Pankowski, and Louis Wierenga. At the Viadrina, our thanks go to Oliver Kossack and Malisa Zobel for their substantive input in getting the project going and providing thoughtful feedback along the way, and to Anca Florian for her valuable work managing the project between 2017 and 2019, navigating the cases of Bulgaria, Poland, and Romania and contributing also to Chapter 3 in this book. We are also thankful to our dedicated research assistants who accompanied the project over the years: Friedrich Landenberger, Franziska Keß, Hannes Jakim Peter, Lukas Franz Lönnendonker, and Maike Dörnfeld. Our coordinators, Elke Teichelt and Camilla Klich, made sure we always had our books in order and our Dienstreise properly registered; they deserve our deepest gratitude.

We are also indebted to a great number of subcontractors who helped us with the collection of archival data by tirelessly digging through parliamentary minutes, bills, and legislation in the countries under study. Without their valuable contribution our work would not have been possible – though all remaining errors are our own.

We are particularly grateful to the Fritz Thyssen Foundation for their generous funding of the project and especially to Dr Thomas Suermann for the smooth sailing along the way.

We would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers of our book proposal and the first version of our manuscript for their constructive and valuable feedback on our work, as well as Robert Byron, Lucy Burns, and Alun Richards at Manchester University Press for their editorial assistance and invaluable help in steering us through the production process.

Frankfurt (Oder), December 2022

Michael Minkenberg and Zsuzsanna Végh

List of abbreviations

Countries

Parties and organizations (country in parentheses)

Other

Introduction

With the Eastern enlargement of the European Union (EU), political pundits and scholars alike concluded that the transformation process in Eastern Europe¹ had finally reached its climax, resulting in the creation of stable democracies, firmly rooted in the European community and sharing the same liberal and democratic values. However, the rush to democracy among the mainstream left and right following the regime change was from early on also accompanied by the radical right’s constant calls for strong and concomitantly illiberal nation-states (see e.g. Mudde 2007; Buštíková 2020). Such calls did not subside with democratic consolidation and the East European countries’ EU accession either. Rather, they traveled across the political board and it now seems that the agenda of the radical right has reached the mainstream (see Minkenberg 2015a, 2017; Pytlas 2016, 2019a).

Since the mid-2010s in particular, the quality of democracy has suffered a considerable backlash in some countries in the region (Ágh 2019; Zielonka and Rupnik 2020). At the same time, by early 2016, nationalist politics and the agenda of the radical right reached new levels of support throughout Europe – and even more so in the new democracies of the post-communist East. In Hungary, for example, liberal democratic standards have been eroded by the Fidesz – Hungarian Civic Alliance (Fidesz) government since it came into power in 2010, and the party’s positioning in relation to the radical right Jobbik – Movement for a Better Hungary (Jobbik) has gradually transformed Fidesz into a radical right actor itself. Likewise, in Poland the formerly national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS), in government since 2015 and the de facto inheritor of the ideology and electorate of the radical right League of Polish Families (LPR), is laying the base for further far-reaching reforms by restricting the independence of the judiciary and the public media. These two are pivotal cases of mainstream right parties turning into radical right ones while holding governmental power – an unprecedented development in Europe (Mudde 2019, 21). As our study will explore, the causes of this transformation can be found in the fluidity of boundaries between the mainstream and the radical right and certain region-specific patterns of party competition. That is, radical right actors’ interaction and even cooperation with mainstream parties are not limited to Poland and Hungary, and by no means are isolated incidents in the region. In other East European countries radical right actors have also been influential in shaping the transformation process and political development of these societies (see e.g. contributions in Minkenberg 2015a; see also Pirro 2015; Ágh 2019).

That the clocks tend to run at a different pace in large parts of Eastern Europe can also be seen by these states’ reaction to the increased refugee influx over the past years, in particular in the aftermath of what has been misleadingly labeled the refugee crisis of 2015 – it would be better labeled as a humanitarian crisis or displacement crisis because the large numbers of asylum-seekers and refugees did not result in a crisis in the recipient countries. Instead "mainstream media and politicians chose to frame the influx of asylums seekers as a ‘crisis’, thereby providing ammunition to the already mobilized far right" (Mudde 2019, 4, italics in the original; see also OECD 2015; Pytlas 2019a, 174). The quarrel over the appropriate handling of asylum-seekers and refugees and their distribution within the EU has mounted a serious challenge to the EU from 2015 on. This problem is highlighted by the complete refusal to accommodate asylum-seekers by several EU states, the majority of them from Eastern Europe.

To some authors, these developments related to the radical right appear as a sign of an all-European trend. A number of scholars have argued that what results from the growing consolidation of East European democracies and the European integration process is a convergence of party systems, including radical right and identity politics, which renders a region-specific focus and categories obsolete (see Mudde 2007; Umland 2015; von Beyme 2015; Wind 2020). While recent developments in East and West indeed testify to a radicalization of national politics in policy fields such as immigration, integration, and the handling of asylum and border issues, this certainly cannot be interpreted as closing the gap between the East and West (see Beichelt 2012). In this case, in fact, radicalization runs contrary to the assumed linear trend of further liberalization and democratization in the region that was seen to culminate in the countries’ EU accession. Additionally, radicalization in the East encompasses large parts of the political spectrum, rather than merely its remote corners.

Against the argument of party systems convergence, this book rests on the premise that there are distinct differences between East and West when it comes to the politics of the radical right (see Minkenberg 2017; Ágh 2019) and that the roots of recent developments in the East – i.e. the adverse impact on democratic quality or the increasing calls against so-called out-groups, like immigrants and refugees – precede the various all-European crises, such as the humanitarian crisis of 2015. In this region, liberalization and democratization have in fact always been challenged by radical right (and other) actors, which questioned the new political order and, following from their ultranationalist agenda, fundamentally challenged the rights and status of ethnic and national minorities.

The rising influence of the radical right and the radicalization of the politics in Eastern Europe pose a major challenge to the political order in Europe and the continuation of the European integration process. Once radical right and radicalized parties stabilize their position and gain even more traction in the region, they will pose significant challenges to the EU and its institutions, and the democratic order those promote. It is therefore crucial to build a more refined understanding of the role of the radical right in Eastern Europe, and of the particular set of factors that might aid its influence, as well as of the impact of these actors on the political system and democratic quality more generally.

In this setting, the concept of democratic quality as key dependent variable can be understood in many ways; most experts agree however on a few fundamental dimensions, such as free elections, access to information, civil rights and liberties, the legal state, and checks and balances (see Dahl 1989; Bühlmann et al. 2012). In this book’s understanding, a central aspect of democracy is also that of inclusiveness, as emphasized in Robert Dahl’s widely accepted polyarchy concept (1971; 1989), which stresses the need to include as many as possible in the demos. More recently, this idea has been advanced to address also minorities and disadvantaged groups (Kymlicka 1995); nonetheless, as Ian Shapiro notes, "the failure to come up with an adequate theory of membership [in the demos] is an enduring embarrassment of democratic theory" (2003, 219). Furthermore, a polity’s democratic quality can be measured by key political actors’ as well as states’ respect toward the humanitarian principle which stresses their responsibilities for vulnerable outsiders lacking the protection of a political community (Gibney 1999, 177–80). This understanding of inclusiveness is what the radical right fundamentally contests, and this is what also constitutes the focus of the book, thus binding radical right activities and their impact to the level of democratic quality in Eastern Europe and, by doing so, addressing the often overlooked question of membership.

The East European trends do bear some similarities to the European and international developments built around calls for a return to the nation, such as the Brexit vote in the UK in 2016, the election of Donald Trump as US president in the same year, the solid electoral strength of the far right National Front (FN) (now National Rally, RN) in France, and Germany’s catching up with the rest of the democratic world in experiencing the meteoric rise of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) since 2013 (see e.g. Herman and Muldoon 2019). It seems, however, that in this setting the core issue is no longer just immigration (in the West), minority politics (in the East), or the EU (in both) – but something bigger. A quick glance at the recent wave of publications on the state of democracy and liberalism suggests that the liberal democratic order itself is under attack (see the mushrooming body of literature, e.g. Luce 2017; Eatwell and Goodwin 2018; Ginsburg and Huq 2018; Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018; Mounk 2018; Cianetti, Dawson, and Hanley 2020; Wind 2020). The attackers or challengers are immediately identified as populists, often specified as right-wing populists, extremists, or both, and comprise a large and heterogeneous number of parties, movements, and individuals (see e.g. Betz 1994, 2004; Reynié 2013; Müller 2016; Mudde 2019).

While these forces’ impact on public discourse, mainstream parties’ agendas, and public policies have drawn significant interest and are well studied, very little research exists on their overall system-level impact. In fact, some of the literature on populism goes so far as to hypothesize that populism can harm democracy but, under certain circumstances, it also benefits it (see Rovira Kaltwasser 2012; Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2017). With very few exceptions (see Huber and Schimpf 2016), these propositions are hardly discussed systematically, comparatively, and empirically; instead, they tend to appear as case studies or part of a normative or theoretical debate (see Rovira Kaltwasser et al. 2017; Herman and Muldoon 2019).

Against this backdrop, this book tries to shed light on the nature and extent of this antidemocratic attack in Eastern Europe and ultimately poses the question: How and to what degree did the radical right in East European countries in its interaction with other parties affect their respective political system and its democratic quality? In addressing the issue, the book adopts a complex approach of exploring the impact of the radical right on three distinct but complementary levels, which progressively build on one another. First, it explores the radical right’s impact on other, primarily mainstream, parties as it is reflected through party positions. Second, it investigates their impact on policy areas of core importance for the radical right: the issue of ethnic and national minorities – a long-lasting target of ultranationalist hostilities in Eastern Europe – as well as refugees and asylum-seekers to assess how a more recently politicized issue has been evolving. Addressing these levels requires a close look at the specific contextual elements setting the stage for interactions between the radical right, most importantly – but not exclusively – in this book in its manifestation as political parties, and other, primarily mainstream, actors.

When exploring the interactions and their consequences on the party and policy levels, that is, the potential impact of the radical right, the research poses the question of how defining elements of the radical right, e.g. its electoral strength and blackmail potential (Sartori 1976), can explain its influence and what role other parties’ strategies, such as collaboration, co-optation or maintaining a cordon sanitaire, play in furthering or mitigating radical right impact on the political scene. The study hypothesizes that the impact of the radical right would present itself as rightward shifts in other parties toward more restrictive positions regarding national and ethnic minorities as well as refugees and asylum-seekers, policy areas singled out for the core analyses in this book. It argues that these shifts are more likely to occur if mainstream parties pursue a strategy of positive engagement (e.g. do not uphold a cordon sanitaire), and that once a rightward shift occurs, the disappearance of the radical right from parliament or the electoral arena does not automatically lead to a return to the center; the transformation of mainstream parties and/or policies remains.

Finally, beyond party positions and policies, the book seeks to explore the radical right’s impact on the systemic level of the polity, that is, on the overall quality of democracy in the given countries. It does so by connecting the findings regarding these first two levels with the concept of inclusiveness as a central element of democratic quality on the one hand, and with periods of decline in democratic quality as they appear in democracy indices on the other. A key argument of the book is that system-level effects of radical right parties are observable in Eastern Europe. Moreover, the research reveals that what is being questioned in the region is both the concept of the people, as well as increasingly that of the ‘government of the people’ (Minkenberg 2001, 19; see also Mudde 2013, 11–13).

To explore the impact of the radical right while accounting for a variety of constellations of context factors and characteristics, the book concentrates on a comparison of three groups of countries in Eastern Europe, i.e. (1) Bulgaria and Slovakia; (2) Hungary, Poland, and Romania; and (3) the Czech Republic and Estonia, which are distinct in terms of the strength and relevance of radical right parties as well as the typical strategic reactions of mainstream parties. By focused comparison of these three country groups and the analytical tracing of the political processes of interaction between mainstream and radical right parties, the book therefore sheds light on how and under what circumstances radical right mobilization becomes problematic for party positions, policies, and ultimately, the democratic quality. The study focuses on the period from 2000 to 2016, or more specifically between the end phase of the adoption of the EU’s acquis communautaire in most countries in this study, and an ensuing reconfiguration in their radical right party sector, on the one hand and the aftermath of the humanitarian crisis in Europe on the other, which introduced a new contentious issue for the radical right and triggered new competition dynamics for parties in the region.

To empirically investigate these issues, the book adopts a mixed methods approach (Brady and Collier 2004; Plano Clark and Ivankova 2016), and builds on a large volume of quantitative and qualitative data collected regarding the countries covered. By employing different methods, we can explore both different levels and complementary facets of the phenomenon we study, which is essential to gain an in-depth understanding of the complexities of the research problem that spans across three levels (parties, policy, and polity; see more in Chapter 1). Applying them in an integrative way allows us to produce an analysis, the components of which build toward a more refined conclusion that would not have been attainable otherwise. The quantitative data includes a blend of established comparative survey evidence, as well as original data produced through a dedicated expert survey of sixty-five distinct parties in the seven countries targeted. The novel survey takes inspiration from but also adapts the international Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES) to reflect specific issues pertaining to the East European party and policy environments, by surveying, for instance, party positions regarding the status of the Roma, a key minority targeted by the radical right in the region, an issue which is absent from the international survey. The comparative nature of the data creates added value by allowing the tracing of trends and developments over time and across countries, and serves as the basis of our analysis on the party level in Chapter 3. We also use quantitative data to assess the development of democratic quality in Europe and in the region of Eastern Europe more closely. Here, we rely on the datasets of the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project, which provides full comparative coverage of our cases in the period we focus on. In this vein, we also embed our analysis on the polity level in Chapter 5 in quantitative data. The qualitative dimension of the study is based on country-level archival research and analysis of legislative and media sources, reflecting party dynamics and potential radical right effects on policy-making regarding ethnic and national minorities as well as asylum-seekers and refugees. Data have been systematically gathered to allow for an in-depth comparative analysis of the key factors and processes enhancing or hindering the impact of the radical right in different contexts. This serves as the foundation of our analysis on the policy level in Chapter 4. Ultimately, the findings of our quantitative analysis on the party and polity levels in Chapters 3 and 5 and of our qualitative investigations on the policy level in Chapter 4 feed into the final discussion in Chapter 5, which synthesizes our findings across the three levels of inquiry.

The book aims to show the effects of the radical right by diverging from existing scholarship in several ways. Importantly, it does not only look at the radical right’s direct effects when in governmental power but