Across Europe, radical right-wing parties are winning increasing electoral support. The Dark Side of European Integration argues that this rising nationalism and the mobilization of the radical right are the consequences of European economic integration. The European economic project has produced a cultural backlash in the form of nationalist radical right ideologies. This assessment relies on a detailed analysis of the electoral rise of radical right parties in Western and Eastern Europe. Contrary to popular belief, economic performance and immigration rates are not the only factors that determine the far right's success. There are other political and social factors that explain why in post-socialist Eastern European countries such parties had historically been weaker than their potential, which they have now started to fulfill increasingly. Using in-depth interviews with radical right activists in Ukraine, Alina Polyakova also explores how radical right mobilization works on the ground through social networks, allowing new insights into how social movements and political parties interact.
After Britain voted to leave the EU, the European dream of a united continent is at risk but not dead. The Atlantic Council's Alina Polyakova argues that EU leaders must create opportunities for young people to reap the benefits of the economic bloc's accomplishments. Unless a new generation is made a political priority, it could be on the verge of being lost to the far-right populist parties sweeping across Europe.
This article traces the on-the-ground mobilization and recruitment strategies of Ukraine's radical right party, Svoboda (Freedom) in the years prior to its 2012 electoral breakthrough. Ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews with Svoboda party leaders and activists in Galicia show how party leaders strategically created an organizational structure aimed at recruiting young people, making linkages with pre-existing nationalist groups, and shifting the ideological focus away from cultural and toward economic issues. Interviews with party activists reveal how personal networks were key in the recruitment and radicalization process, showing that radical right activists were radicalized, or "made," through political participation. Consequently, Svoboda's organizational capacity allowed the party to take advantage of a political opportunity — Yanukovych's unpopularity and weakened national democratic parties — in the 2012 parliamentary elections.
Social integration--a goal integral to the European project--has not followed economic integration. The main argument I set forth here is that European economic integration is producing the very opposite of its intended goals, namely, it is leading to cultural disintegration in the form of rising nationalism and radical right mobilization. Using cross-national statistical survey data, an original longitudinal dataset, in-depth interviews, and first hand observations, I examine various aspects of how nationalism manifests in contemporary Europe: as national identity, as support for radical right political parties, and as a process of political mobilization. I focus specifically on the cultural and political consequences of the EU integration process on the post-socialist countries of Eastern Europe.One consequence of European integration is Europeans' increasing tendency to identify more with their nations than with Europe. Analysis of Eurobarometer survey data from before and after the 2007-2009 economic crisis shows that Europeans' support for the European project is deeply tied to their identities: those who see themselves in primarily nationalist terms are more likely to oppose their country's continued membership in the EU as well as further European integration. the EU's response to the economic crisis drove European citizens to pull away from Europe: across all countries, Europeans saw themselves in increasingly nationalist, as opposed to European, terms. In countries that were hardest hit by the economic crisis, individuals turned towards their national governments and national identities in dramatically high numbers. European citizens have grown increasingly disillusioned with the EU, and this disillusionment, anchored by sense of detachment from the European project, has taken shape along nationalist lines. Over the last two decades, radical right parties that advocate for ethnic vision of national belonging have garnered increasing electoral support in both Western and Eastern Europe. Comparing electoral support for such parties across 27 European countries from 1991 to 2012 shows that, in contrast to conventional wisdom, economic decline does not explain differences in the electoral success of radical right parties in Western and Eastern Europe. Support for radical right parties is lower in the less prosperous Eastern than Western Europe, and differences in immigration rates cannot explain this divergence. Rather, I find that political stability and social trust are more important determinants of support for radical right parties. Whereas higher stability decreases support for radical right parties in all European countries, the effect is much greater in Eastern Europe. In other words, when the governing regime is perceived as unstable in an Eastern European country, a radical right party is more likely to win support than in a Western European country. The greater effect of political instability in Eastern European countries may explain why support for radical right parties begins to decline in those countries after the late 1990s just as the political and economic conditions were stabilizing after the post-socialist transition. As in the West, Eastern Europeans' have become more likely to see themselves in national, as opposed to European, terms and radical right parties have recently gained support in countries like Hungary and Ukraine. Yet, in terms of popular support for exclusionary ethic nationalism, it is the West that appears more backward. The fear for the "new Europe" is no longer about the integration of the East, but rather the disintegration of the West. Large comparisons, however, can only provide a snapshot of radical right mobilization. To answer why and how individuals join radical right movements, I trace the rise of a radical right movement in Ukraine by conducting over 100 in-depth interviews between 2009 and 2012 with members of Ukraine's radical right wing party, Freedom (Svoboda). I find that activists were primarily recruited to the movement through friendship networks, reflecting the recruitment practices of progressive social movements. A surprising finding of this case study is that even the most ardent radical right activists were ambivalent about the political aims or ideology of the party before joining. Rather, they developed well formed political beliefs after continued interaction with other activists and participation in political events. Individuals were thus radicalized through the process of mobilization. By showing that radical ideas result from the mobilization process, this finding builds on emerging research of right-wing activists challenging the underlying assumption of social movement theory that activists, and radical right activists in particular, join movements to express preexisting beliefs.
Europe has undergone a "Right turn" in politics over the last three decades, as evidenced by the continued success of radical right parties in Western European countries. Early studies of Western European radical right parties examined country level sociostructural factors for explaining variation in electoral support of radical right parties, but studies left unanswered if the same aggregate level factors are sufficient for explaining different levels of support that radical right parties secure outside of Western Europe. This paper builds upon the early studies of Western European radical right parties to examine whether structural factors – low economic growth, high unemployment, and high ethnic heterogeneity – are associated with high electoral support for radical right parties in the Central Eastern European EU member states from 1990 to 2010. The findings show that these factors are associated with support for radical right parties in some countries but not others. The paper then draws on theories of democratization to show that civic participation is a potentially important factor for understanding differences in support for radical right parties. This study contributes to a growing literature on the role of civic organizations in democratization and the body of knowledge on right-wing politics in Europe.
Основная цель нашего исследования состоит в изучении этофизиологических мишеней речевой манипуляции и средств ее речевой реализации на примере политического дискурса. В данной статье рассматривается такая этофизиологическая мишень манипуляции, как «безопасность».Объектом исследования являются предвыборные агитационные речи кандидатов на пост главы США Д. Трампа и Х. Клинтон. Особенности реализации этофизиологических мишеней на эторецептивном уровне составляют предмет данного исследования.Для достижения основной цели исследования послужили следующие методы: метод структурного моделирования для интерпретации речевого намерения, интерпретативный метод, метод интроспекции и понятийного анализа.Результаты исследования вносят определенный вклад в развитие теории манипулятивного речевого поведения в политическом дискурсе и в предвыборном агитационном дискурсе как его разновидности. Практическая значимость исследования предполагает возможность использования его результатов в вузовских лекционных курсах по общему языкознанию, теории грамматики и стилистики, теории дискурса, а также при руководстве дипломными и курсовыми работами. ; The aim of our research is to analyze ethological and physiological targets of the speech manipulation and means of its actualization as based on the political discourse. Such aetophysiological target as "security" is analyzed in this paper. The study subject is the pre-election agitational speeches of the candidates for presidency Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, whereby we can research aspects of the ethological and physiological targets actualization.The basis of the research is the structural modelling method for interpreting the speech intention, interpretative method, method of introspection and conceptual analyse. The results of the study contribute to the development of the theory of manipulative speech behavior in the political discourse and in the pre-election agitational discourse as its subtype.The results may be used in lecture courses on general linguistics, theory of grammar and stylistics, theory of discourse as well as for graduate and course papers supervision.
