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In Central and Eastern Europe, radical right actors significantly impact public debates and mainstream policy agenda. But despite this high discursive influence, the electoral fortune of radical right parties in the region is much less stable. It has been suggested that this may be due to the fact that mainstream competitors increasingly co-opt issues which are fundamental for the radical right. However, the extent to which such tactics play a role in radical right electoral success and failure is still a subject for debate. This book is the first to provide a systematic theoretical framework and in-depth empirical research on the interaction between discursive influence, party competition and the electoral fortune of radical right parties in Central and Eastern Europe. It argues that in order to fully explain the impact of mainstream party strategies in this regard, it is vital to widen the analysis beyond competition over issues themselves, and towards their various legitimizing narratives and frame ownership. Up-to-date debates over policies of collective identity (minority, morality and nationalizing politics) in Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia serve as best cases to observe these under-researched phenomena. The analytical model is evaluated comparatively using original, primary data combined with election studies and expert surveys. Advancing an innovative, fine-grained approach on the mechanisms and effects of party competition between radical right and mainstream parties, this book will be of interest to students and scholars researching the far right and European party politics, as well as political contestation and framing.--

Studies of 'thin' anti-establishment supply assess mainly the extent of populist messages. This paper analyses the diversity of thin contestation beyond just populism. I conduct a content analysis of 142 social media campaigns by anti-establishment (AEPs) and conventional parties during 23 elections across Europe 2010–2019. We find that in addition to popular will and extra-political technocratic expertise, AEPs increasingly enacted exceptional political calling, depicted as necessary to revive 'true' formal-representative politics itself. Regression analysis shows that political vocation cues played an important auxiliary role in AEP mobilization strategies. On average, those AEPs across the political spectrum which used more political vocation messages performed better electorally ceteris paribus than those which used them less. Conventional parties instead did not universally benefit if they increasingly spotlighted thin messages. The salience of anti-establishment and populism-related rhetoric played a further role within particular AEP groups, but neither was significantly associated with stronger AEP performance altogether. In order to better understand recent political turbulence, it is therefore useful to account for more diverse thin contestation supply.

This article explores how different anti-establishment parties (AEPs) can themselves strategically enact an image of both distinctiveness and 'normality' behind their political offer. For this purpose, we directly measure and map diverse anti-establishment normalisation strategies by analysing 142 social media campaigns of radical right, left, and 'centrist' AEPs and their conventional competitors during 23 elections in Europe during 2010–2019. We find that while AEPs presented themselves as fundamentally distinct from 'politics as usual', they simultaneously attempted to normalise their contestation supply across and within two dimensions: mainstreaming and streamlining. Using regression analysis, we further find that the degree to which AEPs rhetorically normalised their supply was positively and significantly associated with their broader electoral appeal ceteris paribus, controlling for substantive issue positions, parliamentary experience and position in government. Concurrently, the effects of particular normalisation strategies and their specific calibration varied for the radical right and left. The findings deepen our comparative understanding of diverse anti-establishment strategies used in party competition.

The article analyses the organisation of the Law and Justice party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość [PiS]) in Poland. The case of PiS does not only allow us to explore the organisational features of a strongly institutionalized, incumbent party which uses populist radical right (PRR) politics. PiS, we argue, is also an ideal case to contrast what such parties might rhetorically declare and substantively do about their organisational features. Using party documents, press reports, quantitative data, and insights from the secondary literature based on interviews with activists, we evaluate the extent to which PiS has developed a mass-party-related organisation, and centralized its intra-party decision-making procedures. We find that while PiS made overtures to some aspects of mass-party-like organisation for electoral mobilization, the party remained reluctant to actively expand its membership numbers and put little effort into fostering the integration and social rootedness of its members through everyday intra-party activities. Furthermore, despite attempts to enact organisational reinvigoration, in practice PiS continued to revolve around strongly centralized structures and, in particular, the absolutist leadership style of the party's long-time Chair Jarosław Kaczyński. The analysis contributes to assessing the variety and functions of organisational features and appeals within the comparative study of PRR parties. Most particularly, it invites further research into the still relatively under-researched interactions between PRR party organisation and active party communication.

AbstractRadical right European contestation is analyzed mainly as claims denouncing European integration. Less focus is put on narratives suggesting how a supposed 'truly European' political process should be and work. This paper explores how radical right actors use such counter‐European claims within their competition strategies. Computer‐assisted qualitative analysis of communication by Front National, Alternative for Germany and Fidesz during the humanitarian crisis debate 2015–16 demonstrates that radical right counter‐Europeanism constitutes a nuanced tactical resource deployed to normalize nativist supply in the name of Europe. Unlike Eurorejectionist FN, Fidesz and AfD redefined Europe in nativist terms, attempting to draw legitimacy from association with European identity and cooperation. Concurrently, both actors justified Euronativism not only as antithetical to current EU values and political principles, but mainly as their more fundamental practice juxtaposed against 'not (truly) European elites', effectively 'hijacking' Europe from within. The findings deepen our understanding of radical right Europe‐contesting competition strategies.

AbstractParticularly in Central and Eastern Europe, but also in "the West," radical right politics established itself in the mainstream and continues to challenge liberal democracy from within. While there is broad consensus that radical right politics in both regions constitute an exclusionary, anti‐pluralist counter‐reaction against societal modernization, the discussion continues whether the radical right in the East remains a contextually distinctive phenomenon sui generis, or rather becomes increasingly similar and "functionally equivalent" to the West.This review synthesizes extant findings on radical right politics from a comparative East–West perspective. Pursuing a "middle path" approach based on the framing perspective, it discusses conceptual synergies behind contextually distinctive and functionally equivalent aspects of radical right politics, expanding these comparative observations towards narrative strategies, mainstreaming mechanisms, and its impact on societies, party systems, policies, and liberal democracy as such.The discussion demonstrates the potential of the framing approach for comparative East–West study of radical right politics. It further shows that not only can concepts developed for WE cases be adapted to inform studies on CEE. Concurrently, contextualized insights from Central and Eastern Europe can provide broader lessons relevant to the study of radical right politics across Europe and in "the West."

AbstractThe normalization of radical right (RR) politics fosters opportunities for RR parties, but can also facilitate intra-party conflicts over the 'true' version of the shared party ideology. Previous research has highlighted two factors that influence ideational change within RR parties: contextual conditions and the formal power of intra-party factions. Yet, surprisingly, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) progressively radicalized to the right and witnessed the increased influence of its extremist grouping Der Flügel, despite contextual normalization pressures and the grouping's lower formal power. Analysing three crucial conflicts within the AfD between 2013 and 2021, we show how intra-party competition additionally plays into nativist party radicalization. Flügel balanced contextual and 'hard' power disadvantages by fostering its 'soft' power as 'the true party within the party'. Simultaneously, this power was cemented by more established AfD actors who used Flügel's ideas against other competitors for office. Our conclusions have important implications for comparative research on competition within and between RR parties.

"Formalrechtlich kann der Beitritt der neuen, mittelosteuropäischen EU-Mitgliedstaaten zum Euro-Raum als Automatismus betrachtet werden. Doch auf der real, politischen Ebene ergibt sich eine Reihe von Hindernissen." (Autorenreferat)