The populist radical right

Populist radical right (PRR) parties have long been characterised as ‘men’s parties’ due to the overrepresentation of men among their voters and grassroots members. While the gender gap among voters has been extensively investigated, little is known about the extent to which women participate at the grassroots of these parties. My book examines this by asking: How does gender shape the experience of PRR party membership? To do so, it looks both at the ‘supply-side’ of PRR party membership, assessing whether women and men differ in their motivations for joining, motivations for staying, and participation in party activities; and the ‘demand-side’, exploring if PRR parties adopt distinct recruitment and retention strategies for women and men. I focus on three PRR parties which have had profound influence on the politics and societies of their countries: the Bharatiya Janata Party in India, the League in Italy, and the Sweden Democrats. The book draws on a vast collection of original qualitative and quantitative data which includes interviews with over 100 party members and officials from the three parties, in addition to membership surveys of thousands of members of the League and the Sweden Democrats. Arguing that women PRR grassroots members play a central role in the organisational development, electoral expansion and growing normalisation of the populist radical right, this volume casts light on one of the defining political phenomena of our century.

Many of today’s most prominent populist radical right (PRR) leaders in Europe came through their party’s youth wings. Yet we know little about these organisations and how they and their members support their parties. This book, which is not only the first to examine PRR youth wings but is the first in English to look at youth wings of any ideological type, focuses on their structures and agents. Specifically, it considers their organisational features, their relationships with the senior party, their international networks, and their leaders and grassroots members. Covering 10 PRR youth wings from across Europe, and based on extensive interviews, survey data, and document analysis, it finds that youth wings are not merely peripheral future-oriented entities but are central and influential components of their parties in the here and now. The book thus offers a unique window on how youth wings are both supporting the PRR today and helping build the PRR of tomorrow.

Transnational cooperation on the populist radical right is on the rise. From the USA to India, populist radical right (PRR) parties are increasingly adopting a discourse which juxtaposes a transnational ‘us’ with a transnational ‘them’. While scholars have looked primarily at nativism, and in particular Islamophobia, as the glue that links these actors transnationally, this paper investigates new issues on which they are mobilising in the transnational arena. Specifically, it asks: What issues do PRR party actors discuss at transnational events? I argue that due to the increasing heterogeneity of PRR politics in terms of policy issues, actors involved, and venues for transnational socialisation, the PRR transnational discourse should have become more diverse and encompass ‘newer’ issues, especially outside the context of the European Parliament (EP). To test this, I draw on an original corpus of over 300 speeches of PRR party actors at transnational events which occurred between 2013 and 2024. Using Structural Topic Models, I find that the transnational populist radical right has moved beyond nativism and increasingly mobilises on issues like the family and foreign policy. In addition, the only events in which PRR parties still debate mostly traditional topics are those organised by PRR EP groups.

Over the past decade, there has been a steep increase in the quantity and quality of transnational activity on the populist radical right (PRR). This has not only been confined to members of European Parliament groups, or even parties and politicians from Europe more broadly, but extends to actors from across the globe, encompassing parties, youth wings, and think-tanks. The result is a burgeoning transnational PRR ecosystem which continues to both widen and deepen. However, while we may be familiar with the big events characterising this ecosystem such as CPAC, NatCon and Foro Madrid, we know little about the actors that drive its construction and connect its various parts. In this paper, we therefore ask: Who are the architects and brokers of PRR transnationalization? To investigate, we use a unique dataset of transnational PRR events, speeches by participants at such gatherings, and original interviews with PRR elected representatives, youth wing leaders, and affiliated think-tank officials. Having firstly mapped out the PRR ecosystem using Social Network Analysis (SNA) and identified its architects and brokers, we then illustrate how these actors contribute to maintaining and growing the ecosystem. Building on our empirical findings, we then propose a theory of PRR transnationalization.

Do voters perceive women candidates of the far right as more democratic and socially acceptable than men candidates of the far right? If so, far-right parties may strategically use women candidates to appear as legitimate and ‘normal’ actors in the eyes of voters, thereby reducing the stigma they face. Building on the literature on gender stereotypes and candidates, we theorise that voters perceive women far-right candidates as more cooperative, empathetic, respectful of rules and moderate – and therefore, more socially acceptable and more likely to behave in line with democratic principles – than men far-right candidates. This should be the case even when candidates explicitly favour positions that strongly break with the principles of liberal and electoral democracy. To test this, we run an original online vignette survey experiment in Germany (N = 3,881), where the far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is still relatively stigmatised compared to its counterparts in other European countries. We find that, overall, women AfD candidates are perceived as more socially acceptable than their men counterparts, but not as more democratic. However, when they engage in anti-immigration rhetoric, women candidates are perceived as more democratic. Our findings bring a novel gender perspective to the literature on far-right normalisation and legitimisation, showing that women are key actors in both these processes.