Between party and movement: conceptual and empirical considerations of the radical right’s organizational boundaries and mobilization processes Open Access

With the rise and consolidation of the radical right in most Western democracies, scholarly work on the topic is flourishing.¹ So far, a party-centered perspective has dominated research in the field and the impressively growing body of literature on far-right parties is contrasted by a rather slow growth in research on radical right movements, despite their prominence in the field (see Introduction by the editors; also Caiani 2017: 2). However, recent research has (re)discovered the movement characteristics of the radical right, including the movement qualities demonstrated by radical right parties, the role of radical right movements and their interaction with other radical right parties and movements or more broadly, the electoral and protest politics of the radical right (see Kitschelt 2006; Caiani et al.2012; Hutter 2014; Cisar and Vrablikova 2015; Caiani 2017; Hutter et al.2017).

This article seeks to contribute to the conceptual and comparative debate by approaching the topic through the logic of collective action (see Minkenberg 2003; Klandermans and Mayer 2006; Muis and Immerzeel 2017). Starting from an ideologically centered definition of right-wing radicalism, it conceptualizes the radical right in liberal democracies as a collective actor with different ideological as well as organizational manifestations, the latter most notably in party or movement forms. The article argues that unlike other movement-party linkages, which build on clear typological distinctions between parties and movement (one might add interest groups as well; see Kitschelt 2006: 278–80), radical right parties almost by definition exhibit movement characteristics in that they continuously engage in ‘contentious politics’ (Tilly and Tarrow 2015). In this sense, they can be configured as ‘movement parties’ (Kitschelt 2006). Following this line of thinking, the article examines the relationship between different types of radical right actors with a focus on party–movement relationships and interactions and the respective arenas of engagement (i.e. electoral vs. protest mobilization). Empirical evidence will be drawn from member states of the EU to illustrate the argument. It will be further argued that in the interaction between radical right parties and movements in Western democracies, movements endure where radical right parties remain marginal. In other words, to the extent that radical right parties maintain their movement qualities and become electorally successful, movement mobilization on the far right is inhibited. This ‘Western’ pattern is contrasted by patterns in Eastern Europe, where more porous borders between radical right parties and movements exist along with symbiotic interactions.

The article is organized into four sections. The first section clarifies the key concepts and terms in light of the research on social movements and contentious action; the second presents an analytical model of radical right party and movement mobilization for comparative purposes in the time frame between 1990 and 2015. In the third section, the party–movement interaction patterns are discussed and empirically illustrated while the fourth section addresses recent developments in the wake of the so-called refugee crisis of 2015 and discusses to what extent the patterns detected hold after 2015, followed by a brief conclusion.

The radical right in liberal democracies is conceptualized here as a collective actor and a ‘political family’ with different ideological as well as organizational manifestations, the latter most notably in party or movement forms (see Rucht 1994; Mair and Mudde 1998; Mudde 2000; Ennser 2012). Right-wing radicalism as an ideological current is primarily defined in modernization-theoretical terms (see Scheuch and Klingemann 1967; Minkenberg 2000; Mudde 2010). Against the backdrop of rapid social and cultural change or accelerated societal differentiation, the radical right mobilizes to counter such social change and attacks its perceived agents by overemphasizing images of a homogenous national community, a key characteristic of radical right-wing thinking (see Mudde 2000: chap. 7; also Minkenberg 2003). This myth of a homogenous nation is constructed on the basis of an idea of nation and national belonging (‘us’) by radicalizing criteria of exclusion (‘them’) along ethnic, cultural and/or religious lines, with the aim of preserving an extreme cultural or ethnic homogeneity of the primary in-group and a congruence between the state and the nation (Smith 2001: 34). Such ultranationalism, or nativism, is intertwined with an authoritarian, that is, decidedly anti-egalitarian view of the world and a top-down approach to politics. The corresponding emphasis on strong leadership as well as the absence of internal democracy in radical right groups and organizations are deliberately designed to ensure the enforcement of the ultranationalist vision (see e.g. Mudde 2007: 22–3; also Kitschelt 2007: 1179). This ideological characteristic is relevant because it informs the kind of organization and the interaction between different types of the radical right: authoritarianism and strong leadership are in tension with movement-type political mobilization ‘from below’ (see Klandermans and Mayer 2006: chap. 3; also Kitschelt 2006; Art 2011).

While this definition places the radical right at the ideological margin of the political spectrum in liberal democracies, the radical right ideology is not a homogenous worldview. In line with most research on the subject (see e.g. Kitschelt 1995; Carter 2005), this political family is differentiated into ideological variants, depending on the criteria of exclusion and the degree of authoritarianism: (1) at the extreme end of the ideological spectrum is the autocratic-fascist right (usually including racism or xenophobia), often with an affinity to political violence and clearly anti-democratic; this category is summarily referred to as ‘extremism’ (see also Mudde 2007: 24). It contrasts with the less extreme (2) racist or ethno-centrist (but not fascist or explicitly anti-democratic) radical right, and (3) a religious-fundamentalist version (in which nationalism merges with religious doctrine), although empirically, the ideological boundaries are not always clear-cut and less extreme organizations can radicalize into extremist groups or vice versa. What these variants have in common is a rejection of difference and pluralization and a populist anti-establishment political style (see Minkenberg 1998: 35–47; Minkenberg 2000; also Kitschelt 2007: 1179f.).

Along with this ideological differentiation, different organizational types of the radical right can be distinguished, most importantly political parties running in elections (not necessarily for office) and social movements or networks of networks, the latter often complemented by small groups at the subcultural level, loosely organized but presenting a micromobilization potential for movement activities (see Minkenberg 2003: 152–53). Movements and parties are principally distinguished by their primary focus of collective action: while parties engage in electoral contestation, movements attempt to advance their agenda by contention via ‘street politics’ and disruption outside of established institutional agendas (see Kitschelt 2006: 279; see also Tarrow 1994: 4f.). Moreover, parties tend to stay while movements eventually demobilize (see Tilly and Tarrow 2015: 36–8).

With these definitional distinctions in mind, radical right parties, more than most other small or niche parties (Meguid 2005), operate in both arenas and hence they can be generally characterized as ‘movement parties’ (Kitschelt 2006). Unlike other movement parties (such as the Greens in their early stages), radical right parties usually do not emanate from social movements, yet ‘apply the organizational and strategic practices of social movements in the arena of party competition’ (Kitschelt 2006: 280). Moreover, based on their activists’ and supporters’ basic value orientations and the radical right’s particular (anti-egalitarian, top-down) approach to politics, radical right parties typically exhibit the characteristics of a charismatic leadership which runs the party in an authoritarian fashion and lends the party organizational stability (see Minkenberg 1998: 44; Kitschelt 2006: 287; also Aminzade et al.2001; Mudde 2007: 260–64; Hutter 2014: 40).

This organizational stability of successful radical right parties notwithstanding, they clearly qualify as movement parties in that they are continuously engaged in ‘contentious politics’ as defined by Tilly and Tarrow (2015), that is, a process of collective claims making at the interplay of contention, collective action and politics. They do not only challenge governments as ‘targets, initiators of claims, or third parties’ (Tilly and Tarrow 2015: 7). They challenge all other parties or even the political order in a populist style, rather than merely seeking office or a change in policy (see also McAdam et al. 2001; Klandermans and Mayer 2006: chap. 1; Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017). Even when in office, as in the case of the Lega Nord in the three Berlusconi governments (1994, 2001–2005, 2008–2011), the Swiss People’s Party (from 2004) and the Austrian Freedom Party (2000–2006, and from 2017) or, more clearly, when refraining from joining a formal coalition but supporting minority governments, for example in the case of the Dutch PVV (2010–2012) or the Danish People’s Party (2001–2011 and from 2015), these parties try to be ‘in’ and ‘out’ at the same time, reconciling ‘voice’ and ‘exit’ in their characteristically anti-establishment fashion (see Albertazzi 2009; Downs 2012). If social movements constitute ‘collective challenges by people with common purposes and solidarity in sustained interaction with elites, opponents and authorities’ (Tarrow 1994: 3–4) and if they strive to bring about or inhibit change affecting the entire societal order (Rucht 1994: 74), then it can be said that radical right parties exhibit movement qualities (see Minkenberg 1998: 50–3). They, like movements, challenge existing authority and direct their efforts as ‘discursive communities’ on different levels collectively; they use protest activities (in Tarrow’s words ‘disruptive direct action’) against specific target groups; and in the course of conflict with the ‘others’ they gain collective identity and solidarity (see Giugni et al.2005; Hirsch-Hoefler and Mudde 2013). Furthermore, they interact in an ongoing and not merely episodic conflict with their antagonists (see Minkenberg 2003). Like any challenger group in the context of contentious action, radical right parties lack ‘routine access to decisions that affect them’ (William Gamson, as quoted in McAdam 1999: xvii) and enter the democratic political field offering interpretations of problems while potentially ‘framing’ central issues or the entire political agenda, in rivalry with other actors (other parties, state actors such as government, the political elite etc.). In the process, threat/opportunity perceptions are formed and reinforce each other, leading to the building or appropriation of organizations and the emergence of collective identities, and resulting in a (new) cycle of contentious action (see McAdam et al.2001: Figures 1.2 and 2.1, pp. 17, 45; also Hutter et al.2017).

In consequence, boundaries between party and movement politics are somewhat blurred (Tilly and Tarrow 2015: 154–61; Hutter et al.2017), underlined by the very concept of ‘movement parties’. Based on the above, one can go one step further and argue that this fuzziness is particularly pronounced when it comes to the radical right, where parties exhibit movement qualities almost by definition.² However, there are indicators that differences exist not only episodically but structurally, not in the least because parties do not easily want to run the risk of being associated with more extreme (or violent-prone) actors from the movement sector lightly (see Minkenberg 2003; Hutter 2014).

Movement literature repeatedly emphasizes the significance of context for understanding collective action. This context includes ‘mobilizing structures’ or opportunity structures such as patterns of party competition and the role of the state, along with cultural factors such as political culture or cultural repertoires (see e.g. Rucht 1994: chap. 7; Kriesi et al.1995: chaps. 1–2; McAdam et al.2001: chaps. 1–3; Hutter 2014: chap. 3). Applying this logic to the study of the radical right, this section discusses the context of radical right mobilization. Clearly, context alone does not explain much (see Aminzade et al.2001: 153; see also Mudde 2007: chap. 10) but context cannot be ignored when looking at collective action in general and radical right mobilization in particular.

Based on the relevant movement and party literature (e.g. Kitschelt 1995, 2007; Klandermans and Mayer 2006; Mudde 2007; Muis and Immerzeel 2017), a map of radical right mobilization can be constructed, which includes major cultural and structural context factors and organizational variations (see also Minkenberg 2003; Rydgren 2007; Hutter 2014).

Typically, historical and cultural context is conceptualized in terms of the dominant understanding of national identity, whether in ethnic, cultural or political terms, the ethnic landscape (the share of foreign-born population or national minorities), the religious landscape (dominant traditions, religious nationalism, the strength of Islam³). Relevant structural variables include the major cleavages (incl. the degree of polarization or convergence between the major parties and new cleavages, i.e. a value-based, globalization-related New Politics cleavage in the West and the regime conflict cleavage in the East), the electoral system, and the states’ and major parties’ response to the radical right (for details, see Hutter 2014: chap.3; also Minkenberg 2017: chap. 3.3). Such an approach suggests significant differences between the strength of the radical right party and movement sector, and between party–movement relations in Western Europe in comparison to those in Eastern Europe. In Western Europe, a ‘strong’ radical right party sector is defined by persistent electoral successes of radical right parties of at least 4% of the national vote in parliamentary elections in entire the period of 1990–2015 (see Minkenberg 2017: 101, fig. 101).

‘Movement strength’ is incomparably harder to measure and relates to estimates of mobilization capacities as well as the frequency and size of protest events (see Tilly and Tarrow 2015: 29–44; for the evolution and strength of anti-immigration protest events in six West European countries, see Hutter 2014: 113, fig. 24). For comparative purposes, the time frame is from 2000 to 2015, thereby excluding the particularities of the East European transition period in the 1990s.

Table 1 reveals a clear pattern. Country cases with strong radical right-wing parties and a weak movement sector are contrasted by those with weak radical right-wing parties and a strong movement sector. This pattern can be connected to particular contextual factors. The usual factors such as the voting system or the presence of foreigners do not account for much of the variation (see also Mudde 2007: 210–20). Rather, the major mobilizing factors in Western Europe appear to lie in the New Politics cleavage (see Bornschier 2010; Hutter 2014) and in the cultural and religious sphere. Large non-Christian immigrant communities and an accelerated process of religious and cultural differentiation drive the success and consolidation of radical right parties more than do structural factors (see Minkenberg 2003). As has been shown elsewhere (Camus 2011), the West European radical right and more recently also its East European counterpart, increasingly draws on religious affiliation, in particular, Islam as the ‘other’, to radicalize the difference between ‘us’ and ‘them’ in their discourse. In Western Europe however, references to Christianity do not reflect the religious beliefs of the activists or the tradition of the parties concerned. These references are a strategic adjustment, not the soul of the radical right, which remains its anti-plural ultranationalism. Moreover, the pattern summarized in Table 1 supports the ‘different logic’ argument. In Western Europe, radical right mobilization (unlike mobilization on the far left) manifests itself either in the electoral arena (where radical right parties are strong and ethno-centrist rather than fascist) at the expense of movement mobilization or in the protest arena if strong parties are not present (Hutter 2014: 38–42). Finally, despite the growing number of cases of government coalitions which include the radical right in Western Europe, the overall number of countries where this happens is rather modest. In Western Europe, there are only three such countries (Italy, Austria, Switzerland; five if one counts the Norwegian and Finnish cases⁴) with another two having experienced radical right support for minority governments (Denmark and the Netherlands). Radical right parties are perceived and act as challenger parties, which is underlined by their continuously confrontational political ideology and actions after they leave office, in that they remain ‘movement parties’ despite their ‘access to decisions that affect them’ (Gamson, see above) while in power. Turning to Eastern Europe, the processes of regime transformation and the implementation of the EU’s acquis communitaire have introduced the same basic constitutional structures as in Western Europe, but they were accompanied by another set of profound changes and context factors (see Minkenberg 2017). Hence, the overview in Table 2 to some extent diverges from the key factors identified for Western Europe.

Table 2 suggests that in contrast to the West European scenario, there is hardly any pattern which connects the context conditions with party strength. With the exception of Slovakia, there is no country with a persistently strong radical right party since the 1990s while in some countries the radical right was strong in two or three elections, after which they vanished (Poland, Czech Republic). Moreover, countries with similar radical right party strength differ in many of the contextual factors. The connection seems stronger with regard to movement strength, as the three countries with a stronger movement sector (Poland, Slovakia, and to a lesser degree Romania) share a high fusion of national and religious identity (see Grzymała-Busse 2015), medium-to-high levels of ethnic homogeneity and the lack of a clear distinction between political camps (see Minkenberg 2017: chap. 3). In other words, high cultural homogeneity and a diffuse party competition can be seen as facilitating right-wing movement mobilization. But there was no inverse relationship between party strength and movement strength in Eastern Europe in the 2000s, in contrast to Western Europe. In some countries such as Slovakia and Poland, medium-to-strong radical right parties co-existed with strong movements or, as in Hungary, created their own movements. In two Baltic states, there were weak radical right parties along with weak-to-medium strong movements (see Auers and Kasekamp 2013; Kasprowicz 2015; Kréko and Mayer 2015). Overall, if there is a pattern in the East, it can be seen in the tendency of countries with strong parties also exhibiting strong movements and vice versa. This finding contradicts the observation that there is a negative relation between radical right party and movement mobilization in Eastern Europe (see Cisar and Vrablikova 2015; Hutter et al.2017).

When considering the party–movement interaction of radical right actors, different levels of contention or arenas can be distinguished. Among these are the electoral arena, the parliamentary arena and the street arena (see Rucht 1994: 479–83; McAdam et al.2001: 45–70; Tilly and Tarrow 2015). Moreover, for radical right movements to remain marginalized, much depends on whether a radical right party succeeded in consolidating itself in the party system over time (instead of being a flash phenomenon). Numerous studies have shown that the cases of the most significant upswing of radical right voting support and consolidation of these parties in the countries’ party systems include those of a new radical right, newly formed or reformed parties, which belong to the ethno-centrist rather than the extremist or fascist variant (see Kitschelt 1995; Carter 2005).

Most parties, such as the French FN, the Austrian FPÖ, the Belgian VB have made efforts to demarcate themselves from more extremist (and hard-to-control) radical right movements and activists while maintaining links ‘backstage’ (see Klandermans and Mayer 2006: 34; Art 2001: chap. 4). Moreover, during their breakthrough period, the successful parties of the radical right have absorbed and integrated significant sections of the radical right movement sector, along with creating their own non-party organizations such as youth groups, university clubs, housewives’ associations etc., as the case of the FN most vividly demonstrates (see Birenbaum 1992: 220–52; Minkenberg 1998: 282–86; for the FPÖ, see Bailer and Neugebauer 1993: 355f.). This is a significant difference to the politics of alliances between radical right parties and movements in inter-war Europe and also in the immediate postwar era in Western democracies (see von Beyme 1988).

The British, German and Swedish cases show (until recently) that where the radical right has remained more traditional, i.e. extremist and more or less true to a fascist-autocratic agenda, it has not fared well in national elections, regardless of the electoral system (see also Art 2011). These are also the same countries where the movement and subcultural sector is livelier and where levels of racist or right-wing extremist violence are higher (see Table 1; also Minkenberg 2003; Stiftung 2009; Ravndal 2015). In his analysis of anti- and pro-immigration protest events from the 1970s until the 2000s, Hutter demonstrates the relative prominence of anti-immigration protest events in the 1990s and 2000s in Germany, the UK and the Netherlands, in contrast to less frequent events in Austria, France and Switzerland (Hutter 2014: 113, fig. 24). These figures are not correlated with the number or share of immigrants in the respective countries. Instead, as scholars have suggested already in the 1990s, there appears to be a dynamic link between various organizational manifestations. For instance, more right-wing radical mobilization in the electoral arena tends to go along with less mobilization in the ideologically more extreme movement sector and vice versa (see Koopmans 1996; also Klandermans and Mayer 2006). At the same time, the new radical right parties in Western Europe have become a stable element in almost all Western European party systems, with a solid level of electoral support – a feature which is taken as an indication that they do not qualify anymore as ‘movement parties’ (see Kitschelt 2006). However, the evidence is mixed and this interpretation can be disputed. The example of the Lega Nord underscores that even when in a governmental coalition with Berlusconi, the radical right continued to play a role as an opposition party (see Albertazzi 2009; also Muis and Immerzeel 2017). Also, the Austrian FPÖ returned to their contentious political style and radical attacks on the ‘system’ after the coalition with the ÖVP ended in 2006 (see Akkerman and Roodujin 2015).

The party–movement relationship remained largely antagonistic and the new radical right parties have made efforts to demarcate themselves from the more extremist movements and subcultural milieus (Table 3). In France, the FN has absorbed independent groups during the consolidation process in the 1980s (see Minkenberg 1998: chap. 7; Klandermans and Mayer 2006). Likewise, in Belgium, the ultranationalist subcultures have become an integral part of the VB and what remains as independent extremist activism is kept at arm’s length by the party (see Art 2011: 112–15). The Danish case shows efforts by anti-Muslim and extremist organizations such as Arhus against the Mosque and the protestant-fundamentalist Danish Association to link up with the Danish People’s Party in the 2000s. While the DF dissociated itself clearly from more extremist groups and individuals, the Danish Association can be considered an ideological ally of the DFF (see Rydgren 2004: 481–87; Widfeldt 2015: 143–49).

In the UK, an overlap between the BNP and the English Defense League can be observed (see Goodwin 2011: 69, 104). While some activists of the EDL called for a party to represent their agenda in electoral politics, most see themselves as a protest group with no electoral aspirations. One could make the argument that recently, with the adoption of tougher anti-immigration positions, both Conservatives and Labor have absorbed part of the EDL’s and BNP’s message but the BNP, due to its being seen as illegitimate by the majority of the electorate in the UK, did not benefit while the more moderate UKIP stayed clear of the EDL (see Pupcenoks and McCabe 2013: 181).

In sum, the movement–party interactions of the radical right in Western Europe show that until recently, there have been closer links where radical right parties were marginal and more extreme (as with the British National Party, the German NPD) but the relationship was or turned antagonistic when such parties were larger or became electorally more ambitious. The French, Austrian and Belgian cases show that these parties absorbed rather than collaborated with segments of the movement sector, though in many countries collaboration between radical right parties and separate movements could be observed at the local level (see Art 2011).

The impression of radical right parties as ‘movement parties’ is even more clearly demonstrated by various examples in Eastern Europe where radical right parties exhibit more extremism and irredentism, combined with more electoral fluctuations and organizational weaknesses than those in the West (see Minkenberg 2017: 99–105). These characteristics also suggest the presence of porous borders between radical right movements and radical right parties, as well as between the radical right and the mainstream right (see Mudde 2007: 257–73; also Pirro 2015; Pytlas 2016). The volatility of the political landscape, the absence of stable cleavage patterns and the under-institutionalization of party systems should theoretically provide favorable conditions for a vibrant movement sector. However, the evidence is mixed so far (see Table 2; Mudde 2005; Minkenberg 2017). When comparing parties and movements over time, there is more continuity in the region’s radical right movement sector than in the party sector but also a disconcerting growth of movement activities, especially in the Czech Republic and Latvia, followed by Hungary, Poland and to a lesser degree Romania – countries where radical right parties have disappeared from the parliamentary and electoral arenas until recently (except for Hungary), while mainstream or new parties have picked up significant parts of the radical right agenda (see Gherghina and Miscoiu 2014; Cinpoeş 2015; Pytlas 2016; Minkenberg 2017).

For Eastern Europe, a summary of the modes and patterns of interaction between the radical right and various key actors are presented in Table 4.

In contrast to a number of cases in Western Europe, there is hardly any indication in the new democracies in Eastern Europe of a cordon sanitaire and therefore, there is a low threshold for coalition building between mainstream and radical right parties (see Minkenberg 2017: chap. 6; also Pirro 2015; Pytlas 2016). As has been documented elsewhere (see contributions to Minkenberg 2015; for an earlier assessment, Mudde 2005), in most countries radical right movement politics has usually not been an alternative, or antagonistic, to party politics and instead, it has been complementary.

It is important to remember that the fluidity of the radical right party sector in Eastern Europe renders systematic cross-time and cross-country comparisons difficult. Even so, a difference between West and East can be observed in that Western radical right parties stay mostly clear of such movements, not in the least because the movements’ extremism and uncontrollability is more often than not a liability rather than a resource. In the East, however, margin and mainstream are not as clearly divided and movements are often accepted as resources rather than feared as liabilities. This was evident in the Polish case of Radio Maryja that can be characterized as a mass movement (see Pankowski 2010: 95–8) and its relationship to both LPR and PiS after the LPR’s decline and of Ruch Narodowy which has replaced the vanished LPR as the most important radical right actor. RN started as a movement but by the 2014 European elections has morphed into a party as well and is now present in the Polish parliament in the Kukiz’15 group. Another case in point was the relationship between the Hungarian party Jobbik and the Magyar Garda. First created by Jobbik in 2007, then banned by the government in 2009 (see Krekó and Mayer 2015), the Hungarian Guard turned into a liability. Newly formed successor organizations were kept at a distance by Jobbik – but only officially. Informally, they continued to cooperate on their common anti-Roma agenda (see Krekó and Mayer 2015).

If right-wing radicalism can be understood as a reaction to rapid social and cultural changes or with reference to socio-cultural differentiation, as posited above, the new developments stemming from the so-called refugee crisis of 2015 and its aftermath should have resulted in a new phase of radical right mobilization. This is most clearly visible in Germany where an originally anti-Euro party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), rose to national and European prominence in a series of by-elections, culminating in their entry into the German national parliament in the September 2017 elections (12.6% of the vote), the first radical right party since the 1950s to have entered the Bundestag. This meteoric rise in elections has been accompanied by an equally startling series of radical right protest events, most notably the activities of the anti-Islamic Pegida movement (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident) and a rising number of attacks against asylums seekers and their accommodation.

However, these seismic shifts in the German political landscape have not been accompanied by similar changes in other European countries. In contrast to the real numbers of immigrants in East and West, survey data show similar levels and variations of concern about immigration in 2011 in West and East, despite the absence of large-scale immigration to Eastern Europe (see Perrineau 2016: 192). The proportion of those considering immigration a particularly significant issue more than doubled in a number of countries between 2011 and 2015, well before the massive increase from the summer of 2015 onwards. It is noteworthy that even before the jump in numbers and the use of the ‘Balkan route’ from 2015 on, concern over immigration increased enormously in Hungary and Slovakia, but also in Poland and Estonia. This can be read as a sign of a particular anxiety related to the more traditional ethnic conflict configuration in the region (see Brubaker 1997). With the growing anxiety about immigrants, anti-Muslim views have spread in Europe. With hardly any Muslims in the country (0.1% in each Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia), 72% of Hungarians and 66% of Poles expressed unfavorable views of Muslims in 2016 (as compared to 69% of Italians, 50% of Spanish, 29% of French and 29% of Germans; see Pew Research Center 2016).

Against this backdrop, radical right movement mobilization has increased in West and East and Islamophobia has taken the center stage in the rhetoric, in particular in Austria, France, and Germany (see Caiani 2017: 3). Cross-nationally, the Identitarian movement constitutes a large part of this uptake in radical right movement mobilization. It originated in France in 2003, is oriented at the neo-racist ideology of the French Nouvelle Droite and has also appeared in Germany, Austria, some Nordic countries and Eastern Europe during the 2010s. Its 10th-anniversary celebration in France attracted only 500 attendants and while the Italian LN sent delegates, the French FN successfully exerted pressure on other radical right parties in Europe not to be present at the event (sees Bruns et al.2014: 62). Overall, the Identitarian movement’s street mobilization was rather limited, with participant numbers at street rallies reaching at most a few hundred, but the movement has a strong presence on the internet (see Vejvodová 2014). The large ideological and strategic overlap between the Identitarians and the EDL in Britain, together with the prominent role of UKIP until recently, may explain why the Identitarians remained marginal on the British Isles (see Braouezec 2016). This also applies to the pan-European efforts of the Pegida movement, which were short-lived, with a one-time appearance of ca. 5000 protesters in Malmö in Feb. 2015 as the biggest success outside of Germany (see Vorländer et al. 2016; Caiani 2017: 3–4).

Meanwhile, the radical right party sector in Western Europe did not benefit from the 2015 events as they had hoped either. Almost all parties have shifted their rhetoric towards Islam and the defense of the European and national identities and cultures against the perceived threat of ‘Islamization’. However, in France, despite receiving 34% of the vote and despite gathering twice as large a share of the vote as her father did in 2002, Marine Le Pen’s result in the second round of the election can be considered a defeat. This is underlined by the 13% of the vote and 8 seats the FN obtained in the subsequent parliament elections (first round). The party appears to be where it was before the Presidential election campaign and in-fighting has set in over its future course, not in the least because Marine Le Pen’s strategy of ‘de-demonization’ seems to have failed in breaking down the cordon sanitaire by the other parties (see Mayer 2015). In sum, the current developments of radical right movements in Western Europe, by and large, maintain the earlier patterns outlined in the preceding analysis.

This observation does not apply to Germany. Here, a new radical right movement has scored its biggest mobilization successes, but the rise of the AfD put an end to the movement cycle. Pegida started in East Germany in October 2014 and attempted to spread across Germany and Europe. However, the movement is locally concentrated in the Dresden area in East Germany, where in its peak time in late 2014 and early 2015 it mobilized around 20,000 protesters on several of their Monday night demonstrations. Today the numbers are in the lower 1000s, and in other parts of Germany it failed to establish a strong and lasting presence (see Vorländer et al.2016; Caiani 2017: 3–4). In the meantime, the Alternative for Germany has taken over the role of anti-system challenger by emulating the French and Dutch models after the party experienced a right-wing shift at their party convention in July 2015. The major cleavage which resulted in the party’s partition, with the more moderate activists and leaders leaving the party, occurred over the question of how to deal with the Pegida movement. It was in particular in the East German party groups of the AfD that leading politicians, who represented the more extremist wing in the party, advocated a stronger cooperation with the movement (see Vorländer et al.2016: 42f.). Despite a number of ideological affinities, the party’s leadership has officially rejected any formal alliance with the movement (see Häusler 2016).

In addition, there is a new dynamism in Eastern Europe in response to 2015. As mentioned, Islam has climbed onto the agenda in Eastern Europe despite its almost total absence in the population. In Warsaw in November 2017, the annual march to commemorate Poland’s Independence Day attracted tens of thousands of radical right activists, including an EDL delegation, marching for a ‘White Europe’. In Hungary, Jobbik has entered a new strategic phase in which it tries to establish itself as a moderate alternative to Fidesz, toning down its anti-minority and ultranationalist messages (see Bíró Nagy and Boros 2016), a move which is echoed by the Slovak National Party under its new leader Andrej Danko, since 2016 for the third time in government. However, to the right of the SNS, a new party which started as a movement in the 2000s, the L’SNS, or Kotleba party, has taken the place at the extreme end of the spectrum. This party continues to cultivate a complementary relationship to violent and extremist subcultures and anti-minority militias. Furthermore, in the Czech Republic, a new radical right party has been founded in 2015 and led by Czech-Japanese activist Tomio Okamura who is trying to offer a modernized version of a radical right party, in line with the French and Dutch counterparts the leaders of which he welcomed in Prague in December 2017 (see The Guardian 2017). Overall, in the last few years, there have been more changes in Eastern Europe than there have been in Western Europe with regard to radical right party and movement mobilization. In this light, the Eastern European radical right remains true to itself and continues its trajectory of fluidity and inconstancy.

‘Movement parties are transitional phenomena … ,’ observes Herbert Kitschelt in his conclusion (2006: 288). While this may be the case for most parties which qualify as movement parties, radical right parties diverge to some degree. They became stable, organizational structures but their opposition to the entire party system, along with their internal hierarchical structures and a strong leadership principle, keep them from ‘normalizing’. They are nudged towards a permanent politics of contention in the above sense. In many West European countries, these parties have in fact stabilized and built effective organizational structures which make them durable features of their countries party systems. Nonetheless, their programmatic outlook and strategic appeals remain confrontational, despite some ‘window dressing’, as in the case of Marine Le Pen’s strategy of de-demonization and her ‘new’ FN (see Akkerman and Roodujin 2015). This is even more so the case in Eastern Europe. Here, the parties that were analyzed – with the exception of the SNS and possibly Jobbik – have failed to build up stable organizational structures, their lifespan is relatively short and the field is until now constantly reconfiguring. They act as movements rather than parties.

These findings also have repercussions to the movement–party relationship. In Western Europe, the argument of the ‘different logics’ of the political left and right (Hutter 2014: 38–42, 116; see also Hutter et al.2018) so far holds, which means that the radical right parties are strong where the movement sector is weak. Because the radical right’s ideological and strategic orientations, as well as protest and electoral politics, do not easily coexist, they tend toward a ‘zero-sum’ situation (except in East Germany after 2015). This is different in Eastern Europe. As McAdam and Tarrow have shown for the US (2013), there is a tendency towards a ‘positive sum’ relationship, at least since the countries’ EU accession in 2004/07.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Michael Minkenberg is Professor of Comparative Politics at European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder), Germany. His research interests include the radical right in liberal democracies, the relationship between religion and politics in Western societies, and, most recently, the politics of architecture in capital cities. He published on these topics in journals such as Comparative Political Studies, West European Politics, Comparative European Politics, International Political Science Review, and the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies; his most recent book publication is The Radical Right in Eastern Europe: Democracy under Siege? (Palgrave 2017).