The Far Right in Western Europe: “From the Margins to the Mainstream” And Back?

  • Beatriz Acha Ugarte Public University of Navarra
DOI: https://doi.org/10.18543/ced-59-2018pp75-97
Keywords: Far Right, mainstreaming process, migration, radicalisation

Abstract

This paper analyses the rise of the Far Right in Western Europe and the widespread political, social and scholarly concern due to the extremist parties’ recent electoral performances. It holds that, already since the late 1980s, we are witnessing a new (third) “wave” of right-wing extremism in several European countries —with some of these parties having already undergone electoral and political consolidation— and joins other contributions that approach the issue of their “mainstreaming” process. It presents some data on the Far Right’s electoral and political evolution, which seem to confirm that some mainstreaming did take place in the decades between the 1980s and the 2000s. However, more recently the immigration issue and the “refugees’ crisis” seem to have prompted the radicalisation of many (if not all) of these parties, and even of some parties which were not thought to be extremist. The paper reflects on this process of alleged radicalisation of the Far Right. The conclusion speculates on its future evolution and highlights future avenues for research.

Received: 23 February 2018
Accepted: 8 May 2018
Published online: 31 October 2018

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Author Biography

Beatriz Acha Ugarte, Public University of Navarra

Beatriz Acha Ugarte is BA in Political Science and Sociology and holds a Master’s degree in Social Sciences (Institute Juan March, Madrid). PhD in Law and Political Science (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid). She obtained her PhD from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Programme in Law and Political Science. She lectures at the Universidad Pública de Navarra, Faculty of Human and Social Sciences. She has worked in ar eas such as nationalism and regionalist parties, and has focused in the phenomenon of the Far Right and Right-Wing Extremism from a comparative perspective and also with a special attention to the German case. She has published on these topics, and belongs to different research groups which analyse the relationship between democracies and extremism. She is mainly concerned with the study of the emergence of new political parties and the transformation of Western European party systems.

Published
2018-10-31
How to Cite
Acha Ugarte, Beatriz. 2018. “The Far Right in Western Europe: ‘From the Margins to the Mainstream’ And Back?”. Deusto Journal of European Studies, no. 59 (October), 75-97. https://doi.org/10.18543/ced-59-2018pp75-97.
Issue
No. 59 (2018): The European Crisis of Politics: Ethnoreligious Pluralism and the Rise of Radical Populism and Far-Right in Europe
Section
Monographic Articles

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