The Populist Radical Right Beyond Europe

Abstract

The Populist Radical Right (PRR) is at the center stage of contemporary politics. While this party family was seen as a marginal electoral force in the 1980s and 1990s, the situation has dramatically changed since the 2000s. In fact, the PRR has been able to establish itself around the world, making the life of mainstream political parties increasingly difficult. The growing relevance of PRR forces at the global level has led to the proliferation of studies about them. Cumulative knowledge on this topic has been possible thanks to increasing academic agreement on how to conceptualize the PRR. In effect, despite the existence of different conceptual approaches, comparative politics scholars tend to employ the approach proposed by Mudde (2007), according to which there are three main defining attributes of the PRR: nativism, populism and authoritarianism. However, it is fair to say that studies on the PRR focus primarily on Europe. The main reason for this is that PRR forces emerged and consolidated in the European electoral arena much earlier than elsewhere. In fact, studies on the PRR beyond Europe have started to increase only recently, particularly with the rise of figures such as Trump in the United States in 2017 and Bolsonaro in Brazil in 2019, who are probably the two clearest examples of non-European, electorally successful PRR politicians. With the aim of contributing to broadening comparative studies of the PRR, this panel focuses on a set of cases beyond Europe. Based on a common analytical framework, the papers in this panel address each of the following three research questions: a) How does the PRR articulate authoritarian, nativist, and populist ideas? Do some of these ideological elements receive more attention? b) How does the PRR define the members of both “the pure people” and “the corrupt elite”? Is more emphasis given to the outgroup (“them”) than to the ingroup (“us”) distinction? c) Does the PRR employ other ideological tenets that go beyond the PRR’s three defining attributes? In other words, we are trying to answer whether it is possible to identify additional ideological elements that help advance a discourse that resonates with the dominant social grievances in the context in which the PRR operates?

Title	Details
The Populist Radical Right in Brazil: Jair Bolsonaro	View Paper Details
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP): The forgotten populist radical right party	View Paper Details
The populist radical right in contemporary Chile: the case of José Antonio Kast and the Partido Republicano	View Paper Details
Trajectories of Populism and the Future of Democracy in the Global South: A Comparative Study of Turkey and Brazil	View Paper Details