Radical Right Parties and Welfare Issues in Western Europe. A New Winning Formula?

Literature has stressed that the rise and strengthening of Radical Right Parties have occurred concomitantly with the globalization process, which has brought new challenges to the European welfare states. This paper aims at exploring the extent to which welfare issues have played a crucial role in the electoral success of RRPs in Europe, in the light of new exogenous pressures on the welfare state – i.e., international integration, post industrialization economy, growing immigration flows. Toning down their market liberal rhetoric and employing a welfare-friendly approach but shaped in an ethnocentric fashion, RRPs have appealed to that constituency which no longer trusts that left-wing parties can guarantee their traditional social security channels. Focusing on the case of Italian Lega Nord and French Front National, the work will try to bring the comparative historical analysis and the quantitative method into a mutual dialogue, combining Comparative Manifesto Dataset and mass surveys.