What explains the success and failure of radical right parties over time and across countries? This paper presents a new theory of the radical right that emphasizes its reactive nature and views it as backlash against the political successes of minorities and concessions extracted on their behalf. Unlike approaches that focus on competition between the extreme and mainstream parties, my theory stresses the dynamics between radical right and non-proximate parties that promote minority rights (“bilateral opposites”). The model thus endogenizes issue salience and identifies coalition politics as a key mechanism that increases the salience of identity issues in political competition. The article finds supportive evidence for the theory’s key empirical implications using an original party-election-level data set covering all post-communist democracies over the past twenty years.
