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Movement Parties of the Far Right: Organisation, Processes, and Mobilisation

Political Leadership
Political Parties
Political Activism
Pietro Castelli Gattinara
Université Libre de Bruxelles
Pietro Castelli Gattinara
Université Libre de Bruxelles
Andrea L. P. Pirro
Università di Bologna

Abstract

Traditional political parties are on the wane. Newer populist and far-right actors are, on the other hand, exerting ever-growing influence on the public sphere and political participation. The fortunes of the latter have been often attributed to the introduction of unconventional methods into politics. While the unorthodoxy of their formula is mostly assessed through their performance in the electoral arena, very little attention has been paid to the ‘production structure’ of these actors. Instead, we contend that the decisions pertaining to the internal arrangements and the extra-parliamentary mobilisations of the far right are absolutely crucial for their success and failure, in and out of the polls. With this project, we focus on the organisation and strategies of a specific subset of populist and far-right actors, i.e. ‘movement parties’. We tackle movement parties as political organisations that run for public office but uphold the seemingly looser structures, procedures, and practices of social movements. The aim of our study is to unveil those arrangements and choices underlying their idiosyncratic modus operandi in the protest and electoral arenas, and understand how they address the dilemma of transition from movement to party combining comparative evidence from Eastern and Western as well as Northern and Southern Europe.