How the Radical Right has Changed the Welfare State in Europe and the USA

Radical right parties (RRPs) have been the most successful party family in the advanced capitalist democracies during the past three decades. Previous research has intensely studied the causes of their electoral rise, but we know very little about their consequences for the largest part of government spending and regulation: the welfare state. This is what the present book project investigates. The first aim is to identify how RRPs have influenced social policies when in government in Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and the USA (Trump administration), i.e. their social policy impact. The second aim is to explain cross-national variation in the social policy impacts of RRPs in government. My account argues that the institutional legacies of different welfare regimes play a crucial role in shaping the social policy priorities of PRRPs. This assumption builds on well-established insights about how previous policy choices create feedback mechanisms that influence the policy options perceived to be available to political parties. In short, the radical right’s social policy agenda cannot be understood without considering how radical right parties draw on historically evolved and nationally distinct ways of balancing capitalist markets and social protection.