Mapping the trade policies of the radical right

The system of liberal international governance is under pressure. Scholars talk about the "globalization backlash", i.e., the precipitous decline in support for globalization. Radical right parties (RRP) have emerged as formidable players in the West European party landscape, partly owing to their mobilization of anti-globalization grievances in the electorate. While research has found EU-skepticism and anti-immigration policies to be core characteristics of RRPs, opposition to free trade has received less scholarly attention. The research that has been done on the trade policies of RRPs, either do not track the cross-temporal patterns of positioning on free trade, nor study systematically what about free trade they object to, or which trade policies they advance – i.e, what their opposition to free trade consists of. Moreover, if there is a backlash against globalization, this implies increased salience of free-trade critique as time progresses. In this paper we redress this gap in the literature by making an in-depth topic-mapping of RRP trade policies from 2000 to 2018 of RRPs in five European countries – Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Austria and Greece. Our sample allows us to study a crucial period in trade policy, including the TTIP and CETA-debates, Eastern enlargement of the EU and the growing relevance of trade and services and non-tariff trade barriers, as well as geographical variation over North, Central – and Southern Europe.