Eroding Checks and Balances: Far-Right Parties and the Challenge to Liberal Democracy

Despite extensive research on the far right, little is known about the extent to which these parties support liberal-democratic principles in the fourth wave of far-right mobilization, an era in which they are integrated into mainstream politics and increasingly influential at national and transnational levels. This study argues that understanding the relationship between the far right and democracy requires systematic attention to parties’ discourse on institutional checks and balances, particularly constraints on executive power, judicial independence, and media freedom. Using Twitter data from official far-right party accounts collected by the AUTHLIB project (2006–2023), we employ computational text analysis to identify and quantify references to reforms in these three areas. We then model variation in support for liberal democracy as a function of party ideology, organizational characteristics, and governing experience. Our findings show that far-right parties generally oppose liberal-democratic norms, with opposition intensifying among older parties with government experience. These results challenge the notion that the far right becomes normalized in power and highlight the conditions under which such actors may hollow out democratic institutions from within.