Far-Righting the Mainstream: Endogenous Drivers of Reactionary Shifts in Western Party Politics

Research on the relationship between the far right and the mainstream has predominantly focused on how far-right electoral success exerts external pressure on mainstream parties, leading them to accommodate far right frames and policies. While this literature has provided important insights on party competition, it underplays the agency of mainstream actors. This paper advances a new research agenda centred on “far-righting the mainstream”. Rather than treating far-right ideas as exogenous imports, we foreground the endogenous ideological, institutional, and state-centred dynamics through which mainstream parties actively shape, legitimise, and implement reactionary frames and policies. By reconceptualising the mainstream as a productive site of far-right politics, this article moves beyond accommodation-based explanations and offers a framework for analysing democratic regression and authoritarian drift in contemporary party systems.