The far right is rising worldwide, gaining widespread support and becoming part of domestic governments. It is also increasingly challenging international institutions and organisations. Their foreign policy preferences and strategies have only recently attracted scholarly attention, mainly under the rubric of 'populism'. Therefore, we are still unaware of the nature of far-right challenges to International Organizations, the far right’s strategic transnational cooperation, or their effect on the dynamics of international conflict. This workshop fosters dialogue between international relations and comparative politics researchers to systematically understand and evaluate the sources and implications of the international politics of the far right.
The workshop aims to advance explanations about the international politics of the far right. To do so, it engages with comparative politics and international relations debates having different key assumptions. First, the workshop aims to understand how far-right groups' 'thick' ideology matters for international politics, compared to the 'thin' ideology of populism. Disentangling these two notions will help determine the effects of far-right ideology on international institutions and how populist strategising serves as a tool to realise ideological preferences. Second, the workshop explores whether far-right actors’ positions and strategies vary according to specific global issues (migration, gender, or conflict behaviour), which helps us understand whether their preferences are rigid or have distinct patterns on different policy issues. Third, the workshop investigates the 'resilience' of international institutions to far-right challenges by inquiring about their adaptation or containment strategies to fundamental challenges. Studying institutional reactions to far-right politics reveals under what conditions their ideas become normalised or rejected. Fourth, it aims at exploring both broader patterns of cooperation (IO withdrawals, forum-shifting, etc.) and more piecemeal changes (funding, staffing, etc.) to understand the nature of the current 'crisis of multilateralism', of which the far right is a primary driver. Fifth, the workshop will examine how international developments affect the far right regarding its policy preferences, opportunities for contestation, and alliance formation. This workshop will provide essential insights into political dynamics more widely and constitutes a novel research agenda of interest for fields related to (and intersecting with) international relations and comparative politics.
Bibliography
Carnegie, Allison, Richard Clark, and Ayse Kaya. 2024. “Private Participation: How Populists Engage with International Organizations.” The Journal of Politics 86 (3). https://doi.org/10.1086/727595.
Castelli Gattinara, Pietro, Caterina Froio, and Andrea L. P. Pirro. 2022. “Far‐right Protest Mobilisation in Europe: Grievances, Opportunities and Resources.” European Journal of Political Research 61 (4): 1019–41. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12484.
Chiru, Mihail, and Natasha Wunsch. 2023. “Democratic Backsliding as a Catalyst for Polity-Based Contestation? Populist Radical Right Cooperation in the European Parliament.” Journal of European Public Policy 30 (1): 64–83. https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2021.1984546.
Chryssogelos, Angelos. 2017. “Populism in Foreign Policy.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics, by Angelos Chryssogelos. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.467.
Copelovitch, Mark, and Jon C. W. Pevehouse. 2019. “International Organizations in a New Era of Populist Nationalism.” The Review of International Organizations 14 (2): 169–86. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11558-019-09353-1.
Destradi, Sandra, David Cadier, and Johannes Plagemann. 2021. “Populism and Foreign Policy: A Research Agenda (Introduction).” Comparative European Politics 19 (6): 663–82. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41295-021-00255-4.
McDonnell, Duncan, and Annika Werner. 2019. International Populism: The Radical Right in the European Parliament. London: Hurst & Company.
Mudde, Cas. 2007. Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Raunio, Tapio, and Wolfgang Wagner. 2021. “Contestation over Development Policy in the European Parliament.” JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 59 (1): 20–36. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.13138.
Wajner, Daniel F, Sandra Destradi, and Michael Zürn. 2024. ‘The Effects of Global Populism: Assessing the Populist Impact on International Affairs’. International Affairs 100 (5): 1819–33. https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiae217.
1: Why and how do far-right foreign policy preferences differ from other groups?
2: Why and how do far-right foreign policy preferences differ from other groups?
3: What kind of strategies do they employ across different policy fields?
4: What effects can we observe on international institutions (design, policy output, and institutional resilience)?
5: How, in reverse, do international institutions shape the far-right’s international politics?
| Title |
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| Resilience in an Era of Far-Right Influence: How African States, the AU, and Non-State Actors Navigate Ideological Pressures in International Organizations |
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| Grievances, Conspiracy Theories and Social Exclusion in Northern Europe |
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| All on the Same Page? Comparing the China Strategy of European Far-Right Governments |
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| The Mainstreaming of Populist Discourse and Public Support for International Solidarity |
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| Redefining Security, Bordering the Regime: The Far-Right and the EU-NATO Organizational Overlap |
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| More Bark than Bite: Explaining RIght-wing Populist Foreign Policy in Comparative Perspective |
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| Transmission of Anti-Gender Radicalism within the Right-Wing Complex of the Visegrad Countries |
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| Turning towards climate? A qualitative analysis of climate policy preferences of European far-right parties today |
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| The impact of Radical Right Populist Parties on international cooperation policy |
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| Rising Nationalism, the Far Right and the Impact on International Organisation Resources |
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| New conservatives and the attack on multilateralism |
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| Engaging the enemy? IO social media communication, far-right contestation, and public resonance |
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| Friends or Foes? The Italian Far-Right and Russia Before and After the War in Ukraine |
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| Does the venue matter? The behaviour of far-right political parties in international parliamentary assemblies |
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| Far-right transnationalization: the example of the revolutionary movement Terza posizione |
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| Transnational networks of anti-gender activism: Same, same or widely different? |
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| Armed and Dangerous: International and Domestic Politics of Militia Groups |
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| ‘We want to roll back the Green Deal’ – The far-right Patriots for Europe and climate obstruction at the EU level |
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| Mapping CSDP support across the far-right spectrum in the European Parliament (EP) |
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| The influence of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine on the politics of the far-right in International Organisations |
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| Defending Consensus against the Bullies: The EU's Resilience against Populist Radical Right Governments During the COVID-19 Crisis |
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| The International Engagement of Far-Right Parties with Russia and China |
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