Radical right parties are increasingly central actors in European democracies. This workshop examines them as both outcome and agent of societal change, connecting research on the socio-economic, cultural, and elite-driven determinants of their electoral success with research on their consequences for democratic institutions, norms, and processes. It aims to develop an integrated research agenda explaining radical-right success and its downstream political consequences. We welcome submissions reflecting the diversity of the ECPR research community in age, gender, ethnicity, and career stage, and encourage contributions covering a wide range of European regions.
Radical right parties are no longer confined to the opposition benches. They govern, or prop up governments, in Italy, Sweden, Finland and Slovakia, and are well-positioned to win or join power in France in 2027. In many cases, the radical right has become the dominant party on the political right. This shift demands scholarly attention, because the established literature was built to explain radical-right emergence and electoral success, not its consequences once in office.
Two literatures have developed largely in parallel. A demand- and supply-side tradition (Golder 2016; Mudde 2017) explains why voters turn to the radical right, treating radical right success as a dependent variable. The question is whether radical-right popularity is the result of cultural or economic factors – or a complex interaction of both. A separate, fast-growing literature on democratic backsliding (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018) documents institutional erosion but rarely isolates the radical right as a distinct causal mechanism, nor distinguishes its effects from those of executive aggrandizement.
This workshop closes that gap by treating the radical right as an outcome and agent of societal change, creating one research agenda spanning contemporary and historical cases across Western and Eastern Europe. The workshop welcomes quantitative, qualitative, historical, and mixed-methods contributions, with particular interest in research designs that clarify causal relationships and trace the mechanisms connecting radical-right success to societal and democratic change. With radical-right governance now a durable feature of European politics, the discipline needs a systematic account of its causes and its consequences for institutions and norms.
1: What explains the sustained electoral success of radical right parties?
2: How do economic and cultural demand- and supply-side drivers interact over time?
3: How does radical-right incumbency reshape democratic institutions and democratic backsliding?
4: How can mainstream actors constrain and moderate radical-right parties?
5: What are radical-right effects on democratic norms?
1: Demand-side drivers of radical-right support (socio-economic, cultural)
2: Supply-side and elite drivers: party strategy, media, mainstreaming
3: Historical and contemporary cases of radical-right electoral breakthrough
4: Radical-right participation in government and coalition dynamics
5: Effects of radical-right power on institutions, civil liberties, media freedom, and civil society
6: Mainstream party and civil society strategies in the face of radical-right success
7: New measures of democratic backsliding linked to radical-right rule
8: Causal identification strategies for radical-right causes and effects
