Book Review: The Populist Radical Right: A Reader Cover Image

Book Review: The Populist Radical Right: A Reader
Book Review: The Populist Radical Right: A Reader

Author(s): Marianna Dudášová
Subject(s): Book-Review
Published by: Univerzita Mateja Bela
Keywords: book review;populist radical right;far-right parties;far-right politics;

Summary/Abstract: Cas Mudde is the leading authority for the research on contemporary populist radical right parties, currently the dominant form of far-right politics in Europe and the most studied party family in political science. In the 1980s, a new group of far-right parties emerged in Western Europe. These parties were able to mobilize people based on their political discontent without being stigmatized as being outright anti-democratic. Contrary to their fascist and traditional extreme right predecessors, they did not oppose the democratic constitutional order per se; however, their political doctrine was profoundly anti-liberal. Thus, attempts to find a new name for this party family and to define its ideological core intensified. An internationally acclaimed concept was introduced by C. Mudde in his seminal work Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe (2007), where he argues that these parties share a core ideology that includes a combination of (at a minimum) nativism, authoritarianism and populism. Mudde´s well-reasoned conceptual framework has gained widespread endorsement in the field. His definition of populist radical right (PRP) ideology and classification of populist radical right parties (PRRPs) has informed a significant part of the relevant scholarship on this topic.

  • Issue Year: 21/2018
  • Issue No: 4
  • Page Range: 208-214
  • Page Count: 7
  • Language: English