The Populist Radical Right: A Pathological Normalcy

In recent years more and more studies have pointed to the limitations of demand-side explanations of the electoral success of populist radical right parties. They argue that supply-side factors need to be included as well. While previous authors have made these claims on the basis of purely empirical arguments, this article provides a (meta)theoretical argumentation for the importance of supply-side explanations. It takes issue with the dominant view on the populist radical right, which considers it to be alien to mainstream values in contemporary western democracies – the ‘normal pathology thesis’. Instead, it argues that the populist radical right should be seen as a radical interpretation of mainstream…

• UF
  Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro