Radical Right: Voters and Parties in the Electoral Market

Description

During recent decades, radical right parties have been surging in popularity in many nations, gaining legislative seats, enjoying the legitimacy endowed by ministerial office, and striding the corridors of government power. The popularity of leaders such as Le Pen, Haider, and Fortuyn has aroused widespread popular concern and a burgeoning scholarly literature. Despite the interest, little consensus has emerged about the primary factors driving this phenomenon. The puzzle is to explain why radical right parties have advanced in a diverse array of democracies - including in Austria, Canada, Norway, France, Italy, New Zealand, Switzerland, Israel, Romania, Russia, and Chile - while failing to make comparable gains in similar societies elsewhere, such as in Sweden, Britain, and the United States. This book expands our understanding of support for radical right parties through presenting an integrated new theory which is then tested systematically using a wealth of cross-national survey evidence covering almost forty countries.

Pippa Norris is the McGuire Lecturer in Comparative Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Her work compares elections and public opinion, gender politics, and political communications. Companion volumes by this author, also published by Cambridge University Press, include A Virtuous Circle (2000), Digital Divide (2001), Democratic Phoenix (2002), and Rising Tide (2003), Electoral Engineering (2004) and Sacred and Secular (2004).

"Norris has written a masterful and comprehensive account of the rise of radical right voting in liberal democracies. She offers a dispassionate, scientific, and nuanced treatment of the perplexing surge of xenophobic politics in a wide range of societies that are otherwise stable and affluent. Anyone who wants to understand these developments must read this book." James Hollifield, Southern Methodist University "Radical Right by Pippa Norris should be high on the obligatory reading list for anyone wishing to understand the rise and dynamics of right-wing parties in Europe. Based on recent and cross-nationally inclusive data sets, it provides crisp answers to intensely debated questions in the burgeoning literature on its subject. At the same time, the book will give rise to new arguments and questions that open up avenues for further research." Herbert Kitschelt, Duke University "Pippa Norris has made an important contribution to our understanding of why radical right parties have achieved electoral breakthrough in a wide range of wealthy, democratic countries, while failing to breakthrough in others. This is, by far, the best and most comprehensive analysis of this puzzle, and is a new baseline for scholarly analysis. " Martin Schain, New York University "Radical Right is an important new contribution to the social sciences. Scholars from a variety of subfields and disciplines will gain critical insights into relationships between and among voters, party elites, electoral systems, and political institutions as a growing number of democracies struggle with high unemployment, globalization, increasing racial and ethnic diversity, and the social and political costs of legal and illegal immigration on native populations. Sociologists, political scientists, psychologists, and policy makers can learn much from Norrisa meticulous approach to an issue sure to become more salient in the future. " Carol Swain, Vanderbilt University Norris, an eminent Harvard expert in comparative democracy, explores why radical right-wing parties have enjoyed sustained success in some nations since 1990. Meticulously employing public opinion and election data, she dissects the experience of radical Right political movements in over two dozen nations. Balanced, careful, and thoughtful, Norris rejects more lurid claims about the radical Right. Highly recommended. Choice