VOLLTEXT

ABSTRACT: West European right-wing extremist parties have received a great deal of attention in the academic literature over the past two decades due to the success that many of these actors have experienced at the polls. What has received less coverage, however, is the fact that these parties have not enjoyed a consistent level of electoral support across Western Europe in this period. This paper seeks to put forward an account for the variation in the right-wing extremist party vote across Western Europe that incorporates a wider range of factors than have been previously considered. It begins by examining the impact of socio-demographic variables on the right-wing extremist party vote. Then, in a second section, it turns its attention to a whole host of structural factors that may potentially affect the extreme right party vote. These include institutional variables, party system variables and conjectural variables. The paper concludes with an assessment of which variables have the most power in explaining the uneven electoral success of right-wing extremist parties across Western Europe. The findings go some way towards challenging the conventional wisdom as to how the advance of the parties of the extreme right may be halted.

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