kai arzheimer

Course Outline/Readings

Introduction and central concepts	Mudde (2007 ch 1)
The Extreme Right before 1980	Blinkhorn (2000, 8–88), Prowe (1994)
The supply side: Authoritarianism, the Economy, and the EU	Lange (2007; Vasilopoulou 2011), background: (Rydgren 2005)
France/Belgium	FR: Mayer (2013), BE: Jamin (2012), background: (Hainsworth 2000)
Italy/Austria	IT: Bulli and Tronconi (2012), AT: Aichholzer et al. (2014), background: Ruzza and Fella (2009 ch.2), (Luther 2000)
Scandinavia/Germany	Scandinavia: Demker (2012), DE: Arzheimer (2015), background: (Sommer 2008)
Netherlands, Great Britain	NL: Bos and Brants (2014), GB: Ford and Goodwin (2014), background: Holsteyn and Irwin (2003; Ford and Goodwin 2010)
Greece, Switzerland	GR: Ellinas (2013), CH: Skenderovic (2012), background: (Ellinas 2012)
Ideology vs Protest	Brug (2003), Brug, Fennema, and Tillie (2000)
The Role of Religion	Arzheimer and Carter (2009; Zúquete 2008)
Immigrants	Rydgren (2008)

PDFs for all texts should be available through the reader system. Most of the articles are also available electronically on any computer connected to the university network (either on campus or via VPN).

Some relevant peer-reviewed journals

• Comparative European Politics
• Comparative Political Studies
• Comparative Politics
• Electoral Studies
• European Journal of Political Research
• Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies
• West European Politics

Articles from these journals should be available electronically on any computer connected to the university network (either on campus or via VPN).

I also maintain an extensive bibliography on the Radical Right.

Assessment

1. I expect you to come to class well prepared. If you don’t read the assigned texts, participation is pointless.
2. Even with a medical certificate, you may miss a maximum of two classes.
3. Assessment is based on your essay (- words). Your essay title/topic must be chosen from the list below
4. Plagiarism is the most serious academic offence. It is both morally and legally a form of fraud and will not be tolerated. Students who cheat in this way will be awarded a mark of zero.
5. Essays must be entirely students’ own work, and any passages from the work of others that are quoted directly, or paraphrased or summarised, must be acknowledged and accompanied by full references. Avoid internet sources as they are not normally peer-reviewed (it is of course absolutely ok to use the electronic version of an article from a peer-reviewed journal). If you absolutely have to use material from the internet, you must give the full URL and the date on which the website was accessed.
6. Essays must be typed on a computer. They must include an introduction and a bibliography (list of references) that adheres to bibliographic standards. The American Political Science Association’s style manual is a useful but verbose guide (http://www.apsanet.org/files/Publications/APSAStyleManual2006.pdf). The main points are summarised here: http://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/DocAPSA.html.
7. Essays are single-authored
8. As an alternative, you make work in teams of up to three students on a report for the President of the State Parliament of Rhineland-Palatinate (for administrative reasons, each team member still has to submit an individual copy of the report, and the main author of each section should be flagged up in the text).
9. The report should assess the problem of right-wing populism in Bourgogne, the Central Bohemian Region, the Opole Voivodeship, and Rhineland-Palatinate, with a special focus on parliamentary representation. It should also entail some recommendations for dealing with this problem politically. The length of the report should be no less than words.

Essay Titles

• Is the Radical Populist Right after 1980 really completely different from the old, interwar right?
• Why is there no successful Radical Rightwing Populist Party in Spain or Portugal?
• Why was the VB in Flanders so much more successful than the NF in Walloon?
• Is the AfD a Radical Rightwing Populist Party?
• Was there ever a chance to stop the rise of the Austrian FPÖ?
• How does UKIP fit into the Radical Rightwing Populist party family?
• How does the SVP fit into the Radical Rightwing Populist party family?
• Is populism a necessary condition for Radical Right-Wing success?
• Has the FN really changed under Marine Le Pen? If yes, how?
• OR: Write a report (see above) with one or two fellow students

Aichholzer, Julian, Sylvia Kritzinger, Markus Wagner, and Eva Zeglovits. 2014. “How Has Radical Right Support Transformed Established Political Conflicts? The Case of Austria.” West European Politics 37 (1): 113–37. doi:10.1080/01402382.2013.814956.

Arzheimer, Kai. 2015. “The Afd: Finally a Successful Right-Wing Populist Eurosceptic Party for Germany?” West European Politics 38: 535–56. doi:10.1080/01402382.2015.1004230.

Arzheimer, Kai, and Elisabeth Carter. 2009. “Christian Religiosity and Voting for West European Radical Right Parties.” West European Politics 32 (5): 985–1011. doi:10.1080/01402380903065058.

Blinkhorn, Martin. 2000. Fascism and the Right in Europe, 1919-1945. Harlow: Pearson.

Bos, Linda, and Kees Brants. 2014. “Populist Rhetoric in Politics and Media a Longitudinal Study of the Netherlands.” European Journal of Communication 29 (6): 703–19. doi:10.1177/0267323114545709.

Brug, Wouter van der. 2003. “How the Lpf Fuelled Discontent. Empirical Tests of Explanations of Lpf Support.” Acta Politica 38: 89–106.

Brug, Wouter van der, Meindert Fennema, and Jean Tillie. 2000. “Anti-Immigrant Parties in Europe: Ideological or Protest Vote?” European Journal of Political Research 37 (1): 77–102.

Bulli, Giorgia, and Filippo Tronconi. 2012. “Regionalism, Right-Wing Extremism, Populism. the Elusive Nature of the Lega Nord.” In Mapping the Extreme Right in Contemporary Europe. from Local to Transnational, edited by Andrea Mammone, Emmanuel Godin, and Brian Jenkins, 78–92. London; others: Routledge.

Demker, Marie. 2012. “Scandinavian Right-Wing Parties. Diversity More Than Convergence?” In Mapping the Extreme Right in Contemporary Europe. from Local to Transnational, edited by Andrea Mammone, Emmanuel Godin, and Brian Jenkins, 239–53. London; others: Routledge.

Ellinas, Antonis A. 2012. “LAOS and the Greek Extreme Right Since 1974.” In Mapping the Extreme Right in Contemporary Europe. from Local to Transnational, edited by Andrea Mammone, Emmanuel Godin, and Brian Jenkins, 124–39. London; others: Routledge.

———. 2013. “The Rise of Golden Dawn. the New Face of the Far Right in Greece.” South European Society and Politics 18 (4): 543–65.

Ford, Robert, and Matthew J. Goodwin. 2010. “Angry White Men: Individual and Contextual Predictors of Support for the British National Party.” Political Studies 58 (1): 1–25. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9248.2009.00829.x.

———. 2014. “Understanding Ukip. Identity, Social Change and the Left Behind.” The Political Quarterly 85 (3): 277–84. doi:10.1111/1467-923X.12099.

Hainsworth, Paul. 2000. “The Front National: From Ascendancy to Fragmentation on the French Extreme Right.” In The Politics of the Extreme Right. from the Margins to the Mainstream, edited by Paul Hainsworth, 18–32. London, New York: Pinter.

Holsteyn, Joop J.M. van, and Galen A. Irwin. 2003. “Never a Dull Moment: Pim Fortuyn and the Dutch Parliamentary Election of 2002.” West European Politics 26: 41–66.

Jamin, Jérôme. 2012. “Extreme-Right Discourse in Belgium. a Comparative Regional Approach.” In Mapping the Extreme Right in Contemporary Europe. from Local to Transnational, edited by Andrea Mammone, Emmanuel Godin, and Brian Jenkins, 62–77. London; others: Routledge.

Lange, Sarah L. de. 2007. “A New Winning Formula?: The Programmatic Appeal of the Radical Right.” Party Politics 13 (4): 411–35. doi:10.1177/1354068807075943.

Luther, Kurt Richard. 2000. “Austria: A Democracy Under Threat from the Freedom Party?” Parliamentary Affairs 53: 426–42.

Mayer, Nonna. 2013. “From Jean-Marie to Marine Le Pen: Electoral Change on the Far Right.” Parliamentary Affairs 66 (1): 160–78. doi:10.1093/pa/gss071.

Mudde, Cas. 2007. Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Prowe, Diethelm. 1994. “”Classic” Fascism and the New Radical Right in Western Europe: Comparisons and Contrasts.” Contemporary European History 3: 289–313.

Ruzza, Carlo, and Stefano Fella. 2009. Re-Inventing the Italian Right. Territorial Politics, Populism and “Post-Fascism”. Abingdon, New York: Routledge.

Rydgren, Jens. 2005. “Is Extreme Right-Wing Populism Contagious? Explaining the Emergence of a New Party Family.” European Journal of Political Research 44: 413–37.

———. 2008. “Immigration Sceptics, Xenophobes or Racists? Radical Right-Wing Voting in Six West European Countries.” European Journal of Political Research 47 (6): 737–65. doi:10.1111/j.1475-6765.2008.00784.x.

Skenderovic, Damir. 2012. “Challenging the Exceptionalist View. Favourable Conditions for Radical Right-Wing Populism in Switzerland.” In Mapping the Extreme Right in Contemporary Europe. from Local to Transnational, edited by Andrea Mammone, Emmanuel Godin, and Brian Jenkins, 209–24. London; others: Routledge.

Sommer, Bernd. 2008. “Anti-Capitalism in the Name of Ethno-Nationalism: Ideological Shifts on the German Extreme Right.” Patterns of Prejudice 42 (3): 305–16. doi:10.1080/00313220802204046.

Vasilopoulou, Sofia. 2011. “European Ingegration and the Radical Right. Three Patterns of Opposition.” Government and Opposition 46 (2): 223–44.

Zúquete, José Pedro. 2008. “The European Extreme-Right and Islam. New Directions?” Journal of Political Ideologies 13 (3): 321–44. doi:10.1080/13569310802377019.