Institutional Roles and Radical Right-Wing Populism

How Proximity to Power Affects Party Discourse

Anna Heapy-Silander

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781040324363
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book examines how the proximity to government and different institutional roles–being in opposition, government or supporting a minority government–influence European radical right-wing populist (RRWP) parties' discourse.

Analysing case studies of different institutional roles – Finns Party (opposition), Fidesz (government) and the Danish People's Party (supporting a minority government) – the book presents how the framing of the RRWP's ideology and policies adapt to decision-making and power. It investigates whether there are alternative factors which better explain the possible changes in tone – such as domestic or foreign events – and finds that the party discourse is such a robust and identifying character of the RRWP parties that the different institutional roles do not moderate as previously thought.

This book is of key interest to scholars and students of the radical right, party politics, populism, policymaking and, more broadly, European and comparative politics.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Radical right-wing populist discourse, its moderation and radicalisation
• 2 What impacts radical right-wing populist parties’ behaviour in parliament?
• 3 Quantitative overview of RRWP parties’ discourse in Europe
• 4 Makeover or takeover?: How the rise of the nationalists changed the Finns Party
• 5 Fidesz: The governing party that is forgetting the people
• 6 Best of both worlds: Danish People’s Party
• 7 Comparing the three case studies
• Conclusion
• Appendix A Radical right-wing populist parties’ elections, institutional roles and coalition partners
• Appendix B CHES and POPPA datasets
• Appendix C PS codes in the order of frequency
• Appendix D Fidesz codes in the order of frequency
• Appendix E Fidesz Matrix coding
• Appendix F DF codes in the order of frequency
• Appendix G DF Matrix coding
• Appendix H Methodology
• Index