School of Social and Political Science

Description

Radical right parties are no longer political challengers on the fringes of party systems; they have become part of the political mainstream across the Western world. 

This seminar talk from Philip Rathgeb discusses how they have used their political power to reform economic and social policies in Continental Europe, Northern Europe, Eastern Europe, and the USA. In doing so, it argues that the radical right's core ideology of nativism and authoritarianism informs their socio-economic policy preferences. However, diverse welfare state contexts mediate their socio-economic policy impacts along regime-specific lines, leading to variations of trade protectionism, economic nationalism, traditional familialism, labour market dualism, and welfare chauvinism. 

Combining insights from comparative politics, party politics, comparative political economy, and welfare state research, the seminar provides novel insights into how the radical right manufactures consent for authoritarian rule by taming the socially corrosive effects of globalised capitalism for key electoral groups, while aiming to exclude the rest from democratic participation.