Understanding the Rise of the Radical Right - Detailseite

Inhalt (short abstract):

Over the past decades, the radical right has been on the rise worldwide, creating challenges to democratic governance. In this seminar, we will investigate the drivers of radical right support, the consequences of their success, as well as responses by civic society to foster democratic resilience. Our focus will be on quantitative research on Europe and North America.

The seminar is split into four parts. The first part will give a brief overview of core concepts and definitions that will guide us throughout the course. This will involve a discussion of ideological features that characterize the radical right as well as the issues they campaign on.

The second part will cover the causes of far right success. Here, we will cover demand-side explanations involving classic theories of voting behavior, as well as supply-side explanations with a focus on theories of political competition. Here, we will examine what strategies radical right parties employ and how mainstream party reaction affects their electoral fortunes. 

The third part will give an extensive overview of consequences of radical right success on democratic governance and civic society. We will analyze how they affect democratic governance, other parties’ positions, as well as public opinion. 

The fourth part engages with a growing literature on interventions that are aimed at bolstering democratic resilience. 

The seminar is designed to familiarize students with seminal contributions in the theoretical and empirical literatures on voting behavior, political competition and democratic governance that help understand the rise of the radical right.

Einführende Literatur:

• Jens Rydgren (2007). “The Sociology of the Radical Right”. In: Annual Review of Sociology 33.1, pp. 241–262
• Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser (2017): “Populism: A Very Short Introduction” Oxford: Oxford University Press
• Kai Arzheimer (2017). “Explaining Electoral Support for the Radical Right”. In: The Oxford Handbook of the Radical Right. Ed. by Jens Rydgren. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Apart from weekly participation in and preparation (readings) for the seminar, students will be expected to write a research proposal and submit a final term paper.

Requirements:

Students’ willingness to engage with quantitative research and methods is necessary. We will focus on quantitative research. Familiarity with descriptive and inferential statistics (e.g., at the level of Statistik I+II) is therefore strongly recommended. The general language of communication is English.