Radical Right Populism

Political Capital is a Budapest-based, independent political research and consultancy institute with a decade of experience, a strong international network and reputation. The basic values of the institute are parliamentary democracy and market economy. The institute's main fields of interest are political radicalism, extremism and its social background, conspiracy theories, prejudices, election research and Russian political influence within the EU. Political Capital has strong expertise in quantitative analyses.

Thanks largely to the Kremlin’s information war, Ukraine’s ultranationalists have become global media stars of a sort, depicted in Western and other reports as key players in Ukraine’s third major political upheaval in less than a quarter-century. How do we explain the paradox of ultranationalist parties becoming involved in a protest movement whose thrust is toward greater integration between Ukraine and the European Union? And are the fears that swirl around these parties justified?

Despite the vast amount of comparative research on right-wing populist parties over the past decade, there has been little work on non-European parties (as opposed to leaders). In this article, we argue that the international literature on populist parties has largely overlooked a significant non-European case: India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP – Indian People’s Party). Following the ideational approach to understanding populism, we examine whether the three distinguishing features of right-wing populism – its conceptions of “the people”, “elites” and “others” – are reflected in the views from interviews we conducted with BJP officials and representatives. We find that they are and so then consider whether they have been manifest in actions and statements while in power or whether, as some scholars claim, governing parties like the BJP moderate their populism. We conclude that the BJP can be very fruitfully included in comparative research on right-wing populist parties and propose a series of concrete ways in which this could be pursued.

"In the opinion of some historians the era of fascism ended with the deaths of Mussolini and Hitler in 1945; yet, the academic debate about its nature is as far from resolution as ever. Besides, a number of developments since 1945 make it ever more desirable that politicians, journalists, lawyers, and the general public can turn to "experts" for a heuristically useful and broadly consensual definition of the term. The novel post-war phenomena include: the emergence of a highly prolific European New Right, the rise of radical right populist parties, the flourishing of ultra-nationalist movements in the former Soviet empire, the radicalization of some currents of Islam and Hinduism into potent political forces, and the upsurge of religious terrorism. This book brings alive the intense controversy the topic has generated, while suggesting valuable heuristic strategies for resolving it. Twenty-nine academics, mostly German but including several prominent experts working in English, were invited by the journal "Erwaegen Wissen Ethik" to engage with an article by Roger Griffin, one of the most influential theorists in the study of generic fascism in the Anglophone world. The result is essential reading for all those who realize the need to provide the term "fascism" with theoretical rigour, analytical precision, and empirical content. The book will change the way in which historians and political scientists think about fascism, and make the discussion on the threat it poses to infant democracies like Russia more incisive not just for academics, but for politicians, journalists, and the wider public.
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS (with their affiliations as of 2004): David Baker, Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Warwick; Jeffrey M. Bale, Assistant Professor of International Policy Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, California; Tamir Bar-On, Professor of Politics and Sociology at George Brown College at Toronto; Alexander De Grand, Professor of History at North Carolina State University; Martin Durham, Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Wolverhampton; Roger Eatwell, Professor of European Politics at the University of Bath; Peter Fritzsche, Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; A. James Gregor, Professor of Political Science at the University of California at Berkeley; Roger Griffin, Professor in the History of Ideas at Oxford Brookes University; Siegfried Jäger, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of Duisburg-Essen; Klaus Holz, Director of the Evangelisches Studienwerk e.V. at Villigst, Nordrhein-Westfalen; Aristotle Kallis, Lecturer in European Studies at Lancaster University; Melitta Konopka, social psychologist at Bochum; Walter Laqueur, Professor Emeritus of History at Georgetown University, Washington, DC; Werner Loh, Research Fellow in Social Sciences at the University of Paderborn, Nordrhein-Westfalen; Bärbel Meurer, Professor of Sociology at the University of Osnabrück; Philip Morgan, Senior Lecturer in Contemporary European History at the University of Hull; Ernst Nolte, Professor Emeritus of Modern History at the Free University of Berlin; Kevin Passmore, Lecturer in History at the University of Cardiff, Wales; Stanley G. Payne, Hilldale-Jaume Vicens Vives Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Friedrich Pohlmann, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau; Karin Priester, Professor of Sociology at the University of Münster; Sven Reichardt, Junior Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Konstanz; David D. Roberts, Albert Berry Saye Professor of History at the University of Georgia; Alfred Schobert, Research Fellow in Social Sciences at the Duisburger Institut für Sprach- und Sozialforschung; Robert J. Soucy, Professor Emeritus of History at Oberlin College, Ohio; Mario Sznajder, Leon Blum Professor of Political Science at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Andreas Umland, DAAD Lecturer in German Studies at the National Taras Shevchenko University of Kyïv; Leonard Weinberg, Foundation Professor of Political Science at the University of Nevada; Jan Weyand is a Research Fellow in Sociology at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg; Wolfgang Wippermann, Professor of Modern History at the Free University of Berlin."