Cohort: POLS 40
Topic of the thesis: A Tale of Two Rights: Distinguishing European Radical and Extreme Right Parties via Ideology, Political Behavior, and Computational Analysis.
Abstract: This This project investigates the European radical and extreme right through five interrelated studies, each designed to build on the other in order to construct a coherent doctoral thesis. The central concern is whether radical-right parties (RRPs) and extreme-right parties (ERPs) should be understood as two distinct political families or whether, as some scholars suggest, they form a continuum that justifies the use of the umbrella term "far right." Cas Mudde's conceptualization (1996; 2000; 2007) provides the starting point for distinguishing radical from extreme, but recent attempts by Gattinara and Pirro (2024) to collapse both into the broad label of "far right" risk blurring analytically meaningful boundaries. Thus, the overarching question of the thesis is: can radical and extreme right parties in Europe be considered distinct political families across ideology, programmatic content, systemic opportunities, parliamentary behavior, and organizational networks, or are they better understood as a continuum?
The five studies that compose the dissertation answer this question progressively. The first study provides the theoretical foundation; the second examines programmatic distinctions in manifestos; the third analyzes systemic and institutional conditions for ERP breakthrough in national assemblies; the fourth investigates how ERP presence shapes RRP behavior in parliamentary arenas; and the fifth explores organizational and transnational networks.
Taken together, the five studies offer a comprehensive examination of radical and extreme right parties in Europe. They move from conceptual and theoretical clarity (Study 1) to programmatic expression (Study 2), to systemic opportunity structures (Study 3), to parliamentary behavior (Study 4), and finally to organizational networks (Study 5). Each article stands independently, but collectively they answer the central research question: radical and extreme right parties are not reducible to a single "far-right" family. They differ conceptually, programmatically, structurally, behaviorally, and organizationally. Yet they also interact dynamically, influencing one another across arenas. The thesis thus demonstrates both the necessity of distinguishing them and the importance of studying their interconnections to fully understand the contemporary European right.
Research interests: Political Parties, Political and Electoral Behavior, Political Extremism, Political Violence, Political Communication, Social Media, Network Analysis, Spatial Analysis, Quantitative Studies
Graduated from: Università degli Studi di Milano
Degrees obtained: BA in Political Science (Curriculum: Storia e Cultura Politica); MA in Public and Corporate Communication (Curriculum: Data Analytics for Politics, Society and Complex Organizations)
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