The Far Right and Democratic Backsliding: Responses from Political Parties, Civil Society, and the Media
Far-right parties have made significant electoral gains in many Western democracies. Political parties, civil society organisations, and the media respond to this development in different ways, ranging from opposition and counter-mobilisation to accommodation and the normalisation of far-right actors and ideas. Yet we still know comparatively little about what shapes these responses and their consequences.
This project investigates how political and societal actors respond to the far right and how political and discursive contexts shape these responses. It asks: How do political parties, civil society organisations, and media actors respond to far-right actors and agendas? What motivates different response strategies? How do political and discursive opportunities shape these responses and their consequences?
The project develops the empirical and methodological foundations for the comparative study of responses to the far right in Europe. It combines three perspectives:
- Mobilisation: protest and mobilisation against the far right.
- Context: computational and qualitative text analysis of public and parliamentary debates.
- Motivation: semi-structured interviews examining how media practitioners understand and select different response strategies.
The project combines newly collected interview data with protest event analysis and computational analyses of mass media, social media, and parliamentary speech. Through this multi-method approach, it provides new comparative evidence on how responses to the far right emerge, vary across contexts, and shape political and public debate.