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. While various social and political actors are attempting to counter the rise of the far right, they are also contributing to the mainstreaming of far-right ideas and accelerating democratic backsliding.

This project investigates the responses of political parties, civil society organisations and the media to the rise of far-right actors in different European countries. It focuses on the political and discursive opportunities that allow far-right ideas to take root in liberal democracies: How do political and social actors respond to the far right? What are the drivers and effects of different responses? Why have political and social actors successfully reduced the demand for far-right policies and resisted democratic backsliding?

The comparative analyses explore how different political and discursive opportunities in Europe have shaped both the rise and the decline of the far right. The research design includes countries with emerging, governing and declining far-right parties. The project employs a mixed-methods approach to analyse responses to far-right actors and agendas from four perspectives:

1. Mobilization: protest event analysis of counter-mobilisation against the far right

2. Context: automated text analysis and content analysis of dynamics in public debates

3. Motivation: interviews with media practitioners and politicians on the rationale behind different strategies

4. Effect: experiments to analyse the effects of different counter-strategies on public opinion

The project collects novel data based on (survey) experiments and semi-structured interviews. In addition, it uses the Poldem dataset covering 30 European countries to analyse protest dynamics and media data to analyse public debates.