This article makes a case for reassessing what counts as pro- or anti-European identity. Over the past decade, the rise of radical right mobilisations has prompted many progressive social movement organisations and parties within the EU to anchor their activism in a defence of 'Europe' and in resistance to nationalist retrenchment - even while maintaining strong critiques of specific EU policies. At the same time, actors on the radical right also and increasingly claim a European identity, though one rooted in a markedly different and exclusionary understanding of what 'Europe' represents. The present study bridges party politics Europeanisation literature with work from the field of social movement studies to find a common conceptual framework that can capture the competing visions of this European identity. We construct a multi-level (across actor type, including political parties, social movements and individual activists), cross-country comparative case study that draws on focus groups, semi-structured interviews, party manifestos, movement campaign documents as well as online and offline publications to show how visions of Europe across party politics and the protest arena are symbolically constructed and utilised in response to the evolving dynamics of European politics and across political, cultural and economic dimensions.

This paper examines the normalization of the far right via the transnationalization of identities, networks and mobilization. Normalization is related to transformations in the socio-political landscape, and the travelling across borders of discursive strategies and practices of backlash political players play a role on it. Focusing on the crucial Italian case, first, we distinguish extent of far right transnationalization in terms of framing strategy, organizational contacts and networks, and events, underlining the existence of different paths toward the same outcome. Second, we apply these concepts to key cases of various types of far right organizations, tracing the trasnationalization processes of the political party Fratelli d'Italia (FdI), two radical right movements (GI Italia, and CasaPound) and one 'movement-party' (Forza Nuova). The findings, (i) underline the contextual political opportunities European integration provides for the transnationalization of the far right and (ii) identify distinct practices and processes of transnationalization across different types of actors. These aspects are fundamental to consider, as the far right's transnational alignment may lead to a stronger European far-right public sphere, in opposition to the one envisioned by the EU. We can call this normalization or mainstreaming. The study draws on an analysis of organisational documents, protest event data and interviews.

The transnationalization of the far right is a noteworthy and evolving phenomenon, characterized by extensive networks of actors, their collaborative activities and the exchange of novel ideas and frames. The emergence and cross-national spread of 'anti-wokeness' is a recent trend in the ongoing transnationalization process. As a concept to criticize the woke ideas while promoting the illiberal and conservative ones, anti-wokeness emerged in the United States during the 2010s, yet it has also been rapidly adopted by the political, social and intellectual actors in many European countries-among which France represents a paradigmatic case. This research note, which is a pilot study under a broader research project, investigates this cross-national spread of anti-wokeness and addresses the questions of why and how anti-wokeness as a popular frame of far-right politics has diffused from the United States to France recently. Drawing on the analysis of social media content and in-depth interviews with far-right/conservative figures, we propose an analytical framework that frames the spread of anti-wokeness as a phenomenon of the transnationalization of the far right through the cross-national diffusion of a master frame.

The Far Right is generally considered to be a significant phenomenon of the first two decades of the twenty first century, and it perhaps also represents the defining academic publishing phenomenon in political science and sociology over the same period. But what do we know about the transnationalization of the Far Right? While processes of transnationalization are well known and have long been studied in relation to left-wing, progressive actors, there is still a need for research to be carried out on how the Far Right responds to the challenges of transnationalization. This is true for both political parties and movements in an era such as the fourth wave of the Far Right, which has seen the emergence of increasingly hybrid actors on this side of the political spectrum. This chapter addresses these issues by using a number of concepts from the scholarship on social movement contention to look at the trasnationalization of different types of actors on the Right (including both political parties and non-party organizations).

This study focuses on right-wing populists (RWP) in power and their discourses and policy preferences on environmental issues. Through a content and frame analysis of electoral manifestos, party communication and semi-structured, in-depth interviews with party representatives, this paper examines whether ideological or contextual factors (political opportunities) determine RWP positioning on the environment. By focusing on the only three cases in Europe of RWP in government in a prominent position, i.e. alone or as a major coalition partner (also representing key ideological varieties of RWP), Law and Justice - PiS in Poland; Fidesz in Hungary and Lega in Italy, this study shows that ideological positions (and especially differences) are less important in determining RWP environmental discourses than are opportunities and institutionalization. Moreover, we also find that the shared features across these actors reflect a conditional, 'yes-but' environmentalism of these parties, embedded in the discourse of ecological modernization and oppositional, Manichean framing.

The radical right is on the rise all over Europe and beyond, either in terms of electoral success or activities outside the institutional arena, especially after the 2015 refugee crisis. Central and Eastern European countries are no exception, although not yet closely studied for radical right social movements and protest. In this article we investigate the degree and characteristics of the mobilisation of different types of radical right organisations (political parties and social movements alike) in Central and Eastern Europe to capture a broader picture of the current developments in radical right politics beyond elections and electoral campaign periods. By focusing on four countries (Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia), and combining qualitative and quantitative data derived from a protest event analysis reported in newspaper articles between 2008 and 2016 (for a total of 1587 events coded), we analyse the radical right mobilisation (i.e. intensity and degree of radicalism), linking it to the political opportunities and the organisational features of the groups mobilising. We argue that the radical right is using a very broad repertoire of action, beyond violence and the electoral arena, including expressive and symbolic strategies, as well as the use of new technologies like the Internet. We also stress that for the radical right, as for the leftwing social movements, the analytical framework of political opportunities and a resource mobilisation approach can help in explaining their mobilisation.

Abstract This chapter contributes to the knowledge of extreme-right radicalization in the CEE region, by exploring the mobilization of the extreme right (party organizations and not-party groups, including neo-Nazis and subcultural movements) in four Eastern European countries (Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, and the Czech Republic), online and offline. Without denying the importance of the electoral arena on the one hand and the use of violence on the other for the extreme right, this chapter argues that extreme right groups in Central and Eastern Europe use a broad(er) repertoire of action, including a strong presence online (for their radicalization), which varies across time and across country, depending on the combination of the specific contextual opportunities, as well as grievances (i.e. issues) and organizational factors. As this chapter shows, in the shadow of the Great Recession popular discontent is more likely to be transformed into radicalization on the Right—especially around immigration (and cultural identity conservative) issues related to the recent European economic and refugee crises. Moreover, right-wing extremist movements and groups, rather than displaying “irrational” or anomic behaviour, are examples of collective action facilitated or hampered by specific political/cultural and discursive opportunities at the local and national level.

Moving from a social movement perspective, this timely volume examines narratives on Euroscepticism and frames on Europe from below, at the party and social movement levels. Revealing perspectives from both the Right and the Left, it unpacks the emergence, re-emergence and increase in critical 'voices' and opposition towards Europe. Based on extensive fieldwork in two candidate countries for accession to the EU and three member states, it offers insight from analysis of focus groups, interviews with Eurosceptic and pro-European political actors and ordinary citizens, together with frame analysis and scrutiny of archival material, electoral manifestoes and organisational documents. Revealing the development of Eurocritical frames, it demonstrates the differences and similarities in narratives used to address Europe and the conceptualisation of Euroscepticism. Key cases examined include the rise of illiberalism in post-transition Slovenia; complex Euroscepticism in Poland; the path from strong support to harsh opposition in Italy; indecision over membership in North Macedonia; anticipating the future while revisiting the past in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Offering guidelines for the direction of future research and policy, European Narratives and Euroscepticism in the Western Balkans and the EU is essential reading for scholars and students of political sociology, political science, European studies and international relations, as well as policy makers concerned with trajectories pro and against Europe and the European integration process.

ABSTRACTAlthough images are very important for political actors and social movements, including the radical right (RR), empirical studies still rarely integrate visual material as relevant data for understanding radical right politics. This article outlines this new and growing field of research (i.e., visuality and the RR), critically reviewing existing studies from the perspective of both visual studies of social movements and contentious politics, which are rarely applied to the RR, and the methodology of working with images, offering empirical case studies (European and beyond) to illustrate the argument. The findings reveal the main functions of the use of visuals for the radical right, as well as the benefits (but also the challenges) of studying radical right politics through the lens of visual analysis. A conceptual framework is proposed to capture this dominant visual politics of the radical right. As shown, two dimensions emerge as the most theoretically relevant for the radical right: The discursive meaning of images (the story itself, telling the story, eliciting the story) and the communicative function of images (visual expression by the movement or others, visibility), which combine agency and addressee.

Mobilisations opposed to vaccinations and other Covid-19-related measures have dominated the protest arena in the recent years of the pandemic. Radical right collective actors, whether newly emerging or revitalised, have successfully shaped public discourses and gained significant roles on the streets and in party politics. This paper analyses the radical right (RR) mobilisation that takes place in response to the pandemic, looking at the main actors, demands and strategies behind protest events, and paying particular attention to the relationship between movements and parties. The analysis focusses on Italy and Hungary, two European countries characterised by favourable political opportunities for radical right mobilisation in recent years. The argument is that the pandemic offered a new window of opportunities for the empowerment of (new and old) radical right collective actors, leading, however, to different outcomes in terms of ‘movement–parties’ relations (or ‘movement–parties’ formation). The article draws on a mixed method approach including a protest event analysis based on newspapers and police records (2021–2022), comprising more than 300 events, and 30 in-depth interviews with radical right and anti-vax activists and leaders in both countries. The findings highlight that while health-related demands are the most important issues in both countries, the outcomes of such protests are different, both in terms of the intensity of radical right mobilisation (including violence) and in the movement–party relations. In the Italian case, the protest against vaccines gives birth to a strict division of labour or ‘conflict’ between RR movements (which remained the main actors of the street protest) and political parties (in institutions), while in Hungary the two sides are characterised by ‘cooperation’. These results demonstrate that in the two analysed countries, anti-vax and Covid-19-related protests have different impacts on national politics and the conflict arena, which require investigation of movement–party relations to be fully grasped.

This article investigates the emergence and diffusion of antipopulist mobilizations. Resembling the iconic image depicting a school of small fish chasing a big one, the Italian 6000 Sardine and the Finnish Silakkaliike (Herrings) emerged as two movements with antipopulist claims. Although the scholarship on populism is abundant, antipopulism remains mostly neglected, especially its mobilization from below. Drawing on extensive fieldwork including a groundedtheory approach applied to twenty-seven interviews with activists from these two movements, plus the analysis of offline and online organizational documents, this study shows the mechanisms—cognitive, affective and relational—of their national and crossnational diffusion, relating them to the opportunities of the context. Exploring the internal movement dynamics and actors’ perceptions and motivations, this study also contributes to the conceptualization of antipopulism from below, defining the main characteristics and the ideological underpinnings of these two antipopulist movements.

The article provides an analytical introduction to the Symposium devoted to Sidney Tarrow's "Movements and Parties. Critical Connections in American Political Development". First, it discusses the relevance of the book with regards to the Movement-Parties scholarship. Second, it presents the content of the Symposium, focusing on the main arguments developed by the various authors.

Several western European countries recently experienced the establishment of more than one populist actor in their party system. While we know how populists attack the political mainstream, we lack knowledge on how populists talk about other populist actors. Conducting content analysis of campaigning communication on Twitter and 23 interviews with populist MPs in Germany, Italy and Spain - countries characterised by the presence of various populisms - we find that populists demonise each other perceiving themselves as adversaries. Populists attribute a malicious and extremist character to the (populist) opponent when the latter is ideologically distant indicating the decisive role of host ideologies. Positive evaluations only occur by overlapping policy position. Some specificities emerge in Italy, where established populists behave more like the mainstream. Being populist as such does not unify political actors in the fight against the establishment: populists appear at least as hostile towards other anti-establishment parties as towards the mainstream.

This study aims to unpack the mobilization of emotions in the political discourse of populist and non-populist parties and above all, across 'varieties of populism' (right wing vs. left wing or hybrid). Is there an empirical connection between emotions and populism? Are all types of populisms alike with regards to the emotional appeals within their political discourse? Focusing on Italy as a crucial case for populist communication and using a novel methodological approach based on supervised machine learning, it systematically investigates the intensity and trends of specific emotions in political discourses (institutional and informal, i.e. leaders' speeches) of all Italian political parties over the last 20 years, for a corpus of more than 13,000 sentences analysed. The findings confirm that (i) populists tend to use more (and a broader repertoire of) emotional appeals than non-populist parties; however (ii) overall, there is an increase in the use of these appeals in the Italian political party discourse over time, especially in terms of negative emotions; and, most importantly, (iii) different types of emotions are mobilized by different types of populisms. Right wing populism mainly uses negative emotions while left wing or hybrid populism employs positive emotional appeals. The communication arena (party manifestoes vs. speeches) nevertheless does matter in the degree and types of emotions mobilized by political actors. This study identifies important implications for research on emotional appeals in politics, populist communication and political campaigning, and populist contagion from an emotion-based perspective.