„Back to the National Roots? The Role and Impact of the Radical Right in Eastern Europe Today”

The research project which aims to analyze the significance of the radical right in Central- and Eastern Europe was granted funding by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation for a period of two years, starting in October 2016.

The project’s central research question is: how and to what degree did the radical right in Eastern Europe negatively affect the democratic quality in these countries? Is there a relationship between electoral strength and impact of the radical right, or do other parties’ strategies, such as maintaining or abandoning a cordon sanitaire between them and the radical right, play a more crucial role? Following the theories of multicultural democracy, democratic quality in the project is understood and measured by the status and rights of minorities, refugees and immigrants – this is what the radical right (defined by its populist and anti-liberal ultranationalism) fundamentally contests.

Under the direction of Prof. Dr. Michael Minkenberg, Chair of Comparative Politics, the project aims to answer the questions at hand by taking a comparative look at the interaction patterns of the radical right, most importantly but not exclusively in its manifestation as political parties, and other actors such as mainstream parties, civil society and the state. An analytical interaction model will be applied to a comparison of three groups of countries in Eastern Europe, which are distinct in terms of the strength and relevance of radical right parties and the strategic reactions of mainstream parties: (1) the Czech Republic and Estonia; (2) Bulgaria and Slovakia; (3) Hungary, Poland, Romania. By focused comparison of these three country groups, the project hopes to shed light on how and under what circumstances radical right mobilization becomes problematic for democratic quality.

The project is able to draw on an already existing research network in Eastern Europe which consists i.a. of Oľga Gyárfášová (Bratislava), Péter Krekó (Budapest), Zdenka Mansfeldová (Prague), Miroslav Mareš (Brno) and Cas Mudde (USA).

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