Unmet expectations? The impact of the Coronavirus crisis on radical right populism in North-Western and Southern Europe

ABSTRACT

This article investigates the state of health of the populist radical right in North-Western and Southern European democracies after the outbreak of the pandemic. The research question is whether the Coronavirus crisis represents an enemy or an ally of populist radical right (PRR) parties in these European regions. The thesis put forward is that a priori, based on the copious literature of political sociology and political science on populism, there are four interrelated compelling reasons to argue that PRR parties can benefit from the pandemic. However, I show how the polls and the national elections held during the pandemic suggest the opposite, namely that populist radical right forces have overall found in the Coronavirus crisis a little more an enemy than an ally. Finally, I suggest four remarks on why we are facing this unexpected outcome.

KEYWORDS:

• European politics
• populism
• radical right populism
• Coronavirus
• crisis
• voting intentions

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Apart from the case of Switzerland, where two members of the Federal Council are SVP exponents. In Italy, the League has joined the new government chaired by Draghi in February 2021.

2 Lega and FdI have a very different history. The first was born as a regionalist party, and then transformed, under the leadership of Salvini, into a PRR party. The latter is a direct descendant of Alleanza Nazionale, which in turn was the heir of the Movimento Sociale Italiano, an open neo-fascist party of the First Italian Republic. So FdI maintains some line of continuity with the Italian fascist experience. However, it is possible that precisely the attempt to ridding itself of the fascist legacy and embracing the populist radical right script is swelling the ranks of Meloni’s party, while deflating those of Salvini’s one.

3 ‘Elitism’ and ‘pluralism’ should be acknowledged as the true opposites of populism (Mudde, 2017).