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date: 31 May 2020

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter examines the connections between the trajectory of the radical right in Italy, Spain, and Greece and the impact of the 2007 economic crisis and its aftermaths. The crisis sparked sweeping anti-political sentiments directed against the mainstream political actors that had been ruling these countries in recent decades, and which were held responsible for the disproportionate impact of the crisis on these countries. However, it is argued that distinctive supply-side and contextual political factors affected the relevance of radical right parties in the countries examined. Competition from new types of populist formations such as Podemos and the Five Star Movement limited the viability of the radical right in Italy and Spain, while in Greece the radical right emerged in association with conventional extreme right ideologies. In addition, in Spain a perception of migrants as less threatening and competition from ingrained ethnonationalist identities further limited the viability of the radical right.

Keywords: Italy, Spain, Greece, radical right, right-wing movements, 2007 financial crisis, populism

Carlo Ruzza

Carlo Ruzza is Professor of Political Sociology at the University of Trento, where he teaches courses on European and international politics. He has previously taught at the Universities of Leicester, Essex, and Surrey. His research interests focus on social movements, populism, and right-wing parties. He is also interested in advocacy processes at European level, which include a focus on the efforts of civil society groups to affect policy-making in areas such as European Union anti-discrimination policy and environmental policy. His book publications include Reinventing the Italian Right: Populism, Post-Fascism and Territorial Identity, with Stefano Fella (Routledge, 2009) and Europe ↵and Civil Society (Manchester University Press, 2007). His edited books include Europe’s Prolonged Crisis, coedited with H. Trenz and V. Guiraudon (Palgrave, 2015), and several volumes on EU politics. His journal publications include articles in the Journal of European Integration, Innovation, Theory and Society, Telos, West European Politics, International Journal of Sociology, European Political Science, Journal of Political Ideologies, Social Science and Medicine, and Policy and Society.

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