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The Conservative Party's survival as a significant political force was now open to serious question for the first time since the crisis over the Corn Laws. The Labour Party has commanded a fairly consistent level of attention, whether in office or in opposition. But it seems that the Conservatives are fated to be regarded either as unavoidable or irrelevant. This book presents an analysis that suggests that the party leader plays a less important role in Conservative recoveries than a distinctive policy programme and an effective party organization. It examines the Conservative position on a series of key issues, highlighting the difficult dilemmas which confronted the party after 1997, notably on economic policy. New Labour's acceptance of much of the main thrust of Thatcherite economic policy threw the Conservatives off balance. The pragmatism of this new position and the 'In Europe, not run by Europe' platform masked a significant move towards Euro-skepticism. The book also traces how the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Parties adapted to the creation of the Scottish Parliament, exploring the re-organisation of the Scottish party, its electoral fortunes and political prospects in the new Scottish politics. It examines issues of identity and nationhood in Conservative politics in the 1997-2001 period, focusing on the 'English Question' and the politics of 'race'. The predictable results of the Conservatives' failure to develop an attractive, consistent narrative are then analysed. Right-wing populist parties with charismatic leaders enjoyed some electoral success under the proportional representation systems in 2002.
legislation in place. We present the states in the order in which they established regulations. Readers will note that Hungary, on which we reported in the first edition, is absent in this chapter in this second edition. This is because in 2011, under the leadership of the right-wing populist party Fidesz, the country abandoned its lobbying law, which had previously been in enacted in 2006. We examine the following countries in turn: Lithuania, Poland, Taiwan, Australia, France and Israel. Lithuania Lithuania is located on the south-eastern shores of the Baltic Sea
, disfranchisement and a lack of political representation. With right-wing populist parties being on the rise everywhere in Europe, politicians, journalists and scholars have become dedicated to diagnosing a crisis of democracy. With this book we offer an in-depth perspective on the theme of democracy in crisis through the prism of wolf politics in early twenty-first-century Eastern Germany. Investigating fringe political movements, the political agitation against both migrants and wolves, the perspectives of Eastern German hunters, farmers, rioters and self-appointed saviours of
readership that provides a full assessment of the Lega Nord's (LN – Northern League) fundamental features since its founding by Umberto Bossi in 1991 and up to 2012, when he had to relinquish its leadership. One of the oldest right-wing populist parties in western Europe, and one that has accumulated considerable experience in government at both national and subnational levels, the LN has much to teach us (and other parties) about how populists can achieve rootedness and success. It is an example of how populists are not simply “challengers”, as is often wrongly assumed by
electorate. 48 In Finland we see the same tendency: 75 percent of the members of the populist Finns Party are men, so are the majority of its voters. 49 In the Netherlands in March 2019 the right-wing populist party Forum voor Democratie became the largest party in the election for the provincial councils and the Dutch Senate. The great majority of its voters – 64 percent – were men. The age groups 35–64 and older were overrepresented. Young voters were underrepresented. 50 The question is why? One explanation is that young voters are more open and mobile than older
psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, escape these we–they oppositions. However, these antagonistic feelings need not result in ‘fighting’, but may be transformed into talking and voting, that is, mechanisms for resolving the inevitable tensions that are part of the human condition. In her book On the Political (2005), Mouffe analyses how the disappearance of ideology has had the consequence that the citizenry has no one with whom to identify. This, in Mouffe’s view, is one of the reasons for the rise of right-wing populist parties such as the National Front in Britain and Pauline
a story of American exceptionalism? Or should we instead focus on the many similarities and overlaps between the Trump campaign and the right-wing populist parties in Europe? Is il liberalism spreading as part of a process of change taking place across much of the developed world? The Afterword considers this. Four further points should be added about the book. First, there are inevitably extensive overlaps and crossovers between the different chapters. Ideas and ‘material’ processes always interact. Much will be said about voters during the discussion about
-wing and a right-wing populist party governing together. The first to introduce this model was Greece, but here the coalition was completely dominated by the left-wing Syriza party. 17 This was not the case in Italy. In the parliamentary election of 4 March 2018 the left-wing populist Five Star Movement got 227 seats (32 percent of the vote) and the far-right populist Lega got 125 seats (17 percent of the vote). Did the far-right Lega suffer from its participation in government? Lega leader Matteo Salvini, who was interior minister, conducted an aggressive anti
particularly true of right-wing populist parties, which are often characterized by nationalism, racism, and xenophobia. “By ‘nationalism’,” wrote George Orwell, “I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests … Nationalism … is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own
to develop their ‘culture of condescension’, and the cycle of devaluation continues. For those people sympathising with the offers made by right-wing populist parties, democracy in fact is in crisis; not because of the rise of a phenomenon academic observers call right-wing populism but because the voters for these splinter parties feel politically unheard and ignored in their needs – in their community, in Germany and in Europe. Hence the phrase ‘cruel optimism’ as integral to the promise of representative democracy: the promise of power of the people – a