The Rise of Right-Wing Populism in EU. A comparative analysis between the West and the East

Abstract

Nowadays, the financial crisis of 2008, the globalization and the Syrian refugee crisis inter alia have enabled right-wing populist and Eurosceptic political forces to rise, putting the democratic, liberal and European values at stake. Moreover, these parties are now considered mainstream and so do their ideas. Inspired not only by the electoral success of Radical Right Populist Parties (RRPPs), but also from their normalization, this thesis tries to answer why they have been so successful in the 21st century. To answer this question, this thesis identifies some of the cultural, economic, and political factors that are supposed to fuel the rise of Right-Wing Populism and measures their relative importance through panel data analysis, using as case studies twenty-five European countries where RRPPs have entered the national parliament (twenty-two EU member-states, United Kingdom, Switzerland and Norway). The dependent variable, RRPPs’ electoral success in European countries’ national elections, is measured against GDP, unemployment, immigration, corruption, and globalization in three different panels focusing on the whole of EU, Western and Eastern Europe respectively. The results of the panel data analysis showed that immigration fuels the electoral success of RRPPs both in the whole of EU and the region-focusing panels (Western and Eastern Europe), while the impact of the economic factors varies. Finally, corruption and globalization generally fuel RWP in Western Europe and the whole of EU, while they do not affect the electoral success of RRPPs in Eastern Europe.