Professor Marco Tarchi.

Prof. Tarchi: The Legacy of Fascism Continues to Structure Political Conflict in Italy

by Editor’s ChoiceEuropean ObservatoryHomeInterviews

In this ECPS interview, Professor Marco Tarchi offers a nuanced interpretation of Italy’s recent referendum defeat, arguing that the outcome reflects not merely institutional disagreement but a deeper political conflict shaping democratic contestation. Rather than a technical rejection of judicial reform, the vote became a broader judgment on government authority, where competing visions of democracy—majoritarian mandate versus constitutional constraint—collided. Professor Tarchi underscores how political narratives, rather than policy details, drove voter behavior, with opposition forces successfully framing the reform as a threat to institutional balance. At the same time, he highlights the enduring role of historical memory and ideological legacies in structuring contemporary debates, while emphasizing that the result ultimately reveals both the resilience of Italy’s constitutional order and the limits of governing authority in a polarized political environment.

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has suffered her first major political setback after voters rejected her proposed judicial reform in a referendum, with around 54% voting “No.” Although framed as a technical institutional change, the vote quickly evolved into a broader judgment on her government, revealing growing political vulnerability ahead of next year’s general election. High turnout—close to 60%—underscored strong public engagement, yet failed to deliver the mandate Meloni sought. Opposition forces have seized on the result as evidence that she can be defeated, while analysts suggest the loss has weakened her image of political invincibility and complicated her wider constitutional ambitions, including proposals to strengthen executive authority. Amid economic pressures, geopolitical tensions, and escalating rhetoric toward the judiciary, the referendum signals a more competitive and uncertain political landscape.

Answering written questions from the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Marco Tarchi, Professor Emeritus at the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Florence, offers a sharply contextualized reading of the outcome—one that shifts attention away from institutional technicalities toward the primacy of political conflict and historical memory. For Professor Tarchi, the referendum cannot be understood as a straightforward assessment of judicial reform. Rather, it was “heavily influenced by the political conflict between the center-right government and the center-left opposition,” a confrontation that “overshadowed the discussion on the specific content of the reform.”

At the core of this conflict lies a deeper struggle between competing conceptions of democracy and legitimacy. The government framed the reform as the fulfillment of an electoral mandate—“a commitment to those who had granted it the legitimacy to govern”—thus advancing a majoritarian understanding of democratic authority. By contrast, opponents invoked the limits of the rule of law and the post-fascist constitutional order, effectively denying that “the people [are] the ultimate and primary source of government legitimacy” when institutional balances are at stake. In this sense, the referendum crystallized a long-standing tension between popular sovereignty and constitutional constraint.

Crucially, Professor Marco Tarchi situates this tension within Italy’s enduring historical framework, noting that “the appeal to anti-fascism has certainly served to mobilize left-wing voters” and continues to influence political contestation, particularly given the post-fascist lineage of Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia, FdI). In this respect, historical memory operates not merely as rhetorical strategy but as a durable structuring force in contemporary Italian politics.

Far from signaling institutional fragility, however, Professor Tarchi interprets the outcome as evidence of systemic resilience: the referendum demonstrates that popular will can “grant a mandate” but also “revoke it,” reaffirming the solidity of Italy’s constitutional architecture. Yet politically, the message is unmistakable. What prevailed, as he concludes, was “a purely political conflict”—one that has re-opened Italy’s competitive political arena and exposed new limits to governing authority.

Here is the edited version of our interview with Professor Marco Tarchi, revised so slightly to improve clarity and flow.

Green ballot paper for Italy’s constitutional referendum.
Green ballot paper for Italy’s constitutional referendum on judicial reform, with pencil. Photo: Michele Ursi / Dreamstime.

The Referendum Reflected a Politicized Clash, Not a Technical Judgment

To what extent should the recent referendum defeat be interpreted not simply as a rejection of a specific judicial reform, but as a broader refusal of an attempt to redefine the constitutional equilibrium between popular mandate and judicial autonomy?

Professor Marco Tarchi: It should be noted that the referendum result was heavily influenced by the political conflict between the center-right government and the center-left opposition, which overshadowed the discussion on the specific content of the reform. The issue of the constitutional balance between the popular mandate and the autonomy of the judiciary was raised by the opposition to accuse the government of seeking an authoritarian shift—an accusation obviously rejected by those who had voted for the reform in Parliament. The referendum result demonstrates that supporters of the “No front” succeeded in convincing a majority of the electorate that the reform would alter this balance.

In your view, what does this referendum reveal about the political risks that populist-led governments incur when they seek to transform anti-elite rhetoric into concrete institutional engineering?

Professor Marco Tarchi: Since I don’t consider the Meloni government populist, this question makes no sense to me.

Opponents Denied That Popular Mandate Alone Could Justify Institutional Change

The Meloni government presented the reform as a necessary correction to judicial corporatism, while its opponents depicted it as a threat to the post-fascist architecture of checks and balances. How should we understand this clash of narratives in light of competing conceptions of democracy, sovereignty, and the rule of law?

Professor Marco Tarchi: In the Meloni government’s view, the reform—having been included in the program presented to voters in 2022—constituted a commitment to those who had granted it the legitimacy to govern. It thus reflected a substantive interpretation of the concept of democracy, one also implicit in the use of a popular referendum to approve or reject choice made by the parliamentary majority.

Opponents, however, invoked the limits of the rule of law and, in this case, denied the government the right—despite its adherence to parliamentary procedures—to alter the existing balance of power. In doing so, they signaled that they do not regard the people as the ultimate and primary source of governmental legitimacy.

Does the outcome suggest that, in Italy, the judiciary still retains a distinctive symbolic status as a constitutional counter-power, such that reform projects in this domain are almost inevitably judged through the prism of democratic suspicion?

Professor Marco Tarchi: “Democratic suspicion” toward the reform was expressed only by opposition parties and the association representing the judiciary, which proved to be a de facto political counter-power, significantly contributing to the referendum result.

References to Anti-Fascism Will Continue to Shape Opposition Strategy

Giorgia Meloni.
Giorgia Meloni, Prime Minister of Italy and leader of the Fratelli d’Italia party, speaks at an electoral rally ahead of the national elections in Turin, Italy, September 13, 2022. Photo: Antonello Marangi / Dreamstime.

To what extent did the referendum confirm that constitutional politics in Italy remains deeply shaped by historical memory, particularly the legacy of fascism, anti-fascism, and the constitutional settlement designed to prevent the concentration of power?

Professor Marco Tarchi: The appeal to anti-fascism has certainly served to mobilize left-wing voters, but it has already been used on numerous other occasions since the creation of the Meloni government, due to the post-fascist ideological affiliation of Fratelli d’Italia, and will most likely continue to be used by the opposition to counter the government’s actions in many other areas.

How far can this vote be read as a test of the limits of majoritarianism in contemporary Italy—namely, the point at which electoral strength ceases to confer legitimacy for altering institutions intended to restrain executive dominance?

Professor Marco Tarchi: This vote demonstrates that the concept of popular will can be used either to grant a mandate to transform the institutional structure—as happened in the 2022 elections—or to revoke it, as in the referendum.

Majoritarian Reform Has Occurred Before Without Any Populist Label

How does the politicization of judicial reform in this case illuminate the tension between majoritarian conceptions of democracy and liberal-constitutional principles within populist radical right governance?

Professor Marco Tarchi: On a previous occasion—the 2001 reform passed by the Amato government, which radically modified Articles 114 to 133 of the Constitution without making concessions to the opposition’s proposals—the “majoritarian conception of democracy” was applied without there being any populist party in government and without any denunciation of a violation of liberal constitutional principles.

In the Italian case, where populism has often thrived on the denunciation of intermediary powers, does the referendum reveal that the rhetoric of popular sovereignty is more effective when directed against institutions than when deployed to restructure them?

Professor Marco Tarchi: Beyond this specific case, many examples in other countries – from the Austrian case of 2000 onwards – show us that this is one of the typical limits of populist action.

Political Conflict Overshadowed the Substance of the Reform

How should we interpret the high turnout in this referendum? Does it suggest that a significant segment of the electorate understood the vote as a constitutional choice of first-order importance, or that the referendum was successfully transformed into a plebiscitary judgment on the government itself?

Professor Marco Tarchi: The judgment on the government certainly prevailed, but it is impossible to empirically calculate how much the specific content of the reform influenced the outcome.

How should we situate this referendum within the longer trajectory of Italian populism, particularly the enduring distrust toward political and judicial institutions since the crisis of the First Republic?

Professor Marco Tarchi: Italian populism, especially during the crisis of the First Republic, extolled the judiciary’s role as a bulwark against political corruption. If the referendum vote was viewed from this perspective, one would paradoxically argue that it marked a success for the populist vision of the relationship between professional politicians and judges. But I repeat, what prevailed in this case was a purely political conflict.

No Political Actor Has Easily Translated Support into Structural Reform

Could the defeat be seen as evidence that populist radical right actors are more successful at politicizing dissatisfaction than at building broad consent for complex institutional redesign, especially when such redesign touches the judiciary?

Professor Marco Tarchi: With the already stated reservations about the alleged populist nature of the Meloni government— which I dispute —I would answer yes. I would add, however, that other political actors also found it difficult to transform the dissatisfaction that had fueled their success into consensus for the institutional overhaul. This was demonstrated by the failure in 2016 of Matteo Renzi, then both head of the government and the Democratic Party, to pass his constitutional reform to abolish the Senate.

To what extent can the referendum be read as a test of “state capture” dynamics, and does its outcome suggest resilience or fragility in Italy’s institutional architecture? 

Professor Marco Tarchi: Given the result, one should deduce a substantial solidity of the Italian institutional architecture.

In comparative perspective, how does this referendum differ from those moments in which governments in Turkey, Hungary or Poland were able to advance far-reaching judicial transformations? Does Italy’s constitutional culture still provide stronger antibodies against that trajectory?

Professor Marco Tarchi: I see no substantial similarity between the Italian situation and the others mentioned, which are also very different from each other.

The Future of Reform Now Depends on the Next Election Outcome

To what extent might this result affect Meloni’s wider constitutional ambitions, especially proposals aimed at strengthening executive authority or introducing direct popular legitimation for the premiership?

Professor Marco Tarchi: This certainly represents a setback to Meloni’s proposed reform of the role of Prime Minister. Whether it can be revived or permanently shelved will depend on the outcome of the next general election.

Finally, what does this referendum tell us about the medium- and long-term trajectory of Italian and European politics: are we witnessing a momentary setback for a successful populist radical right government, or an early sign that constitutional resistance can still interrupt projects of hegemonic consolidation?

Professor Marco Tarchi: I repeat that I do not consider the Meloni government a “radical right-wing populist government,” and therefore this question is irrelevant to me.

Le Pen & Bardella

Prof. Marlière: Local Elections Show Polarization in France Amplifies the Mainstreaming of the Far Right

by Editor’s ChoiceEuropean ObservatoryExtremism & RadicalisationHomeInterviews

In an era marked by intensifying polarization and electoral fragmentation, France’s 2026 municipal elections offer a revealing lens into the country’s shifting political equilibrium. In this ECPS interview, Professor Philippe Marlière argues that while mainstream parties retain urban strongholds, the populist radical right continues to consolidate its territorial and sociological base. Crucially, he underscores that “polarization… tends to benefit the far right,” enabling the National Rally to advance its normalization strategy within an increasingly conflictual political environment. Beyond electoral outcomes, the interview highlights deeper structural transformations—from cross-class realignment to the erosion of centrist politics—suggesting that France is not experiencing a rupture, but a gradual reconfiguration that may decisively shape the dynamics of the 2027 presidential contest.

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

Giving an in-depth interview to the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Philippe Marlière, Professor of French and European Politics at University College London, offers a nuanced and empirically grounded assessment of France’s evolving political landscape in the wake of the 2026 municipal elections.

Held against the backdrop of an increasingly polarized European political environment, the elections revealed a fragmented yet structurally revealing electoral map. While mainstream parties retained control of major metropolitan centers such as Paris, Marseille, and Lyon, the populist radical right—anchored by the National Rally (RN)—continued to expand its territorial base across smaller municipalities and peripheral regions. Notably, the RN and its allies consolidated support in medium-sized towns and traditional strongholds in northern deindustrialized zones and the Mediterranean southeast, while also making inroads into previously resistant regions such as western France. At the same time, opinion polls suggest that RN candidates remain above the 30 percent threshold ahead of the 2027 presidential race, underscoring their growing electoral competitiveness.

As Professor Marlière emphasizes, these results must be understood through the dual lens of fragmentation and consolidation. “The French electoral landscape is deeply fragmented and also polarized,” he observes, highlighting the coexistence of institutional instability with the strengthening of ideological blocs. Indeed, he notes a “consolidation of the two blocs at the extremes,” with both the far right and the radical left reinforcing their positions without producing a decisive electoral rupture.

At the core of his analysis lies a striking argument captured in the headline insight: polarization itself has become a structural driver of far-right normalization. “This kind of polarization tends to benefit the far right,” Professor Marlière explains, as it enables the RN to position itself as a seemingly “reasonable, ‘moderate’ political force” within an increasingly conflictual political field. In this context, the long-term strategy of dé-diabolisation appears to be advancing, albeit unevenly. While the RN remains constrained in major urban centers, it has become, in Professor Marlière’s words, “a party that is increasingly on course to become normalized.”

Equally significant is the sociological transformation of the far-right electorate. No longer confined to economically marginalized groups, the RN now draws support across a broader cross-class coalition, including professionals and retirees—a shift he identifies as a critical turning point since the 2024 European elections.

Taken together, the 2026 municipal elections do not signal a dramatic rupture but rather a deepening of structural trends. As Professor Marlière cautions, “the tectonic plates… are aligning in a way that looks favorable for the National Rally,”even as electoral uncertainty persists. In this interview, he unpacks the implications of these developments for democratic resilience, party competition, and the high-stakes trajectory toward 2027 presidential elections in France.

Philippe Marlière is a Professor of French and European Politics at University College London.

Here is the edited version of our interview with Professor Philippe Marlière, revised slightly to improve clarity and flow.

France’s Electoral Landscape Is Fragmenting While Extremes Consolidate Their Ground

Professor Marlière, welcome, and let me start right away with the first question: The 2026 municipal elections seem to have produced a fragmented but revealing map of French politics; the far right advanced in many provincial towns, mainstream parties held key metropolitan strongholds, and the left remained unevenly competitive. From your perspective, what do these results tell us about the current stage of France’s populist realignment?

Professor Philippe Marlière: I think the main lessons of that local election are, first of all, the very high level of abstention. That confirms that, when it comes to voting, the French are voting less and less. Some would call it civic disengagement. It does not necessarily mean that the French are no longer interested in politics; it simply means that they vote less. Turnout was also lower in 2014, which was the last “normal” local election, as the previous one took place during the COVID pandemic and is therefore not really comparable.

The second point, as you mentioned, is fragmentation. The French electoral landscape is deeply fragmented and also polarized. I think we will return to this later.

Thirdly, there is a form of consolidation of previous electoral trends. I am thinking here of the two major elections in 2024—the general election and the European election. There was no major upset or breakthrough, but rather a continuation of existing dynamics. Notably, as you pointed out, there is a consolidation of the two blocs at the extremes: on the far right with the National Rally, and on the far left—the radical, populist left—with Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Insoumise. Both camps can claim gains, and their positions appear to have strengthened.

So, overall, that would be my general assessment of this local election.

The National Rally Consolidates Territorially but Still Struggles in Major Cities

The National Rally expanded its local presence but again struggled to convert momentum into decisive victories in major cities. Should this be read as evidence that the populist radical right is becoming structurally embedded in French politics, or do these results still reveal significant sociological and territorial ceilings to its expansion?

Professor Philippe Marlière: I think for the National Rally it is hard to say that this was a bad election. It is not a fantastic election, because a fantastic result would have meant winning a number of large cities, and in France a big city is one with over 100,000 people. They did not manage to do that. They had hoped to win the city of Toulon. That said, they did win one, and, to be fair, that is at least a good result in Nice, which is, of course, one of the bigger French cities. They won in Nice with Éric Ciotti. Technically, he is not a member of the National Rally, but he is the former leader of Les Républicains, who left the party in 2024 and now runs a small party allied with the National Rally. So that is a significant gain.

Apart from that, however, the election highlighted the weakness of the National Rally in big cities and urban areas, which are now strongholds of the left. My assessment, therefore, is that this was not a breakthrough in terms of winning major cities; it did not achieve that. What it did do, however, is to consolidate its power base in medium-sized cities—places with around 20,000 inhabitants or fewer. It is now a party with a solid and territorially widespread base.

There are also three regions where it is particularly dominant: in the north, especially in former mining areas that were once socialist bastions but are now strongholds of the far right; in the southeast, which has long been a strong area for the National Rally; and in parts of the southwest as well. So I would not describe this as a setback, but neither is it a major victory. It is a party that is increasingly on course to become normalized—people in small towns now vote for the National Rally in ways that were not typical before.

At the same time, when you look at opinion polls—which is what ultimately matters for a presidential election in a year’s time—they are very favorable for the National Rally. Any candidate, whether Marine Le Pen or Jordan Bardella, is polling well above the 30% threshold, while all other competitors remain significantly behind.

A Weakening Center and Identity-Driven Politics Reshape French Populism

The crowd and supporters with French flags during the campaign meeting (rally) of French presidential candidate Eric Zemmour, on the Trocadero square in Paris, France on March 27, 2022. Photo: Victor Velter.

In your work, you have emphasized that populist projects must be understood in relation to their national political cultures rather than as interchangeable European phenomena. What, in your view, is specifically French about the current configuration of populism and the populist radical right revealed by these municipal elections?

Professor Philippe Marlière: It is an important point to contextualize the rise, or sometimes the setback, of the populist far right across Europe. You cannot compare all situations; they are not entirely similar. However, there are similar trends. There are differences, but also common patterns.

So, while sharing similarities with other national contexts, the French case may be specific in the sense that it exacerbates some of these trends. One example is polarization. The French political landscape is extremely polarized, and that makes a very significant difference. Polarization means that you have left-wing parties, right-wing parties, and a political center, which in France is weakening—Macron’s party did not perform well in this election, which is not a surprise.

When polarization intensifies, it creates a climate of tension in which debates revolve less around economic and social issues and more around personalities and questions of identity. We have seen a great deal of that. In the end, this kind of polarization tends to benefit the far right. The far right has used this climate to position itself as a reasonable, “moderate” political force, in contrast to other parties that have contributed to this polarized environment. I am thinking here in particular of the populist radical left associated with Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

This dynamic becomes a tool that enables the National Rally to present itself—rightly or wrongly—as a more mainstream party. The mainstreaming of the National Rally is still ongoing. It is a process that could potentially enable the party to win the presidential election in a year’s time.

So far, there has been what is often described as a “glass ceiling” in presidential elections: the far right could not win because it was perceived as too extreme, prompting a counter-reaction from voters. This time, however, if the party succeeds in presenting itself as part of the mainstream—regardless of whether that perception is accurate—it may facilitate its path to electoral victory.

From Peripheral Protest to Nationwide Presence, the RN Vote Is Expanding

The far right’s local breakthroughs were especially visible in smaller towns, deindustrialized areas, and parts of Mediterranean France. How far do these results confirm that support for the populist radical right continues to be rooted in a combination of territorial abandonment, social insecurity, and cultural anxiety?

Professor Philippe Marlière: There are aspects of the National Rally vote which clearly underline what you have just said—social insecurity, anxiety, and a feeling of being abandoned by the central state. There are some strong indicators, such as people feeling that when you live, for instance, in a small town, or in a suburban or peri-urban area, you lack many of the things that make life easier, such as good public transport and good public services. There are issues around that, and studies have shown that this feeds and strengthens the National Rally vote in general. So there is clearly that aspect.

But I think what is new, and something which will worry anyone concerned about a major National Rally victory in France in a year’s time, in the presidential election, is that this vote has not only nationalized. You mentioned the three zones of strength of the National Rally in the north, in the southeast, and the southwest—that is true—but it is also present in other parts of France. Think, for instance, of Brittany in the western part of France, a place where traditionally the National Rally would get very few votes. Now, the party can also get very decent scores in that part of France.

So, there is a nationalization of the vote, but it is also a vote that has spread across different social classes. It is no longer only the vote of the young, unemployed, relatively uneducated working class, or the working class in general. It also includes professionals and retired people, which is a new development. The turning point was the European election of 2024, when, for the first time, retired people—who had been the main supporters of Macron—switched en masse to the National Rally. That is a sign of electoral strength, because retired people tend to vote more than younger people, who abstain more.

All in all, the tectonic plates, so to speak, are aligning in a way that looks favorable for the National Rally. That said, I am not suggesting that the presidential election is a foregone conclusion or that the far right will win. A great deal can happen between now and April 2027, notably a last-ditch reaction from French voters who might prefer to vote for another candidate simply to prevent the far right from winning the highest political office in France. Much will also depend on the candidate who faces the National Rally in the second round.

Education and Class Remain Key Barriers to Far-Right Urban Expansion

French university students.
University teachers, research staff, and students demonstrate against French government reforms to the academic system in Paris, France on April 2, 2009. Photo: Olga Besnard / Dreamstime.

Conversely, the RN’s continuing weakness in many large metropolitan centers suggests that urban France still resists the populist radical right. To what extent is this an effect of class composition, educational attainment, immigration-linked demography, or the continued political toxicity of the far-right label?

Professor Philippe Marlière: There are very strong sociological variables or indicators that explain why some populations and categories of voters support the far right, and why others distrust and resist it. I think there are such sociological variables at play.

Gender is one of them. Women still tend to vote less, in general, than men for the far right. The gender gap has narrowed compared to 20 or 30 years ago, but it remains. Interestingly, among younger voters—the 18–24 age group, for instance—the gender gap is even wider. There is a broader trend, not only in Europe but globally, of young men being more attracted to the far right than young women. Women, in fact, are often put off by the far right and tend to resist it.

The second variable is education, and here again the French case is not particularly unique. It is a pattern observed in many countries. The general sociological rule is that the more educated you are, the more likely you are to vote for the left. Conversely, those with lower levels of education—primary or secondary schooling, possibly the baccalaureate but no university education—are more likely to support the National Rally.

This also applies to younger voters. While Jean-Luc Mélenchon does appeal to the youth, his support is concentrated among more educated young people—those pursuing higher education and living in urban areas—as opposed to young salaried workers who left school early and live in rural areas, who tend to support the National Rally. In this sense, education is an even more decisive factor than age.

This helps explain why France’s major cities are now governed by the left. Paris and Marseille have socialist mayors, while Lyon has re-elected a Green mayor. This reflects the sociological profile of urban electorates, which tend to be more educated and relatively well-off, and therefore more inclined to support left-wing parties. By contrast, in smaller localities across France—where there is a lack of public services and higher unemployment—the National Rally performs more strongly.

The RN’s Normalization Is Aided as Much By Opponents as by Strategy

In light of these municipal results, do you think Marine Le Pen’s long strategy of dé-diabolisation has reached its limits at the local level? Or has it succeeded enough to normalize the RN in parts of France even if it still falls short of full urban legitimacy?

Professor Philippe Marlière: De-demonization is to start with—yes, you are right to stress that—a process. If it is a process, it has been initiated by political forces, and obviously, the forces that want de-demonization to happen are the National Rally, to begin with. Marine Le Pen has been very clear about this in the past. “We have been demonized,” she has said several times, and that has to stop.

So, what do you do about that? You adopt a strategy. First, you try to appear less radical, less far-right in the way you conduct your political activities and in your discourse. You remove the more radical, extremist elements within your party. This has been done.

However, I would say this has mainly been implemented among RN officials—that is, those in elected positions, particularly at the national level. For instance, considerable effort has been made by the National Rally to ensure that, within its group of MPs in the National Assembly, there are no sympathizers of extremist or fascist groups, and that no one makes anti-Semitic or Islamophobic statements. A great deal of work has gone into this. Marine Le Pen herself and Jordan Bardella present a very polished image to the public, unlike Jean-Marie Le Pen, who was repeatedly convicted for racist or anti-Semitic statements. That marks a clear difference.

Nonetheless, there are still, among supporters and even at the local level, elected RN representatives who occasionally—and quite often—make such statements. So the process is not entirely complete. Much has been achieved, but it remains ongoing.

There is also another dimension to de-demonization. It can only succeed if it receives some assistance from opponents, and in France, opponents of the far right have, in fact, contributed to this process. This is not a recent development; it began some time ago. Parties on the center-right and the right have progressively adopted elements of the RN’s discourse, and sometimes even aspects of its policy agenda. By doing so, they contribute to making the RN appear more moderate and more mainstream. If mainstream parties frame issues in similar terms to the far right, then the far right no longer appears as extreme or dangerous.

A certain degree of support has also come from the media. French media, as studies suggest, have shifted to the right. Some private channels, such as CNews, owned by the billionaire Bolloré Family, as well as formerly mainstream radio stations with large audiences, have clearly moved in that direction, if not toward the radical right. In such a context, de-demonization becomes more likely.

However, as you pointed out, there is still resistance, particularly at the grassroots level. We saw this again in 2024. After the first round of the general election, the far right was ahead and appeared on track to secure a possible absolute majority. Then what the French call a “Republican front” emerged, involving significant tactical voting between left-wing parties and also between the left and Macron’s supporters. This tactical coordination led to the defeat of many RN candidates, and in the end, the RN did not win.

So, overall, de-demonization has been underway and has been quite successful for the RN. However, the process is not yet complete. There remains a kind of anti–far-right reflex among the electorate, which has so far prevented the RN from winning major elections.

The Boundary between Mainstream Right and Far Right Is Increasingly Blurred

Les Republicains.
Photo: Dreamstime.

One of the most striking outcomes of the elections was Éric Ciotti’s victory in Nice and the broader sense that parts of the mainstream right are moving closer to the RN. Do you see this as a local anomaly shaped by specific rivalries, or as a more durable sign that the boundary between mainstream conservatism and the populist radical right is eroding?

Professor Philippe Marlière: That is a very important point, and it concerns the future not only of the far right—whether it will eventually win a major election, such as a presidential or general election—but also the future of the mainstream right, the post-Gaullist right, which is what Les Républicains represent, with their legacy of de Gaulle and Chirac. I would say it also concerns the future of French politics in general, because having a far-right president and government would be a major development not only in French politics, but also in European and even global politics.

The mainstream right, notably Les Républicains (LR), plays a pivotal role in this, because figures and studies show that there is a porosity between the LR electorate and the far-right electorate. In some constituencies, voters from both sides support each other’s candidates when needed, for instance in the second round of an election. If the only candidate facing a left-wing contender is from the National Rally, you will often see a significant transfer of votes from LR voters to RN candidates, and vice versa. So it works both ways.

However, the rising and dominant force is not LR. LR is now a shadow of what used to be the dominant party on the right in French politics, particularly until the Sarkozy era. It is a party that has been losing votes and representation with each election.

As a result, LR finds itself in a kind of impossible situation. If it forms an alliance with the far right—which some within the party are now considering—it risks accelerating its own decline. That was Éric Ciotti’s choice in 2024, when he was leader of LR. He argued that the party should form an alliance and work with the far right. This represented a complete break with the tradition of figures like Charles de Gaulle and Jacques Chirac, who were firmly opposed to the far right. When the party rejected this line, Ciotti left, taking with him more than 20 MPs. Yet this has not resolved LR’s dilemma, as there remains a strong temptation among some of its officials and elected representatives to cooperate with the RN.

The problem is that by working closely with the far right, LR further legitimizes it and signals to voters that there is little difference between the two. This could lead to a scenario similar to what happened on the left in the 1970s, when the Socialists, under François Mitterrand, formed an alliance with the Communists and eventually became the dominant force.

In the current context, however, with a de-demonized far right and potentially a figure like Jordan Bardella running a relatively mainstream campaign, not very different from LR on socioeconomic issues, there is a real risk that what remains of the LR electorate could shift further toward the RN.

So, it is a very complex situation for LR. What we may be witnessing is a broader recomposition of the right, with the RN potentially becoming the dominant party and LR relegated to the role of a junior partner. This would represent a complete reversal of the post-war political order, where the far right becomes the main party, and what is considered the mainstream right becomes a junior partner.

The Macronite Center Has Given Way to a Reconfigured Right-Wing Bloc

More broadly, do these elections suggest that the French right is moving toward a process of recomposition in which traditional conservatism, Macronite liberalism, and the populist radical right are being forced into a new and unstable relationship?

Professor Philippe Marlière: Yes, the striking thing about that local election is that it really marks the end—although we already knew this—of the Macronite center. It was, in a way, positioned both on the left and on the right. Macron wanted to strike a balance between the moderate left and the moderate right. That was his project in 2017, when he was first elected. We saw that during his first term there was a shift to the right, and in his second term nothing has changed. The Macron party is now firmly on the right and has been governing with right-wing forces. It has been in power with LR, for instance. So there is no doubt that this marks the end of the attempt to find a kind of centrist position in French politics, where one could combine elements of the center-right and the center-left. That is over. The Macron party is firmly on the right.

Moreover, the local election showed that the electorate of Macron, in general, clearly supports the forces of the right in the second round when their candidate cannot run. So this very original attempt to create a genuine center that synthesizes the moderate left and right has come to an end.

As for the rest of the right, I have already addressed this in my previous answer. LR finds itself between a rock and a hard place. It has tried to cooperate with the Macron party in government, but that has not really helped, as it continues to lose votes. At the same time, it faces the major and direct challenge from the RN. So it is a very complex situation for the right.

Just one more point about LR: it did relatively well in this local election, and the reason is the same as for the Socialist Party—they entered the election from a position of strength. They already governed many cities across France. LR is the party that runs the greatest number of cities. The difference with the Socialist Party is that the latter tends to be strong in large cities with over 100,000 inhabitants, whereas LR is stronger in medium-sized cities with fewer than 100,000 inhabitants, where it governs many municipalities. So it has managed to survive this election and perform relatively well.

This illustrates the paradox of French politics. The two parties that dominated French politics from the 1970s until 2017, when Macron was elected—the Socialists and LR—are no longer in a position to win national elections. However, they remain dominant at the local level, where they still have strong territorial bases.

French President Emmanuel Macron.
French President Emmanuel Macron at the Cotroceni Palace in Bucharest, Romania on August 24, 2017. Photo: Carol Robert.

Republican Discourse Now Normalizes Formerly Far-Right Themes

Your work on laïcité and the “islamo-gauchisme” controversy has shown how republican language can be reworked in increasingly exclusionary ways. Do you think the municipal campaign confirmed that themes once associated with the far right have now migrated into broader mainstream discourse, thereby indirectly strengthening the populist radical right?

Professor Philippe Marlière: Yes, you are right on that. It is not only the far right, the National Rally, that has been normalized and mainstreamed; a certain type of racist discourse has also become quite mainstream, particularly around Islamophobia. But that is not new. This is part of the debate on so-called Islamo-gauchisme. Islamo-gauchisme was essentially directed at French academics or intellectuals who were allegedly in cahoots with Islamists in France. That was never demonstrated, but nonetheless it became a central claim. And, of course, when such claims are made, they give a significant boost to the far right, because the far right does not even need to intervene in that debate. That debate was largely carried out by the Macron government and by LR. So this is where we are.

What is interesting is that the election also showed that, in some areas—particularly in the outskirts of major cities, including several cities around Paris—mayors from ethnic minorities were elected. They are French citizens, but they come from minority backgrounds. The most notable example is Saint-Denis, a large city of around 150,000 inhabitants. It was traditionally a communist stronghold, then governed by a socialist mayor for one term, and has now been won by a La France Insoumise candidate who is Black. This is very good news for Mélenchon, who has recently advanced the idea of a “new France.”

What does this “new France” represent? It is a multicultural France shaped by immigration. France has long been a country of mass immigration, and the sons and daughters of migrants—born on French soil and holding French citizenship—are now increasingly involved in political life. Some have been elected as mayors, local councillors, and even MPs, which marks an important shift. Twenty years ago, the French political class was overwhelmingly white. While this remains the case for some parties, others—particularly on the left—have increasingly incorporated this diversity.

This is what Mélenchon has gained. He won a number of cities, I believe up to seven, which is a solid result. It is not a major breakthrough, given that La France Insoumise is a relatively young party that started from scratch, but moving from zero to seven is significant. These include important cities such as Saint-Denis, Roubaix, Vénissieux, Vaulx-en-Velin, La Courneuve, and Créteil—places with substantial populations of ethnic minorities.

What La France Insoumise is doing is quite specific. It reflects Mélenchon’s broader strategy of mobilizing young voters—particularly those pursuing higher education and living in urban areas—alongside ethnic minority communities in the banlieues. He believes that by consolidating this electorate, he can position himself to reach the second round of the presidential election.

Without Alliances, the Far Right’s Path to the Second Round Appears Assured

Torn campaign posters of Jean-Luc Mélenchon during the French presidential election in Bordeaux, France on February 19, 2022. Photo: Jerome Cid / Dreamstime.

And finally, Professor Marlière, looking ahead to the 2027 presidential election, do these municipal results suggest that France is still moving toward a contest structurally shaped by the RN and the populist radical right, or do they also reopen the possibility that broader democratic coalitions—of the mainstream left, center, and moderate right—can still contain that trajectory?

Professor Philippe Marlière: That is an important question. It is also a difficult one to answer, because the situation is so fluid and things can change from one month to another. It will very much depend on the work on the ground by political parties. Can they enter into an alliance? It seems that, if you want to defeat—or to qualify for the second, decisive round of the presidential election, you need to enter into an alliance. If you go it alone, if you do not make an alliance on the left or on the right, you will further split the total vote of your political family. And if you further split the vote, everyone expects the far right to qualify, given how strong it is in the polls.

There are two places in the second round, and it seems that one is already taken by the far right. It used to be a major upset when the far right qualified for the second round; now it would be a major upset if it did not. So, let us assume the far right will be in the second round. The question then becomes: who will face it? I think there are three possible scenarios.

One appears to be a lose-lose scenario, but paradoxically it is quite plausible today. This would be the qualification of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. He is a well-known figure who can appeal to highly mobilized segments of voters—particularly young people and ethnic minorities. In a fragmented electoral landscape, the threshold to qualify for the second round could be relatively low, around 15–17 percent, which he could reach. However, this would be a lose-lose scenario because, despite the de-demonization of the far right, Mélenchon himself has been heavily demonized. According to polls, he is the most disliked political figure in France, even more so than far-right leaders. In such a case, he would likely be defeated, and the far right would have a relatively easy path to victory.

The two other scenarios would involve either a candidate from the center-left or from the right reaching the second round. For the center-left, this would likely require unity, possibly through a primary election to select a common candidate. I am quite pessimistic about this, as the left remains highly fragmented. Some support the idea of a primary, while others oppose it. For instance, former President François Hollande may be considering another run and does not favor a primary.

On the right, a similar question arises: will they unite and organize a primary to choose a candidate? There are significant differences between figures such as Édouard Philippe, a former prime minister under Macron, and Bruno Retailleau, the leader of LR, whose discourse and policies are closer to the RN. So there is a clear gap.

Without such unity, the first scenario remains plausible. In that case, one could say, as a scholar of populism, that the two populisms in France are converging—one on the radical left and the other on the far right. And, unfortunately, it seems that of these two, the one that repels more voters is Mélenchon.

Dr. Frederik Møller Henriksen.

Dr. Henriksen: Strict Migration Policy in Denmark Fails to Contain the Radical Right

by Editor’s ChoiceEuropean ObservatoryHomeInterviewsMigration

In this ECPS interview, Dr. Frederik Møller Henriksen offers an in-depth assessment of Denmark’s 2026 general election, highlighting both continuity and change in one of Europe’s most stable democracies. He characterizes the outcome as “a very poor election for the traditional governing parties,” underscoring the historic decline of established actors alongside the emergence of “a highly fragmented parliament.” While domestic concerns dominated the campaign, Dr. Henriksen emphasizes that strict migration policies have not contained the populist radical right, as evidenced by the resurgence of the Danish People’s Party. At the same time, he cautions against overstating democratic crisis, noting Denmark’s enduring institutional trust. Instead, he points to media fragmentation and digital communication as key forces reshaping political competition and voter alignment.

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

In the aftermath of Denmark’s closely contested 2026 general election on March 24, the country stands at a critical political juncture—marked by fragmented blocs, the resurgence of the populist radical right, and renewed geopolitical tensions over Greenland. While domestic issues such as the cost-of-living crisis and migration shaped the campaign, deeper transformations in political communication and democratic contestation are also unfolding. Giving an in-depth interview to the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Dr. Frederik Møller Henriksen, a postdoctoral researcher at Roskilde University working at the intersection of politics, media, and digital society, whose research on digital counter-publics, alternative media ecosystems, and anti-systemic populism, offers important insights into these developments. 

Reflecting on the election outcome, Dr. Henriksen underscores that “this was a very poor election for the traditional governing parties,” pointing to the historically weak performance of both the Social Democrats and the center-right Venstre. He further highlights that “we now have a highly fragmented parliament,” a development that is likely to render coalition-building both complex and protracted. Indeed, the emergence of multiple competitive actors across the political spectrum has produced what some observers describe as “Dutch conditions” of party fragmentation and even “Belgian conditions” of prolonged government formation.

At the same time, Dr. Henriksen draws attention to the resurgence of the populist radical right, particularly the Danish People’s Party, emphasizing that restrictive policy convergence has not neutralized such forces. As he notes, the Danish case illustrates that strict migration policies do not necessarily diminish the electoral appeal of the radical right, but may instead coincide with renewed voter mobilization around issues of identity, economic anxiety, and national direction.

Beyond electoral dynamics, the interview also engages with the transformation of political communication in digitally mediated environments. While cautious about attributing direct causal effects to alternative media, Dr. Henriksen observes that “it has been very difficult to define” the election in terms of a coherent overarching narrative, suggesting that media fragmentation and hybrid communication systems are reshaping how political competition is structured and understood.

Importantly, despite these shifts, Dr. Henriksen does not interpret recent developments as signaling a systemic crisis of democracy. Denmark, he argues, remains a high-trust society with robust institutional foundations. Yet, it is increasingly “no longer isolated from trends we see elsewhere in Europe,” including fragmentation, anti-incumbent voting, and the growing salience of populist communication.

Taken together, Dr. Henriksen’s reflections situate the Danish election within a broader European trajectory, where established party systems are under pressure, populist actors continue to adapt, and democratic politics is being reshaped by both structural and communicative transformations.

Here is the edited version of our interview with Dr. Frederik Møller Henriksen, revised slightly to improve clarity and flow.

Voters Reward Clearer Political Profiles on Both Sides

Denmark votes in parliamentary elections in Copenhagen.
Denmark votes in parliamentary elections in Copenhagen, Kastrup, Denmark, on November 1, 2022. Voters head to polling stations to cast their ballots in the general election. Photo: Francis Joseph Dean / Dean Pictures / Dreamstime.

Dr. Henriksen, thank you very much for joining our interview series. Let me begin with the electoral outcome itself: How should we interpret the 2026 Danish election results, where both the red and blue blocs fell short of a majority? Does this fragmentation signal a structural transformation of Denmark’s party system?

Dr. Frederik Møller Henriksen: Thank you for this question—it is a very broad one. I will try to narrow it down to a few key takeaways, and then we can elaborate further during the interview.

The first takeaway is that this was a very poor election for the traditional governing parties. The Social Democrats, for instance, remained the largest party, but they fell to a historic low—their worst result since 1903. The center-right party, Venstre, as it is called in Danish, also suffered a historically weak result.

The second takeaway is that we now have a highly fragmented parliament. This means that coalition-building will be unusually difficult and potentially lengthy—at least, that is what commentators are suggesting at the moment.

The third point is that overall voter turnout was lower than usual, although still high by international standards. I interpret this as a sign that voters have been dissatisfied with the centrist government we have had over the past four years.

The fourth point is that there were clear winners outside the old or established center. The Danish People’s Party, for example, performed strongly with 9.1%, and the Socialist People’s Party on the left became the second-largest party.

Thus, the election did not simply produce fragmentation for its own sake; rather, it suggests that voters rewarded parties with clearer profiles on both sides of the political spectrum. In this sense, the Danish People’s Party can be seen as one of the main winners.

I also heard a commentator suggest that these are “Dutch conditions,” in the sense that we now have many parties represented in parliament. There is a political science measure for the effective number of parties, and it has reportedly never been higher in the Danish parliament. Another commentator added that we may face “Belgian conditions,” meaning that it could take a very long time to form a government with so many parties involved. I find this framing quite insightful.

Regarding whether this signals a structural transformation, I would say it is important to view the situation in light of the decline of the Social Democrats. They have been in government for an extended period—first leading a left-leaning government and then a centrist coalition. This development should therefore be understood in the context of their weakening position, including their time in power during COVID-19. It appears they have struggled to maintain momentum, which is reflected in the election results. At the same time, we do see clear signs of fragmentation—this is quite evident.

We can also observe that centrist parties, such as the Moderates, have become highly important in the coalition-building phase. Although relatively small, both blocs—the left and the right—depend on their mandates to form a government. As a result, they are likely to play a very prominent role.

Finally, this election also points to the growing importance of person-driven politics rather than party-driven politics. For voters, the election itself has been quite fragmented. It is not entirely clear what the main issues have been; instead, individual political figures have played a central role. We can see that some of the key figures, such as Martin Messerschmidt and Lars Løkke Rasmussen, have attracted a significant share of the vote. This indicates a broader shift toward more person-driven politics and person-driven electoral outcomes.

Unpopular Reforms Cost the Social Democrats Voter Support

Mette Frederiksen
Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen at a press conference during the COVID-19 crisis, Copenhagen, March 17, 2020. Photo: Francis Dean | Dreamstime.

The Social Democrats emerged as the largest party but recorded one of their weakest results in over a century. To what extent does this outcome reflect voter fatigue with incumbency, and to what extent does it point to deeper shifts in political trust and democratic legitimacy?

Dr. Frederik Møller Henriksen: It’s a very good question. There is clearly an incumbency story here. It is important to situate the Social Democrats’ decline in voter support within a broader anti-incumbent mood among voters, which I alluded to, earlier. After nearly seven years in power, the party has been carrying the burdens of office. As we know from political science, this is challenging for governing parties, particularly when they are associated with unpopular reforms. One notable example is the abolition of a national holiday in 2024, known as the Great Prayer Day. This decision appears to have resonated strongly with voters across the political spectrum, and the party has been penalized for it. I think that when the government abolished the holiday, it did not anticipate the extent of its electoral impact. That is an important factor to consider.

At the same time, it would be too narrow to interpret the result solely as voter fatigue. The Social Democrats were squeezed from both sides. Some left-leaning voters felt that the party had become too restrictive on immigration, while some right-leaning voters continued to distrust it on economic issues. In this sense, the outcome reflects both incumbency effects and the limits of a centrist repositioning, which is relatively unusual in the Danish political context. So, while the party remains electorally dominant in relative terms, its broad coalition appears thinner and more fragile than before. 

That said, I do not see strong evidence—at least at this stage—of a more generalized crisis of democratic legitimacy. Denmark still has stable political institutions, and the economy is in relatively good shape compared to some other EU countries. Voter turnout also remained relatively high, and the election process was fair. Therefore, framing this as a general crisis of democratic legitimacy may be an overstatement. However, much will depend on what kind of government ultimately emerges.

The Danish People’s Party Re-Emerges as a Major Force

The election saw a notable resurgence of the Danish People’s Party and other anti-immigration actors. How do you explain this revival in light of your research on anti-systemic populism? Does it indicate that such movements have successfully re-entered the electoral mainstream?

Dr. Frederik Møller Henriksen: That is a good question. There is clearly a strong case to be made that the Danish People’s Party has re-emerged as a significant force. They moved from around 2–3% to 9.1% of the vote, effectively tripling their support compared to the previous election. They have campaigned on issues such as zero net Muslim migration and cost-of-living concerns, including proposals like abolishing petrol taxes. They have been very successful in doing so, and I would also argue that they have run one of the most effective social media campaigns, which likely contributed to their performance.

This revival suggests that anti-immigration politics have not disappeared; rather, they were partially displaced and fragmented. This election indicates that when economic anxiety, migration, and broader questions about national direction become salient again, these constituencies can be remobilized electorally.

In relation to my own research, I have focused less on elections per se and more on anti-systemic movements and forms of mobilization. From that perspective, the Danish People’s Party has been particularly successful in tapping into this kind of anti-systemic mobilization.

At the same time, we also see another far-right party, the Danish Democrats, led by former minister Inger Støjberg. While they share a similar anti-immigration stance, they have not been as successful in converting this into electoral support. To me, this suggests that additional factors are at play. One key element appears to be the effectiveness of social media campaigning, particularly on the part of the Danish People’s Party and Morten Messerschmidt.

A Key Lesson for Social Democratic Parties in Europe

The Danish case has often been cited as an example of mainstream parties absorbing far-right agendas—particularly on immigration. In light of the latest election results, do you see this strategy as containing or, paradoxically, legitimizing populist radical right discourse within mainstream political competition? Do the election results suggest that this strategy has reached its limits—or even backfired?

Dr. Frederik Møller Henriksen: Yes, I definitely think this election lends support to the argument that the strategy of normalizing far-right rhetoric and policies within the center and the center-left has its limits—perhaps even backfiring to some extent. For example, Denmark has maintained one of Europe’s toughest migration policies, and yet the Danish People’s Party still achieved a very strong electoral result.

When we examine the data, particularly in comparison to the 2022 election, we also observe one of the largest estimated voter shifts from one party to another—specifically from the Social Democrats to the Danish People’s Party. This is based on the data currently available, although it will require further analysis. At the very least, this suggests that voters are moving from the Social Democrats to the Danish People’s Party, and that this shift is closely linked to the migration issue.

What this indicates is that a strict mainstream migration policy does not automatically neutralize the radical right or the far right in electoral terms. This is an important lesson for other social democratic parties across Europe that are observing the Danish election and seeking to shape their own positions on migration and anti-immigration policies in light of these developments.

Far-Right Digital Counter-Publics Remain Highly Active

Your work emphasizes the role of alternative news media in shaping political perceptions. To what extent do you think digital counter-publics and alternative information environments influenced the electoral performance of populist and radical right actors in this election?

Dr. Frederik Møller Henriksen: Let me begin with alternative news media. I would say that, in themselves, they do not have a significant impact on electoral outcomes. I have been collecting articles from Danish alternative news media throughout the election, and only one outlet—one that is somewhat close to the Social Democrats, called PUPU—has actively covered the election. I have also followed debates on national television, where at least one editor from a right-leaning outlet was invited to participate in discussions on migration, particularly concerning Muslims and the Danish Muslim population. So, there is certainly something to this, but it is not an impact that we can clearly observe. 

When it comes to digital counter-publics connected to alternative news media, it is becoming increasingly difficult for researchers to obtain reliable data from platforms, which makes this question quite challenging to answer. Based on my intuition, however, these counter-publics—especially those associated with the far right and the Danish People’s Party—are highly active. I am quite confident that the Danish People’s Party’s social media strategy has aimed to mobilize some of these digital counter-publics. How successful these efforts have been, and the extent of their overall impact, remains difficult to determine—particularly given the ongoing challenges of accessing data from different platforms.

No Electoral Impact from the Greenland Issue

Election campaign posters featuring Liberal leader and former Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen displayed on a street during the campaign period in Copenhagen, Denmark on June 15, 2015. Photo: Francis Joseph Dean / Dean Pictures / Dreamstime.

Despite intense international attention on the Greenland crisis, domestic issues ultimately dominated the campaign. How do you interpret this gap between geopolitical salience and voter priorities? Was the so-called “Greenland effect” electorally significant or overstated?

Dr. Frederik Møller Henriksen: As I see it, the only politician who really managed to benefit from the “Greenland effect,” or to gain something from it, was the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, from the Moderates. There was a documentary film about the days leading up to and during the crisis, when it was at its peak, and Lars Løkke Rasmussen traveled to Washington to meet with American politicians. 

I think he was the only one who really gained something from this in electoral terms, at least. I am not entirely sure why. Mette Frederiksen was certainly in a position to benefit as well, since she played a significant role in managing the situation and coordinating with European counterparts. However, we do not see this reflected in the numbers, at least not in the electoral outcome.

If we consider the Greenland case more broadly, it mattered quite a lot in the run-up to the election. Mette Frederiksen called the election while still benefiting from the visibility and leadership image created by Trump’s pressure over Greenland. During the campaign itself, however, the issue was clearly overshadowed by domestic concerns. These included rising costs of living, the green transition, debates over clean drinking water, healthcare for an aging population, and, of course, immigration. These issues ultimately dominated the campaign. The established parties struggled to mobilize effectively across all of them, although the Social Democrats were more successful on issues such as the green transition and welfare, while the Danish People’s Party mobilized strongly on immigration as well as welfare and healthcare-related concerns.

Potential Spillover into Populist Narratives

At the same time, could the Greenland issue have indirectly shaped the election by reinforcing narratives of sovereignty, external threat, and national unity—particularly within populist communication frames?

Dr. Frederik Møller Henriksen: As I mentioned earlier, perhaps—but not to a very strong extent. I think it is, to some degree, a matter of time. We will have to see whether concerns over Greenland spill over into broader, more classic right-wing populist debates regarding border control, security, national cohesion, and immigration. That said, I would still be somewhat hesitant to answer definitively in the affirmative. It is also a question of timing—we will have to see, especially as the formation of a coalition government will likely take a few months, according to some political analyses. These topics could certainly resurface.

Fragmentation Elevates the Moderates to Kingmaker Status

The Moderates, now positioned as a pivotal kingmaker at the political center, occupy a decisive role in post-election coalition building. From your perspective, does this development represent a stabilizing corrective within Danish democracy, or does it instead point to a deeper fragmentation of political representation?

Dr. Frederik Møller Henriksen: I think it points to a deeper fragmentation of political representation, as you suggest. Today, the left-leaning bloc has chosen the Moderates as the kingmaker, which is entirely new information. However, the left-leaning bloc still needs the mandates from Lars Løkke Rasmussen’s party to succeed, so the most likely scenario is a left-leaning government with the Moderates as part of it—although I would not put my head on the block for that.

It is somewhat striking, because leading up to the election, many expected that Lars Løkke Rasmussen and the Moderates would assume the kingmaker role. However, learning from the last election, the Social Democrats appear to have tried to avoid that situation, as it would have placed considerable pressure on them—even as the largest party—within an increasingly fragmented party system. Time will show what role the Moderates and Lars Løkke Rasmussen—who hold 14 seats in parliament—will ultimately play in forming the government.

One additional point is that Lars Løkke Rasmussen has been the clearest advocate for forming another centrist government. He has maintained this position consistently from the outset. If the government formation process drags on, he may find himself in a particularly strong position, as having a clear and consistent stance can be advantageous in such a fragmented political landscape. There is a great deal at stake, and forming a government will be a difficult political process. It could prove especially interesting for the Moderates.

No Clear Narrative Defines This Election

Danish daily newspapers
Various major Danish daily newspapers in Copenhagen, Denmark, on April 17, 2015 displayed on a table. Photo: Francis Joseph Dean / Dean Pictures / Dreamstime.

Your research highlights how digital environments can foster echo chambers and partisan homophily. Do you see evidence that such dynamics contributed to the electoral polarization—or fragmentation—observed in this election? How might these dynamics have influenced voter alignments in this election, particularly regarding contentious issues such as immigration, economic redistribution, and national sovereignty?

Dr. Frederik Møller Henriksen: The short answer is no, but I think the fact that it was not possible for either political parties or the media to construct a very clear storyline for this election—for voters, at least—really says a lot. It is something that political commentators across the spectrum agree on: this has been an election that has been very difficult to define. It has been unclear whether the election was about policies related to the green transition, immigration, or other issues. It has been highly fragmented, and none of the parties has been able to set the agenda in a decisive way.

My hypothesis—perhaps also from a researcher’s perspective—is that we are witnessing the long-term effects of media fragmentation. Legacy media and social media together are making it increasingly difficult, within this hybrid media environment, for the media to establish a coherent narrative for voters—one that clearly identifies the main dividing lines between parties and presents the election as a unified communicative and political process. Of course, social media is not new to this election, but we may now be seeing its longer-term effects more clearly.

I do not have a definitive answer as to why it has been so difficult for the media. Denmark still has a high-quality, high-trust media system, with outlets that voters generally trust. So it is somewhat puzzling why it has been so difficult to formulate a cohesive narrative about the election.

European Trends Reshape Danish Politics

Denmark is often described as a high-trust, low-polarization society. Yet your work suggests that even such contexts are not immune to the rise of anti-systemic communication. Do the current election dynamics indicate an erosion of this “Nordic exceptionalism,” or rather its adaptation under new digital conditions?

Dr. Frederik Møller Henriksen: I think the fact that the far-right party, the New Right—which we have not discussed—entered parliament in the last election is indicative of this—an erosion of Nordic exceptionalism, at least to some extent. They only entered with 2.1% of the vote, so Denmark remains a high-capacity democracy with fairly high turnout, as we have said—a little lower than in the last couple of elections—and there is still broad institutional legitimacy.

On the other hand, one could argue that Denmark is no longer isolated from trends we see elsewhere in Europe. The fragmentation we discussed, anti-incumbent voting patterns, migration-centered competition, and increased pressure on mainstream, established parties all point in that direction.

However, my analysis is that much of the anti-systemic mobilization and communication has been picked up and channeled very successfully by the Danish People’s Party, particularly through social media campaigns. The Danish People’s Party has been one of the parties that has gained the most from this election. So, it has not been a landslide erosion of democratic trust; rather, it is a sign of an increasingly polarized political landscape. We may also be observing some longer-term effects, particularly the difficulties faced by the media system in providing a clear and coherent narrative of the election for voters.

Nativist Strategies Can Backfire Electorally

Pakistani or Indian migrants in Copenhagen.
Pakistani or Indian migrants in Copenhagen, Denmark, September 22, 2017. Photo: Dreamstime.

In your view, how does the Danish election contribute to our understanding of populism beyond the traditional left–right spectrum? Do we observe forms of “valence” or “anti-systemic” populism that cut across ideological divides, especially in digitally mediated environments?

Dr. Frederik Møller Henriksen: I will have to give a somewhat boring answer to this—and also one that is not particularly favorable for my own research on anti-systemic populism—but I do not see it as the main case here. It is not the central story of this election. There is, however, an interesting argument in how the Social Democrats appropriated a far-right nativist discourse, which appears to have backfired in terms of voter transitions to the Danish People’s Party. I think this is partly because the Danish People’s Party was effective in exploiting the opportunities it was given. What I mean by this is that we do not observe the same voter transition to the Danish Democrats, who did not achieve the electoral success they had anticipated. So, to a large extent, this comes down to the social media campaigning of Morten Messerschmidt and the Danish People’s Party.

Anti-Centrist Voting Defines the Election

The election results indicate gains both for the populist radical right and for certain left-wing actors. Does this suggest that populism in Denmark is increasingly transcending the traditional left–right divide? From a comparative perspective, how does Denmark’s experience relate to broader European trends in populist radical right mobilization? Does the Danish case still represent a distinct model, or is it converging with patterns observed in countries like Germany, Austria, or Sweden?

Dr. Frederik Møller Henriksen: First of all, I would not say that the Danish case shows that populism has fully transcended the left–right divide, at least not in a symmetrical sense. What we do see, however, is a clear revolt against the status quo and the established parties. A more accurate formulation is that this represents a kind of anti-centrist voting, spread across the spectrum on both the left and the right.

On the right, we have the Danish People’s Party, whose recovery was clearly tied to classic populist radical right themes such as immigration, national protection, and related issues. They campaigned on zero net Muslim migration and on cost-of-living grievances. On the left, we see the Socialist People’s Party, which mobilized around classic welfare issues and a stronger green profile.

In comparative terms, Social Democrats in countries such as Sweden, Germany, and perhaps the Netherlands are likely looking at this election and drawing lessons from it—particularly that they should avoid adopting strategies that appropriate nativist tropes from far-right parties. I think that would be my answer to this question.

No Strong Cordon Sanitaire in Danish Politics

A Conservative Party election billboard reading “Stop Nazi Islamism” draws public attention and criticism during the campaign period in Copenhagen, Denmark on April 15, 2015.. Photo: Francis Joseph Dean / Dean Pictures / Dreamstime.

Denmark’s far right has historically been constrained by institutional and cultural factors, including elements of a cordon sanitaire. Do recent developments suggest a weakening of these barriers, particularly through digital mainstreaming processes?

Dr. Frederik Møller Henriksen: Good question. Historically, when we compare Denmark to Sweden and Germany, for instance, we do not have as strong a cordon sanitaire tradition as we see in the German context, where certain parties, such as the AfD, are very actively and explicitly excluded.

The Danish political scene is characterized by a relatively wide spectrum of voices that are allowed in. So, I do not think that the 2% threshold for entering parliament necessarily prevents a broader range of parties from gaining representation; rather, it allows for what one might call a “long tail” of parties. So, I tend to disagree slightly with that premise.

Regarding whether this relates to digital mainstreaming processes, there has certainly been a mainstreaming of nativist discourse. That is quite clear to me. And, as I mentioned before, it is now up to Social Democrats across Europe to consider whether they want to follow the same path as the Social Democrats in Denmark. 

A Left-Leaning Government Is Likely to Emerge

And finally, looking ahead: Based on these election results, what are the key risks and opportunities for Danish democracy? Do you foresee a consolidation of mainstream politics, or further growth of anti-systemic and populist forces in future elections?

Dr. Frederik Møller Henriksen: For this election, and for the government coalition-building process currently underway, I think we will see a left-leaning bloc entering government. As for the long-term effects, this relates more to how difficult it can be to form a centrist government, especially in a political party system that does not have a strong tradition of doing so. I think the three parties that formed the previous government were not very successful in this regard, and we can see that reflected in voter turnout—the voters simply did not like it.

On the other hand, this did not translate into strong anti-systemic mobilization. I think this is more closely related to Denmark being a high-trust society, where people are not concerned about fraud and are not worried about being misinformed by state media, for instance.

I think we need to center our attention on the core pillars of democracy that sustain it, rather than focusing solely on a specific election outcome. Of course, that is also very important, but to understand why we do not see strong anti-systemic mobilization on either the left or the right, we need to look at trust in the media system and the political system.

Assembleia da República.

Gender and the Return of Culture Wars in the Portuguese Parliament

by CommentariesEditor’s ChoiceEuropean ObservatoryHome

In this timely commentary, Dr. João Ferreira Dias examines how recent parliamentary debates on gender identity in Portugal signal the consolidation of culture-war politics within the legislative arena. Moving beyond the technicalities of legal reform, the analysis shows how competing moral frameworks—centered on “non-negotiable values”—are reshaping political conflict and generating affective polarization. The 20 March 2026 vote reveals a coordinated right-wing effort to reframe gender as a matter of state authority and child protection, while opponents view it as a rollback of rights. Situated within broader debates on populism and cultural backlash, this piece highlights the growing centrality of symbolic politics in contemporary European democracies.

By João Ferreira Dias

Debates on gender identity in Portugal have brought to the fore one of the core logics of contemporary culture wars: the notion of non-negotiable values, rooted in deeply held ethical commitments and/or religious beliefs. Precisely because these values are framed as non-negotiable, they tend to generate what the literature describes as “affective polarization,” thereby intensifying the conditions for culture-war politics.

The Event

On 20 March 2026, Portugal’s right-wing parliamentary parties secured approval in principle for three bills on gender identity, tabled by Chega, CDS-PP, and PSD. All three passed with the support of PSD, Chega, and CDS-PP, while the opposition bloc — Socialist Party (PS), Liberal Initiative, Livre, Communist Party, BE (Left Bloc), PAN (Party of Animals and Nature), and JPP (an Azorian new party) — voted against. A separate Left Bloc proposal was rejected at the same stage. 

What was approved is not yet final law, but it marks a clear attempt to reverse the framework established by Law No. 38/2018, which enshrined self-determination in the legal recognition of gender identity. The core shift is the reintroduction of medical validation for changing name and sex in the civil registry, replacing the current model based on self-identification. In political terms, the vote signals a coordinated right-wing effort to re-medicalize legal gender recognition and to reframe the issue not primarily as a question of individual autonomy, but of state oversight and child protection. 

The CDS-PP bill goes further, proposing to ban puberty blockers and hormonal treatment for minors under 18 when used in the context of gender incongruence or gender dysphoria. Chega’s proposal, meanwhile, explicitly frames the revision in terms of the “protection of children and young people.” For supporters, these initiatives are presented as corrective safeguards; for opponents, they represent a rollback of rights, a renewed pathologization of trans identities, and a moral panic translated into lawmaking. 

Crucially, however, the parliamentary vote of 20 March was only a first reading. Approval “in principle” means that the bills now move to committee, where they will be debated and amended in detail before any final overall vote. Only after that stage could a final text proceed to presidential promulgation or constitutional review and, eventually, publication in the Diário da República. The immediate significance, then, is political rather than juridical: the Portuguese right has opened a legislative offensive against the country’s existing gender identity framework, but the legal outcome remains unsettled. 

The Context

For a long time, Portugal was portrayed as a country immune to populism. However, as Zúquete (2022) has shown, contrary to that illusion of “exceptionalism,” Portugal has experienced different types of populist solutions, from charismatic military figures to mainstream political actors, especially during the 1990s, when CDS-PP — the Christian-democratic party — began to articulate a low-intensity version of Camus’s “great replacement” thesis.

In fact, to understand this debate and political decision, it is necessary to frame it within a long tradition of culture wars in Portugal. As I argued in my book (Ferreira Dias, 2025), debates on moral values are part of the Portuguese political fabric, as illustrated by the so-called Revolta da Maria da Fonte (Maria da Fonte’s Revolt) in the nineteenth century, a popular uprising against heavy taxation on rural communities and the ban on burials in churches for public-health reasons.

However, the most critical topics of debate in Portugal are colonial memory and national self-esteem, both linked to the myth of the “good colonizer” (v.g. Cardina, 2025; Smith, 2025; Vala, Lopes & Lima, 2008). The so-called “lusotropicalism” produced a form of self-esteem grounded in the myth of colonial exceptionalism, that is, the supposedly distinctive Portuguese capacity to mix with native populations and to produce a mulato community free of racism.

With the emergence of postcolonial and critical studies, and of the Epistemologies of the South (Sousa Santos, 2016), there emerged a generation of Portuguese academics and activists who questioned those assumptions, giving greater room to the subalternized voices of history.

While this postcolonial, postmodern and critical generation gained space in Portuguese universities, global social changes were also taking place, with the rise of the so-called woke culture and a subsequent global response labelled “cultural backlash” (Norris & Inglehart, 2019).

A widespread paranoia gained ground in Western societies around the idea of “cultural Marxism,” helping to consolidate a radical right that claimed to be conservative while often operating in reactionary and illiberal registers, through populist leaders such as Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, and Viktor Orbán. At the same time, parts of the left became culturally radical, hyper-moralized, and at times susceptible to symbolic forms of historical and social purification (Mounk, 2025; McWhorter, 2021).

The struggle between this “conservative moral majority” and “progressivist morality” has accelerated culture wars. This context, together with the moral panic surrounding globalization, helps explain how Chega rose so quickly in Portugal — a country where cultural backlash, in many respects, arrived before woke culture acquired real social depth.

The Proper Debate

Paulo Núncio is one of the most visible CDS-PP deputies in this debate. He is well known for his ultraconservative positions and his opposition to woke culture. As coauthor of the CDS-PP bill on puberty blockers and hormonal treatment for minors, he is not initiating a new line of intervention but rather reaffirming a longstanding political agenda: for years, he has been one of the clearest exponents of culture-war politics within CDS-PP, and this initiative should be read as one more moment in that broader trajectory. In that sense, the issue of gender is not merely a policy question; it becomes a privileged arena for moral and political confrontation. Núncio has come to personify this agenda: he is the most visible CDS-PP figure in the field of culture-war politics and one of the most politically consequential voices of the Portuguese right on these matters.

What matters here, however, is not only the profile of one deputy, but the wider political grammar at work. The right is increasingly learning that moral conflict mobilizes more effectively than technocratic disagreement. Gender, in this setting, functions as a condensed symbol through which parties can speak about authority, family, childhood, education, and the limits of institutional neutrality.

That is why this debate exceeds the legal content of the bills themselves. At stake is a deeper dispute over who has the authority to name social reality: the individual, the family, the clinic, the school, or the state. Once framed in these terms, the controversy ceases to be a narrow disagreement over administrative procedure and becomes a struggle over moral sovereignty. This is the true grammar of culture wars: not distributive conflict, but symbolic boundary-making.

In Portugal, this grammar is still relatively recent in parliamentary form, but it is no longer marginal. What happened on 20 March 2026 suggests that the Portuguese right now sees legislative action on gender not as an isolated intervention, but as part of a broader attempt to reorganize the national moral agenda. Whether that attempt will prevail in law remains uncertain; that it has already shifted the political center of gravity is much harder to deny.

 

References 

Applebaum, A. (2021). Twilight of democracy: The seductive lure of authoritarianism. Vintage.

Cardina, M. (2025). “Portugal’s legacies of colonialism and decolonization.” Current History, 124(860), 101–106. https://doi.org/10.1525/curh.2025.124.860.101

de Sousa Santos, B. (2016). Epistemologies of the South: Justice against epistemicide. Routledge.

Ferreira Dias, J. (2025). Guerras culturais: Os ódios que nos incendeiam e como vencê-los. Guerra & Paz.

McWhorter, J. (2021). Woke racism: How a new religion has betrayed Black America. Portfolio.

Mounk, Y. (2025). The identity trap: A story of ideas and power in our time. Penguin Books.

Norris, P., & Inglehart, R. (2019). Cultural backlash: Trump, Brexit, and authoritarian populism. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108595841

Smith, H. (2025). “Many races – one nation: Racial non-discrimination always the cornerstone of Portugal’s overseas policy.” In: C. Roldão, R. Lima, P. Varela, O. Raposo, & A. R. Matias (Eds.), Afroeuropeans: Identities, racism, and resistances (pp. 235–246). Routledge. 

Vala, J.; Lopes, D. & Lima, M. (2008). “Black immigrants in Portugal: Luso-tropicalism and prejudice.” Journal of Social Issues, 64(2), 287–302. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.2008.00562.x

Zúquete, J. P. (2022). Populismo: Lá fora e cá dentro. Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos. 

Professor Jean-Yves Camus.

Professor Camus: The Boundary Between Mainstream and Radical Right in France Is Blurring Locally

by Editor’s ChoiceEuropean ObservatoryExtremism & RadicalisationHomeInterviews

Professor Jean-Yves Camus, a leading scholar of the far right and researcher at the Observatory of Political Radicalities at the Jean Jaurès Foundation in Paris, argues that France’s 2026 municipal elections revealed more than the continued advance of the National Rally (RN): they exposed a deeper reconfiguration of the French right. In this interview with ECPS, Professor Camus shows how the RN’s local gains—57 municipalities and over 3,000 council seats—coexist with persistent weakness in major metropolitan centers. More importantly, he underscores that “the boundary between the mainstream and the radical right is blurring locally,” particularly where segments of Les Républicains and RN voters increasingly converge. The interview offers a nuanced account of electoral realignment, selective republican resistance, and the uncertain road to 2027.

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

Giving an interview to the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Jean-Yves Camus, a researcher at the Observatory of Political Radicalities at the Jean Jaurès Foundation in Paris, underscores that France’s 2026 municipal elections reveal not only the continued advance of the National Rally / Rassemblement National (RN) but, more importantly, a gradual reconfiguration of the right in which the lines separating mainstream conservatism and radical populism are increasingly porous at the local level.

Reflecting on what he calls a “mixed bag” outcome, Professor Camus notes that the RN has achieved “a substantial gain” by winning 57 municipalities and securing over 3,000 council seats, yet “failed in all major cities and metropolises.” This dual pattern—territorial expansion alongside persistent urban resistance—captures the paradox at the heart of contemporary French politics. While the party has consolidated its presence in “small and medium-sized cities”and in economically distressed regions such as Pas-de-Calais and Moselle, it continues to face structural limits in gentrified metropolitan centers like Paris, where “the extreme right is very weak for obvious sociological reasons.”

Yet, the most consequential development, as Professor Camus emphasizes, lies not simply in where the RN wins or loses, but in how it increasingly interacts with the broader right-wing ecosystem. In several regions, particularly along the Mediterranean corridor, “the core voters of the Conservatives… are very close to voters of the National Rally,”facilitating patterns of vote transfer and informal cooperation. This dynamic signals a shift from the once rigid cordon sanitaire toward what Professor Camus describes as a more “selective” Republican front, contingent on local contexts and strategic calculations.

The significance of Éric Ciotti’s victory in Nice further illustrates this transformation. While rooted in the city’s longstanding conservative and post-colonial sociological profile, the result also points to a deeper convergence: “locally… the Republicans and the National Rally have platforms that are very similar.” In this sense, Ciotti’s ascent functions as both a local phenomenon and a symbolic “vitrine,” enabling the RN to present itself as part of a broader conservative continuum rather than an isolated extremist force.

At the national level, however, this convergence remains contested. Professor Camus highlights an unresolved strategic dilemma within Les Républicains, torn between maintaining ideological autonomy and pursuing alignment with the RN. As he cautions, any such coalition would likely be asymmetrical: “the dynamic is on the side of the National Rally… the agenda will be set by the National Rally.”

Taken together, the interview suggests that France is not witnessing a straightforward normalization of the far right, but rather a more complex process of political recomposition. The RN’s rise is embedded in enduring socioeconomic grievances and cultural anxieties, yet its ultimate trajectory will depend on whether the boundaries that once separated it from the mainstream right continue to erode—or are strategically reasserted—in the run-up to 2027.

Here is the edited version of our interview with Professor Jean-Yves Camus, revised slightly to improve clarity and flow.

The RN Has Expanded Locally, but Still Hits a Metropolitan Ceiling

Paris.
Cyclists and pedestrians take over the Champs-Élysées during Paris Car-Free Day, filling the iconic avenue from the Louvre to the Arc de Triomphe under a clear sky. Photo: Dreamstime.

Professor Jean-Yves Camus, welcome, and let me start right away with the first question: The 2026 municipal elections seem to have produced a paradoxical outcome: the National Rally / Rassemblement National (RN) expanded its local footprint yet failed to secure the kind of major urban victories that would have symbolized full normalization. How should we interpret this mixed result—does it confirm the RN’s structural implantation, or does it reveal enduring sociological and territorial ceilings?

Professor Jean-Yves Camus: You’re right to say that the outcome of this election is very much a mixed bag for the Rassemblement National (RN). On the one hand, they significantly increased the number of seats they gained on city councils—up to more than 3,000. They won 57 cities, which is, of course, a substantial gain compared to the 13 cities they secured in 2020. But they failed in all major cities and metropolises, with very significant losses. They expected to win Toulon and secured 42% in the first round, but ultimately did not win. Due to a consolidation of votes against the National Rally, they were also expected to seize Marseille but did not. Paris remains a territory where the extreme right is very weak, for obvious sociological reasons. It is a gentrified city, which is largely alien to the ideology of the party. So, the cities they seized are small and medium-sized. The largest is Perpignan, which they retained in the first round with just over 50%, but this is the only city with more than 100,000 inhabitants that will be in the hands of the Rassemblement National.

So, I would say there is still significant progress to be made. In view of the presidential election, winning 57 cities is a notable achievement, but when it comes to the presidency, you need votes from the main metropolises. It remains to be seen whether, in a presidential contest, the outcome will be more favorable for the party. Let us remember that city council elections are based on proportional representation, which is not the case for presidential elections. These are local votes that rely heavily on the personality of the candidate for mayor, making this a very different mode of voting, with distinct patterns. Most voters in city council elections focus on very local issues, whereas presidential elections operate on an entirely different level.

What I take from this vote is that the party has expanded its reach to many small cities where it already had a number of strongholds. For example, in the département du Pas-de-Calais, one of the former industrial areas in northern France, they were highly successful and captured more than 10 small cities with populations between 3,000 and 10,000—a significant gain. On the other hand, if you look at a department with a similar sociological profile just north of Pas-de-Calais—the département du Nord, at the border with Belgium—they did not seize any towns, contrary to expectations. This suggests that electoral success depends heavily on how well the local branches of the party are organized, the quality and performance of the candidates, and whether there is genuine local momentum.

They also performed very well in the former industrial area of Lorraine, particularly in the département of Moselle, which borders Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany. These are areas where unemployment remains high, where we see multiple generations struggling with long-term economic insecurity, and where many people face difficulties maintaining stable and adequately paid employment. Unsurprisingly, the party performs strongly there. They also did well in the Mediterranean belt, from Perpignan at the Spanish border to Menton at the Italian border—an area where the party has long enjoyed support. However, despite failing to win Toulon or Marseille, they made a very significant gain in Nice, a major city with international appeal.

That said, it was not the Rassemblement National itself that won Nice. Rather, it was a smaller party, Les Républicains, led by Éric Ciotti, now the mayor of Nice, who identifies as a Gaullist and is working toward uniting the right ahead of 2027.

Populism in France Is Deeply Rooted, Not a Temporary Surge

You have long argued that right-wing populist parties must be understood through their specific national histories rather than as a perfectly homogeneous European bloc. In the French case, what do these local election results tell us about the specifically French configuration of populism, nationalism, and anti-elite politics in 2026?

Professor Jean-Yves Camus: This situation tells us, first of all, that in most cases the Rassemblement National is still unable to build a coalition with the mainstream conservative right. In many cities, Les Républicains, the mainstream conservatives, remain strong. I think the main outcome of this election is that both Les Républicains on the right and the Socialist Party—the Social Democrats on the left—retain most of their strongholds. They are still the most important and relevant parties at the local level.

The National Rally has two options. The first is that of Marine Le Pen, who said after the vote: “My party is neither left nor right. I want to call on all people, regardless of their political affiliation, to vote for us in 2027. So, not left, not right.” The second option is that of Jordan Bardella, the new president and chairman of the party, who argues that, if they want to win in 2027, they must work toward a coalition of the right. But this coalition of the right is still very much contested from within among mainstream conservatives. Some of them, like Xavier Bertrand, chairman of the northern region of France, or Valérie Pécresse, chairperson of the Île-de-France region, argue that if they ally with the National Rally solely to defeat the left, they will probably lose their specificity. If they enter into a coalition with the National Rally, the policies of the National Rally will prevail, and they will not be able to act as the driving force in recovery.

That is a very wise analysis of the situation. If the conservative right enters into a coalition with the National Rally, the dynamic is on the side of the National Rally. Politically, the agenda will be set by the National Rally—by Le Pen or Bardella—and the conservatives will become a second-ranked partner in the coalition.

Another specificity of France is that it has a populist far-right party that has been above the 10% mark since 1984—over 40 years. Contrary to what many analysts have suggested, this is not a short-term political phenomenon. It is a structural part of political life, both at the local and national levels.

This also means that the French right, which until the 1980s had been divided between a liberal wing and a conservative wing, is now divided into three segments: a liberal, center-right one; a mainstream conservative one; and an identitarian, populist, anti-EU family. This is a major challenge.

Finally, there were elections in Denmark yesterday (March 24, 2026), and the outgoing Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, stated in her acceptance speech that there is a broad consensus on restricting immigration policy in Denmark, which is true. This consensus ranges from the Social Democrats to right-wing populists. In France, however, this is not the case. Immigration and asylum policies remain highly contentious issues, and there is no way the Socialist Party—the Social Democrats—can find common ground even with the mainstream conservative right. Restricting immigration and limiting the rights of asylum seekers is still associated with a small segment of the right wing of the Conservative Party, within Éric Zemmour’s party, which does not perform very well at the local level. Yet this remains central to the ideology of the National Rally. Any coalition, any cohesion of the right for 2027 will therefore have to confront these policy differences on immigration. No agreement, no coordination.

Marine and Jean-Marie Le Pen.
Marine and Jean-Marie Le Pen rallied during the meeting for the celebration of May 1, 2011 in Paris, France. Photo: Frederic Legrand

Blocking the RN Remains Possible, but No Longer Automatic

Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella framed the elections as evidence of a historic breakthrough, yet the two-round system once again appeared capable of blocking the far right in key urban contests. Does the municipal vote suggest that the so-called “Republican Front” is weakened, resilient, or merely transforming into more selective and local forms?

Professor Jean-Yves Camus: The so-called Republican front has become more selective. Obviously, in the southern part of the country, from Perpignan to Menton, the fan base—the core voters of the Conservative Party, the Republicans—are very close to voters of the National Rally. So they tend to transfer their votes to National Rally candidates in the second ballot because they share common ideas: mostly rejection of the left, even when it is moderate, a desire to curb immigration, and a very strong stance against what they call Islamic fundamentalism. Sometimes, the distinction between fighting Islamism and opposing Islam and Muslim immigrants becomes blurred. So, there is considerable cooperation at both the membership level and among voters between the Republicans and the National Rally.

In other cases, such as Toulon, it seems—although it is still too early to say definitively—that one of the reasons why the National Rally did not win is that the local bourgeoisie and business community had concerns about what the city would look like under National Rally governance. This is a very local situation. Toulon was won by the Front National in 1995, and the way the city was governed at the time was widely regarded as dreadful. It was a total failure, both economically and administratively. There may still be lingering negative memories from that period. You must remember that this whole area of France is heavily dependent on foreign investment and tourism, including mass tourism, with foreigners building and buying homes and condominiums, sometimes for retirement and sometimes for vacation. In such a context, how the city is perceived by outsiders—especially from other countries—is extremely important. I believe that the Rassemblement National is still not seen by these foreign investors as a fully normalized party. There remains a fear of what it might do, a fear of the future, and uncertainty about how things would look under its rule.

But this is only one example; Toulon is a very specific case. In Marseille, it was a completely different story. First of all, turnout was much higher in the second round than in the first. Secondly, the candidate from the radical left chose to withdraw, and it appears that a significant portion of his voter base supported the Socialist Party candidate in the second ballot, thereby limiting the National Rally’s chances of winning. This is particularly interesting because voters from the far left seem to have backed the Socialist candidate, despite Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the radical left La France Insoumise, being highly critical of the Socialist Party.

It, therefore, appears that left-wing voters still seek to block the National Rally from winning their cities. They may not like the Socialist Party—they may view it as too moderate, too pro-business, too pro–free market, and too strict on immigration—but when faced with a choice between the National Rally and the left, they ultimately vote for the left.

There is, therefore, still a possibility that in 2027, if Jordan Bardella or Marine Le Pen reach the second round, some form of Republican front will re-emerge to block the National Rally from winning the presidency. Why? Because Marine Le Pen remains associated with an embezzlement case involving funds from the European Parliament, and she is expected to stand trial next June. Jordan Bardella, meanwhile, is a 32-year-old, relatively inexperienced politician who has never been a mayor or a member of the National Assembly. He is a Member of the European Parliament but has never served in the National Assembly.

France still sees itself as one of the world’s major powers. It possesses nuclear weapons and plays a role in numerous international negotiations, as seen in both the Ukraine conflict and the Iran–Israel–United States tensions. Many French people may therefore feel that it is somewhat unwise to entrust such responsibility to someone who, while undoubtedly capable, lacks the necessary experience.

In 2017, France elected the youngest president in its history—Emmanuel Macron—who was only 39. By the end of Macron’s second term, many French citizens may feel that he lacked sufficient experience, as he had not been a Member of Parliament and had only briefly served as a minister. He may be seen as one of those figures from the higher administrative elite with limited experience at the grassroots level—someone who had never previously been elected—and that this, in hindsight, may have been a mistake.

Ciotti’s Victory Signals Convergence Between Republicans and the RN

How significant was Éric Ciotti’s victory in Nice for the broader right-wing ecosystem? Should we read it as an isolated local triumph shaped by personal rivalry, or as a more durable sign that the boundary between the mainstream right and the Le Pen camp is continuing to erode?

Professor Jean-Yves Camus: There are two different things here. The first is the Nice election, with Éric Ciotti winning over Christian Estrosi, who had the backing of the center-right and President Macron. And then there is what it represents at the national level.

Nice has always been a very peculiar city. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, the mayor was Jacques Médecin, who was officially a center-right member of the government but was very close to the local extreme right, even before the Front National was founded in 1972. This has traditionally been a stronghold of the arch-conservative right. That was the situation before World War II, and it remained so afterward. The Gaullist movement was never very strong, especially after 1962, when Algeria was granted independence. A large number of what we call repatriés—repatriated people—settled in the area, and they were strongly opposed to de Gaulle for obvious reasons. They were also very right-wing, particularly on the issue of immigration and the Muslim population. That remains an issue to this day.

In addition, Christian Estrosi performed very poorly. You have probably heard about the many controversies that emerged during the campaign, and there are ongoing inquiries into some of them. So he is partly responsible for his own failure.

So, the election of Éric Ciotti aligns very well with the sociology of this city and with expectations for change. It also reflects the fact that, locally, between Nice and Menton, the Republicans and the National Rally have platforms that are very similar, or at least very close to each other.

At the national level, Ciotti’s party is, in a way, a Gaullist formation. Marine Le Pen and Bardella also refer to General de Gaulle when it comes to the idea of France being independent, both from the United States and from other powers. They claim to be Gaullist in their approach to relations with the European Union and in their economic policy, emphasizing a return to strong industry, and so on.

This movement, when it was launched as a splinter group from the Republicans, was both a personal project of Éric Ciotti—he wanted to achieve something he felt he could not achieve within the Republicans—and a reflection of a broader trend within the Gaullist movement to drift toward a more right-wing stance on immigration and on relations with, especially, Muslim immigration.

This group has captured several cities, such as Montauban, Vierzon, and Sablé-sur-Sarthe. These are medium-sized cities. It can serve as what we call in French a vitrine—a kind of showcase demonstrating that there is an ally which is, in fact, part of the mainstream conservative right and not burdened by the controversies that have surrounded the history of the National Front and the National Rally. So Marine Le Pen and Bardella can say: look, we have mayors from a Gaullist party, which shows that we do not belong to the extreme right. We are simply the real conservative right, while the Republicans are no longer truly conservative because they have governed alongside Macron’s ministers and are, ideologically, closer to the center-left than to traditional right-wing ideas.

Republicans Remain Strong Locally but Divided Nationally

Éric Zemmour’s election campaign, meeting in Cannes,France on January 22, 2022. Photo: Macri Roland.

At the same time, Les Républicains retained or regained a number of municipalities. Do these results indicate that the traditional right still possesses a meaningful territorial base independent of the RN, or is it increasingly being forced into a strategic choice between centrism and nationalist realignment?

Professor Jean-Yves Camus: Les Républicains retain a significant base at the local level. The controversy within the Republicans concerns the presidential contest. What we have seen after the city council vote is two leaders from the Republicans, Laurent Wauquiez and Bruno Retailleau, expressing opposing views regarding the presidential election. One explanation is that both of them are, in fact, candidates for the presidency. Retailleau argues that if they retain traditional conservative ideology, and perhaps go a little further on the issue of immigration, they can still win the presidency. Wauquiez, by contrast, argues that if they remain alone as Les Républicains, they will not succeed.

So, he suggests that they already have much in common with the National Rally. What, then, are the differences between them? On this basis, he proposes organizing a primary among all right-wing candidates, from Édouard Philippe on the center-right to the National Rally, to Zemmour’s party and its candidate, who will obviously be Sarah Knafo. They would then rally behind whoever wins the primary election.

Retailleau, however, rejects this approach outright. In other words, he insists that they have nothing in common with Zemmour’s party. So, why hold a primary contest with actors who do not share the same platform and ideology?

In other words, part of the center-right does not want to become hostage to the most right-wing parties in the country, especially since Zemmour’s party stands to the right of the National Rally. Zemmour’s party promotes the idea of the “Great Replacement.” It also advances the view that Islam is not compatible with French citizenship and supports the idea of “remigration,” that is, the compulsory return of all non-European immigrants. This is, therefore, a completely different ideological framework.

My view is that this controversy will continue for many months to come, especially since we do not yet know who the National Rally’s candidate will be. As I mentioned earlier, Marine Le Pen will stand trial on appeal next June, and the outcome will be known then. She may be disqualified from running. If that happens, Bardella will carry the colors of the National Rally. This means that, for the time being, the National Rally faces some difficulty in entering the pre-campaign phase, and this gives the Republicans time to take advantage of the situation and clarify their strategy.

Perceived Cultural Loss, Not Just Reality, Drives RN Support

Islamophobia.
Muslims demonstrating against Islamophobia outside the Grande Mosquée de Paris, France. Photo: Tom Craig.

Your previous work has emphasized the role of cultural insecurity, as well as socioeconomic dislocation, in shaping support for the populist right. Did these local elections confirm that diagnosis, especially in provincial France and smaller towns where the RN performed more strongly than in metropolitan centers?

Professor Jean-Yves Camus: It is absolutely true. When we look at the map of the cities won by the National Rally, what we see are many small and medium-sized cities where there is a strong feeling of cultural loss—a perception that there is more immigration, more mosques being built, and more immigrants and refugees arriving. Many people feel very uneasy about this. It is a perception of insecurity, even in cases where there is no actual crime or insecurity. That is very important to understand.

It is not because you live in a safe city that you do not believe immigration is increasing—10, 20, or even 50 kilometers away in a larger city—and that sooner or later immigrants will come to your own town and change its cultural history, what you consider necessary to be truly French, and what you think is required to live in your community.

I think we still have a problem with immigration from former French colonies, whether from North Africa or West Africa. It is as if we have not fully come to terms with our colonial past, and with the fact that we not only accepted these immigrants but actively encouraged them to come. Large industries and major business interests brought them to this country. So, they deserve recognition for what they contributed and for the role they played in building the country’s industrial base. Yet, they remain disadvantaged, and racism and xenophobia persist.

On the other hand, among native French people—those whose families have lived in the country for generations—especially in today’s unstable international context, there is a growing perception of a clash of civilizations between the West and the Muslim world. This perception plays an important role, particularly along the Mediterranean coast, in shaping support for the National Rally.

The social situation is also very important. As I mentioned earlier, in many parts of France, these areas have been deindustrialized since the late 1970s, and there is no realistic prospect that these jobs will return. You may recall that President Trump, during his campaign in Pittsburgh, told steelworkers that their jobs would come back—but they did not. The same is true in northern France: industrial jobs will not return.

In other words, people feel they have no future, no new forms of employment or specialization for younger generations. There is a strong sense of dispossession, alienation, and abandonment. In some small towns, public services are also disappearing. Public services include the post office, the local school, the railway station—everything that signals the presence of the state. This also includes the presence of police or access to hospitals. Many hospitals have been closing in this country, and when people have to travel an hour to reach emergency care, they understandably feel that the state is no longer taking care of them. So, a protest vote in favor of the National Rally emerges in this context.

Major Cities Favor Stability Over Populist Alternatives

Conversely, how do you explain the RN’s continuing difficulty in major cities? Is this primarily a matter of candidate quality, urban demography, coalition arithmetic, class composition, or the party’s still-incomplete process of dédiabolisation?

Professor Jean-Yves Camus: In major cities, you have to remember that most of them, including Paris, have become gentrified. A gentrified city means a high proportion of people with higher education, better-paid jobs, and incomes above the average wage. There is also a tendency to reject extremes and to seek stability.

If you look at cities like Marseille, Paris, Lille, Strasbourg, and so on, there is also a significant share of the population that comes from an immigrant background and who, obviously, do not want to vote for the National Rally. So the conditions are in place to prevent the National Rally from winning in the largest cities, such as Lyon, Paris, and Marseille.

This is not the case in small or medium-sized cities. There, the population is different, often with incomes below the average and facing many difficulties, including in rural areas where the National Rally has made very significant inroads.

Moreover, the organizational apparatus of the major parties still retains some hold over the electorate in major cities, whereas the electorate in small and medium-sized cities and rural areas is much more volatile.

Municipal Results Do Not Predict Presidential Outcomes

Le Pen & Bardella
Leaflets featuring candidates for the 2024 legislative elections in Versailles, France, on June 28, 2024. Photo: Dreamstime.

Finally, Professor Camus, do these municipal elections offer any reliable indication for the presidential race ahead? More specifically, do they suggest that France is still heading toward a Le Pen– or Bardella-centered contest, or do they reopen the possibility that broader coalitions of the mainstream left, center, and moderate right could yet alter the expected scenario?

Professor Jean-Yves Camus: First of all, in political science, we know that we cannot infer from city council elections what the outcome of a presidential election will be. These are two very different types of elections, not the same mode of scrutiny, and, of course, a very different context—especially in a country like France, where the presidency is very powerful. We are a semi-presidential system.

Second, I would insist that there is still one year to go until the election. The only thing we know for sure is that Emmanuel Macron is not allowed to seek a third term. As for the other contenders, we know quite a few—especially Édouard Philippe, who retained his mayorship of Le Havre last Sunday and is one of the contenders for the center-right—but there are others, and there are many contenders within the Republican Party. We do not yet know who will be the candidate of the Social Democratic left; there may even be several. The only thing we know for sure is that the candidate of the National Rally will be either Le Pen or Bardella, and we know that the candidate of the radical left will be Jean-Luc Mélenchon. So let us wait until we really know who will stand for president, and then look at the first polls.

What the National Rally expects is a second round between Mélenchon and Bardella. Why? Because opinion surveys show that the dédiabolisation of the National Rally has progressed to such an extent that the radical left is now rejected by a higher proportion of voters than Le Pen or Bardella. This is something we would not have said 10 or even 5 years ago. The rejection level of the radical left is around 60%. Fewer than 50% of French people today say that the National Rally is a threat to democracy—49% still see it as such, but that is no longer a majority. So, the hope of the National Rally is a second round between two candidates from the extremes, which would allow it to win.

On the other hand, what I see emerging is what we call the central bloc—that is, Macron’s majority—playing the card of stability: you do not want to vote for one or another extreme, so let us vote for stability. Maybe you do not agree with everything the center-right has done over the past decade, but if you are faced with the National Rally in the second round, please vote for stability—keeping France a democracy and keeping France within the European Union. This kind of strategy may work.

The only problem is that in 2017 and in 2022, the majority of the French did not vote for Macron because they shared his ideas; they voted for him because they rejected Le Pen. And if, in 2027, we again have to vote for a candidate whose policies we do not truly support, only out of rejection of the National Rally, then I would expect very difficult times. Because voting for a president, at least in the French context, should mean supporting his ideology, his project for the country, what he wants to do, and the kind of legislation he wants to pass. If you vote only to avoid what you perceive as a threat, then democracy is not very solid.

Professor Marlene Wind.

Prof. Wind: Mainstream Parties in Denmark Have Absorbed, Not Neutralized, the Radical Right

by Editor’s ChoiceEuropean ObservatoryHomeInterviews

Professor Marlene Wind argues that Denmark’s 2026 general election is not only a contest over leadership and crisis management, but also a revealing test of how liberal democracies internalize radical-right agendas. In her interview with the ECPS, Professor Wind contends that mainstream Danish parties have “absorbed, not neutralized, the radical right,” warning that electoral containment has too often meant ideological normalization. Situating the campaign within the wider context of Trump’s pressure over Greenland, Europe’s security crisis, and Denmark’s pragmatic turn toward the EU, she highlights the deeper structural dilemmas facing contemporary democracy: the normalization of restrictive politics, the fragility of liberal institutions, and the growing entanglement between populist forces, geopolitical instability, and weakened democratic boundaries. Denmark, in her view, offers a critical case for understanding these broader European transformations.

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

Giving an interview to the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Marlene Wind—Professor of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen and Director of the Centre for European Politics—offers a penetrating analysis of Denmark’s parliamentary election campaign against the backdrop of geopolitical rupture, institutional recalibration, and the longer-term normalization of radical-right politics. As Denmark heads toward the March 24, 2026 general election, the contest has unfolded under the shadow of Donald Trump’s renewed pressure over Greenland, a crisis that briefly revived Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s standing after months of domestic political weakness. Reuters reported that Frederiksen’s Social Democrats rebounded from a December polling low of 17% to around 22% in recent weeks, while the broader electoral landscape remained fragmented and without a clear majority for either bloc. 

Yet for Professor Wind, the most consequential issue is not simply whether Frederiksen’s crisis management can secure a third term. Rather, the Danish case exposes a more structural dilemma at the heart of contemporary European democracy: how mainstream actors respond when radical-right agendas become embedded within the political center. This concern is captured in the interview’s headline argument: “Mainstream parties in Denmark have absorbed, not neutralized, the radical right.” Professor Wind also cautions that “the argument that we have managed to eradicate the extreme right is simply not accurate,” because “the policies adopted by the majority of politicians and political parties… have effectively incorporated right-wing positions.” The result, she argues, is not democratic containment but ideological normalization.

Professor Wind’s intervention is especially timely because the election has developed at the intersection of two seemingly contradictory dynamics. On the one hand, geopolitics has returned forcefully to Danish politics: Trump’s Greenland posture, Russia’s war against Ukraine, and uncertainty surrounding transatlantic guarantees have elevated questions of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and Europe’s strategic future. On the other hand, the campaign itself has remained anchored in domestic concerns—cost of living, welfare, migration, leadership fatigue, and social trust. As Professor Wind observes, geopolitics has functioned largely as “a background condition for everything else,” not as a fully articulated debate about Denmark’s future in Europe.

Within that setting, her analysis moves beyond the immediate election cycle to a broader diagnosis of European political development. She argues that Denmark’s majoritarian political culture, limited judicial review, and long-standing transactional view of European integration have made it easier to mainstream restrictive agendas without eliminating their social base. Indeed, she notes, aggregate support for right-wing parties remains “roughly 17% to 20%,” even if now dispersed across smaller formations. That continuity leads to her central normative warning: “Adopting the positions of the extreme right is not an effective strategy to counter it.”

In sum, Professor Wind’s remarks present Denmark not as an exceptional success story in containing the far right, but as a revealing case of how liberal democracies may gradually internalize the very forces they claim to resist.

Here is the edited version of our interview with Professor Marlene Wind, revised slightly to improve clarity and flow.

Mainstreaming the Far Right Has Not Reduced Its Support

Pakistani or Indian migrants in Copenhagen.
Pakistani or Indian migrants in Copenhagen, Denmark, September 22, 2017. Photo: Dreamstime.

Professor Marlene Wind, thank you very much for joining our interview series. Let me begin with the broad picture. To what extent should the current Danish election be understood not merely as a domestic contest over welfare, inflation, and leadership fatigue, but as a referendum on sovereignty, geopolitical anxiety, and Denmark’s place in an increasingly post-Atlantic Europe?

Professor Marlene Wind: Thank you very much for having me here. I will try to answer as well as I can. I think there was some anticipation that this election would be largely about geopolitics and Denmark’s place in Europe. However, it has actually turned out to be more of a background condition for everything else. It has not been particularly dominant, even though there have, of course, been questions about who we can trust to run the government in times of crisis, and this kind of very broad framing of the situation. There has not really been any detailed discussion about what kind of Europe we should have if we can no longer trust the US after Greenland, and so on. It has remained in the background. I also think this has to do with the fact that journalists covering national elections tend to be quite narrow-minded in terms of what should be debated and asked about, focusing mainly on healthcare, immigration, and similar issues. So, while the international situation and geopolitics are certainly present, they have not displaced other debates.

Domestic Priorities Prevail Despite Geopolitical Anxiety

In your work, you have explored the tension between national constitutional traditions and European integration. How do you interpret Mette Frederiksen’s transformation from one of Denmark’s most sovereignty-conscious and Eurosceptic leaders into a prime minister who now presents deeper European cooperation as a strategic necessity? Does this reflect ideological conversion, geopolitical realism, or a broader restructuring of Danish statecraft?

Professor Marlene Wind: It is really based on national interests. The current government, and in particular the Danish Prime Minister, has realized that everything Danish foreign policy has relied on since the Second World War has been NATO and our alliance with the Americans. This is also one of the reasons why Denmark has approached the EU in a very transactional way. We often accuse Trump of being transactional, but Denmark has also been incredibly transactional in its EU policy—and this is not limited to the current Prime Minister; it has been the case since we joined in 1973.

Our prime ministers and politicians more generally have viewed the European Union primarily as a market for creating wealth in Denmark—a market where we could sell our products—and little more. Every time we have held referendums on the EU over the years, the public debate has followed the same pattern: this will not become a federation, this will not become a political union. Please vote for this treaty; it will not develop into anything beyond a market. This reflects a consistently skeptical approach toward the more political idea of Europe. There has not really been much engagement with that dimension.

What has changed now is the impact of the illegal full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and, in particular, Donald Trump’s return to the White House—questioning support for Ukraine, questioning who is responsible for the war, and even questioning NATO, including whether the United States would honor Article 5 commitments. In response, the Danish Prime Minister has effectively made a U-turn.

Pragmatically, she has turned to her closest allies in Denmark and to civil servants, asking what the wisest course of action is. Europe is there, and it is the only viable option left. That explains this shift.

It is not driven by idealism or sentiment. It is highly pragmatic and transactional. The United States is no longer a reliable anchor in the same way. Geopolitics has fundamentally changed. And now, after 50 years of EU membership, we are finally beginning to see the EU as a more political entity than before—but this shift has emerged out of necessity and national interest, not out of idealism.

Denmark’s European Reorientation Reflects Geopolitical Realism, Not Ideological Conversion

Photo: Marian Vejcik | Dreamstime.

The Greenland dispute has elevated questions of sovereignty to the center of Danish politics. In your view, has Donald Trump’s revived interest in Greenland merely triggered a short-term “rally around the flag” effect, or has it fundamentally altered how Danes think about territorial integrity, alliance dependence, and the fragility of the liberal international order?

Professor Marlene Wind: I think it is fair to say that there was a distinct Greenland moment, during which many European leaders—until the threat to invade Greenland emerged—had tried to accommodate Trump and please him; I would even say to cozy up to him. We have seen this across many European governments.

However, when the threat to invade an ally and seize part of the territory of an allied kingdom materialized, both Danes and Europeans more broadly began to realize that we need to stand together and rethink our position. This has brought renewed attention to questions of territory, integrity, and sovereignty—but not sovereignty in the narrow sense of protecting only our own borders. We saw clearly that France, Germany, and even the UK, despite being outside the EU, came to Denmark’s support in this moment.

I also think that Danes have become much more aware of the importance of resisting aggressors who threaten territorial integrity. After all, Europe has effectively been in a state of conflict for four years—not only Ukraine in relation to Russia. The prevailing narrative has emphasized that countries must be able to protect their borders and determine for themselves whether they wish to be democracies.

For that reason, when Trump and the United States began threatening an ally, we quickly realized that such threats could also affect us. It is not only Ukraine that can be targeted by external actors; this is a broader phenomenon and a direct challenge to the liberal international order. The principles of territorial integrity and the right of countries to determine their own political systems must not be undermined by threats of force.

All these elements have converged in the Greenland crisis, and the parallels with Ukraine have been striking. After all, what have Ukrainians been doing for the past four years? They have been defending their territorial integrity. That is precisely the principle at stake when Trump threatened Denmark.

Trumpism as Symptom: The Rise of ‘Designer Populism’ from Above

How should we understand Trumpism in this Nordic context? Is Trump best seen as an external disruptor of Danish politics, or as a transnational amplifier of political tendencies that already exist within Europe—such as executive personalization, nationalist rhetoric, distrust of institutions, and the normalization of coercive sovereignty claims?

Professor Marlene Wind: I have written about this myself in my Tribalization of Europe book, which came out in 2020, that Trump, Brexit, and the erosion of democracy in Hungary, and earlier in Poland, are part of the same story. Even the return of Trump 2.0 has been inspired, to a large extent, by the populism and the extreme right that we have seen rising in Europe since 2010. So, I think Trump is a symptom not only of populism and its rise, but also of a new type of autocratic leadership—leaders who manipulate in order to gain and retain power.

Within the academic literature, there has been an ongoing debate. On the one hand, there is a left-wing analysis of populism that attributes it primarily to inequality. On the other hand, newer strands of research suggest that it is not the poorest who support autocrats, but rather segments of the middle classes who are receptive to narratives about external enemies, “draining the swamp,” and immigrants taking over society.

In my view, both Trump and many right-wing populists in Europe represent a largely top-down phenomenon. What we see is what I would call “designer politics”: political actors who deliberately construct narratives and manipulate conditions in order to secure and maintain power. They generate antagonisms by portraying elites as liberal or “woke,” and by identifying external and internal enemies.

This pattern is evident across Europe—in figures such as Nigel Farage, the AfD in Germany, Marine Le Pen, and previously in the Netherlands, as well as in many Central and Eastern European countries. It is, in fact, less about a dissatisfied citizenry rejecting liberal elites and more about kleptocracy and the concentration of power. If we look at the data, for example in Poland, we see that people have become increasingly affluent, yet still vote for right-wing parties.

A similar pattern can be observed in the United States. In 2016, it was not the poorest voters who supported Trump; many of them voted for Hillary Clinton. This suggests that we should be cautious about reducing these developments to questions of inequality alone. They also reflect the strategies of highly cynical political leaders who actively manufacture dissatisfaction, create antagonism, and construct narratives of threat from which they claim to offer protection.

Why the Far Right Persists in Denmark

Denmark, Rasmus Paludan.
Anti-Muslim demonstration by Stram Kurs and Rasmus Paludan, Frederikssund, Denmark, August 26, 2018. Photo: Stig Alenas | Dreamstime.

Denmark has long been seen as a case where mainstream parties absorbed parts of the anti-immigration agenda, thereby containing the electoral breakthrough of the far right. Do you see this as a successful inoculation strategy, or has it instead normalized core elements of far-right politics by translating them into state policy?

Professor Marlene Wind: To a large extent, it has become normalized in the Scandinavian countries. The reason it has been so easy to normalize is that we are not constitutional democracies; we are majoritarian democracies, where there is very little judicial review, and where there is no strong tradition of minorities challenging majority policies in court against a robust constitutional framework. We have a political culture in which the majority decides. In such an environment, it is much easier to normalize right-wing policies than in constitutional democracies, such as Germany, where minority groups can turn to the courts to assess whether policies are compatible with their rights and protections.

So, it has been easier in Denmark, and this process has been ongoing for many years. The argument that we have managed to eradicate the extreme right is simply not accurate. If you look at the policies adopted by the majority of politicians and political parties, they have effectively incorporated right-wing positions. We also see that support for right-wing political parties remains at similar levels as before; it is simply distributed across smaller parties. If aggregated, this support still amounts to roughly 17% to 20%. Moreover, there is currently a competition within Danish politics over who can adopt the toughest stance on these issues.

I believe it is a misconception in many European countries that this challenge has been resolved. I am not suggesting that the discussion itself is not legitimate—it certainly is. We must uphold our liberal values and firmly reject all forms of intolerance toward women, as well as attempts to promote Islamist and other extreme positions. Protecting liberal democracy remains essential. However, adopting the positions of the extreme right is not an effective strategy to counter it. In fact, the overall level of support for these views remains largely unchanged compared to 20 years ago.

Social Democracy at the Edge of Populist Politics

Relatedly, what does the Danish case tell us about the contemporary relationship between mainstream social democracy and populist political logics? Can restrictive migration politics coexist with a democratic center-left project without eroding the normative distinctions between social democracy and the populist radical right?

Professor Marlene Wind: That is a very political question. If you ask the Social Democrats, they would absolutely say yes. Even the Socialists on the left side of the Danish Social Democratic Party fully support this, so they would argue that it can coexist. This is a clear example of how such positions have become normalized. It is entirely legitimate to raise and debate the major questions and challenges associated with immigration, particularly when it comes to differing values. Where I see a problem, however, is when there is no judicial review of political decisions that sometimes approach the limits of what one would consider the rule of law, and where it becomes difficult to obtain a second opinion on the policies being implemented. That, in my view, is where the real issue lies—not in having an open discussion about challenges that certainly exist. So yes, any Social Democrat in Denmark would say that this is fully compatible, but it remains a highly political question.

Crisis Governance Expands Executive Power While Suspending Accountability

Professor Wind, do you think the incoming election demonstrates that external geopolitical crises can temporarily suspend domestic political accountability? In other words, can international confrontation—whether over Greenland, Ukraine, or transatlantic instability—re-legitimate incumbents whose domestic credibility had previously weakened?

Professor Marlene Wind: This is what happens every time there is a crisis. Political leaders go into crisis mode and argue that they need more power and greater competences to deal with the situation, and as a result, other issues are set aside. This is a very common phenomenon. You can see it in Hungary as well, where there has been a state of emergency since the COVID period. As far as I know, it is still in place. I am not entirely sure whether it has been lifted, but you can certainly observe similar crisis rhetoric in Denmark.

We have a Prime Minister who is highly effective in managing crises. However, the concern is always that more fundamental questions of accountability—democratic accountability in particular—as well as reasonable limits, may be overlooked in such situations. It is certainly open to debate whether we are currently in that kind of scenario.

At the same time, I do agree with the Prime Minister that we are, in a sense, in a state of war—and not only in relation to Ukraine. Europe is facing a very dangerous situation, being pressured from both the East and the West, while struggling to act collectively. This is deeply problematic, and it underscores the need for political leaders who are capable of addressing these challenges. So it is always a matter of balance, and something we must continuously reflect upon: has a given political leader gone too far in this regard? But at this moment, I believe that Europe needs strong and decisive leadership in order to endure as a continent.

The Fragile Foundations of Renewed Public Trust

Mette Frederiksen
Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen at a press conference during the COVID-19 crisis, Copenhagen, March 17, 2020. Photo: Francis Dean | Dreamstime.

Much of the current debate revolves around whether Frederiksen’s firmer line toward Washington has restored public trust. But from a democratic-theoretical perspective, how durable is trust that is rebuilt through crisis leadership rather than through institutional responsiveness, social compromise, or policy coherence?

Professor Marlene Wind: That is a big question, which I think can only be answered when we look back in a few years. As citizens and voters, we tend to appreciate when politicians stand up and demonstrate leadership. At the same time, many Europeans were deeply dissatisfied with the initial responses to Donald Trump, when we sought to please him, accommodate him, and turn the other cheek.

The so-called Greenland moment marked a turning point, when we finally rejected his demand to take part of another ally’s territory. This was an important development that fed into a broader European effort to assert itself and say no. We observed a similar dynamic in the Middle East, where European actors emphasized that it was not their war, that they had not been consulted about Iran, and that they could not simply accommodate—even under threats that Trump might withdraw from or dissolve NATO.

In many ways, that phase is over. Europe has, to some extent, been constrained by a sense of inferiority and dependence on the United States. The Greenland crisis made it abundantly clear to many European leaders, and certainly to the Danish Prime Minister, that this approach is no longer sustainable when dealing with an unpredictable partner. A firmer stance became necessary, and we have seen this reflected in the decision to place Greenland within a working group while avoiding further escalation.

It is also worth noting that Mark Carney, the Canadian Prime Minister, was among the first to adopt this approach and openly resist Trump. After being publicly humiliated—referred to as merely a governor, with suggestions that Canada should become the 51st state—and after firmly rejecting such rhetoric, Trump appeared to step back and has not revisited the issue since.

In this context, there is a growing sense that political leaders must be able to stand up to forms of coercion and authoritarian behavior. Such pressures do not emanate from a single source; while they are evident in Russia, similar dynamics can also be observed in the United States at present.

From Opt-Outs to Integration? 

You have written extensively on Europe’s legal and political development. In light of recent events, do you think Denmark is now moving from its traditional status as a semi-detached, opt-out-oriented member state toward something closer to the European core? Or is this shift still contingent, fragile, and driven more by fear than by conviction?

Professor Marlene Wind: As I said in the introduction to this interview, where you asked something similar, that at least initially the turn to Europe has been very transactional and very pragmatic—simply a question of, alright, we lost our ally, now we need to find new friends, and therefore we turn to Europe. But I actually believe that this could develop into a closer attachment, in general, to the European project. In fact, that what we are seeing right now could be a more fundamental shift, where Danish politicians have started suggesting that we could move from unanimity to qualified majority voting in foreign policy, that we could build up a European army, that we could even federalize, take on debt in common, and give the EU a bigger budget to create better conditions for business, innovation, and tech companies in Europe.

All these kinds of measures—removing barriers in the internal market that have grown to a rather extreme level, as illustrated in the Draghi report and the Enrico Letta report as well—would require more Europe.

And the Danes, and Danish politicians in particular, are gradually realizing that if Europe is to survive in a new global context with adversaries all around us, and where we strategically have to avoid excessive dependence on any major power and instead “de-risk,” as von der Leyen has said several times, then Europe simply has to become stronger and more independent. It must also become a power that projects its influence outward—not only a union that defends itself and builds military capabilities, whether within NATO as a European pillar or within the European Union itself, but also one that can project power externally.

Danish top politicians are gradually moving in that direction. I could anticipate it, and I think we have seen some signs of it, but again, I would say that there has not really been much public debate about this during the current campaign. There is still a sense among many political leaders that it is somewhat risky to address these issues openly.

But we will see in the coming years whether we are moving closer to Europe and toward the core, possibly by removing our remaining opt-outs. Denmark still has opt-outs in Justice and Home Affairs and regarding the euro, as it is not part of the euro area, even though its currency is pegged to the euro. If the next step is to remove these opt-outs and fully join the European core and its power center, then that would signal a more definitive shift—should this trajectory materialize.

How Economic Interests Shape Transnational Populism

How do you assess the relationship between today’s European far right and Trumpism? Should we think of them as part of a coherent transnational ideological family, or are they better understood as overlapping but ultimately fragmented projects—united by anti-liberal impulses, yet divided by national interests, geopolitical alignments, and competing visions of sovereignty?

Professor Marlene Wind: My analysis is that something much bigger is at stake here. We are dealing with a rather strange combination of populist leaders who are kleptocrats and, as I said earlier, who are designing populism from above, creating tensions and antagonism among the people they lead. I think that is very dangerous. It represents a very different way of understanding populism than in the past.

What we have seen, particularly in the United States, and increasingly also in Europe, is that many figures from Silicon Valley—J.D. Vance, who was supported by Peter Thiel, Musk, Bezos, and other tech oligarchs—are playing a significant role. They are actors who, in different ways, seek to challenge Europe. We also saw in the American foreign and security policy strategy published before Christmas that there is a willingness to support regime change in Europe and to weaken the European Union.

At first glance, one might think this is simply about supporting Orbán and other right-wing groups, such as the AfD, which Musk has also openly supported. But if you look more closely, it is fundamentally about economic interests. It is about control by major tech companies that want access to a less regulated European market.

What is happening in Europe, and why parts of the American administration appear to support the extreme right, is closely tied to the interests of US-based tech giants that seek access to a wealthy European market while opposing EU regulatory frameworks. They resist European regulation of digital platforms and often frame such regulation as censorship. Yet, in reality, the United States has dropped to 57th place in the Press Freedom Index, suggesting that concerns about censorship are not limited to Europe.

This connects to a broader transformation of populism and autocratic leadership, which is increasingly engineered from above, with “tech elites” playing a central role. Their interest in weakening the European Union and empowering far-right actors lies in the expectation that such actors will renationalize power, undermine EU integration, and create fragmented markets that are easier to dominate.

In that sense, the dynamic is not only ideological but also economic and structural. It may sound conspiratorial, but there is a growing body of research pointing to these linkages. The more one examines the connections between far-right populism and segments of the US tech industry, the more concerning the picture becomes.

Unanimity or Fragmentation: The Existential Choice Facing the European Union

European Commission headquarters with waving EU flags in Brussels. Photo: Viorel Dudau.

Finally, Professor Wind, looking beyond the election itself, what do you see as the most important long-term question for Denmark and Europe: how to defend national sovereignty without collapsing into nationalism, how to deepen European cooperation without reproducing democratic alienation, or how to confront far-right normalization without simply borrowing its political vocabulary?

Professor Marlene Wind: How to strengthen the European Union in the current situation is very difficult because it was built as a market which, over time, developed to 27 or 28 members into a larger and larger union. We want more members; we want Ukraine in the Union. We face many institutional problems in terms of how to ramp up decision-making processes.

Some member states, because they have governments that are very concerned with their sovereignty, including Denmark, have also been very much against transferring further power to the European Union. And you have several countries with nationalist leaders—the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and a president in Poland—so we have had, and continue to have, significant disagreement about how to strengthen the European Union. That is what makes me perhaps not so optimistic in the short run, because we currently have a system in the European Union where unanimity is required. When we want to integrate further, we need unanimity. When we want new members, we need unanimity, as you can see with the loan to Ukraine that Orbán is blocking because he is afraid of losing the election on the 12th of April.

So there are some inbuilt weaknesses that are very strong in the European project. We also have an upcoming election in France, where we may see yet another extreme right party enter the Élysée Palace. We are facing very significant institutional problems, and I am almost tempted to say that it can make or break: either we truly feel the pressure from the global stage—not just from the US and Russia, but also China—and get our act together, or we do not.

We need to move from unanimity to qualified majority voting quickly, or perhaps create a new club for those who are willing. I think we already see signs of that in relation to Ukraine. We have this “alliance of the willing,” and that could become an alternative within or alongside the European Union. We even talk about having Canada join, at some point, some of the structures in Europe.

So either we get our act together—the liberal democracies that are still left in the world—and ramp up our cooperation, or the whole thing risks collapsing. If current political leaders are not able to see the dangers of failing to preserve our way of life in Europe, also for our children and grandchildren—protecting democracy and free speech, and being able to defend ourselves and survive in a very competitive global market, perhaps through a more assertive industrial policy—then I am afraid that the entire European project could fall apart.

We know that there are actors, including in the United States, who would welcome such an outcome. Trump, for instance, prefers to deal with individual leaders rather than with the EU as a bloc. But we also have to remember that we are a very powerful bloc. We are almost 500 million Europeans. We are a wealthy continent. We have some of the highest life expectancies in the world. We have free education, welfare systems, and broad access to public goods.

So we have all the opportunities to become a strong, united power on the global stage. But we need political leaders right now who can see this, recognize its necessity, and act accordingly. That is why, despite all the criticism that can be directed at political leaders in times like these, when they do take leadership, I think that is exactly what we need—because the alternative is much worse.

Dr. Hugo Ferrinho Lopes is an invited assistant professor at EEG-UMinho and Iscte-IUL, and an associate researcher at ICS-ULisbon.

Dr. Lopes: Ventura Mobilized ‘Latent Populists,’ but Authoritarian Appeals in Portugal Have Limits

by Editor’s ChoiceEuropean ObservatoryExtremism & RadicalisationHomeInterviews

André Ventura’s qualification for the presidential runoff marks a critical moment in Portuguese politics, long viewed as resistant to far-right breakthroughs. In this interview with the ECPS, Dr. Hugo Ferrinho Lopes (EEG-UMinho & Iscte-IUL; ICS-ULisbon) argues that Ventura’s advance is “less a sudden presidential earthquake than a clear manifestation” of an ongoing party-system shift—deepened by fragmentation on the mainstream right and declining abstention. Dr. Lopes explains how Chega mobilized “latent populists” once a viable radical-right option emerged, while also stressing the limits of authoritarian and nativist appeals in a second-round contest that requires broader legitimacy. The result, he suggests, is a normalized but still constrained radical right: agenda-setting and organizationally consolidated, yet facing ceilings shaped by elite incentives, affective polarization, and presidential norms of moderation.

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

The qualification of André Ventura, leader of the populist radical right party Chega, for the presidential runoff marks a watershed moment in contemporary Portuguese politics. Long regarded as an exception within Southern Europe for its resistance to far-right breakthroughs, Portugal now finds itself grappling with a transformed party system, declining abstention, and the normalization of a radical right actor at the highest symbolic level of the state. In this wide-ranging interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Dr. Hugo Ferrinho Lopes, an invited assistant professor at EEG-UMinho and Iscte-IUL, and an associate researcher at ICS-ULisbon, offers a nuanced and empirically grounded analysis of what Ventura’s rise does—and does not—signify for the future of Portuguese democracy. 

At the core of Dr. Lopes’s argument is a rejection of the idea that Ventura’s presidential advance represents a sudden rupture. Instead, he situates it within a longer trajectory of party-system transformation. As he notes, Ventura’s runoff presence is “less a sudden presidential earthquake than a clear manifestation of a party-system shift that has already been underway,” one that began with Chega’s parliamentary breakthrough and was accelerated by fragmentation on the mainstream right. In Sartorian terms, Portugal is experiencing increasing ideological distance and fragmentation, dynamics that presidential elections—through personalization and strategic voting—tend to amplify.

A central theme running through the interview is the role of political supply. Dr. Lopes emphasizes that Chega did not emerge because Portuguese voters suddenly radicalized, but because a long-standing gap on the cultural and conservative dimension of party competition was left unfilled. This allowed Ventura, an experienced political communicator with extensive media exposure, to capture what Dr. Lopes describes as “latent populists who were activated once a viable alternative became available.” Importantly, this mobilization was facilitated by institutional conditions—such as a lower effective electoral threshold in 2019—and by Chega’s rapid transition from entrepreneurial project to organizationally consolidated party.

Yet the interview also highlights the limits of Ventura’s appeal. Despite declining abstention disproportionately benefiting Chega, Dr. Lopes stresses that Ventura’s electorate remains strikingly stable rather than expansive. “Ventura is competing against himself,” he observes, as voters from eliminated candidates increasingly coalesce behind his opponent in the runoff. This pattern reflects what he characterizes as a de facto cordon sanitaire driven less by formal elite coordination than by affective polarization and voter hostility toward the far right.

Perhaps most importantly, Dr. Lopes cautions against overestimating the governing potential of authoritarian rhetoric in Portugal. While Chega has successfully imposed issues such as immigration and security on the national agenda, “relying solely on authoritarian and nativist appeals is insufficient” in a second-round presidential contest that demands broader democratic legitimacy. The interview thus paints a picture of a radical right that is normalized, agenda-setting, and organizationally entrenched—but still constrained by institutional structures, elite incentives, and the enduring appeal of moderation in Portuguese presidential politics.

Together, these insights offer a sober prognosis: Chega has reshaped the political landscape, but its path toward governing viability remains uncertain, contested, and far from inevitable.

Here is the edited version of our interview with Assistant Professor Hugo Ferrinho Lopes, revised slightly to improve clarity and flow.

Ventura’s Runoff Is No Shock—It’s the Symptom of a Shifting Party System

André Ventura of the Chega party speaking during the plenary session of the Portuguese Parliament debating the government’s motion of confidence, March 11, 2025.

Dr. Hugo Ferrinho Lopes, thank you very much for joining our interview series. Let me start right away with the first question: Ventura’s qualification for the presidential runoff marks an unprecedented moment for the Portuguese far right. How should we interpret his first-round performance in relation to the 2024 snap elections? Should it be understood as a continuation of party-system transformation toward polarized pluralism, or as a distinct presidential dynamic reshaping existing voter coalitions?

Dr. Hugo Ferrinho Lopes: Thank you very much for having me. I would argue that this development largely reflects the ongoing transformation of Portugal’s party system. Ventura’s presence in the runoff is less a sudden presidential earthquake than a clear manifestation of a party-system shift that has already been underway.

What I mean is that, one year earlier, in the general parliamentary elections, Chega’s legislative breakthrough signaled a departure from the traditional two-party system. In the first round of the 2026 presidential election, this shift was further reinforced by a coordination problem on the mainstream right. We witnessed several viable center-right and right-wing candidates competing simultaneously, which fragmented the vote and lowered the threshold for Chega to secure second place—an outcome that Ventura ultimately achieved.

In Sartorian terms, the longer-term trend in Portugal points to increasing fragmentation and growing ideological distance among the main parties and candidates. The distinct dynamics of presidential elections—shaped by personalization and strategic voting—are likely to accelerate a transformation that is already well underway in the Portuguese political system.

Why Declining Abstention Worked in Ventura’s Favor

The decline of abstention has been one of the most striking features of recent Portuguese elections. To what extent does the 2026 first round confirm your earlier finding that increases in turnout disproportionately benefit Chega, and what does this suggest about the political activation of previously disengaged voters?

Dr. Hugo Ferrinho Lopes: There are two main points I would like to emphasize here. First, the incumbent president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, is constitutionally barred from running for a third term. In Portugal, when presidential elections take place without an incumbent seeking re-election, turnout tends to increase and abstention tends to decline, because the perceived odds of victory for competing candidates are higher. Historically, all Portuguese presidents who have run for a second term have been re-elected. From this perspective, it was expected that abstention would decrease in this election, at least in the first round.

Second, and more importantly, we know that turnout is closely related to voting for the far right in Portugal. In this election in particular, voting-intention data from public opinion polls show that Ventura had the most stable base of support. This means that he retained the largest share of voters who had previously voted for Chega in the legislative elections, compared to any other candidate.

By contrast, António José Seguro, who also advanced to the runoff, was less stable among socialist voters. Similarly, Luís Marques Mendes —supported and endorsed by the center-right PSD and CDS, the governing coalition—lost a significant number of votes from his party to other right-wing candidates.

As a result, we observed a first round in which Ventura amassed the largest number of votes from his own party relative to any other candidate. Other contenders not only needed to mobilize their core constituencies but also attempted to attract voters from different ideological camps. This proved far more difficult for them, and this dynamic is closely related to patterns of abstention.

Issue Ownership Opened the Door for Chega

Sign of the right-wing conservative political party Chega, led by André Ventura, in Faro, Portugal, March 16, 2023. Photo: Dreamstime.

In your work on the 2024 elections, you emphasize the “supply side” of party competition. Which supply-side factors—party fragmentation, leadership credibility, agenda ownership, or organizational reach—were most decisive in enabling Ventura’s advance to the runoff?

Dr. Hugo Ferrinho Lopes: That is a very interesting question. The first factor I would highlight is issue ownership. Applying a supply–demand logic to politics, Portugal experienced, for more than four decades, what is often described as “Portuguese exceptionalism” toward the far right: unlike in many other countries, the far right was unable to break through to Parliament. However, this situation left an opening on the supply side of party competition—particularly in the cultural and conservative dimension—for a new challenger party on the right to emerge.

For example, while the radical left in Portugal has been strong in Parliament for decades and has enjoyed stable representation—indeed, more than one radical left party has been represented—no radical right party managed to enter Parliament until 2019, with the emergence of André Ventura and Chega. Why did this happen?

First, it was due to this long-standing breach on the supply side of party competition. Second, it was related to leadership. André Ventura is an experienced politician who came from the PSD. He left the party following an internal split and benefited from extensive media coverage. Prior to founding Chega, he was a football commentator, which gave him a level of public visibility that previous far-right candidates had lacked.

There is also an additional institutional explanation. In the 2019 elections, the effective threshold of the electoral system was lower, making it easier for parties to enter Parliament with fewer votes than in previous elections. A recent example is LIVRE—a left libertarian party—which failed to enter Parliament in 2015 but secured one MP in 2019. Chega and the Liberal Initiative on the right similarly entered Parliament in 2019 with fewer votes than would have been required in earlier elections.

Once inside Parliament, the media coverage Ventura received and the institutional space to disseminate his message made further growth much easier in the years that followed.

The De Facto Cordon Sanitaire Around Chega

Election night event of the Democratic Alliance (AD)—a coalition of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) and the CDS–People’s Party—held at the Epic Sana Marquês Hotel, Lisbon, Portugal, on 18 May 2025. Photo: Ricardo Rocha.

Portugal’s presidential elections traditionally reward moderation and cross-party appeal. Does Ventura’s strong showing indicate a weakening of this logic, or has Chega successfully adapted its populist appeal to the presidential arena without fundamentally expanding its social base?

Dr. Hugo Ferrinho Lopes: Ventura’s presidential campaign is, in many ways, a continuation of the strategy he pursued in the parliamentary elections one year earlier. That said, presidential elections in Portugal have historically favored moderation and centrist candidates, and this pattern was still visible in the first round. If we look at the vote shares, candidates occupying moderate ideological positions collectively garnered far more support than Ventura. We are seeing a similar dynamic unfold in the runoff campaign.

Although we have only limited data so far, as the second-round campaign has just begun, most supporters of the eliminated candidates indicate that they are inclined to vote for Seguro rather than Ventura in the runoff. This reinforces my earlier point: Ventura’s support base is remarkably stable, with only marginal expansion beyond his core voters, while supporters of other candidates tend to coalesce around the alternative contender.

What does this imply? Essentially, Ventura is competing against himself, attempting to marginally expand his vote share, while all other candidates—now consolidated behind Seguro, who placed first in the opening round—are effectively competing against Ventura. In this sense, it becomes a contest of Ventura versus everyone else. This pattern aligns with findings in the literature on affective polarization, which show that the far right tends to be the primary target of hostility and negative affect, often to a greater extent than the hostility expressed by right-wing voters toward other parties. In practice, this amounts to a de facto cordon sanitaire around Chega in the second round.

Grievance, Not Poverty, Fuels Chega’s Regional Strength

Chega has performed particularly well in regions historically dominated by the center-right and, in some cases, the left. How do you assess the role of territorial grievance, regional economic restructuring, and perceived political neglect in shaping Ventura’s first-round electoral geography?

Dr. Hugo Ferrinho Lopes: That’s a very good question. Ventura’s electoral geography fits a broader European pattern. Places that feel bypassed by economic growth and unheard by the political center—namely Lisbon—tend to become more receptive to anti-establishment political entrepreneurs. Recent work on Portugal, for example a study by João Cancela and Pedro Magalhães links radical right support in these regions—often rural and formerly left-wing, even communist, strongholds—to perceived political neglect and broader economic transformations, rather than to a simple story of poverty.

What this suggests is that the key mechanism is often mediated: grievance, distrust, and resentment create openness to punitive, nativist, and anti-elite messaging, rather than voting behavior being driven solely by material hardship. In southern Portugal and in rural areas more broadly, voters are therefore more likely to support the radical right because they feel politically neglected and marginalized by decision-makers.

The Youth Gender Gap and Chega’s Electoral Future

Post-2024 analyses highlighted Chega’s disproportionate support among young, less-educated men and the emergence of a “modern gender gap.” How does the 2026 first-round vote confirm or complicate this sociological profile, and what does it imply for long-term ideological realignment?

Dr. Hugo Ferrinho Lopes: At this stage, we have very limited data from the first round, so any assessment must remain tentative. More robust evidence will emerge in the coming months. That said, existing data for Portugal point to a pronounced youth gender gap in far-right support, with young men far more likely than young women to back far-right parties—Chega in particular. This pattern is also consistent with trends observed across other European and Western democracies.

If this profile is reproduced in the second round of the 2026 presidential elections, it would suggest the presence of a pipeline for long-term ideological realignment. If, however, the pattern softens, it would indicate that Ventura’s presidential surge reflects coalition broadening rather than cohort deepening. Ultimately, more data will be needed to assess this dynamic conclusively.

Is Chega Still Expanding—or Hitting Its Limits?

Guarda, Portugal — June 12, 2018: The ancient Jewish quarter (Judiaria) of Guarda, Portugal, where residents live amid streets that retain much of their 14th-century character. Photo: Dreamstime.

Your research on party membership switching suggests that Chega mobilized “latent populists” rather than converting ideologically moderate voters. Does Ventura’s presidential performance suggest that this reservoir of latent support is still expanding, or are we approaching a ceiling effect?

Dr. Hugo Ferrinho Lopes: We may be approaching a ceiling effect, but it is still too early to tell. What we know so far relates to the supply-side dynamics I mentioned earlier. Many party members who were previously housed in other parties switched to Chega once a viable radical-right alternative became available. These were politically interested citizens who had already chosen to participate in politics through the options available to them at the time. When this new option emerged and became electorally viable—which is crucial—they felt able to switch to it.

That said, we do not yet know whether a ceiling effect has been reached, because this would require observing at least one election in which Chega or Ventura stops growing. At this stage, we cannot determine whether citizens’ preferences are stabilizing or continuing to shift over time.

What we do know, however, is that the far right has been increasingly successful in imposing its agenda on the media and on other political parties. These actors are now responding to the incentives set by the far right by prioritizing issues such as security and immigration. Immigration is a good example. For decades, Portugal stood out as one of—perhaps even the—European countries where the salience of immigration was lowest. In the standard Eurobarometer question asking citizens to name the three most important issues facing their country, immigration was frequently mentioned in most European democracies, but far less so in Portugal.

Although immigration remains less salient in Portugal than in many other countries, its importance has increased significantly over the past two years. This signals that Ventura and Chega have been able to place this issue firmly on the political agenda. We have also seen other parties responding to this rising salience, not only by positioning themselves against it, but also through concrete policy responses—for example, government legislation on the issue.

From Abstainers to the Right: A Narrow Path to Expansion

Chega’s rise has been driven largely by voters defecting from the mainstream center-right. How has this pattern shaped Ventura’s claim to leadership of the “non-socialist space” in the presidential election, and what limits does it impose on his runoff strategy?

Dr. Hugo Ferrinho Lopes: Ventura can plausibly claim that he represents the pole of the non-socialist electorate, but there are two important caveats. First, he draws more support from former abstainers than from the mainstream right, even though he does attract some voters from the PSD and CDS. Overall, however, his gains come primarily from previously disengaged voters rather than from direct transfers within the center-right.

Second, the runoff presents a different strategic context. In the second round, Ventura must rely on voters from parties that are unwilling to formally endorse him. A clear example is the PSD leadership, which refused to support either of the two candidates who advanced to the runoff. In this context, mobilizing center-right voters through individual-level choices rather than party-led coordination is far more difficult, creating a ceiling for Ventura’s expansion. Without elite cues and under greater public scrutiny, it becomes harder for Chega—and for Ventura in particular—to move beyond its core protest electorate.

Ventura the Brand, Chega the Machine

André Ventura of the Chega party speaks during a plenary session of the Portuguese Parliament debating the government’s motion of confidence in Lisbon, Portugal on March 11, 2025. Photo: Ricardo Rocha.

Presidential elections personalize politics more strongly than legislative contests. To what extent is Ventura’s success best explained by André Ventura as a political entrepreneur, rather than by Chega as a party organization?

Dr. Hugo Ferrinho Lopes: Ventura is clearly the brand; he is a political entrepreneur, as I have noted before. At the same time, Chega as a party has increasingly become the organizational machine that makes this brand effective. Ventura is electorally viable, and when he is not running, Chega’s results tend to be significantly lower than when he is on the ballot. Still, the party structure matters, and Chega now has a substantial grassroots base actively working on its behalf.

In presidential elections, voters tend to reward candidate-centered campaigns, making the contest highly personalized. In this respect, Ventura’s media skills are a clear asset. Yet Chega’s rise as a major political actor also signals growing organizational penetration and normalized visibility. What we are witnessing is a shift from an initial entrepreneurial breakthrough driven by Ventura toward a gradual—but increasingly solid—process of party institutionalization by Chega itself. This is an incremental development, not one that occurs overnight.

Authoritarian Appeals Mobilize Some—but Not Enough

Your findings indicate that Chega switchers often exhibit higher authoritarian attitudes than first-time party members. How might this shape Ventura’s rhetoric and positioning in a second-round contest that requires broader democratic legitimacy?

Dr. Hugo Ferrinho Lopes: First, my findings suggest that switchers resemble latent populists who were activated by the rise of Chega as a viable alternative. However, when we examine the data in more detail, we see that the higher levels of authoritarian values are driven mainly by former right-wing party members who switched to Chega.

What does this mean? It means that most of Chega’s base—around 74 percent—consists of first-time members who joined the party for a variety of reasons. In contrast, those coming from right-wing parties joined Chega primarily because they felt that the PSD and CDS no longer represented what they considered important in the sociocultural domain, particularly in terms of values and authoritarian preferences. As a result, these attitudes are not evenly distributed across Chega’s grassroots.

Second, in the context of the presidential runoff, Ventura needs to appeal to a much broader electorate. Relying solely on authoritarian and nativist appeals is therefore insufficient, as he must attract voters from the center-right. Voters who have not previously switched electorally to Chega are unlikely to do so based only on authoritarian cues. Consequently, Ventura needs to go beyond these appeals in the second round.

Anti-System Rhetoric Meets Institutional Trust

Some Chega supporters display relatively higher institutional trust than expected for a populist radical right electorate. How does this tension shape Chega’s “anti-system” discourse when competing for an institutionally symbolic office like the presidency?

Dr. Hugo Ferrinho Lopes: Chega’s base within the party generally distrusts politicians and political institutions. However, within its grassroots—at the level of party membership—those who switched from another party to Chega tend to display higher levels of institutional trust. This points to a legacy effect among those who were politically experienced prior to joining Chega, even though overall trust in institutions remains quite low. This suggests that many of these switchers moved to Chega primarily for ideological reasons, not solely because of institutional distrust or anti-elite sentiments. They are therefore mobilized more by ideological cues than by explicitly anti-system appeals.

This tension produces a dual message for the party. On the one hand, Chega needs to argue that the system is broken; on the other, it must present itself as capable of safeguarding the nation’s institutions. This balancing act is particularly difficult in presidential elections, given the debates surrounding the limits of presidential power and the Constitution—whether Ventura embraces those limits or seeks to revise them. Since the president does not hold executive power, the role is closer to that of a moderator. Ventura must therefore convince his electorate that he can still meaningfully influence policy despite not being part of the executive or the cabinet.

Between Containment and Accommodation

The refusal of the PSD to endorse a runoff candidate highlights elite fragmentation on the right. How does Ventura’s runoff presence recalibrate elite incentives around containment, tacit accommodation, or strategic neutrality?

Dr. Hugo Ferrinho Lopes: The PSD’s neutrality is a way of avoiding two risks at once: legitimizing Ventura on the one hand, and alienating voters who might defect if given explicit instructions on the other. In terms of party competition, this reflects a form of elite coordination failure with a strategic rationale. The party is attempting to contain Chega organizationally while allowing individual voters the space to vote strategically in the runoff.

Over time, this situation recalibrates elite incentives. Some elites double down on non-accommodation, while others experiment with selective or tacit accommodation toward Chega. Despite this, most PSD elites are, in practice, supporting Seguro against Ventura in the runoff.

Above all, the governing party is trying to avoid giving Ventura the opportunity to claim that it is aligned with the Socialists or the left, or to be accused of accommodating the left rather than the right. Nevertheless, the reality is that most governing party elites are backing Seguro against Ventura.

This stance is neither full strategic coordination nor outright accommodation; rather, it represents an attempt to occupy a middle ground. That strategy carries risks for PM Luís Montenegro and the governing party, because they do not want Ventura to secure even a single vote more than Chega obtained in the legislative elections. Otherwise, Ventura could claim—despite losing the presidential race—that he enjoys greater electoral legitimacy than the prime minister, on the grounds that more voters support him than the government. There is therefore a shadow form of strategic coordination aimed at preventing Ventura from achieving further electoral success.

Normalizing Chega at the Presidential Level

Photo: Tatiana Golmer.

Portugal’s semi-presidential system grants the president significant agenda-setting and veto powers. Even if Ventura is unlikely to win, how might his normalization as a runoff contender reshape expectations about presidential authority and democratic restraint?

Dr. Hugo Ferrinho Lopes: If Ventura loses the election, then there is no immediate risk. What it does is normalize the idea that a Chega-aligned presence in the presidential arena is thinkable, and it extends the party’s shadow over issues such as veto power, agenda-setting, and signaling—particularly through the president’s ability to publicly highlight certain issues as priorities when meeting weekly with the prime minister. International coverage of this election has often emphasized that the Portuguese presidency, despite frequently being described as largely ceremonial, still retains meaningful powers, including the veto and the dissolution of Parliament, which can be consequential under minority governments, such as the current one. However, with Ventura remaining outside the presidency, it is unlikely that expectations regarding presidential powers themselves—rather than government stability or future alternation in office—will change in any significant way.

An Uncertain Path for Portugal’s Radical Right

And finally, Professor Lopez, taken together—rising turnout, party-system fragmentation, youth realignment, and Chega’s organizational consolidation—what is your best scholarly prognosis for the populist radical right in Portugal? Are we witnessing a durable opposition hegemony, a future coalition actor, or the gradual construction of governing viability?

Dr. Hugo Ferrinho Lopes: That is a very good question, and one to which I do not have a clear answer—both in the absence of a crystal ball and because current government signals point in different directions. The government has been pursuing piecemeal deals with both the Socialists and the radical right to pass legislation, while the opposition often coordinates to block the government, including cooperation between the Socialists and the far right. As a result, the situation remains difficult to assess.

That said, as long as Luís Montenegro remains the leader of the PSD, the party is unlikely to enter a coalition with the radical right or include it in government. However, if Ventura were to win an election at some point, Montenegro would likely resign as PSD leader, and it is unclear who would succeed him or what strategy a new leader would adopt—whether a German-style cordon sanitaire or a path toward accommodation or coalition-building with the far right.

At this stage, the trajectory remains highly unpredictable. I realize this may not be the definitive answer you were hoping for, but it is the most accurate one that can be offered at present.

Professor António Costa Pinto is a Research Professor (ret.) at the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon.

Prof. Costa Pinto: If Victorious, Ventura Would Pursue Orbán-Style Authoritarianism in Portugal

by AuthoritarianismEditor’s ChoiceEuropean ObservatoryHomeInterviewsLeadership & Persona

In this in-depth ECPS interview, Professor António Costa Pinto—one of Europe’s leading scholars of authoritarianism—offers a historically grounded analysis of Chega’s meteoric rise and André Ventura’s advance to the second round of Portugal’s 2026 presidential election. Far from an electoral accident, Professor Costa Pinto situates Chega’s breakthrough within long-standing structural conditions, recurrent political crises, and the fragmentation of the center-right. He traces how Ventura mobilizes authoritarian legacies of “law and order,” welfare chauvinism, and anti-elite resentment without openly rehabilitating Salazarism. Immigration, demographic change, and plebiscitary populism emerge as key drivers of Chega’s success. Crucially, Professor Costa Pinto argues that Orbán’s Hungary—not Trump or Bolsonaro—serves as Ventura’s primary model, raising urgent questions about democratic resilience in Portugal as uncertainty on the right deepens.

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

In this in-depth interview with the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor António Costa Pinto—Research Professor (ret.) at the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon, and a leading authority on authoritarianism and the radical right—offers a historically grounded analysis of the unprecedented rise of Chega and its leader, André Ventura. The discussion is anchored in a critical political moment: Ventura’s advance to the second round of the 2026 presidential election, which Professor Costa Pinto describes as neither a mere accident nor a sudden rupture, but the product of deeper transformations within Portuguese democracy.

As Professor Costa Pinto explains, Chega’s breakthrough cannot be understood as an isolated electoral shock. “The Chega Party and André Ventura have, in a way, a short history in Portuguese democracy,” he notes, “but over the last four years, the party has gone from one MP and 1.5 percent to 23 percent.” This rapid ascent, he argues, reflects the convergence of long-standing structural conditions—most notably the persistence of conservative authoritarian values in Portuguese society—with a series of destabilizing political crises that created what he calls “populist junctures.”

A central theme of the interview is the fragmentation of the center-right, which Professor Costa Pinto identifies as a key enabling factor. Portugal now has “three parties representing the right in Parliament,” and Chega’s strategy is explicitly hegemonic: to replace the traditional center-right as the dominant force. Ventura, Professor Costa Pinto observes, has succeeded because “he was able to mobilize his electorate,” even as his capacity to expand it in a runoff remains uncertain.

The interview also situates Chega within Portugal’s authoritarian legacies without reducing it to a simple revival of Salazarism. While Chega does not openly rehabilitate the Estado Novo (the corporatist Portuguese state installed in 1933), Professor Costa Pinto notes that it selectively draws on the past, particularly through “law and order” and moral authority. “Salazar is presented as the example of a non-corrupt dictator,” Professor Costa Pinto explains, adding that Chega appropriates “the idea of a conservative regime in which law and order prevailed,”while avoiding deeper identification with an unpopular dictatorship.

Immigration emerges as the party’s most powerful mobilizing issue. According to Professor Costa Pinto, “the central card that Chega has been playing over the last four years—and one that is closely associated with its electoral success—is immigration.” He links this to recent demographic shifts, especially increased migration from South Asia, and to growing anxieties among working-class voters. These dynamics underpin Chega’s welfare chauvinism, which combines statist social policies with exclusionary nationalism.

Crucially, Professor Costa Pinto frames Ventura within a transnational authoritarian constellation. “In a way, Orbán is the model for Ventura,” he states plainly. “The type of regime that Ventura would seek to consolidate in Portugal… is precisely the kind of competitive authoritarian regime that Orbán has managed to establish in Hungary.” While Trumpist styles and Bolsonaro’s experience in Brazil matter symbolically, Professor Costa Pinto stresses that Ventura adapts these influences pragmatically to Portuguese political culture.

Ultimately, the interview raises pressing questions about democratic resilience. While Professor Costa Pinto believes that Ventura is unlikely to win the presidency, he cautions that “the game is not over” on the right. Portugal, he concludes, faces a period of sustained uncertainty—one in which democratic institutions remain intact, but increasingly contested.

Here is the edited version of our interview with Professor António Costa Pinto, revised slightly to improve clarity and flow.

A Historic Runoff and a Fractured Right

André Ventura of the Chega party speaking during the plenary session of the Portuguese Parliament debating the government’s motion of confidence, March 11, 2025.

Professor António Costa Pinto, thank you so much for joining our interview series. Let me start right away with the first question: André Ventura’s advance to the second round of the 2026 presidential election marks a historic breakthrough for the Portuguese far right. From a longue durée perspective, how should we interpret this moment: as an electoral shock, or as the culmination of structural shifts long underway within Portuguese democracy?

Professor António Costa Pinto: Let me tell you two things. First, the Chega Party and André Ventura have, in a way, a short history in Portuguese democracy. Over the last four years, the party has gone from one MP and 1.5 percent in legislative elections to 23 percent. The reason why André Ventura will be present in the second round of the presidential elections is therefore more complicated. The Portuguese center-right and right are going through a rather curious period of party fragmentation. We now have three parties representing the right in Parliament: the center-right that is in power, a liberal right with 7.5 percent, and the Chega Party with 23 percent.

The question surrounding this presidential election is, in a way, simple. There was an independent candidate who was expected to be the winner a year ago. Admiral Henrique Gouveia e Melo was a sort of hero of the response to the pandemic a couple of years ago. In this sense, the presidential election is unusual in terms of the number of candidates, with four candidates competing on the right-wing side of the political spectrum.

The reason why Ventura is in the second round is straightforward. The main reason is that he was able to mobilize his electorate. The more difficult challenge for Ventura lies in the second round: whether he will be able to expand his electorate, because, in theory, he is going to lose.

Why the Far Right Arrived Late in Portugal

Portugal was long considered an outlier in Southern Europe for its resistance to far-right populism. In your view, what factors delayed the emergence of a party like Chega, and what has changed—politically, socially, or culturally—to make its rise now possible?

Professor António Costa Pinto: There are structural factors and conjunctural factors. The structural factor is, first of all, that since the 1980s we have known already quite clearly from surveys that around 80 percent of Portuguese society has expressed conservative authoritarian values. That was very clear. The main problem, of course, was the opportunity to express these values in electoral and political terms. Until very recently, the two main parties, especially on the right-wing side of the political spectrum—and particularly the main center-right party—had the capacity, in a way, to frame and absorb this electorate to their right.

What happened in the meantime? There were two general elements. The first was what we could call a populist juncture. A couple of years ago, a Socialist prime minister, António Costa—who now holds a position in the European Union institutions—faced, while in office, an accusation from the court system. Not exactly for corruption but associated with corruption. His response was basically to resign. The president then decided to call early elections. This was the first populist juncture responsible for the initial breakthrough of the Portuguese radical right in Parliament. Over the last four years, there have been three early elections, all associated with this kind of populist juncture.

The most recent one, seven months ago, was also the result of a problem involving a conflict of interests, in which a center-right prime minister was accused in Parliament of maintaining a small family business that was incompatible with the role of prime minister. So, Portugal has experienced several electoral populist junctures over the past four years, and these conjunctural elements have driven the growth of the Chega Party during this period. 

We therefore have structural dimensions, of course, but above all, we have conjunctural dynamics that explain this development. There is also a central element in this process: the leader of the Chega Party. He is a very charismatic figure, extremely well known in the media. He began as a football commentator in the press, closely connected to popular segments of Portuguese public opinion. He then emerged as a party leader, and we must admit that, for the first time in Portugal, a right-wing political entrepreneur managed to establish direct contact with potential voters of a radical right party—and he succeeded in doing so.

Old Repertoires, New Populism?

Sign of the right-wing conservative political party Chega, led by André Ventura, in Faro, Portugal, March 16, 2023. Photo: Dreamstime.

Drawing on your work on the “Estado Novo,” to what extent does Chega represent a reactivation of authoritarian political repertoires—such as moralism, punitive order, and anti-pluralism—rather than a novel populist phenomenon detached from Salazarist legacies?

Professor António Costa Pinto: When we look at populist radical right-wing parties in Europe, discussing their origins can become a political trap. Why? Because the trajectories are highly diverse. We know, for instance, that the Swedish populist party emerged from a very small neo-Nazi group; Fratelli d’Italia in Italy also originated in a marginal neo-fascist party; while in Spain, Vox comes from the center-right.

In the Portuguese case, the Chega Party has a very small core of leaders—essentially one figure—who comes from the political culture of the Portuguese extreme right of the past. However, the majority of its leadership, including André Ventura, comes from the main center-right party, as is also the case in Spain. Ventura himself ran for a municipal position many years ago through the Social Democratic Party, Portugal’s main center-right party, mobilizing a Roma-chauvinistic discourse. He contested a former communist municipality and played on anti-Roma sentiment in very populous suburbs of Lisbon, and this strategy proved effective. That was the starting point of his political career.

When it comes to the past, two elements are particularly important in the radical right’s mobilization of authoritarian legacies. These are not directly tied to Salazarism, but rather to a more homogeneous conception of the nation-state: the glorification of Portugal’s past, the narrative of the “Discoveries,” the Portuguese Empire, and, in many cases, the mobilization of veterans of the colonial wars. Portugal experienced a deeply traumatic decolonization, and this remains the central historical reference in how Chega engages with the past—especially the colonial wars in Africa, in Mozambique, Angola, and Guinea-Bissau.

At the same time, and this is especially interesting, Chega represents a break with the political culture of the conservative right. Traditionally, the conservative right promoted a loose or “tropical” notion of empire, arguing that the Portuguese Empire was not racist and was, overall, a positive historical experience. Chega breaks with this tradition. Its chauvinistic, anti-immigration discourse—targeting African, Brazilian, and Asian immigration—marks a clear rupture with the conservative right’s legacy in Portugal.

What emerges, then, is a new-old conception of national identity. Chega occasionally invokes Salazar, but above all it mobilizes the past through the theme of corruption: fifty years of corruption, fifty years of an oligarchic political class—coinciding, symbolically, with the fifty years of democracy Portugal celebrated last year. Salazar himself poses a problem as a reference, as he is associated with repression and with a period that remains unpopular in Portugal, except in one key dimension: law and order.

These, ultimately, are the two elements Chega draws most clearly from the authoritarian past: the myth of a glorious colonial empire and, above all, the appeal to law and order.

Presidentialization and the Rise of Plebiscitary Populism

Parliament building in Lisbon, Portugal. Photo: Dreamstime.

While Chega does not explicitly rehabilitate Salazar, do you see elements of what you have described as Salazarism’s “politics of order” and depoliticization resurfacing in Ventura’s discourse, particularly his emphasis on discipline, punishment, and national moral renewal?

Professor António Costa Pinto: As I mentioned earlier, Chega draws on Salazar primarily through two elements. First, Salazar is portrayed as an example of a non-corrupt dictator. Second, Salazarism is evoked as a conservative regime in which law and order prevailed. These are essentially the two aspects Chega appropriates from the Salazarist past. However, as I also noted, most of the references to authoritarian legacies are linked less to Salazar himself than to the former greatness of the Portuguese colonial empire in Africa.

In your comparative work on charisma and authoritarian leadership, you note that charisma need not be revolutionary or mass-mobilizing. How would you characterize Ventura’s leadership style: as plebiscitary populism, mediated celebrity politics, or a new post-charismatic form of personalization?

Professor António Costa Pinto: Ventura clearly belongs to the plebiscitary, authoritarian populist parties in Europe. By this I mean that the main elements of political mobilization of the Portuguese radical right revolve around law and order, the idea of corruption associated with the oligarchic political class that has dominated Portuguese democracy since its transition, and a set of conservative values typically linked to this form of plebiscitary authoritarian democracy—such as proposals for the sterilization of pedophiles, or even the reintroduction of the death penalty in Portugal.

These are dimensions tied to this broader political vision, and a significant segment of Portuguese society does support such ideas. As a result, this is not primarily about the functioning of parliamentary institutions, but rather about a plebiscitary, referendum-style conception of political power.

This is also how Ventura behaves in the current presidential elections. He seeks, in a sense, to use the powers of the presidency to advance many of these political proposals, through a form of presidentialization within Portugal’s semi-presidential system.

Electoral Strategies of Chega Is Cannibalizing the Right

Salazarism relied on corporatist and technocratic governance rather than mass populist mobilization. Does Chega’s rise suggest a transition from elite-managed authoritarianism to popular authoritarianism, or are we witnessing a hybrid form adapted to democratic institutions?

Professor António Costa Pinto: As with many other radical right-wing parties in Europe, Chega operates within democratic institutions. It is primarily an electoral party. There are very small segments—one could describe them as a residual effect—of neo-fascist and extreme right-wing groups, but these remain marginal. For the most part, Chega plays the electoral card.

In fact, in the current presidential election and campaign, an important dynamic concerns the right-wing side of the political spectrum in Portugal. Ventura and Chega are present, but Ventura is the only right-wing candidate to advance to the second round. His strategy is to combine two approaches: on the one hand, mobilizing the radical right and, at times, even the extreme right; on the other, presenting more conservative and moderate political proposals. The objective is straightforward: to become the main party representing the right-wing side of the political spectrum in Portugal and to cannibalize the conservative right-wing electorate.

The cards have been played, but the outcome remains highly uncertain. We will see what happens in these presidential elections, even if Ventura does not ultimately win.

Selective Moralism in Portugal’s Populist Right

Your research highlights the role of political Catholicism in shaping authoritarian moral frameworks. To what extent does Chega’s moralized discourse on family, crime, and social order echo these traditions, even in a formally secular and pluralist society?

Professor António Costa Pinto: Chega has clear, or very conservative, values associated with religion—not only with the Roman Catholic Church. We should also not underestimate the role of small evangelical groups, particularly among certain popular segments of Portuguese society. Undoubtedly, Chega has adopted pro-life positions, anti-abortion values, and other conservative stances. At the same time, however, Chega is a populist party. For that reason, it does not consistently play the anti-abortion card. Why? Because its leaders look at opinion surveys and recognize that the majority of Portuguese society supports the legalization of abortion, as is currently the case in Portugal.

What we see, then, is a core of conservative values, but above all a strong emphasis on anti-corruption rhetoric, hostility toward the political class, and the idea that Portuguese society is being held back by centrist, non-reformist center-right and center-left governments. So yes, conservative values matter for Chega, but the party does not emphasize all of them when it realizes that they do not translate into electoral gains.

There is, however, one aspect I would like to stress: As in many other European democracies, Chega is a typical social welfare–chauvinistic party. It does not embrace ultra-liberalism, unlike some other right-wing populist figures outside Europe, such as Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil or Javier Milei in Latin America. Instead, Chega clearly plays the card of a welfare state “for the Portuguese,” combined with anti-immigrant narratives that accuse immigrants of exploiting the welfare state and the national health system. At the same time, it advances a vision of social policy that is explicitly not anti-statist.

From Emigration Country to Immigration Backlash

Ventura’s campaign placed immigration at the center of political conflict, despite Portugal’s relatively recent experience as a destination country. How do you explain the salience of immigration in a context historically defined by emigration rather than immigration?

Professor António Costa Pinto: The central card that Chega has been playing over the last four years—and one that is closely associated with its electoral success—is immigration. Portugal was long accustomed to immigration from Portuguese-speaking African countries and to some extent from Brazil. However, over the past five years—a very recent development—there has been a sharp increase in immigration from Asia, which is new in the Portuguese context. Migrants from Nepal, Bangladesh, and Pakistan are now highly visible across different segments of Portuguese society and the economy, from delivery services and other forms of urban transport in major cities to the agro-export sector in the south of the country. In that sector alone, around 70 percent of the labor force now comes from Asian countries such as Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh. Similar patterns are visible in tourism as well.

This shift is driven, of course, by economic needs. Portugal is one of the most rapidly aging societies in Europe, and demographic aging is a central structural feature of the Portuguese economy and society. Immigrants already play a crucial role in sustaining pensions, social benefits, and key sectors of the labor market.

However, the social reaction to this new wave of immigration—particularly among lower-middle-class and working-class segments of Portuguese society—is perhaps the most important explanation for Chega’s electoral success. At the same time, as Chega has come to dominate the political agenda on immigration, the center-right government, feeling electorally threatened, has responded by negotiating with the radical right and adopting new restrictive policies on immigration, access to Portuguese nationality, and related issues.

The Crisis of the Traditional Right in Portugal

The PSD’s historically weak performance and its refusal to endorse a runoff candidate point to a crisis of the traditional right. How important is center-right fragmentation in enabling Chega’s claim to leadership of the “non-socialist space”?

Professor António Costa Pinto: Undoubtedly, Chega is cannibalizing segments of the center-right, much more so than voters on the left or the radical left. At the same time, Chega is now present in many areas of Portuguese society—particularly in the South—that were electorally communist in the past. However, this is less significant today, given that the Portuguese Communist Party now represents around 2 percent of the vote.

What is more important is that Chega has increased its vote share in many areas, especially in the south and in the outskirts of Lisbon, which previously voted for the Communists and the Socialist Party. Today, however, Chega has become a national party with a very homogeneous electorate. As a result, it is primarily cannibalizing votes from the right.

The only real challenge to Chega, aside from the center-right, comes from a small right-wing liberal party that appeals mainly to younger and more educated voters. Chega, by contrast, is clearly dominant on the right-wing side of the political spectrum among segments of Portuguese society with less than secondary education. For this reason, any further electoral growth for Chega can only come from right-wing voters.

In the last legislative elections, the Social Democratic Party (PSD), the main center-right party, did increase its vote share. It is now in power with a minority government that is forced to negotiate much of its legislation with the radical right. Labor reform is a clear example: the only viable negotiating partner is the radical right, since the center-left has already decided to vote against it.

So yes, the challenge posed by the radical right is very significant, and the game is far from over. While the cards have been played, there remains considerable fluidity and uncertainty on the right-wing side of the political spectrum. On the left, by contrast, the Socialist Party lost the election and many voters, but it has nonetheless survived as the main force of the center-left.

From Trump to Orbán: How Transnational Models Shape Portugal’s Radical Right

Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister arrives to attend in an informal meeting of Heads of State or Government in Prague, Czechia on October 7, 2022. Photo: Alexandros Michailidis.

Observers have described Ventura’s rise as part of the “Trumpification” of the right. To what extent do transnational populist styles, media strategies, and narratives of cultural grievance matter more today than domestic historical legacies?

Professor António Costa Pinto: Domestic legacies are important, but undoubtedly Chega and Ventura are, first of all, integrated into the radical right political family in the European Parliament. There is a strong sense of identification with Giorgio Meloni, and also with Vox in Spain.

Above all—and this is very important—even when it is not openly emphasized, there is a strong sense of identification with Orbán. In a way, Orbán is the model for Ventura. The type of regime that Ventura would seek to consolidate in Portugal, if he were to win elections and gain access to power, is precisely the kind of competitive authoritarian regime that Orbán has managed to establish in Hungary.

In the Portuguese case, and in Portuguese political culture more broadly, we should not forget Portugal’s strong links with Brazil. Chega was a strong supporter of the Bolsonaro experience in Brazil, firmly anti-Lula and anti-left, and this reflects deeper cultural and political connections between Portugal and Brazil.

More recently, however, Trump’s challenge to NATO and episodes such as the “Greenland affair” have made Ventura more cautious. He is aware that, within Portuguese public opinion, Trump’s positions on NATO and the European Union are problematic. This matters because the Portuguese electorate is generally optimistic about the European Union and not receptive to such positions, so Ventura avoids adopting them openly.

So, as in many other radical right-wing populist experiences in Europe, there is a core of values associated with right-wing authoritarianism, but there is also a popular strategy that plays the cards that are popular and avoids those that are unpopular.

Uncertainty on the Right and the Future of Portuguese Democracy

And finally, Professor Pinto, from the perspective of democratic theory and historical comparison, does the 2026 election represent a critical juncture for Portuguese democracy—or does Portugal still possess institutional and cultural buffers capable of containing far-right populism in the long run?

Professor António Costa Pinto: That is a very interesting question, and it is not easy to answer. For the first time, this presidential election has prompted a clear stance among many figures on the right, including several politicians from the center-right, in support of the moderate candidate of the left. This is the first time such a development has occurred in Portugal. Why? Because in the last legislative elections, seven months ago, the Social Democratic Party completely abandoned any strategy of maintaining red lines against the radical right and entered into negotiations with it.

For the second round of the presidential election, both the prime minister and the main leader of the conservative party supporting the government chose not to take public positions. However, they gave instructions to most local leaders—mayors and other municipal figures—to support the center-left candidate. This was also a very pragmatic decision.

They know that, as president, the center-left candidate would respect democratic norms and the formal and informal rules governing relations between the president and the government. We should not forget that Portugal is a semi-presidential democracy. They also know very clearly that if, by any chance, the radical right was to win the election and Ventura became president—which is not going to happen—it could lead to a presidentialization of the system and favor his party in terms of cabinet influence.

In that sense, Portuguese democracy could be subverted not only through legislative elections but also through presidential ones, if Ventura were to gain presidential power—and that is not going to happen.

Overall, Portuguese democracy will continue to face a degree of uncertainty, particularly on the right-wing side of the political spectrum, where the game is not over. At this stage, we do not know which party will ultimately become the dominant force on the center-right. Will Portugal move toward an Italian-style scenario, in which the radical right dominates and the center-right becomes a junior partner? Or will it continue, as it does today, with a minority center-right government supported by a liberal democratic party such as Iniciativa Liberal? With Chega holding 23 percent of the vote, the future of the right-wing political landscape in Portugal remains highly uncertain.

Photo: David Burke / Dreamstime.

Opening the Political Pipeline: Transparency and Civic Access to Party Lists as an Antidote to Populist Distrust

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Please cite as:
Ferreira Dias, João. (2026). “Opening the Political Pipeline: Transparency and Civic Access to Party Lists as an Antidote to Populist Distrust.” Policy Papers. European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). January 15, 2026. https://doi.org/10.55271/pop0006

 

Abstract

The erosion of trust in liberal democracy – and the dynamic, described by Yascha Mounk, of a growing separation between democracy and liberalism – should be understood in a context of hyper-surveillance, that is, hyper-vigilance and intensified scrutiny. The massification of education and the acceleration and fragmentation of the media environment (online news and social media) have made a persistent social and experiential gap between voters and elected officials increasingly difficult to sustain politically—one that previously drew much of its legitimacy from the formal act of voting and from longer electoral cycles. In this setting, the demand for illiberal solutions emerges plausibly from disenchantment with politics, driven by three factors: (i) civic participation reduced to electoral moments; (ii) thin representative linkages that weaken proximity and blur accountability; and (iii) the perception that political parties function as closed recruitment machines, with internal circuits of elite reproduction and low permeability to merit and to extra-partisan social experience. When integrity failures and scandals compound these conditions, a narrative of moralization and “purification” intensifies and broadens populist repertoires, both in bottom-up variants on the radical left and in broad-based variants on the radical right—directed upward against elites and, at times, downward against minorities and immigrants. The paper’s point of departure is that citizens tolerate delegation when liberal democracy is perceived as functional and fair, particularly in the delivery of the welfare state and in the integrity of fiscal governance. Within a European framework, the paper proposes measures to increase transparency in list formation and open political recruitment (including regulated civic pathways into party lists) as a way to reduce the credibility of populist antagonism and strengthen democratic resilience.

 

By João Ferreira Dias

Introduction

Politics and policy – as two sides of the same coin – have become, in the last few decades, increasingly under hyper-surveillance, due to the growth of traditional media and the proliferation of social media. Historically, the media have functioned as the “fourth estate” (after government, parliament, and courts), a long-standing and pervasive concept that translates the social, political, and economic impact of media in modern societies, and that is widely associated with social democratization and political accountability (Schultz, 1998). 

But while “citizen journalism” was a foundational idea that dwells in the concept of expanding the role of the citizen as a “watchdog” (Bennett & Serrin, 2005), weblogs and social media became a structural reconfiguration of the information ecosystem. Early blogging ecosystems were often framed as expanding voice and scrutiny beyond traditional gatekeepers, sometimes complementing or contesting mainstream agendas and lowering barriers to agenda-setting (Sánchez-Villar, 2019). However, social media further accelerated the cycle of attention and reward structures around fast, affective engagement, transforming complex ideas into memes, as argued by Yascha Mounk (2023) concerning post-modern theories and their translation into an “identity synthesis.” 

The shift from broadcast to participatory media means surveillance is no longer top-down (state over citizens) but multi-directional: citizens monitor elites, and elites monitor public sentiment via data analytics. The hyper-visibility of political life redefines legitimacy and accountability. But social media proved the limits of this participatory media to work as watchdogs as a functional substitute for deliberative scrutiny, promoting slacktivism, a low-cost and symbolic participation (Christensen, 2011), and producing a set of high-cost externalities, including echo chambers, bubbles, misinformation, and hate speech. Importantly, the empirical literature is mixed on whether low-cost online actions crowd out offline engagement; the stronger claim is that platform dynamics can reconfigure incentives, attention, and affect in ways that strain deliberation.

As argued by Cass Sunstein (2017), democracy’s sustainability is at stake due to digital dynamics that undermine the basis of a healthy public sphere. Inspired by Habermas, Sunstein argues that the republic requires different types of citizens to interact and debate, with exposure to diverse arguments, while also prevailing on a common ground. However, the algorithm favors echo chambers and epistemic bubbles that reinforce preconceptions and beliefs, thereby undermining democratic dialogue. 

This sketch of the informational ecosystem matters because continuous scrutiny changes how citizens interpret political distance. When everyday monitoring highlights missteps, style, and personal conduct—often detached from policy substance—trust can erode and politics can be read through a moral register. In such settings, accountability is simultaneously intensified (everything is visible) and blurred (responsibility is hard to attribute), creating a demand for clarity that representative institutions rarely satisfy.

This political purity has a strong link to theological backgrounds, since the tension between purity and danger is foundational in Judeo-Christian cultures (Douglas, 1966). Applied to political contexts, the grammar of purity is related to political messianism (Ferreira Dias, 2022) and populist-demagogic leaders (Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018) who claim to represent the true voice of ‘the pure people’ (v.g., Ziller & Schübel, 2015; Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2017). In practical terms, “purification” narratives convert institutional distrust into a moral diagnosis (“the system is rotten”) and a moral remedy (“clean it up”), which expands the repertoire of anti-establishment mobilisation.

All this context of “algorithmcracy” (Amado, 2024) puts stress on the democratic system, vulnerable to a range of factors such as economic crisis, political radicalization, and international affairs. Yet the key point for this paper is not that digital dynamics “cause” democratic erosion on their own, but that they magnify the political costs of long-standing representational frictions, especially the gap between who elects and who is elected.

Additionally, democracy is experiencing a singular crisis due to the emergence of illiberal responses, producing a split between democracy and liberalism, as argued by Yascha Mounk (2018). According to the author, since the 2008 economic crisis, native-born citizens have been experiencing a combination of emotional reactions to political, social, and demographic changes. First, a lack of hope among youth generations when comparing their welfare to that of their parents at the same age. Second, intense  demographic changes – due to migration and refugee inflows and politicised migration debates – are producing emotional responses both in the US and Europe, with a return to nativist claims (Marchi & Zúquete, 2024; Betz, 2017; Marchi & Bruno, 2016; Guia, 2016) and racial working-class ressentiment (Begum et al., 2021; Carnes & Lupu, 2021; Mondon & Winter, 2020a, 2020b; Morgan & Lee, 2018). Third, a rapid progressive consensus in western societies – the so-called “woke culture,” i.e., and “identity-centred progressive agenda” – placed significant challenges, including strong claims about normative change, in terms of language, literature, and art revision based on (i) personal character of the artist/author versus the creation itself, (ii) current morality seen as the ultimate and correct moral. This led to the re-awakening of immaterial culture wars, with a tension between a cultural left and the cultural backlash of the radical right (Ferreira Dias, 2025; Fukuyama, 2018; Hunter, 1991, 1996).

These pressures converge on a structural vulnerability of representative democracy: the gap between who elects and who is elected. Under hyper-surveillance, that gap becomes easier to see and harder to legitimate—especially when (i) civic participation is largely episodic and confined to elections, (ii) representative linkages remain thin, and accountability is perceived as diffuse, and (iii) party recruitment is experienced as opaque or endogamous, privileging internal pipelines over merit and extra-partisan social experience. When integrity failures and scandals are added to this mix, the resulting moral register (“clean-up” and “purification”) increases the plausibility of populist antagonism and demand for illiberal shortcuts. The remainder of the paper, therefore, develops the political recruitment loop as a mechanism linking hyper-surveillance to democratic disenchantment, and proposes a phased, auditable policy toolbox: minimum transparency standards and civic access pathways into party lists, within a European framework, using Portugal as an illustrative case.

The Problem in Europe: Hyper-Surveillance Meets a Representation Gap

Representative democracy has always rested on a tension: citizens govern themselves only indirectly, by selecting others to make decisions in their name (Pitkin, 1967; Urbinati, 2006). This is a consequence of a long-term political process, related to the transition from absolutist monarchy to democracy (Manin, 1997). While the idea that power lies with the people was essential to desacralize the right to rule, the notion that representation seems to be the most effective way to fulfil the will of the majority leads to discomfort, since the will of the people is only indirectly and highly mediated (Manin, 1997; Przeworski, 2018). In stable periods, that tension is often politically manageable because the legitimacy of delegation is anchored in a simple ritual – elections – and in an expectation that institutions will remain broadly functional and fair between electoral moments (Manin, 1997). In other terms, we may say that people accept the rules of democracy – i.e., being set apart from decisions – if they are gaining from it. It is the economy of political satisfaction (Easton, 1965; Scharpf, 1999).

On the other hand, it leads to a recent, however intense, debate: how representation is limiting representativeness, and how representativeness is a political limitation to parties’ independence (Pitkin, 1967; Urbinati, 2006). In more practical terms, demographic changes are demanding affirmative and corrective actions – like quotas – for Parliament to reflect social diversity (Dahlerup, 2006; Krook, 2009; Phillips, 1995). However, while those affirmative actions are producing results, many social movements are claiming that political actors should act like the citizens rather than being independent (Dovi, 2007; Mansbridge, 2003). For instance, it means that it is not enough to have black people in the parliament, government, and other places, but they should act like activist movements expect them to do (Mansbridge, 1999; Phillips, 1995). This is also applied to other visible traits of politicians, despite the racial aspect making this more evident (Young, 2000).

What Changed: Mass Education and the Acceleration of the Information Ecosystem

First, the massification of education increases the baseline capacity to evaluate political claims and the expectation that power must justify itself continuously. Even when information is imperfect, higher educational attainment broadens the social demand for reasons, transparency, and competence. In practical terms, citizens are more likely to notice inconsistency (between rhetoric and action), opportunism (between promises and constraints), and privilege (between ordinary life and elite trajectories).

Second, a more educated public is also very critical of politicians’ abilities, often being cynical towards what seems to be political careers, especially when they start from a young age and involve limited experience of the real world (Bovens & Wille, 2017; Mair, 2013; Przeworski, 2018). In countries where political parties maintain organized youth wings, it is more likely for citizens to see them as “factories of politicians”, i.e., early entry points that socialize and recruit future candidates, producing greater resentment about the gap between electors and the elected (Jalali et al., 2024; Norris & Lovenduski, 1995).

Third, the media environment shifted from periodic broadcast scrutiny to continuous participatory visibility. Traditional media long operated as a “fourth estate,” associated with accountability and the monitoring of power (Schultz, 1998). But the contemporary cycle is faster and more affective: social media ecosystems reward speed, novelty, and emotional resonance, often compressing complex issues into symbolic conflict. In Mounk’s account of contemporary identity politics, the public arena becomes particularly prone to moralized framings and simplified oppositions, an environment in which political legitimacy is judged not only by outcomes but by conduct, language, and symbolic alignment (Mounk, 2023). 

European Symptoms: Low Trust, Party Dislike, and Perceptions of Closure

The European symptom profile is consistent: political parties attract among the lowest levels of trust, and citizens frequently describe politics in terms of closed careers and self-serving elites (Mair, 2013; Przeworski, 2018). In the EU-wide Standard Eurobarometer 101 (Spring 2024), only 22% of respondents “tend to trust” political parties (EU27), while large majorities report distrust (European Commission, Directorate-General for Communication, 2024). Even where trust in other institutions fluctuates, parties remain a focal point for scepticism because they control access to representation: they filter who appears on ballots, how political careers progress, and how internal accountability operates (Hazan & Rahat, 2010; Norris & Lovenduski, 1995).

Perceptions of closure are reinforced where party careers are seen as starting early and progressing through organized youth wings and internal staff roles. While parties tend to see it as a symptom of democracy, citizenship, and generational renovation, public opinion goes on the opposite side, being suspicious of a “jobs for the boys” factory.

Evidence from Portugal suggests an “iceberg-shaped” recruitment ladder: youth wings may be visible as entry points, yet their representation compresses sharply at the decisive stages of candidate selection and electable list placement, with informal bargaining between youth organizations and party leadership shaping outcomes (Jalali et al., 2024). In this sense, anti-establishment narratives are not only moral reactions to individual politicians but institutional reactions to party-controlled filters, what Przeworski (2018) summarizes as the perception that elections reproduce “establishment,” “elites,” or even a political “caste.”

This feeds perceptions aligned with the “cartelization” diagnosis in party scholarship: parties may remain indispensable to democratic coordination while becoming less socially rooted and less permeable to external talent, particularly where public funding and state-linked resources reduce reliance on membership and local embeddedness (Katz & Mair, 1995, 2009; Mair, 2013). Whether or not one adopts the cartel thesis in full, it captures a critical policy-relevant intuition: if citizens experience parties as closed recruitment machines, distrust becomes a rational inference rather than mere cynicism (Hazan & Rahat, 2010; Norris & Lovenduski, 1995).

Finally, the moral register of politics – particularly intense in digital environments –amplifies how integrity failures are interpreted. Scandals do not merely signal individual misconduct; they can erode institutional trust and confirm a broader narrative of closure (“they protect their own”), especially where gatekeeping is opaque (Bowler & Karp, 2004). In that sense, hyper-surveillance often functions less as a neutral accountability tool and more as a lens that magnifies the reputational costs of distance, opacity, and perceived self-reproduction.

A useful contrast is provided by single-member constituency systems such as the United Kingdom. Comparative work on electoral incentives suggests that systems encouraging personal vote-seeking strengthen incentives for constituency-oriented behaviour (Carey & Shugart, 1995), and UK evidence indicates that MPs’ constituency communication and service respond to re-election incentives (Auel & Umit, 2018; Cain et al., 1984; Norton & Wood, 1993). However, stronger constituency linkage does not remove party gatekeeping: candidate selection remains an intra-party process, and perceptions of closure can persist when recruitment is opaque or centrally controlled (Hazan & Rahat, 2010; Norris & Lovenduski, 1995). The implication for European reform debates is therefore precise: improving accountability “at the front end” (representative–constituent linkage) helps, but tackling disenchantment requires reforming the “back end” of democracy: how parties recruit, select, and promote candidates. 

Bridge Conclusion

This paper conceptualises the gap between electors and elected as a recruitment loop rather than merely a communication failure. Citizens watch politics continuously but can intervene meaningfully only episodically; they observe parties as gatekeepers but cannot see inside the gatekeeping process. Under these conditions, accountability becomes diffuse and trust costly. Portugal illustrates this dynamic in microcosm: party youth wings function as visible entry points but are seldom translated into real candidate diversity (Jalali et al., 2024). The challenge is therefore to open recruitment without undermining parties’ capacity to coordinate democracy, to make delegation intelligible again. The following section proposes a pragmatic policy toolbox for doing so, balancing transparency, civic access, and organizational integrity (Hazan & Rahat, 2010; Katz & Mair, 1995; Mair, 2013).

Policy Toolbox: Opening without Breaking Parties 

The central policy challenge is to widen civic access to representation without undermining parties’ coordinating functions. Parties are not merely electoral vehicles; they aggregate preferences, recruit candidates, structure parliamentary majorities, and make responsibility legible in government (Mair, 2013). Yet when parties are experienced as closed recruitment machines, distrust becomes a rational inference rather than a purely moral reaction, especially under hyper-surveillance, where citizens can observe political life continuously but cannot observe how candidacies are actually made (Hazan & Rahat, 2010; Norris & Lovenduski, 1995). The toolbox proposed here follows a simple logic: make recruitment intelligible (transparency), make entry plausible (civic pathways), and make integrity credible (anti-capture safeguards). These reforms are designed to be phased, auditable, and compatible with freedom of association and party autonomy, principles emphasized in European standards on party regulation (OSCE/ODIHR & Venice Commission, 2020).

First Tool

A first tool is a minimum transparency standard for candidate selection. The aim is not to impose a single “best method” of selection, but to require that parties publish the basic architecture of their recruitment decisions in advance: who decides, by what criteria, on what calendar, and with what right of appeal or review. The OSCE/ODIHR and Venice Commission guidelines underline that party regulation should protect pluralism while encouraging democratic internal functioning and clarity of rules (OSCE/ODIHR & Venice Commission, 2020). Translating this into a practical standard means requiring parties to publish written procedures for list formation (including eligibility, stages, and decision bodies) and to report aggregated outcomes after selection (e.g., number of applicants, share coming from outside internal party roles, and basic diversity indicators, reported in non-identifying form). This aligns with the OECD’s emphasis on openness and inclusiveness as trust-relevant “values” drivers: citizens judge not only outcomes, but also whether processes are fair, transparent, and intelligible (OECD, 2017). Crucially, transparency here is not punitive; it is a low-cost infrastructural reform that reduces the informational asymmetry that makes gatekeeping look arbitrary.

Second Tool

A second tool is to create civic access pathways into party lists, designed to reduce the perception that politics is an insiders’ career ladder. Research on recruitment repeatedly shows that who reaches office depends on filters that operate well before election day, such as party selectors, eligibility rules, and informal networks (Norris & Lovenduski, 1995). The policy aim, therefore, is to add a structured “external entry” channel alongside internal recruitment, without delegitimizing internal party work. 

One workable design is a phased system of “civic slots” on party lists, limited in share, clearly defined in eligibility, and tied to an open call. Selection can combine a rule-based screening stage (including blind review where feasible for qualifications and experience), and a plural evaluation panel that includes party representatives plus external members with credibility (e.g., retired judges, academics, civil society leaders). This design reflects the core insight of candidate selection studies: openness alone does not guarantee fairness; the rules of selection and the identity of selectors shape capture risks and public legitimacy (Hazan & Rahat, 2010). To address the predictable objection that “amateurs cannot govern,” parties can attach a standardized training and mentoring track for civic entrants, which preserves competence while changing the optics and reality of permeability.

Third Tool

A third tool is a set of anti-endogamy and integrity safeguards that reduce the probability that openness becomes performative or captured. Here, European integrity standards provide a clear anchor: GRECO’s Fourth Evaluation Round explicitly focuses on corruption prevention for members of parliament, including ethical principles, conflicts of interest, restrictions on certain activities, asset and interest declarations, and enforcement mechanisms (Council of Europe, GRECO, n.d.). 

Yet, the toolbox does not require reinventing ethics regulation; it requires connecting recruitment openness to integrity credibility. Practically, parties adopting civic pathways should commit to (i) basic conflict-of-interest declarations for candidates, (ii) simple anti-nepotism rules and disclosure obligations for close family ties in politically relevant appointments, and (iii) clear restrictions on incompatible roles where these create perceptions of insider privilege. 

Because parties differ legally across European systems, the policy point is not uniform legal transplantation but a minimum package of auditable commitments that makes “purification” rhetoric less plausible by making integrity rules visible and enforceable.

Fourth Tool

A fourth tool is incentives and certification. One reason reforms fail is that voluntary openness is individually costly for a party, especially if competitors remain closed. A practical solution is a transparency certification: an independent audit against a checklist aligned with the minimum transparency standard, civic access design, and integrity safeguards. This can begin as voluntary and reputational, then become scalable if legislatures choose to connect it to permissible incentives (for example, earmarked public funding for training civic entrants, or additional reporting support), always within the constraints recommended in European party-regulation guidance (OSCE/ODIHR & Venice Commission, 2020). The OECD’s trust framework is relevant here: where citizens perceive institutions as open and aligned with public-interest values, trust becomes easier to rebuild; where processes remain opaque, even good outcomes are discounted (OECD, 2017).

Fifth Tool

A fifth, optional tool is participatory selection mechanisms that do not substitute for parties but complement them. Partial primaries or citizen panels (mini-publics) can be used not to choose entire lists, but to evaluate candidates’ competence and integrity claims in a structured, evidence-based setting. The point is to convert hyper-surveillance into functional accountability: create moments where citizens engage substantively with candidate profiles rather than through algorithmic fragments. Because participatory selection can intensify factionalism or media spectacle, it should be deployed cautiously and only with anti-capture rules and clear scope limits (Hazan & Rahat, 2010).

In sum, taken together, these tools aim to change the political economy of distrust by shifting recruitment from an opaque internal practice to a partially visible civic interface. This is particularly relevant in contexts where youth wings function as visible pipelines, yet the decisive stages of list placement remain compressed and informally negotiated, reinforcing the perception that internal circuits dominate political mobility (Jalali et al., 2024). The toolbox is therefore designed to “open without breaking”: to preserve party coordination while lowering the symbolic and practical distance between electors and elected.

Policy Recommendations, Implementation Roadmap, and Metrics 

Recommendations

Recommendation 1 — Adopt a European minimum transparency standard for candidate selection. Parties should publish, ex ante, a written procedure for list formation (eligibility criteria; stages and calendar; decision body; complaint/review channel) and, ex post, an aggregated report on the selection process (e.g., number of applicants; number shortlisted; basic non-identifying diversity indicators; and the share of candidates coming from outside internal party roles). This does not impose a single selection model; it makes gatekeeping legible and therefore contestable on procedural grounds (Hazan & Rahat, 2010; OSCE/ODIHR & Venice Commission, 2020). The expected impact is to reduce informational asymmetry and weaken the plausibility of “closed casta” narratives under hyper-surveillance (European Commission, Directorate-General for Communication, 2024; Mair, 2013).

Recommendation 2 — Implement phased civic access pathways (“civic slots”) into party lists. Parties should reserve a limited and gradually expandable share of list positions for candidates recruited through an open call, with eligibility rules that allow genuine external entry (Norris & Lovenduski, 1995). Selection should be rule-based and staged: a first screening phase can be partly blinded where feasible (qualifications, experience), followed by a plural evaluation panel combining party and external members with high credibility. This targets the core driver of disenchantment identified in recruitment research: citizens can vote, but they cannot realistically enter the pipeline (Hazan & Rahat, 2010; Norris & Lovenduski, 1995).

Recommendation 3 — Add anti-endogamy and integrity safeguards that make openness credible. Where recruitment opens, the system must also signal credible integrity boundaries: baseline conflict-of-interest declarations for candidates; simple anti-nepotism disclosure rules; and enforceable incompatibility rules where accumulation of roles creates perceptions of insider privilege. These measures align with European anti-corruption frameworks that emphasize conflicts of interest, codes of conduct, and enforceability for MPs (Council of Europe, GRECO, n.d.). The expected impact is to prevent openness from being dismissed as symbolic and to reduce “purification” dynamics that thrive on scandal amplification.

Recommendation 4 — Create a transparency certification (voluntary first, scalable later). An independent audit against a short checklist (procedural transparency; civic pathway design; basic integrity disclosures) can generate reputational incentives while limiting the collective-action problem where no party wants to “disarm” unilaterally. This is a policy instrument, not a European legal requirement; it is justified by the governance literature on rebuilding trust through competence and values (OECD, 2017).

Recommendation 5 — Publish annual aggregated metrics to track whether pipelines are actually opening. Parties (or an independent public body) should report a small set of comparable indicators annually (see below). This shifts debate from moral accusation to measurable change and allows phased reforms to be evaluated and adjusted (OSCE/ODIHR & Venice Commission, 2020).

Implementation Roadmap (0–48 months)

In months 0–12, implement the minimum transparency standard (Recommendation 1) and launch a pilot civic pathway with a small number of civic slots (Recommendation 2), accompanied by a basic integrity package (Recommendation 3). In parallel, start the voluntary certification scheme (Recommendation 4) and define the common reporting template (Recommendation 5). 

In months 12–24, expand civic slots modestly (conditional on applicant volume and audit results), institutionalize the plural panel model, and introduce routine disclosure checks (lightweight, standardized, and auditable). 

In months 24–48, consolidate reforms: embed transparency and reporting as stable practice, commission an independent evaluation, and recalibrate thresholds (slot share, screening rules, disclosure scope) based on observed capture risks and legitimacy gains.

Portugal can remain an illustrative benchmark rather than a dedicated section: recent evidence on the translation from youth recruitment to electable list placement shows why “pipeline visibility” does not automatically equal “pipeline openness,” and why reforms must target the decisive stages of selection (Jalali et al., 2024).

Metrics & Evaluation (minimal set)

A compact metrics package should track: (1) the share of elected officials with substantial professional experience outside party/political roles (aggregated); (2) average tenure and rotation rates in elected office; (3) number of applicants per civic slot and selection rates; (4) compliance scores on the transparency checklist (party-level, annually); and (5) time-series trends in trust in parties (national and EU benchmarks, including Eurobarometer) (European Commission, Directorate-General for Communication, 2024).

Conclusion

Hyper-surveillance did not create Europe’s representation gap, but it has raised the political cost of long-standing features of representative government: mediated will-formation, professionalized political careers, and party gatekeeping. When citizens can monitor politics continuously yet cannot observe – or access – the recruitment process, accountability becomes diffuse and trust becomes costly. The policy aim is therefore not moral “purification,” but infrastructural repair: opening the political pipeline while preserving parties’ coordinating capacity. A minimum transparency standard, civic access pathways, and credible integrity safeguards together can transform hyper-vigilance into functional accountability, reducing the plausibility of populist antagonism and strengthening democratic resilience (Hazan & Rahat, 2010; Mair, 2013; OSCE/ODIHR & Venice Commission, 2020).

 

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Professor Tim Bale is a renowned scholar from the School of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary University of London.

Prof. Bale: Nigel Farage Is a Marmite Politician — Loved by His Base, Toxic to Many Others

by Editor’s ChoiceEuropean ObservatoryHomeInterviewsLeadership & Persona

In this in-depth interview for ECPS, Professor Tim Bale offers a sharp assessment of Reform UK’s rise and Nigel Farage’s polarizing leadership. Farage, he argues, is “a Marmite politician — people either love or hate him,” making him both Reform’s engine and its constraint. Professor Bale suggests that Farage exemplifies “a classic populist radical-right leader” who channels anti-elite sentiment, yet risks alienating voters beyond his base. He links Reform’s surge less to ideological realignment than to Conservative decay, marked by Brexit fragmentation, leadership churn, and “over-promis[ing] and under-deliver[ing] on migration.” While Reform may reshape the political terrain, Professor Bale warns its ceiling remains visible—especially if questions of competence, Russia, and generational change intensify. Reform’s future, he concludes, is possible, but far from inevitable.

Interview by Selcuk Gultasli

Giving an interview to the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS), Professor Tim Bale—Professor of Politics in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary University of London—offers a wide-ranging analysis of Nigel Farage, Reform UK, and the structural realignments reshaping British party politics. His insights are grounded in decades of scholarship on party evolution, populist rhetoric, and leadership psychology, making his perspective essential for understanding the United Kingdom’s shifting electoral landscape.

Throughout the interview, Professor Bale situates Nigel Farage as both emblem and engine of Britain’s contemporary radical right. As he puts it, “Nigel Farage is, in many ways, a classic example of a populist radical-right leader,” one who mobilizes support through a moralized confrontation between “the people” and supposed elite betrayal. Yet Farage’s strength is also his constraint. Professor Bale memorably describes him as “a Marmite politician,” a figure voters “either love or hate,” noting that this polarization “probably places a limit on Reform’s appeal.” Farage, therefore, embodies both populist vitality and electoral risk—“the ideal leader” in the eyes of his base, yet “a figure of suspicion” for many beyond it.

This duality frames Professor Bale’s central contention: that Reform UK’s rise must be understood not only in ideological terms but as an artefact of Conservative decay. Years of intra-party conflict, Brexit-driven fragmentation, and “over-promis[ing] and under-deliver[ing] on migration” have opened political space for Farage’s insurgency. Yet Professor Bale cautions against assuming an irreversible realignment. The Conservative Party remains “rooted in the middle-class political culture of the UK,” with institutional depth and internal veto points that make any “reverse takeover” more difficult than populist narratives imply.

Focusing on the structural and sociological conditions that shape political possibility, Professor Bale further highlights a widening generational divide. While education and age have become stronger electoral predictors than class, cultural conflict alone cannot explain support for Reform. If public priorities shift back from national issues to personal ones—from immigration to “the cost of living, [and] the state of public services”—Reform’s momentum may plateau. Moreover, its perceived softness on Russia remains “an Achilles’ heel,” one that stalled its surge when public attention sharpened in 2024.

Across this interview, Professor Bale neither exaggerates inevitability nor discounts volatility. Instead, he offers a sober framework for evaluating whether Reform represents a durable transformation or a protest cycle with a ceiling. Britain, he suggests, now faces a future where polarization, demographic turnover, institutional vulnerability, and charismatic leadership converge—precariously. This conversation, therefore, is not only timely, but analytically consequential.

Here is the edited transcript of our interview with Professor Tim Bale, slightly revised for clarity and flow.

Farage Is a Classic Populist Radical Right Leader

Nigel Farage speaking in Dover, Kent, UK, on May 28, 2024, in support of the Reform Party, of which he is President. Photo: Sean Aidan Calderbank.

Professor Tim Bale, thank you very much for joining our interview series. Let me start right away with the first question: In your work with Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser on the mainstream right’s strategic squeeze between Inglehart’s “silent revolution” and Ignazi’s “silent counter-revolution,” how should we interpret the rise of Reform UK? To what extent does Nigel Farage embody a classic mobiliser of counter-revolutionary sentiment, and to what extent do the Conservative Party’s specific organizational, ideological, and reputational vulnerabilities make the UK an outlier in the broader pattern of West European party-system transformation?

Professor Tim Bale: I think you would have to say that Nigel Farage is, in many ways, a classic example of a populist radical-right leader. He constantly draws a distinction between the wisdom of “the people” and their alleged betrayal and condescension by elites. As for the Conservative Party, there has always been a strain of populism and nationalism—indeed, some would say jingoism—within its tradition. In recent years, particularly under Boris Johnson and during the Brexit campaign, this tendency has come to the surface. In that sense, the party has reached back into its more populist and nationalist heritage as a way of competing with Farage and the political space he has claimed.

The Tories Are Hard to Capture — But Not Impossible

Farage’s rhetoric about a prospective “reverse takeover” foregrounds questions of party permeability and factional capture. Drawing on your analyses of Conservative factionalism and recurrent leadership crises, what structural, ideological, and organizational conditions render the Conservative Party susceptible to colonization by a radical-right challenger? Conversely, what features of party culture, elite networks, or institutional veto points might inhibit such a takeover?

Professor Tim Bale: When you look at the Conservative Party, there are features that, while not necessarily inoculating it from the challenge Farage poses, do make such a takeover more difficult than some people imagine, in the sense that it is a party rooted in the middle-class political culture of the UK. It is a party that has existed for 200 years, and it has a strong sense of entitlement, as it were, and a strong belief that it is the natural party of government, and therefore will be able to resist, in some ways, any challenge from a newcomer. 

Having said that, however, one feature of the Conservative Party that always has to be borne in mind is that it is very strongly a leadership-driven party, and that should a leader take over who is more receptive to the kinds of overtures that Nigel Farage and others are making, then it would be quite easy for that person to convert the party to taking a much more hospitable attitude to that development. So, on the one hand, the fact that the Conservative Party is old, has a brand, and has an infrastructure makes it quite difficult for somebody to take it over. On the other hand, it can be taken over quite easily from within, because it is so reliant on the leader to show it the way in terms of policy and organization.

Farage Is Reform’s Greatest Asset and Its Weakest Link

Stop Trump Coalition march, Central London, United Kingdom, September 17, 2025. A protester holds a sign reading “No to fascists — Trump, Musk, Farage.” Photo: Ben Gingell.

Your recent interview on Reform UK emphasizes Farage’s dual status as both the party’s central mobilizing force and its principal liability. How does this tension map onto broader theories of charismatic leadership, affective polarization, and “anti-system” appeal? In an increasingly fragmented multi-party context, does Farage’s polarizing image constrain the party’s governability narrative to the point of limiting its credible path to No. 10?

Professor Tim Bale: Nigel Farage is what we call, in England, a Marmite politician, which refers to a yeast-based spread that people put on their toast in the morning. People either love or hate that particular spread, and that’s very true of people’s attitudes to Nigel Farage. I think the fact that he is such a polarizing figure probably places a limit on Reform’s appeal. At the moment, it seems to be polling around 30% in the opinion polls, and I think that reflects the fact that he finds it difficult to appeal to voters who hate him, obviously, but also that ambivalent voters may be wary of the polarization he represents. So, I do think that is something of an obstacle to Farage’s progress. The anti-system appeal you mention is clearly attractive to some voters — people fed up with the two mainstream parties who want to smash the system. Anyone like Nigel Farage, who seems to offer a more radical alternative, is an appealing option for them. However, there is still a strong streak of small-c conservatism in the British electorate that would regard that as too radical, and that would like change — but not at the cost of dismantling a parliamentary, liberal, representative democracy that, in many ways, has served Britain well over the last couple of hundred years.

Reform’s Rise Is Built on Tory Collapse as Much as Ideology

Your research on Conservative leadership instability highlights the compounding effects of leader unpopularity, policy incoherence, and internal disunity on electoral performance. How much of Reform UK’s current momentum should be understood through the lens of “opportunity structures” created by Conservative decay, rather than any substantive ideological realignment toward radical-right policy demand?

Professor Tim Bale: As always, what we’re seeing is a combination of both. I mean, there is some genuine appeal of Reform UK’s policies and pitch to the electorate. But obviously, what has gone wrong with the Conservative Party has opened up avenues for Reform in a way that we haven’t seen before. In particular, the fact that the Conservative Party has really, since 2010, over-promised and under-delivered on migration has made it much easier for Farage to suggest that somehow it has failed voters and that it has not been able to, as it were, live up to their expectations. 

Also, you would have to say that the way the Conservative Party has lost its organizational coherence, the way Brexit, for example, tore the party apart and made parliamentary discipline something of a fiction, hasn’t helped—nor has the party’s tendency to cycle through leaders so quickly. That has led to a feeling that the Conservative Party, oncea sort of solid, respectable governing party, has to some extent lost its way, even lost its mind, according to some voters. And I don’t think that has helped the Conservative Party, but I do think that’s helped Nigel Farage and Reform UK.

Many Tory MPs Would Be Comfortable in a PRR Party

In “Populism as an intra-party phenomenon,” you analyzed how Corbynism reconfigured Labour’s organizational dynamics and membership incentives. Do you observe analogous intra-party populist dynamics emerging within the Conservatives today—particularly in the struggle between traditional conservatives, post-liberal cultural conservatives, and those advocating rapprochement or fusion with Reform UK?

Professor Tim Bale: There are definitely, if not factions, then certainly groups within the Conservative Party who are battling it out for the party’s soul. You can see that there is very clearly a bunch of MPs who, if not wanting a merger with Reform UK, would actually be quite open to the idea of some kind of electoral pact with Farage’s party. I think that partly is instrumental opportunism on their part, in the sense that they think the Conservative Party is in trouble, and it needs an alliance of some kind with Reform UK to recover its fortunes. 

But, there are MPs within the Conservative Party who, to be honest, would be quite comfortable belonging to a populist radical right party. They believe that Britain needs shaking up economically, and that the only way for that to happen is actually to get a greater level of support from the electorate, based on cultural concerns—concerns around immigration, woke issues, and green policies. That’s the only way of getting the kind of government that they want to actually dismantle some of the welfare state and some of the regulation that they think is holding Britain back. So, you have a strange situation in the Conservative Party where there are many advocates of a much more neoliberal conservatism who are prepared to adopt a more authoritarian stance on cultural concerns in order to get into government and implement the kinds of economic policies that they think are absolutely vital.

The Tories Are Now Moving on Migration in Farage’s Direction

Photo: Dreamstime.

Your comparative work on UKIP/Brexit Party and Australia’s One Nation highlights how radical-right “outsiders” can generate policy payoffs without executive power by reshaping the strategic environment of mainstream parties. How is Reform UK already influencing Conservative rhetoric, agenda-setting, and internal factional alignments—especially on immigration, welfare, and ECHR withdrawal?

Professor Tim Bale: You put your finger on a phenomenon that occurs throughout the world, and we’ve seen it all over Western Europe, when parties with little hope of actually governing—and certainly of joining a coalition—are capable of, as it were, moving the center of gravity in a system towards the populist radical right. When you look at the Conservative Party’s policy-making since 2024, and even actually before that, in response to the threat that Nigel Farage’s various parties—be it UKIP, be it the Brexit Party, be it Reform UK—you can clearly see that the Conservative Party has moved very much in his direction.

So, on migration, we now have a Conservative Party that has suggested—though there is some debate over whether it was intended seriously—withdraw­ing the indefinite right to remain granted to some non-citizens, and even opening up the possibility of them eventually being encouraged or indeed deported. That kind of mass-deportation approach is something previous Conservative governments would never have considered, and it reflects a direct response to some of Nigel Farage’s arguments.

Welfare is more complex. Farage is very aware that many of his supporters rely on the welfare state, and certainly on the National Health Service, so the Conservative Party must be cautious not to move too far toward his ambivalence on those issues. Instead, it tends to fall back on its more familiar low-tax, low-spend reputation.

On migration, that is the obvious one, where we’ve seen the Conservative Party move, just as we’ve seen parties, whether they be Christian Democrat or Conservatives across the continent, move very much towards a rather more kind of radical policy. You’d also have to look at environmental politics here, and it’s very clear that over the last few years, a Conservative Party that actually pioneered the move towards net zero—when Theresa May was Conservative Party Premier—is now really talking about winding back that commitment. I think, again, that is in response to Nigel Farage and Reform, and their promotion of the fossil fuel industry and its arguments.

Local Failures Might Not Dent Reform as Much as Opponents Hope

Reports of dysfunction in Reform-run local authorities raise questions about statecraft and institutional capacity. Given your longstanding argument that perceived competence ultimately constrains populist breakthroughs in Britain, do you anticipate that these governance shortcomings will erode Reform’s credibility? Or, alternatively, might anti-establishment narratives inoculate the party from such accountability?

Professor Tim Bale: That is a great question. We have seen Reform take over local authorities since spring of this year, and many of those councils have made rather a mess of things. They’ve fallen out with each other, they’ve found it much harder to make savings than they originally suggested, and in fact, they’re going to have to raise taxes rather than reduce them for local people. While the problems in those local authorities actually gain quite a lot of amused coverage in the media, I’m not sure how much the electorate in general pay attention to them if they’re not happening in their particular part of the country.

You raise a very good question here about the extent to which, if you criticize Reform UK, you actually strengthen, in some ways, the support for it among its die-hard advocates and voters. So, one would like to think that the example of local councils actually gives people pause for thought about whether it would be a good idea to elect Reform to the government of the country as a whole. But I rather doubt that it will have as big an impact as some of Reform’s opponents hope.

Hardline Accommodation Risks Alienating Supporters While Boosting the Radical Right

Your scholarship has shown that center-right parties often pre-empt or accommodate radical-right positions under competitive pressure. Should we expect Labour or the Conservatives to adapt their stances on immigration, welfare conditionality, or international legal obligations in response to Reform’s pressure? What do cross-national patterns suggest about the risks and limits of such accommodation?

Professor Tim Bale: We are already seeing in the UK the Labour government take a much harder line on migration than many of its supporters would like. It’s clear that that is a response by the government to losing votes to Reform. Current polling suggests that around 10% of people who voted for Labour in 2024 are now intending to vote for Reform, and Labour is desperate to get some of those people back, and by pursuing a more authoritarian stance on migration, they hope to do that.

You also point, however, to the fact that this has gone on all over the European continent. We’ve seen center-left parties as well as center-right parties pursuing a harder line on migration, and Denmark is often the country pointed to in this respect, perhaps as a successful example. But when we look across the continent as a whole, we don’t find that it is a particularly useful response for center-left parties to take. It ends up doing two things: first, alienating many of their more obvious supporters—in other words, people who have more liberal or left-wing values; and second, it tends to prove counterproductive or futile, in the sense that all it does is raise the salience of issues like migration in the minds of most voters, causing elections to be fought and debate to be conducted on terrain that actually favors populist radical right parties.

So, I personally wouldn’t advocate that as a response by the center-left, but it’s one that is still often mooted and taken by center-left parties, unfortunately.

Farage’s Sympathy for Putin Is an Achilles’ Heel

Stop Trump Coalition march, Central London, United Kingdom, September 17, 2025. Protesters dressed as Musk, Farage, Vance, Putin, Trump, and Netanyahu. Photo: Ben Gingell.

Your work on leadership perception underscores how trait attributions shape political choice. How electorally damaging is the perception that Reform UK is “soft on Russia,” particularly given polling indicating its unusually high association with pro-Russia sentiment? Does this reputational liability limit its potential to broaden its coalition beyond anti-establishment voters?

Professor Tim Bale: Reform’s support, Reform’s support, and certainly Farage’s apparent sympathy for Putin’s justification of the invasion of Ukraine, is something of an Achilles’ heel for him. To be clear, Farage has been careful not to appear as a superfan of Vladimir Putin, but he has repeatedly suggested that Russia’s invasion has been influenced by NATO “poking the Russian bear” and extending its influence into Ukraine in ways that allegedly threatened Moscow. 

Polling from the 2024 election shows that the moment public attention focused on Farage’s more accommodating stance toward Putin and Russia, Reform’s upward trajectory stalled. This position is deeply unpopular in Britain, and it is something Farage will have to address seriously, especially ahead of the next election. After all, the country will be choosing a government and prime minister in a highly unstable geopolitical moment, and Russia is viewed by the overwhelming majority of Britons as the aggressor.

So, I think it is a limit to his appeal unless he begins to resile from it. At the moment, however, it doesn’t look as if he wants to do that. I should add a caveat here: when we look at other populist radical-right parties, and indeed more extreme variants of the radical right in Europe, there does not appear to be anything like the same level of enthusiasm for Russia and for Putin within Reform as we see in some of their continental counterparts.

Reform Voters Favor Leaders with ‘Dark Triad’ Traits

Your “What Britons Want in a Political Leader” study reveals stark divergences between the traits valued by Reform/Conservative members and those preferred by the broader electorate. What does this asymmetry imply about Reform’s sociological and psychological ceiling of support, and what does it reveal about the electorate segments most susceptible to Farage’s appeal?

Professor Tim Bale: What we find in our research is that supporters—and certainly members of Reform—have much more positive views about leaders who exhibit what psychologists would call dark triad qualities. In other words, those are Machiavellianism, for example, psychopathy, for example. That is a marked contrast with the supporters of other parties, although slightly less so with supporters of the Conservative Party, who are rather more like Reform.

I think this comes down, once again, to Nigel Farage’s appeal. For his supporters, he is, in some ways, the ideal leader: he exhibits the kind of ruthless and sometimes manipulative, clever qualities that they so admire. But those very same qualities are actually quite off-putting to a large segment of the British electorate. So once again, if we’re talking about limits to Nigel Farage’s appeal, the kind of leadership qualities that he has—the leadership that he demonstrates—make him intensely popular with his own supporters, because they are psychologically predisposed to like that kind of leadership. Whereas for many in the electorate, they make him a figure of suspicion rather than someone they would like to see leading the country.

The Greens, Not Corbyn, Pose the Greater Danger to Labour

Jeremy Corbyn, former Labour leader, during a visit to Bedford, United Kingdom, May 3, 2017. Photo: Dreamstime.

Reform appears to be peeling off older, culturally conservative, economically insecure voters, while recently founded socialist Your Party seems poised to attract younger, urban, progressive activists disillusioned with Labour. How vulnerable is Labour to a “two-front erosion,” and do Starmer’s strategic concessions on immigration and public order risk replicating the center-left dilemmas seen elsewhere in Europe?

Professor Tim Bale: You’ve seen recently Your Party try to get its act together. This is the party being set up by, among others, Jeremy Corbyn, who used to be the very left-wing leader of the Labour Party, and Zara Sultana, an ex-Labour MP. There is an extent to which this does threaten Labour’s hegemony on the left. There are many left-wing voters who are very disappointed with the Labour government, not least on its attitude to migration, but also on its attitude to tax and spend.

What I would say, however, is that I’m not sure Your Party is actually the biggest threat to Labour on that front. I think what we’ve seen recently is that the difficulties that Your Party have had in actually getting its act together, as I said before, mean that the Green Party has seized the moment. It’s elected a new so-called eco-populist leader, Zach Polanski, who appears to be saying and doing the kinds of things that people disillusioned with Labour would actually like—so, for example, wealth taxes, and a much more aggressive attitude to Nigel Farage and Reform UK.

So, if there is a kind of two-front war being fought by Labour—Reform on the one hand, and then a left-wing party on the other—it’s probably not Your Party; it’s probably the Greens that are the biggest threat on its left flank.

First-Past-the-Post May Save Labour

Drawing on your prior analyses of organizational dysfunction within left-of-center parties, how serious a threat is Your Party’s emergence—given its early factional disputes and resource constraints—to Labour’s ability to consolidate progressive voters? Might it institutionalize a structural cleavage on the British left akin to Podemos–PSOE or Mélenchon–Socialist Party dynamics?

Professor Tim Bale: There is a risk. There We talked about some of the problems that Your Party have had. There is a risk that if they can actually surmount some of the early difficulties that they have, then we do see a party on the left—whether it be Your Party or the Greens—actually draining support from Labour. Current opinion polling does suggest that around 10–15% of former Labour voters have drifted off and might drift off in that direction.

However, there’s always the constraining factor of our electoral system. It is always going to be possible for Labour, successfully or unsuccessfully, to argue that under a first-past-the-post system a vote for either the Greens or Your Party is a wasted vote, particularly if they are able to conjure up the possibility of a Reform government under Nigel Farage, which may frighten sufficient numbers of people who might otherwise be tempted to use their vote expressively and to vote for Your Party or the Greens. They may wonder whether that is a good idea and, actually, in the end, come back home to the Labour Party. Probably that is the Labour Party’s strategy at the moment.

Keir Starmer, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, attends a joint press conference with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv, Ukraine, on January 16, 2025. Photo: Vladyslav Musiienko.

Conservatives Misread 2019 as Permanent Shift, Ignoring Voters’ Economic Priorities

In “Hopes Will Be Dashed,” you argued that Brexit negotiating strategies were deeply shaped by a pervasive “Merkel myth.” Do you see contemporary Conservative or Reform elites relying on analogous political myths—such as a presumed majority demand for “uniting the right,” a belief in the inevitability of populist realignment, or a misreading of public appetite for hard-liner sovereignty politics?

Professor Tim Bale: That is a great question. I think one of the problems that the Conservative Party in particular had was a misreading of the 2019 election result as proof of what they called the realignment. In other words, the sense that working-class voters in this country had moved very much to the right on social questions, on cultural questions, and therefore there was some kind of permanent change of which the Conservative Party would be the beneficiary—when in fact that election was, in some ways, a rather more contingent affair, influenced very much by Brexit, influenced very much by the personality of Jeremy Corbyn, and indeed, Boris Johnson.

That myth—the idea that somehow there has been this incredibly profound change, and that cultural politics is now the dominant factor in elections—is still something that the Conservative Party holds onto, much to its detriment. It’s very interesting when you look at the leadership election in the Conservative Party following the 2024 general election. All the talk was about the Conservatives’ failure on migration, rather than the Conservatives’ failure to provide the country with adequate economic growth and adequate public services.

So, there is a kind of fixation on cultural politics and on this so-called realignment that the Conservative Party still has, which makes it actually quite difficult for it to realize that there is more to life than migration and woke, and indeed net-zero—that, in fact, the British public are not that different in the sense that they still want a government that hopefully provides them with peace, prosperity, and public services that actually work.

Britain Is Slowly Becoming More Liberal

You have frequently noted the role of media ecosystems in amplifying or constraining radical-right actors. To what extent is Reform’s surge a product of media-driven agenda-setting, and to what extent does it reflect deeper structural and sociological realignments within British politics? How should we disentangle these forces analytically?

Professor Tim Bale: That is a great question, but it’s also a very complicated one. Having shed doubt on this idea of a realignment, it is definitely the case that class features much less as a driver of people’s voting in this country, and that, in fact, education and age, to some extent, now seem to be the best predictors of which way people are going to vote. I do think cultural questions have come up in the mix, but I would want to say that the economy—while it’s not the only thing, the only game in town—is still actually very important as a driver of the way that people vote.

If you step back and look at cultural change in this country, clearly there are many voters who are uncomfortable with that, but they tend to be in older generations and, of course, will eventually disappear from the electorate. Now, that’s not to say that the center-left will somehow come into a kind of inevitable inheritance, because younger voters are rather more liberal and more tolerant in their attitudes. But it is to say that the center-right has to be very careful that it doesn’t end up on the wrong side of history, to coin a cliché, and fails to recognize that, for all the turmoil going on in British politics, underneath that, voters are becoming rather more liberal, more tolerant, and—despite media-driven polarization—more comfortable with a multicultural, multi-ethnic Britain.

So how long politics and political parties can thrive by exploiting differences, concerns, and anxieties is an open question.

If Living Costs Top Immigration, Reform Could Stall

UK economic crisis concept illustrated with the Union Jack and forex market data trends (AI-generated). Photo: Yuliya Rudzko.

And finally, you have cautioned that a Reform-led government is “not inevitable.” What empirical indicators—electoral, organizational, reputational, or demographic—would persuade you that (a) Reform UK is on a trajectory toward executive power, or (b) its rise represents a cyclical protest mobilization likely to dissipate before the next general election?

Professor Tim Bale: You have to look at support for Nigel Farage in particular, and the extent to which people think he will or won’t make a good Prime Minister. In the end, people know that they are voting not just in protest against something but are actually having to elect a government that’s going to make some very important decisions, and Nigel Farage is so central to Reform’s appeal that what people think of him is extremely important.

You also have to look at the extent—and obviously this, to some extent, involves prediction as to which issues are going to be most important for people at the next election. At the moment, immigration seems to be top of the list, but it’s only top of the list when you ask people what is the most important problem facing the country. When you ask people what’s the most important problem facing you and your family, immigration drops down the list, and the cost of living, the state of public services, comes right up.

So, I would probably look at the extent to which that is changing. If people think that migration is making a difference to them and their family, then perhaps that bodes well for Reform. But if the current disjunction between what people think is important to the country and what people think is important to them and their families continues, Reform is less likely to gain in strength.

Then, you’d have to take account of the kind of geopolitical situation, given we’ve already talked about Russia being something of an Achilles’ heel for Reform UK. If you were to see any extension of Russia’s aggression in Europe, then that would make it very difficult for Reform UK to make a convincing case for government.

I’d also look at what’s happening to the Conservative Party to bring it full circle. If the Conservative Party continues to stay in the doldrums—in other words, if it can’t recover itself and it can’t get anywhere near 25–30% of the vote—then there are many people who would normally vote Conservative who might be prepared to vote Reform, and that would give Reform a chance of government.

One final thing to throw into the mix is that our electoral system is not really very well suited to the party system that we now have. We now have a five-party—maybe six, seven, eight-party—system in this country, operating alongside an electoral system that is suited only to two parties, which means that it could be possible that a party on just under 30% of the vote could get a majority in Parliament next time around, and that would be a very unstable situation for the UK.