Understanding the Rise of Far-Right Populist Parties in Europe

This paper seeks to answer the question: what drives the recent electoral success of far-right populist parties (RPPs) in Europe? I will argue that it is supply factors, rather than demand factors, united under the theme of mistrust, that drove the recent electoral success of RPPs. To support my argument, I will summarize the ‘losers of globalization’ theory and apply it to the financial and economic crises, the migration crisis, the polarization of politics, and mistrust in governments, and categorize them as supply or demand factors according to Matt Golder’s definitions. For the sake of this paper, I will use a broad description of RPPs: any party that appeals primarily to the middle class while intentionally ‘othering’ the elite and immigrants. ‘Othering,’ in this sense, refers to the process of alienating or excluding a group from society, creating a dichotomy between ‘us’ and ‘them.’