Thread by @CasMudde

Biggest parties in @pollofpolls_EU in EU+

far right (8): 🇧🇪🇫🇮🇫🇷🇭🇺🇮🇹🇵🇱🇸🇮🇨🇭

far right coopters* (9): 🇦🇹🇧🇬🇭🇷🇨🇿🇩🇰🇬🇷🇳🇱🇳🇴🇸🇰🇬🇧

not coopting far right (13): 🇨🇾🇪🇪🇩🇪🇮🇪🇱🇻🇱🇹🇱🇺🇲🇹🇵🇹🇷🇴🇪🇸🇸🇪

As I argue in "The Far Right Today", boundaries have become porous and categorization is difficult.

1. This is bit different from yesterday's Tweet.

- I mixed up parties in Estonia ☺️
- I think ND in Greece should be in coopters, because several of high-ranking "former" far-right politicians.
- I continue to struggle with Tories (see next tweet).

2. Tories are, like Republican Party, example of conservative party that behaves increasingly like far right party. Is it ideological change or tactical opportunism? Difficult to say. In case of Fidesz and PiS it turned to be first... Where is the exact boundary?

3. Academics, journalists, and politicians are very conservative in their terminology. We are very hesitant to change categorizations, particularly from good/neutral to negative -- and conservative parties have "reputational shield".

4. The "party family" is incredibly dominant concept in comparative politics, implicitly more than explicitly, but it is theoretically underdeveloped and empirically almost ignored. We also seem to assume stability over change in terms of classifications.

5. These are the biggest parties in the polls, not necessarily parties in governments. Several countries have biggest far right party, which has never been in govt, or biggest party not far right (coopter) but far right has been in govt.

6. What this list shows, more than anything, is that
- far right parties have become major players in Europe.
- far right ideas and actors have been mainstreamed and normalized
- but there is still lot of diversity.

7. I really wish there was more substantial research into party ideologies. Sure, party positions in manifestoes or "expert studies" are insightful, but ideology is much more than issue positions.

8. While there is quite a lot of research on far-right ideology as well as ideology of far right parties, this is not case for most other party families -- not even the big, traditional ones (e.f. CD, SD, liberal).

9. There is painfully little research on the ideology of conservatism, let alone the ideology of conservative parties, particularly in Europe.

10. All to say that we should take ideology more important in party studies and we should take parties more important in ideology studies and that much has been changing in the past two decades. #TheEnd