From Parties to Movements: Studying the Radical Right with Sidney Tarrow

• Published in: Partecipazione e conflitto Vol. 15; no. 3; pp. 993 - 997
• Main Author: Minkenberg, Michael
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Milan ESE Salento University Publishing 01.01.2022; Coordinamento SIBA
• Subjects: Collective action; Democracy; Ideology; Parliamentary procedure; Political activism; Radicalism; Social activism; Social change
• ISSN: 1972-7623; 2035-6609
• DOI: 10.1285/i20356609v15i3p993

Notwithstanding Klaus von Beyme’s erstwhile demand that “future studies of right-wing extremism will have to pay more attention to the whole political context of this political movement instead of being preoccupied with traditional party and electoral studies” (1988: 16), the bulk of comparative research on the radical right continues to consist of party and electoral analyses. Studying the radical right as a movement is much more challenging for precisely the same reasons why party research still is so popular: the concepts are less crisply defined leading to more variation across the field of research; and access to data is not easy when considering e.g. the size of support, the role of key activists, the measurement of a movement’s strength. Furthermore, research often tends to conflate different perspectives which should be kept separate: studying the radical right as a movement; studying radical right movements proper; and studying radical right party and movement relations (see Minkenberg 1998; 2003; Caiani 2019). Whatever perspective is chosen, such research rests on a fundamental distinction between movements and parties with regard to their primary focus of collective action and their approach to institutional politics: while parties engage in electoral contestation and try to win public office, movements attempt to advance their agenda by contention via “street politics” and disruption outside of established institutional arenas (see Kitschelt 2006: 279; also Tarrow 1994: 4f.). Moreover, parties tend to stay while movements eventually demobilize, according to Charles Tilly and Sidney Tarrow (2015: 36-38), among others.