Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser and Lisa Zanotti – The populist radical right beyond Europe

Abstract

Although the populist radical right (PRR) has become a global phenomenon, research about it focuses much more on Europe than on other regions. To counter this imbalance, this special issue provides comparative evidence on the discourse elaborated by the PRR on six non-European countries: Australia, Brazil, Chile, India, Turkey, and the United States. As we will show, non-European PRR forces articulate authoritarian, nativist, and populist ideas in different ways than their European brethren and they employ specific ideological elements (e.g., neoliberalism and religion) to advance discourses that resonate with the social grievances that are preponderant in the context wherein they operate. This reveals that part of the success of the PRR is related to its discursive flexibility and capacity to adapt itself with the aim of constructing frames that connect with the anxieties experimented by segments of the voting public across different national and regional settings.