Stijn van Kessel’s research while affiliated with Queen Mary University of London and other places

... We include speeches by MEPs belonging to parties that have been classified as far-right in The PopuList (Rooduijn et al., 2024). In addition, we add far-right parties that gained representation in the EP but are not included in The PopuList because they failed to meet its selection criteria (i.e., at least 2 percent of votes or one seat in national parliamentary elections). ...

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Far‐Right Illiberalism in the European Parliament

... Carter 2005;Rooduijn 2015), developing effective and cohesive organisations (e.g. Albertazzi & van Kessel 2023;de Lange & Art 2011), and even adapting to the pressures that come from holding power at the national level (e.g. Albertazzi & McDonnell 2015;Zaslove 2012). ...

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Populist radical right vs populist radical right in power: signalling ideological commitment or competence?

... Comparative efforts in the field have largely focused on why governments opt for non-mandatory referendums (e.g., Closa, 2007;Mendez et al., 2014;Oppermann, 2013;Posser, 2016), while studies adopting a politicization framework have tended to analyze electoral or parliamentary arenas. There have been few comparative analyses of referendum-driven politicization (see Fagan & van Kessel, 2023;Hoeglinger, 2016;Hurrelmann et al., 2013;Hutter et al., 2016;Statham & Trenz, 2013a, 2013bVetters et al., 2009). These studies have often focused on a limited number of prominent cases and have yielded inconclusive results, especially regarding the types of challengers and issue-framing contests magnified in direct democratic contexts. ...

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Game Changers: National Referendums and the Politicization of Europe

... This theory offers insights into the behaviors and interactions of actors involved in these movements, helping researchers understand the dynamics of ecological movements and their effects on nature conservation. van Kessel (2022) have demonstrated the significant impact of social movements in addressing critical ecological issues (Singh, 2023). For instance, the environmental justice movement in Warren County, North Carolina, in the late 1970s and early 1980s is considered a landmark case. ...

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Mobilizing for Conservation: The Role of Social Movements in Damaran Baru Ecovillage, Indonesia

... Although far-right youth organisations can be crucial for the far right's broader mobilisation and radicalisation, knowledge about their development and role is scarce. Studies have only recently devoted more attention to the far right's party organisation (Heinisch and Mazzoleni, 2016;Van Kessel and Albertazzi, 2021), although it is considered a key factor for electoral persistence (De Lange and Art, 2011). Even less attention is paid to (far-right) youth wings, which are part of the broader party organisation and can fulfil important recruitment and socialisation functions for parties. ...

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Drivers of radicalisation? The development and role of the far-right youth organisation 'Young Alternative' in Germany

... In recent decades, populist radical right parties (PRRPs) have made significant electoral gains in Europe and beyond. 1 While earlier academic studies focused primarily on examining the reasons behind this renewed 'swing to the right' (Betz, 1994;Mudde, 2007), recent scholarship has started to analyse how these parties organize themselves (Art, 2011;Böhmelt et al., 2022;Ellinas, 2020). Taken together, these studies reveal considerable diversity when it comes to PRRP organization (e.g., Heinisch and Mazzoleni, 2016b; van Kessel and Albertazzi, 2021). For instance, while the Dutch Partij voor de Vrijheid (Party for Freedom or PVV) has developed a leader-centric structure, others, like the Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest Party or VB), have embraced traditional 'mass party' models (Albertazzi and van Kessel, 2021). ...

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Fortuyn versus Wilders versus Baudet: the evolution of populist radical right party organization in the Netherlands

... We test if this welfare-chauvinism narrative affects with whom solidarity is formed, taking migration background into account. We achieve this by recognising the income disparities between the working class and other social classes and explicitly noting that some political parties advocate prioritising the improvement of incomes for working-class individuals without a migration background, as is present in the programmes and rhetoric of radical right programmes (Abts et al. 2021;Chueri 2023). ...

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Converging ethnicity and class: a strategy for fostering interethnic solidarity and mitigating income inequality

... There is, however, a crucial difference between Hungary and Portugal in terms of the impact of populist politics on government policies. Hungary has become a crystallized case of populist governance (Rooduijn et al. 2023) as the exclusionary right-wing populist party Fidesz has been in government position since 2010. Among major indicators of democratic development Freedom House scores reflect a moderate democratic backsliding of Hungary, while the V-Dem Liberal Democracy Index indicates that Hungary has recently deviated markedly from the liberal democracy path (Figure 1), even pointing to a shift towards a hybrid regime. ...

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Pandemic policymaking in European populist and liberal democracies: a comparison between Hungary and Portugal

... While there are many valuable studies on each of these two important concepts (i.e., populism and competitive authoritarianism), there is still a fertile ground for research about the intersectionalities between these concepts (we discuss the commonalities and differences of the concepts in great detail in our literature review). This article aims to shed light on these commonalities by particularly focusing on the demand side of populism and competitive authoritarianism as to how supporters of populist incumbent parties in competitive authoritarian regimes tackle salient issues for the public (for some illuminating works on this issue, see Eberl, Huber, Mede, & Greussing, 2023;Kaltwasser & Van Hauwaert, 2020;Schulz et al., 2018;Spruyt, Keppens, & Van Droogenbroeck, 2016;Van Kessel, Sajuria, & Van Hauwaert, 2021). ...

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Populism Versus Science in Competitive Authoritarian Regimes

... Relatedly, the categories of 'hard' and 'soft' Euroscepticism devised by Szczerbiak and Taggart in the 2000s, discriminating between fundamental and contingent opposition to European integration, still supply the most popular approach. However, academic understandings of hard Euroscepticism (hereinafter HE) have increasingly tended to ascribe this category only to parties that pursue EU withdrawal altogether (e.g., Bortun, 2022;Heinisch et al., 2021;Taggart and Pirro, 2021;Van Kessel et al., 2020). Such exclusive interpretationsbesides drifting away from HE as defined in earlier work by Szczerbiak and Taggart (2003, 2008b, 2018)arguably end up concealing the actual extent of principled opposition to the EU. ...

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How Hard Does It Have to Be? Reconsidering European Integration and Hard Euroscepticism