ABSTRACT
Movement parties, as a new breed of political actor, have proved successful in mobilising voters in times of crisis. Research in social movement studies has tended to declare social movements the defining feature of established post-1968 democracies and generally prioritized the protest arena of action. Politics is about conflicting political interests and issues that are advocated by parties, social movements and citizens’ groups. The basic idea of the approach based on political opportunity structure is that open political institutions facilitate mobilization, and closed institutions impede it. Studies in political communication have looked at political campaigns, stressing that, by making use of an anti-establishment and antiparty rhetoric, radical right populist parties and movements are able to gain visibility and mobilize citizens’ feelings of disaffection toward the national and European political class. Social constructivist studies have addressed the discourse of the extreme right as ‘a site of the construction’ of extreme-right identity; ‘exploring how meaning works in discourse’.
