ABSTRACT
The introduction presents the main issues addressed in this book. It focuses on the policy responses to right-wing radicalism in an attempt to assess how two liberal democracies, France and Germany, regulate this political phenomenon. This book evaluates how these two Western European democracies address the paradox of tolerance (i.e. the fact that liberal democracies may restrain rights they value, such as freedom of speech, in order to repress intolerant forces that threaten democracy). As responses to right-wing radicalism form a policy field, several questions need to be asked: first, how do the various policy actors involved frame this issue? Then, which factors influence policy-makers’ decision-making capacity? And last, how can one explain the use of some responses over others? This introduction also presents the theoretical and methodological choices that result from the fact that this project is a French-German undertaking. Comparing these two broadly similar countries’ responses to right-wing radicalism necessitates to focus on the impact of three main differences on the regulation of right-wing radicalism: the organisation of the radical right, the type of government, and the treatment of the authoritarian past.
