ABSTRACT
The main findings of the book are presented in this final chapter. It argues that the ideational factor, namely, how the authoritarian past was treated by liberal democracies and the place granted to democratic defence in the polity, play an overriding role in the regulation of right-wing radicalism. In addition, the type of government must be articulated in the analysis of the ideational component in order to make sense of how right-wing radicalism is effectively addressed. In contrast, this book shows that the structural differences of right-wing radicalism in France and Germany are insufficient to explain the various kinds of regulation of this phenomenon in these two countries. Thus, this chapter underlines the benefits of articulating a framework influenced by the inputs of actor-centred institutionalism with a constructivist perspective that questions ideas and perceptions in order to explore how liberal democracies address right-wing radicalism. Lastly, this research analyses French and German societies’ relationship to politics. The German case displays an example whereby the regulation of political radicalism is handled with the use of deliberative practices in a Habermasian way. In France, by contrast, the political system as understood by Luhmann is granted an essential role in the regulation of right-wing radicalism.
