Radical Right-Wing Populism and the Challenge of Global Change

Abstract

In the decades immediately following the Second World War, the liberal democracies of Western Europe enjoyed a remarkable degree of social and political stability. Sustained economic growth, growing individual affluence, and the expansion and perfection of the welfare state each contributed to a social and political climate conducive to political compromise and consensus while eroding support for extremist solutions on both the Left and the Right. However, stability and consensus were only short-lived. The resurgence of ideological and political turbulence in the late 1960s, rising social conflicts in the early 1970s, and the spread of mass protest by new social movements and citizen initiatives in the 1980s were symptoms of a profound transformation of West European politics. Its contours were increasingly becoming visible in the late 1980s and early 1990s. What heightened and accentuated these developments were a number of factors: the decay of the grand ideologies of modernity, exemplified by the fall of the Soviet empire, and the ensuing destabilization of a world to which the majority of West Europeans had readily accustomed themselves; a new awareness of the finiteness of natural resources, the growing visibility of the economic and social consequences of environmental destruction and the population explosion in the developing world; and mounting uneasiness and ambiguity with regard to new technological projects.