On Extremism and Democracy in Europe

✍ Scribed by Cas Mudde

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 189
• Series: Routledge Studies in Extremism and Democracy
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

On Extremism and Democracy in Europe is a collection of short and accessible essays on the far right, populism, Euroscepticism, and liberal democracy by one of the leading academic and public voices today. It includes both sober, fact-based analysis of the often sensationalized "rise of the far right" in Europe as well as passionate defence of the fundamental values of liberal democracy. Sometimes counter-intuitive and always thought-provoking, Mudde argues that the true challenge to liberal democracy comes from the political elites at the centre of the political systems rather than from the political challengers at the political margins. Pushing to go beyond the simplistic opposition of extremism and democracy, which is much clearer in theory than in practice, he accentuates the internal dangers of liberal democracy without ignoring the external threats. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in European politics, extremism and/or current affairs more generally.

✦ Table of Contents

Part I: The Far Right

1. The populist radical right: a pathological normalcy

2. Three decades of populist radical right parties in Western Europe: So what?

3. The myth of Weimar Europe

4. Putin’s Trojan Horses? 5 theses on Russia and the European far right

5. Local shocks: the far right in the 2014 European elections

6. Europe of Nations and Freedoms: Financial Success, Political Failure

7. Viktor Orbán and the difference between radical right parties and radical right politics

Part II: Populism

1. Jean-Claude Jucker and the populist zeitgeist in European politics

2. The problem with populism

3. Populism and liberal democracy: is Greece the exception or the future of Europe? (interview with Antonis Galanopoulos)

4. Populism: a primer

Part III: Euroscepticism

1. European integration: after the fall

2. The European elite’s politics of fear

3. What will the European elections bring the Western Balkans?

4. The 2014 European elections in numbers

5. Electoral winners and political losers in the right-wing Eurosceptic camp

6. The key lessons of Syriza’s defeat? A different Europe requires both ideology and competence

7. It’s time to end the Eurosceptic illusions

8. "Weimar Greece" and the future of Europe

9. Portugal faces a political crisis, but it’s the same one facing governments everywhere

Part IV: Liberal Democracy

1. The intolerance of the tolerant

2. After the storms: time to go beyond the obvious responses

3. Norway’s democratic example

4. The do’s and don’ts of banning political extremism

5. No, we are NOT all Charlie (and that’s a problem)

6. What freedom of speech? Of foxes, chickens, and #JeSuisCharlie

7. As Europe looks fearfully outside, its liberal democracy is under attack from within

8. Epilogue: European democracy after Paris