Over the past decade, the far-right has reshaped domestic politics globally. It has gained parliamentary seats and even government participation in many European countries, changing the political landscape worldwide. The far-right encompasses radical-right groups, which aim to change discourse and policies away from the liberal paradigm, and extreme-right groups, which aim to change the underlying polity. It includes political parties, civil society groups, networks, and social movements. Although populism and far-right discourse often coincide, they can also appear separately. These various groups are far from agreeing on all political positions, but they share a focus on sovereignty, strict immigration policies, “nativism”, and are skeptical of the authority of international organizations (IOs).
However, the effects of far-right contestation of IOs vary: Far-right civil society actors have contributed to a halt in policy development on women’s rights at the UN. Far-right positions influenced the decision of the Trump administration to withdraw from the World Health Organization. Far-right parties in European governments reshaped negotiations on the Global Compact for Migration, while far-right civil society groups and media mobilized online and offline on this international issue. At the same time, far-right contestation had more diffuse effects in other contexts, such as in the case of decision-making in the European Parliament (EP), where the policy influence of radical right parties remained limited, despite their ever-growing representation in the EP over the past decade. In the five-year ERC-funded project, FARRIO will analyze how the far-right affects IOs and where and why we see differences.
In addition to general conceptualization and identification of the transnational far-right (and its strategies), FARRIO analyzes networks, strategies, and reactions by IOs across different policy areas.