Recent political and economic crises, including the 2008 financial crisis and the refugee crisis that intensified several years later, have created favourable conditions for the expansion and mobilization of far-right actors across Europe and beyond. These developments have been visible not only in the electoral success of radical right parties but also in the growing activism of far-right movements, organizations, and networks, from initiatives such as Pegida and the “alt-right” to broader nationalist mobilizations in different regions of the world.
Despite these developments, the research literature on the far right has predominantly focused on populist radical right parties and electoral behaviour, while paying comparatively less attention to the movement sector of the far right—the broader ecosystem of organizations, networks, and activists that surround, interact with, and sometimes support far-right parties. At the same time, the boundaries between far-right movements and radical right parties have become increasingly blurred, making it analytically necessary to conceptualize the far right not only as a party family but also as a field of social movement organizations and hybrid political actors.
Bringing together leading scholars working at the intersection of far-right studies and social movement research, the pleanary will address several key dimensions: the conceptual boundaries between parties and movements; the modes of coordination structuring far-right activism; the role of charismatic leadership; gender and regressive actors; the transnational dimension of far-right mobilization; and comparative perspectives beyond Europe.
