Economic Ideology, Welfare Generosity and the Radical Right

Existing theories on the welfare state and political parties do not clearly address where on the right-center-left scale is the place of radical right parties. Scholarly work on the radical right, with few exceptions, do not systematically analyses parties’ stances on economic issues neither. The assumption that radical right parties will be mostly neoliberal which dominated the early radical right literature generally does not seem to fit. This study aims to provide a systematic analysis of European radical right parties’ economic stances and their positions on welfare, and to explore parties’ trajectories on these positions. It also evaluates differences between Western and Central Eastern European (CEE) parties, and between “old–fascist/national socialist” and “new populist” radical right parties. I argue that we should observe a trend of radical right parties gradually leaning more towards the left on economy in Western Europe, and clearly leftist economic positions of the parties in CEE. Furthermore, I suggest that radical right parties do not oppose welfare policies in general and economy is more important for them than expected.