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The Normalization of the Radical Right: A Norms Theory of Political Supply and Demand
Radical-right behavior is increasing across Western democracies, often very quickly. Previous research has shown, however, that political attitudes and preferences do not change as quickly. Vicente Valentim argues that the role of social norms as drivers of political behavior is crucial for understanding these patterns. Building on a norms-based theory of political supply and demand, he argues that growing radical-right behavior is driven by individuals who already had radical-right views, but who did not act on those views because they thought that they were socially unacceptable. If these voters do not express their preferences, politicians can underestimate how much latent support there is for radical-right policy. This leaves the radical right with less skilled leaders, who are unable to mobilize even radical-right voters to support them. However, if politicians realize that there is more private support for radical-right policy than is typically observable, they have an incentive to run for politics with a radical-right platform and to mobilize silent radical-right views. Their electoral success, in turn, leads to radical-right individuals becoming more comfortable in displaying their views, and impels more politicians to join the radical right. The book's argument makes us rethink how political preferences translate into behavior, shows how social norms affect the interaction of political supply and demand, and highlights how a political culture that promotes inclusion can be eroded.
Oxford Studies in Democratization is a series for scholars and students of comparative politics and related disciplines. Volumes concentrate on the comparative study of the democratization process that accompanied the decline and termination of the cold war. The geographical focus of the series is primarily Latin America, the Caribbean, Southern and Eastern Europe, and relevant experiences in Africa and Asia. The series editor is Laurence Whitehead, Senior Research Fellow, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.
Oxford Studies in Democratization is a series for scholars and students of comparative politics and related disciplines. Volumes concentrate on the comparative study of the democratization process that accompanied the decline and termination of the cold war. The geographical focus of the series is primarily Latin America, the Caribbean, Southern and Eastern Europe, and relevant experiences in Africa and Asia. The series editor is Laurence Whitehead, Senior Research Fellow, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.
- GenresPolitics
321 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 14, 2024
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August 26, 2025
The book was an interesting take on what explains the rise of the radical right. It's an academic book that gives a longer, expanded version of the author's PhD thesis. Overall, I felt that the ideas in the book are still too preliminary and with obvious problems to warrant an entire book. The main argument is that the rise of the radical right needs to be understood through the lens of changing norms, an underappreciated topic in Political Science (but clearly not a radically new idea).
The idea is that even before the rise of the radical right in countries such as Germany, Spain or Portugal, a sizable fraction of people in the population share radical right views but they don't openly express these views due to social norms that stigmatize these views. This prevents potential politicians that would like to run on a radical right platform to run because they underestimate the support they could get. Only after a political shock (such as a terrorist attack) in combination with a skillful political entrepreneur will the equilibrium shift to one where the norms erode and the radical right gains political viability in a short period of time. The book goes through this argument in detail and then provides a combination of quantitative and case study evidence on the different assumptions and implications of the theory.
Purely in terms of the content, I found some parts of the argument more convincing than others. 1) The supply side of politicians and why they would initially all systematically underestimate the support of radical right preferences in the population seemed less convincing. I think different alternative explanations could be at work here, including that elections can be coordination games in which new platforms need not only find voters that share their preferences but also who are convinced that the platform will win. Overall, I felt the argument also under-theorizes how the supply side is affected by party politics.
2) The quantitative evidence was interesting but not always very convincing given too little discussion of data issues (e.g. the implicit assumption that CSES surveys capture the population of non-voters or radical right voters accurately) and obvious lack of good causal evidence.
3) I also felt the argument could have been stronger if the author tried to make a quantitative argument as in "my theory explains x% of the rise of the radical right". For most parts of the book, it seems the author argues that his theory explains all of the rise, while the author then acknowledges in the conclusion that other theories can also play a role. Making this sharper would help, also to test his theory more rigorously.
4) The author argues that preferences for radical right parties could have stayed entirely unchanged and his theory would still work. That's interesting but still leaves open whether preferences systematically changed or not. This is crucial to understand whether the current radical right has hit it's full potential or whether we should expect even more backsliding. The author simply cites some general evidence that political preferences are pretty stable, but given his entire argument around stigmatization, it's unclear that these preferences can always be measured accurately. In terms of policy conclusions, the book has little to say (which is fine). A main take-away would be that the low vote share for radical right parties in post WW2 Europe was a historical peculiarity that arose from the intellectual defeat of the radical right with the war, and that it was simply a matter of time for this equilibrium to shift again. This is an interesting point. The author then conjectures that to change the current equilibrium of high vote shares for radical right parties, we must slowly change preferences directly, via education and building up strong democratic norms, which seems little backed by any evidence shown in the book.
At last, I found the book annoyingly repetitive. Each chapter was almost self-contained repeating the arguments from previous chapters.
The idea is that even before the rise of the radical right in countries such as Germany, Spain or Portugal, a sizable fraction of people in the population share radical right views but they don't openly express these views due to social norms that stigmatize these views. This prevents potential politicians that would like to run on a radical right platform to run because they underestimate the support they could get. Only after a political shock (such as a terrorist attack) in combination with a skillful political entrepreneur will the equilibrium shift to one where the norms erode and the radical right gains political viability in a short period of time. The book goes through this argument in detail and then provides a combination of quantitative and case study evidence on the different assumptions and implications of the theory.
Purely in terms of the content, I found some parts of the argument more convincing than others. 1) The supply side of politicians and why they would initially all systematically underestimate the support of radical right preferences in the population seemed less convincing. I think different alternative explanations could be at work here, including that elections can be coordination games in which new platforms need not only find voters that share their preferences but also who are convinced that the platform will win. Overall, I felt the argument also under-theorizes how the supply side is affected by party politics.
2) The quantitative evidence was interesting but not always very convincing given too little discussion of data issues (e.g. the implicit assumption that CSES surveys capture the population of non-voters or radical right voters accurately) and obvious lack of good causal evidence.
3) I also felt the argument could have been stronger if the author tried to make a quantitative argument as in "my theory explains x% of the rise of the radical right". For most parts of the book, it seems the author argues that his theory explains all of the rise, while the author then acknowledges in the conclusion that other theories can also play a role. Making this sharper would help, also to test his theory more rigorously.
4) The author argues that preferences for radical right parties could have stayed entirely unchanged and his theory would still work. That's interesting but still leaves open whether preferences systematically changed or not. This is crucial to understand whether the current radical right has hit it's full potential or whether we should expect even more backsliding. The author simply cites some general evidence that political preferences are pretty stable, but given his entire argument around stigmatization, it's unclear that these preferences can always be measured accurately. In terms of policy conclusions, the book has little to say (which is fine). A main take-away would be that the low vote share for radical right parties in post WW2 Europe was a historical peculiarity that arose from the intellectual defeat of the radical right with the war, and that it was simply a matter of time for this equilibrium to shift again. This is an interesting point. The author then conjectures that to change the current equilibrium of high vote shares for radical right parties, we must slowly change preferences directly, via education and building up strong democratic norms, which seems little backed by any evidence shown in the book.
At last, I found the book annoyingly repetitive. Each chapter was almost self-contained repeating the arguments from previous chapters.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 7, 2025
(I wrote this in April and didn't post it, so the political commentary probably is associated with the elements of the time)
This book, written by Vincente Valim as an exploration of the evolution of far-right politics, is a fascinating look into the electoral behavior of far-right parties.
As the foundation of the argument, Valim sees that generally voters don't change their political beliefs, and there wasn't some massive entrance into the political sphere that would explain the particular shift in electoral support. So, the author comes to the expectation: There wasn't actually a genuine change in political beliefs, rather there were factions in some right-wing parties that already were susceptible to the rhetoric. The bastions of countries standing strong against right-wing parties like Portugal and Germany wasn't a broader shift, but broader expression. In order to understand the evolution of these parties, the Valim argues that the rise can be explained through a three-part stage: latency, activation, and then normalization.
To this extent, the first stage is latency. Voters will coordinate their particular voting and social behaviors along two metrics: social acceptance of their beliefs, and the actual voting behavior of these partisans. Particularly, during this first stage voters are generally "secret", in the sense that they neither openly express political views with their parties, nor do they vote in favor of these parties. And at least in the European political context, this can come in for a lot of different reasons, such as either a perceived lack of electoral viability or a lack of competence. To this point, Valim attempted to use CSES data alongside actual voting returns in order to understand the particular political expression, to which point it is indeed true that there appeared to be a significant gap in actual voting behaviors and self-reported voting behaviors, particularly with voters tending to hide these positions. Furthermore, this can also be attributed statistically to both comparative under-performance, but also the lack of education or competence among the candidates for the particular party in question.
The second stage is the activation stage, or the part at which "secret" voters thus switch to "covert voters", still underrepresented their own voting behavior but starting to actually vote for parties. Particularly, this relies on the opportunism of "electoral entrepreneurs" who are able to utilize the political context in order to get right-wing voters to actually vote far-right, and start to prove electoral viability. Here, defections may occur: center-right parties, like the CDU in Germany, may lose some of their more vocal or extreme members to independent parties, while the majority of politicians still stay within party lines. So, the key then becomes the utilization of a trigger: common examples include terror attacks (in the case of Vox in Spain and Chega in Portugal) or the refugee crisis in the case of the AfD. During this point, the particular rejection of "political correctness" more broadly, or a general lambasting of political cultural norms gives way to the expression of more radical views. While activation is hard during this particular time, this can be utilized to turn to full normalization.
Normalization, the final stage, is when the party becomes properly mainstream in a sense. The educational attain of the politicians tend to be common, broad defection from sub-factions within other mainstream parties results in a massive boost to far-right popularity, and the shifting of voters from "covert" to "open" positioning, incorporating a broad adjustment to expressing their political beliefs, incorporating the controversy. This normalization especially comes into play when a particular political party properly gets seats, properly achieves political viability.
In conclusion, Valim argues that from this perspective, any attempt to address the concerns of democratic backsliding, it has to address at the very beginning of political belief forming, and generating a general positive reflection on principles of tolerance. This framework can also be used ot explain any political movement with significant stigmatization.
All-in-all, I find this actually a fairly useful system to think about, and I feel like it can explain the rise of a wide variety of political parties through Europe. This adequately explains the rise of France's Ressemblement Nationale where Le Pen was able to use the cost-of-living crisis and Covid to solidifying the proper defecting of most of Les Republicains and other far-right parties into RN's system, as the centrists leave to unite with Rennaisance or one of the other centrist parties. The rise of the far-right center-right coalition in the Netherlands are explained similarly, including the disatisfaction with the usual political beliefs. It doesn't fully explain the success of post-communist right-wing parties that have far-right characteristics, but that is more a reactionary movement against the communism that came before it. Overall, very useful indeed.
Furthermore, it might be useful in trying to understand parties outside of Europe, such as Argentina. In Argentina, La Libertad Avanza is Milei's political engine which was using the advantage of the political and economic stagnation as motivation for a very successful populist political platform to launch anti-woke elements, however it doesn't explain how LLA didn't really radicalize the people responding against the cultural elements that were the usual safeguards like attention to poverty reduction, unionization, etc. However, these connections might more be a lack of my own knowledge of the Argentine political culture or in-applicability in transitioning the model, rather than a true failure of the model.
That being said, the one thing that it be somewhat helpful in explain is the American election. The United States saw the switch of the Neoconservative movement with the Alt-Right becoming more prominent, with particularly the Trumpist faction taking over a lot of the poltiical capital. In a strong way, I wouldn't be surprised if the political opinion changes that were associated with the rise of the Christian Right finally aligned into a political faction that for most of the 90s and 2000s merely defected to the regular Republicans. However, in the attempt to achieve political incorporation of the Tea Party Movement into the Republicans. Both the left and the right had failed to launch a proper political movement that activated the alt-right in regards to a response to the financial crisis and the occupy movement, but it also resulted in the rise of a particular soft-activation with the rise of Trump. Trump during his first term was "on good behavior", and did actually successfully incorporate elements of the Tea Party Movement into itself, effectively monopolizing part of the narrative, especially surrounding cultural issues and immigration. During this time, the scare in regards to immigration, drugs, and crime are absolutely to be understood in this context. While I wouldn't really consider the neocons "center-right" in any sense, the shift towards the alt-right was especially noticeable with Trump. Meanwhile, the Democrats failed to double-down on a pan-leftist platform and instead merely settled for center-left-ish, meaning that the tension between the "Bernie Bros" and the liberals were especially pronounced.
This time was an important time, as at the end of Trump's term was Covid, which offered an opportunity for Biden to come in. Yet, I would still not consider this full activation, as full activation would only occur in 2024 during the election cycle. The Republicans, by using the primaries as a sort of testing-ground for radical ideas, using the pain caused by the inflationary episode as a trigger, were able to utilize the excitement from the RNC to get enough support for Trump. Trump created partial normalization of right-wing norms during 2016-2020, but under Trump 2.0 it is full normalization. And since the American system didn't split into three massive parties (like Britain with having a history of the libdems being kingmakers, or France with technocratic Renaissance)... the center-right Republicans were forced into effective coalition with the Trumpists. Effectively, the Republican base shifted, and the Democrats couldn't keep up salience for the majority of voters. For the upcoming midterm elections, that will be somewhat different, but we desperately need to form a progressive-liberal coalition.
This book, written by Vincente Valim as an exploration of the evolution of far-right politics, is a fascinating look into the electoral behavior of far-right parties.
As the foundation of the argument, Valim sees that generally voters don't change their political beliefs, and there wasn't some massive entrance into the political sphere that would explain the particular shift in electoral support. So, the author comes to the expectation: There wasn't actually a genuine change in political beliefs, rather there were factions in some right-wing parties that already were susceptible to the rhetoric. The bastions of countries standing strong against right-wing parties like Portugal and Germany wasn't a broader shift, but broader expression. In order to understand the evolution of these parties, the Valim argues that the rise can be explained through a three-part stage: latency, activation, and then normalization.
To this extent, the first stage is latency. Voters will coordinate their particular voting and social behaviors along two metrics: social acceptance of their beliefs, and the actual voting behavior of these partisans. Particularly, during this first stage voters are generally "secret", in the sense that they neither openly express political views with their parties, nor do they vote in favor of these parties. And at least in the European political context, this can come in for a lot of different reasons, such as either a perceived lack of electoral viability or a lack of competence. To this point, Valim attempted to use CSES data alongside actual voting returns in order to understand the particular political expression, to which point it is indeed true that there appeared to be a significant gap in actual voting behaviors and self-reported voting behaviors, particularly with voters tending to hide these positions. Furthermore, this can also be attributed statistically to both comparative under-performance, but also the lack of education or competence among the candidates for the particular party in question.
The second stage is the activation stage, or the part at which "secret" voters thus switch to "covert voters", still underrepresented their own voting behavior but starting to actually vote for parties. Particularly, this relies on the opportunism of "electoral entrepreneurs" who are able to utilize the political context in order to get right-wing voters to actually vote far-right, and start to prove electoral viability. Here, defections may occur: center-right parties, like the CDU in Germany, may lose some of their more vocal or extreme members to independent parties, while the majority of politicians still stay within party lines. So, the key then becomes the utilization of a trigger: common examples include terror attacks (in the case of Vox in Spain and Chega in Portugal) or the refugee crisis in the case of the AfD. During this point, the particular rejection of "political correctness" more broadly, or a general lambasting of political cultural norms gives way to the expression of more radical views. While activation is hard during this particular time, this can be utilized to turn to full normalization.
Normalization, the final stage, is when the party becomes properly mainstream in a sense. The educational attain of the politicians tend to be common, broad defection from sub-factions within other mainstream parties results in a massive boost to far-right popularity, and the shifting of voters from "covert" to "open" positioning, incorporating a broad adjustment to expressing their political beliefs, incorporating the controversy. This normalization especially comes into play when a particular political party properly gets seats, properly achieves political viability.
In conclusion, Valim argues that from this perspective, any attempt to address the concerns of democratic backsliding, it has to address at the very beginning of political belief forming, and generating a general positive reflection on principles of tolerance. This framework can also be used ot explain any political movement with significant stigmatization.
All-in-all, I find this actually a fairly useful system to think about, and I feel like it can explain the rise of a wide variety of political parties through Europe. This adequately explains the rise of France's Ressemblement Nationale where Le Pen was able to use the cost-of-living crisis and Covid to solidifying the proper defecting of most of Les Republicains and other far-right parties into RN's system, as the centrists leave to unite with Rennaisance or one of the other centrist parties. The rise of the far-right center-right coalition in the Netherlands are explained similarly, including the disatisfaction with the usual political beliefs. It doesn't fully explain the success of post-communist right-wing parties that have far-right characteristics, but that is more a reactionary movement against the communism that came before it. Overall, very useful indeed.
Furthermore, it might be useful in trying to understand parties outside of Europe, such as Argentina. In Argentina, La Libertad Avanza is Milei's political engine which was using the advantage of the political and economic stagnation as motivation for a very successful populist political platform to launch anti-woke elements, however it doesn't explain how LLA didn't really radicalize the people responding against the cultural elements that were the usual safeguards like attention to poverty reduction, unionization, etc. However, these connections might more be a lack of my own knowledge of the Argentine political culture or in-applicability in transitioning the model, rather than a true failure of the model.
That being said, the one thing that it be somewhat helpful in explain is the American election. The United States saw the switch of the Neoconservative movement with the Alt-Right becoming more prominent, with particularly the Trumpist faction taking over a lot of the poltiical capital. In a strong way, I wouldn't be surprised if the political opinion changes that were associated with the rise of the Christian Right finally aligned into a political faction that for most of the 90s and 2000s merely defected to the regular Republicans. However, in the attempt to achieve political incorporation of the Tea Party Movement into the Republicans. Both the left and the right had failed to launch a proper political movement that activated the alt-right in regards to a response to the financial crisis and the occupy movement, but it also resulted in the rise of a particular soft-activation with the rise of Trump. Trump during his first term was "on good behavior", and did actually successfully incorporate elements of the Tea Party Movement into itself, effectively monopolizing part of the narrative, especially surrounding cultural issues and immigration. During this time, the scare in regards to immigration, drugs, and crime are absolutely to be understood in this context. While I wouldn't really consider the neocons "center-right" in any sense, the shift towards the alt-right was especially noticeable with Trump. Meanwhile, the Democrats failed to double-down on a pan-leftist platform and instead merely settled for center-left-ish, meaning that the tension between the "Bernie Bros" and the liberals were especially pronounced.
This time was an important time, as at the end of Trump's term was Covid, which offered an opportunity for Biden to come in. Yet, I would still not consider this full activation, as full activation would only occur in 2024 during the election cycle. The Republicans, by using the primaries as a sort of testing-ground for radical ideas, using the pain caused by the inflationary episode as a trigger, were able to utilize the excitement from the RNC to get enough support for Trump. Trump created partial normalization of right-wing norms during 2016-2020, but under Trump 2.0 it is full normalization. And since the American system didn't split into three massive parties (like Britain with having a history of the libdems being kingmakers, or France with technocratic Renaissance)... the center-right Republicans were forced into effective coalition with the Trumpists. Effectively, the Republican base shifted, and the Democrats couldn't keep up salience for the majority of voters. For the upcoming midterm elections, that will be somewhat different, but we desperately need to form a progressive-liberal coalition.
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