JMCE Summer Research Award Profile
Far-Right Parties & Political Mainstreaming
Abigail Lantz is a member of the UNC TransAtlantic Masters Class of 2021. Her research interests focus on policies surrounding the integration of migrant communities in Europe. Abigail used the JMCE EU Research Award to investigate how far-right parties in the EU have become increasingly integrated into mainstream politics.
Q: Tell us a little about yourself:
In 2021, I graduated from the Transatlantic Master’s Program with a dual degree in Political Science and European Studies from the University of Gothenburg and UNC Chapel Hill. My research in the summer of 2021 focused on the mainstreaming of far-right political parties, a phenomenon exploding across Europe and the West. I conducted a series of in-depth interviews with experts researching the far-right between July 4 and September 15, 2021. The interviews focused on the impact of the rise of far-right parties on the politics of center-right parties and on a political issue of increasing importance: the “mainstreaming” of far-right frames.
Q: What are frames?
Frames are interpretations of issues and events by far-right actors intended to shift public opinion on a particular topic. In my research, I hoped to understand how the growing popular appeal of far right frames might be impacting mainstream parties, particularly center and center-right parties, and whether it could be encouraging these parties to respond to the broadening voter appeal of the far-right by reacting to their positions, taking on pieces of far-right platforms, and rejecting liberal democratic values at the core of their belief systems.
Q: Where did you conduct your research?
The funds I was awarded by the Jean Monnet Center of Excellence, and by the European Commission under the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union, enabled me to fly to Spain, Germany, and Sweden to conduct interviews. In each of these countries, a far-right political party had become increasingly competitive, and a center or center-right mainstream party had begun to respond to the popularity of the far-right. The interviews were semi-structured to allow the expert I was interviewing to focus on issues they believed to be of greatest importance to understanding how far right frames were entering mainstream political discourse in their country.
Q: What did you find out?
I learned that unable to ignore the electoral clout of the far-right, and desperate to maintain their voting margins, center and center-right parties in Europe are starting to accede to and form coalitions with far-right parties, coopt and respond to their priority issues, and informally break the cordon sanitaire, an unspoken agreement among mainstream parties in many European countries to “isolate and exclude” the far-right.
Q: Why were you interested in studying far right frames?
These issues continue to command relevance today. A quick Google search in 2023 on the far right in Europe brings up articles arguing that Rishi Sunak, UK Prime Minister, is embracing far right frames on mass migration and transgender rights. Center-right parties in east Germany are breaking their promise not to cooperate with the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD. Far right frames condemning support for Ukraine are becoming increasingly popular, despite broad support for NATO and Russia’s threat to upend the international order. Today, far right parties, formerly on the fringe of political discourse, are among the top three most popular political parties in close to half of EU member states.
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