Vicente Valentim on the Normalization of the Radical Right

Vicente, you recently published The Normalization of the Radical Right: A Norms Theory of Political Supply and Demand. It is an impressive contribution to the field. Could you give our readers a brief overview of your argument? How do you understand the interaction between held political preferences, social norms, and the manifestation of voter preferences in political outcomes in the context of the growing strength of radical right parties?

Thank you for your kind words and for the invitation for this interview. The book sets out to understand the following puzzle: the electoral support for radical-right parties and politicians often grows very fast, yet we know from work in the social sciences that the political preferences of voters do not change that fast. To understand this pattern, I argue that we need to look beyond intrinsic motivations like attitudes and preferences, and bring social norms into analyses of political phenomena. I argue that many voters already held radical-right preferences, but they did not show them in public out of fear of social judgement and isolation. As such, what we are witnessing nowadays is, to a large extent, an erosion of these norms that used to exist against radical-right preferences—not necessarily a change in people’s views. In other words, it is not necessarily the case that more voters are becoming radical-right; but rather, that voters who were radical right already are becoming more likely to act on their views.

What we are witnessing nowadays is, to a large extent, an erosion of these norms that used to exist against radical-right preferences—not necessarily a change in people’s views

You identify three phases of political normalization: the latency phase, activation phase, and surfacing phase. Can you expand on the mechanism your book outlines of political normalization and what the three stages look like?

Absolutely. The book lays out a theory of political normalization, by tracing theoretically and empirically how social norms and changes therein affect the behavior of voters (political demand), politicians (political supply), and their interactions.

As I said in my previous answer, the argument in the book is that many voters already hold radical-right views before radical-right parties and politicians first become successful. However, they typically hide them to avoid social repercussions. The fact that they do not show these views lead politicians to underestimate the electoral viability of running for politics on a radical-right platform. This leaves radical-right parties with less skilled leaders who are unable to mobilize even voters with privately held radical-right preferences to go out and vote for them. This is the first stage in the process of normalization, which I call the latency phase.

In this phase, the very fact that radical-right parties and politicians become successful and enter political institutions makes individuals perceive that their positions are more socially acceptable than anticipated. This has two implications. First, at the demand-side level, it means that voters, who already held radical-right views but did not show them in public, become more comfortable expressing these radical-right views. This could be by defending such views in conversations, on social media, by wearing party logos or t-shirts, or by attending a rally. Second, at the supply-side level, politicians learn that one can be electorally successful while espousing radical-right views. This makes more politicians willing to join radical-right parties, making it easier to ensure the success of such parties in the future because it is easier for them to find skilled candidates.

You bring in a number of case studies to illustrate your argument, such as Spain, the UK and Germany, and repeatedly identify an exogenous trigger (or lack of one in Spain) sparking the activation phase. The United States, where our program is based, is currently in the middle of a period marked by a strong radical right party having realized full mainstream status. If you were to apply your theory to the case of the United States, what might be the exogenous trigger? Is there something different about the US being a two-party system rather than a parliamentary system like that of many of the countries you look at in the book?

Absolutely—there are differences between Europe and the United States, primarily institutional ones stemming its presidential and two-party system. Unlike parliamentary systems, where smaller parties can enter parliament more easily and gain visibility and legitimacy, the two-party system in the United States makes it harder for radical right actors to gain influence directly by forming their own separate party. Instead, they must capture one of the two major parties, which means can be harder. However, I believe my argument applies to many Presidential systems, like the United States or Brazil. While the threshold for radical-right electoral success is higher, exogenous triggers still provide incentives for political entrepreneurship by skilled politicians, which should increase the probability that such politicians become successful and that the norm erodes as a consequence.

In terms of an exogenous trigger, I believe that that role was played in the United States by Barack Obama’s presidency and the racial resentment that it generated among large segments of the electorate. This was the trigger that led political elites, namely Donald Trump, strategically tap into these latent views by explicitly putting them in the political debate and claiming to represent those who held such views—even if only in private.

Given the emphasis your argument places on the erosion of social norms as permitting the expression of radical beliefs and the rise of the radical right, how might the process work in reverse? Can the proverbial genie be put back in the bottle?

Unfortunately, one of the implications of the argument is that the genie cannot be put back into the bottle—at least not via the same mechanism. Latency rested on misperceptions of how widespread radical-right views were in one’s society. This is what made voters hide their views and politicians underestimate their electoral potential. However, now that these views are out in the open, neither voters nor politicians can go back to not knowing.

This is not to say that there is nothing that can be done to fight the electoral success of the radical right. There are promising findings from studies regarding how educational interventions and perspective-taking programs can make individuals more likely to adhere to democratic values of tolerance and inclusion. However, the implication of the argument is that the most promising avenues are those that effectively change people’s views, rather than try to reinstate the norm that used to exist. While changing political preferences is a harder and slower process, it is also one that is more likely to lead to stable and long-lasting results.

While changing political preferences is a harder and slower process, it is also one that is more likely to lead to stable and long-lasting results.

Shifting slightly to a related topic, you coauthored a paper with Tobias Widmann on the impact radical right parties have on the tone of public debate in parliament. Can you talk about your findings? How do parties respond to an active radical right and how do they distinguish themselves from such actors?

In this paper, we found that other parties often respond to radical-right success by moving away from the negative rhetoric that is characteristic of the radical right. We believe this is done as a way to distance themselves from radical-right rhetoric and their disregard for established norms.

This is not incompatible with the normalization argument we discussed previously. Normalization operates mainly by making radical-right voters and politicians update their priors about the strength of social norms. They realize that those views are more widespread than previously anticipated, which makes them more likely to express them (voters) or represent them (politicians). However, a growing body of research, including some of my own, has found that this often coexists with a push on the other side of the political spectrum, where progressive individuals hold even closer to the previously existing norm. The coexistence of these two mechanisms means that radical-right success ends up resulting in growing polarization, as this paper by Bischof and Wagner argues. 

Returning back to your book, much of our work tends to focus on the transnational connections formed between political movements—particularly the radical right. Your book focuses on the internal country-specific dynamics in the breakdown of norms and the rise of radical right parties, but what about the international component? How does the upholding of norms or their erosion in one country or region play with the erosion of norms in another country? 

This is not to deny that patterns of diffusion can take place. Radical-right politicians participate in international meetings where they certainly exchange strategies. However, their effect is more likely to be felt after the initial breakthrough of those parties (which is what I mainly seek to understand in my book), because that is typically when they gain access to these international networks.

We previously interviewed Aurelien Mondon and Aaron Winter who have also written extensively on the normalization of the radical right. Aurelien has also published an article in our Journal of Illiberalism Studies on the topic. Their arguments focus in large part on how the radical right is portrayed by mainstream media and political actors and the responsibility the latter has for platforming the radical right. How does your work speak with theirs? What is the role and responsibility of mainstream actors (media, politicians, institutions) for upholding social norms against the radical right?

I fully agree that mainstream actors have a crucial role to play in processes of normalization. After radical-right politicians become successful, other politicians often move closer to their position (what is often called accommodation). This move can have important consequences in further normalizing radical-right views, because it makes those views seem even more widely accepted. This is not something that I study directly in the book because the goal there is to explain the initial breakthrough of these politicians, and accommodation typically happens after. However, I do have some follow-up work where we study these dynamics.

Finally, our program forwards a conception of the term “illiberalism” that sees challenges to the liberal order as a rejection of liberal principles stemming from a lived experience of liberalism. Do you consider the term a useful one to your work with analytical value and how do you see it in relation to other terms like the radical right?

I do believe illiberalism is an analytically useful term. I would argue that it differs from the radical-right in that illiberalism refers to the rejection of liberal principles, while radical-right ideology is a narrower ideology whose main characteristic is the opposition to the liberal principles of minority protection and integration. In other words, while radical-right views are illiberal by nature, not all illiberal views are necessarily radical-right.

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Vicente Valentim is an assistant professor of political science at IE University. He earned my PhD at the European University Institute in July 2021. Before joining IE, he was a Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow in Politics at Nuffield College, University of Oxford, of which he remains an associate member. He studies what citizens think is acceptable to do in a democracy, why that is, and how it changes. His book on social norms and the normalization of the radical right came out with Oxford University Press in 2024. It has been listed as one of the books of the year by the Financial Times and by Piedras de Papel.