Introduction

Irrespective of how favorable the breeding ground and the political opportunity structure might be to new political parties, they merely present political actors with a series of possibilities. In the end, it is still up to the populist radical right parties to profit from them. In line with scholarship on political parties in general, populist radical right parties should no longer be seen simply as “hapless victims of their economic or demographic environments, but as … the active shapers of their own fates” (Berman 1997: 102; also Sartori 1990). In other words, the party itself should be included as a major factor in explaining its electoral success and failure.

The strategies of contemporary populist radical right parties are part of almost every account of the party family. Nearly every scholar points to the importance of the “modern image” of populist radical right parties. Indeed, image production by these parties has generated some marvelously creative terminology, including “Haiderization” to designate the process (Marcus 2000: 36) and “designer fascism” in reference to the final product (Wolin 1998). This process of “restyling” is often believed to be only superficial, involving mainly the selection of physically attractive representatives, such as former beauty queens and (young) men in tailor-made suits, rather than a genuine transformation of the ideology and style of the parties.