ABSTRACT
The rise and success of right-wing populism and extremism can be explained by "hard" tendencies, that is longue durée factors of the transformation of European party landscapes as well as social and economic structures. A structural approach, moreover, frames the persistence and reproduction of the far-right and right-wing populism in the context of dramatic changes of the economy, of economic globalization, neoliberal restructuring and financialization of capitalism, of economic and social crisis, personal insecurities, hence 'pathologies' of neoliberal capitalism. Neoliberal globalization resulted in austerity measures and the erosion of national welfare-state provisions in post-democratic conditions as well, in which representative institutions still exist but where decision making shifted to corporate elites and to the market, leading to a further 'hollowing out' of party democracy. Right-wing populists are a political product of the transformation of politics in Western and Northern European countries and of fundamental changes in former state-socialist countries.
