MOVEMENT PARTIES OF THE FAR RIGHT: THE ORGANIZATION AND STRATEGIES OF NATIVIST COLLECTIVE ACTORS^* Available to Purchase

The scholarship on the far right has often interpreted nativist organizations as straddling the conceptual space between party and movement. These groups contest elections in order to gain representation in office, yet they also seek to mobilize public support to engage contentious issues like social movements. Despite theoretical commonalities, very little empirical research has focused on far-right “movement parties” as collective actors operating both in the protest and the electoral arenas. The article redresses this inconsistency by exploring the organizational and strategic configuration of two far-right collective actors—the Hungarian Jobbik and the Italian CasaPound. Deploying original interviews with high-ranking officials, the analysis enhances our understanding of the internal “supply side” of the far right as well as empirical knowledge on hybrid organizations that emerge from grassroots activism and successively organize to pursue the electoral option.