Introduction

Coming to the end of this book makes me realize primarily how many important and interesting topics within the field of populist radical right studies still need further exploration. This study can at best open consideration of a few issues and begin to answer some of the many questions the subject provokes.

In this final chapter, I want to look both back and forward. This book addresses three aspects of the study of populist radical right parties: identifications, issues, and explanations. On the basis of a pan-European approach I have collected, integrated, and revised insights from existing studies and combined them with new findings from original research. The next sections present some of the main findings of this study and sketch posssible avenues for further research.

The key message of this book is reiterated throughout this concluding chapter: the populist radical right parties themselves must be put at the center of research on the phenomenon. Populist radical right parties are not just dependent variables, passively molded by structural factors, but they also constitute independent variables, actively shaping part of their own destiny. This point is too often ignored in the sociological and economical deterministic studies in political science.