Up to this point, we have analyzed radical right parties that have been either doubly cursed or doubly blessed: Chapter 3 looked at parties that had neither the means nor the opportunity for party building, while Chapter 4 turned to parties that possessed both. This ordering brought differences in historical legacies and reactions to the radical right into sharp relief, but left open the question of whether both variables were truly determinative of success and failure. This chapter demonstrates that opportunity is not enough. None of the five radical right parties it covers – the Danish People's Party, the Norwegian Progress Party, the Swiss People's Party, New Democracy, and the List Pim Fortuyn – faced either cordons sanitaires or social sanctions. Yet while the first three successful cases emerged through a process of party transformation and thus possessed some indigenous resources, the latter two failures were constructed hastily and from scratch.

Since the parties discussed in this chapter had no connection to previous far right organizations, they were not as plagued by extremist activists as were radical right parties elsewhere. And since the social environment was not repressive, they also succeeded in recruiting educated activists. The major problem each faced was how to create competent and coherent parties. Both New Democracy (ND) and the List Pim Fortuyn (LPF) failed to build any semblance of a party organization; the latter in particular demonstrates the problems that politically inexperienced and opportunistic activists bring.