ABSTRACT / The postwar era saw three waves of far right mobilization, with the third wave, starting in the 1980s, the most successful. However, even in the 1990s populist radical right parties were electorally successful in only a handful of European countries and politically isolated in the vast majority. Today, the situation is much different. Now that the populist radical right has moved into Europe's mainstream, we have entered a fourth wave, in which boundaries between mainstream and radical (right) are more and more different to discern.
BIO / Cas Mudde is Associate Professor in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia and Researcher in the Center for Research on Extremism at the University of Oslo. He is the author of "Populism: A Very Short Introduction" and "The Far Right in America". His work is primarily conceptual and empirical in nature. After an initial focus on Western Europe, he has expanded his primary focus to both Eastern and Western Europe and developed a secondary interest in North and South America as well as Israel. The bulk of his research has been within the field of extremism and democracy, particularly populist radical right parties. Secondary interests include civil society, conceptualization, democracy and democratization, Euroskepticism, political parties, political ideologies, and social movements.