The Radical Right and Religious Discourse

Abstract

The paper investigates whether there is a link between the main radical right-wing parties in Greece, Italy and Sweden and the pre-dominant church institutions within these countries. The focus lies on the interaction between the party’s ideology and the church‘s political discourse. We distinguish between the ‘internal supply side’ (the party’s discourse on the religious agenda), the ‘external supply side’ (the Church’s current discourse), and the ‘demand side’ (the Church’s traditional discourse). The research aim is to determine whether religious voters (who are formal church members, who believe and who practice regularly) might constitute a potential electorate for radical right-wing parties. This assumption builds on the ‘pathological normalcy’ thesis that radical right-wing parties promote an extreme version of the mainstream values in society (Mudde 2010). The method for elaborating the official church and party documents is based on the theorization of the so-called Essex school of discourse analysis. The findings of the paper are that the religious electorate is a potential pool for the radical right party family to the extent that the internal supply side and the external supply side overlap. This applies to the largest extent in Greece, to a medium extent in Italy and to a low extent in Sweden.