Party Politics and Radical Right Populism in the European Parliament: Analysing Political Groups as Democratic Actors

Abstract

The European Parliament's political groups have traditionally been studied using quantitative methods and roll call votes. This article expands such research agendas by applying qualitative methods and interview data to expose existing power relations not just on macro level but within and between political groups. This generates insights on the ways in which radical right populism impacts on democratic practices and their erosion in parliamentary politics. The article examines intergroup and intragroup activities as fundamental, under-researched areas of the functioning of political group. The research material consists of 123 interviews with members of the European Parliament and staff and ethnographic field notes all gathered in Brussels and Strasbourg between 2018 and 2020. The findings show that the impact of radical right populism on political group dynamics cannot be understood by focusing on formal institutions only but has to be analysed at the level of informal institutions.