Description
European far-right groups reject the global geopolitical order as it exists. This given, the progressive entrenchment in their respective national political systems raises a number of questions about far right’s potential impact on global politics, such as the distancing from European principles and norms in national political discourses and practices. The bulk of research on the far right tends to focus on parties and on their impact on policy-making, especially in the field of integration and immigration. The limited research on foreign policy and the relationship to Europe – a domain closely connected to the ethno-centric and even expansionist ideology of the far right – is striking. This panel opens up academic debate about the possible ways in which far-right movements can have an influence on geopolitical imaginings of Europe and the ways in which we can estimate the extent of said influence. Our panel thus contributes to the ongoing debate in the critical geopolitics literature on the ways through which ‘EU’rope is contested and played out in political discourses and practices through a spatial diverse approach. The papers offer country-specific evidence of culturalist and particularist interpretations of nations in the broader regional and European context and constitute the first systematic exploration of the ways in which foreign-policy topics are contested by the discursive practices of far-right non-party actors.
