Periodic Reporting for period 1 - FARMEC (Far-Right Mobilization and the European Crises : Electoral and Protest politics)
Reporting period: 2021-05-01 to 2023-04-30
The FARMEC project investigates the drivers, dynamics, and consequences of far-right protest mobilization in Europe. It asks whether such mobilization is mainly a response to short-term crises or reflects deeper, long-term societal changes.
To address this, the project focused on three key goals:
1. Developing a comprehensive framework to understand far-right activity across elections and protests, combining insights from political science and sociology.
2. Exploring the empirical connections between electoral and protest mobilization to understand how far-right parties and movements collaborate across different arenas of political conflict.
3. Providing tools and data for societal understanding, enabling policymakers, educators, and civil society actors to engage with the implications of far-right mobilization.
To address this, the project focused on three key goals:
1. Developing a comprehensive framework to understand far-right activity across elections and protests, combining insights from political science and sociology.
2. Exploring the empirical connections between electoral and protest mobilization to understand how far-right parties and movements collaborate across different arenas of political conflict.
3. Providing tools and data for societal understanding, enabling policymakers, educators, and civil society actors to engage with the implications of far-right mobilization.
To achieve these goals, I collected data on several thousand episodes in Europe over the period 2008 to 2021, using tools like protest event analysis and social network analysis to map far-right groups’ tactics, claims, and networks.
Specifically, there are two main datasets that have been collected as part of this project:
[1] The first dataset consists of protest event data extrapolated from (a) national quality newspaper archives and (b) far-right actors’ official websites. This data pertains to the mobilization of selected far-right collective actors (the most active far-right movement parties in the country), and covers 11 years (2008-2018) and 11 European countries (Austria, Bulgaria, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, Sweden, and the United Kingdom). The dataset allows us to quantify the extent and characteristics of protest mobilization by selected far-right collective actors comparatively across Europe.
[2] The second dataset expands the scope geographically and longitudinally, while also covering all protest events taking place rather than focusing on selected actors. It consists of protest event data extrapolated from national quality newspaper archives, over the period 2008-2021 in 12 European countries (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden). The dataset allows us to explore the initiators and nature of these protests and map the main issues addressed in far-right street campaigns in Europe.
Specifically, there are two main datasets that have been collected as part of this project:
[1] The first dataset consists of protest event data extrapolated from (a) national quality newspaper archives and (b) far-right actors’ official websites. This data pertains to the mobilization of selected far-right collective actors (the most active far-right movement parties in the country), and covers 11 years (2008-2018) and 11 European countries (Austria, Bulgaria, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, Sweden, and the United Kingdom). The dataset allows us to quantify the extent and characteristics of protest mobilization by selected far-right collective actors comparatively across Europe.
[2] The second dataset expands the scope geographically and longitudinally, while also covering all protest events taking place rather than focusing on selected actors. It consists of protest event data extrapolated from national quality newspaper archives, over the period 2008-2021 in 12 European countries (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden). The dataset allows us to explore the initiators and nature of these protests and map the main issues addressed in far-right street campaigns in Europe.
The project paved the way to building the Far-Right Protest Observatory (www.farpo.eu) an interactive platform allowing to track and compare far-right protest activity across Europe, visualize overtime and cross-national trends, and download the project data and output. Developed in collaboration with researchers at Université Libre de Bruxelles, Sciences Po, and the University of Bologna, this tool provides vital data and insights for researchers, policymakers, and civil society organizations.