Abstract
On the whole, classical approaches to extreme right parties have analyzed the question of their relationship to European democratic political systems in four different ways: first, by considering extreme right movements as a danger for democracy (e.g. Taguieff and Tribalat 1998); second, by examining the responses of democratic regimes to extremist challenges (e.g. Capoccia and Pedahzur 2003); third, by evaluating the impact of extremist formations on political systems (e.g. Schain 2001); finally, by interpreting the phenomenon’s emergence in Europe as the consequence of factors such as the transformation (Kitschelt and McGann 1995) or the crisis of West European party systems (e.g. Ivaldi 1999a). In this chapter, I would like to suggest another way of exploring the relationship between extremism and democracy, and more specifically its consequences for extreme right parties.