Dynamics of Far-Right Transnationalization

How and under what conditions do far-right actors in Western Europe become transnational? Building on the players vs. arenas dichotomy, my dissertation uses strategic interactionism to answer this question with a comparative study. From a social movements perspective, I define the far-right broadly, encompassing the extreme, populist, and radical right variants, and focusing on far-right mobilisations as a socio-political milieu. My analysis follows a most different systems design, examining Austria, Germany, and the United Kingdom—three cases that, despite significant differences in national political configurations, have experienced far-right transnationalization between 2017 and 2021, as it is also indicated by the establishment of chapters of transnational far-right social movements, like the Identitarians.I conceptualize transnationalization as a process driven by the content and scope of discourses and (inter)actions of far-right actors. I rely on a mixed methods approach and mainly work with textual data to explore its dynamics. First, I look at the traditional mainstream media arena. I use political claims analysis to study the activities of far-right actors, as reported in the articles from national daily newspapers and explore the scope and content of these claims, as well as their targets and addressees. Second, I turn to the social media arena, focusing on Facebook as a digital platform. I conduct hyperlink network analysis using data from the public Facebook pages of far-right actors to explore with whom the far-right players interact and the scope of their shares. Third, I conduct interviews with country experts of all three cases, as well as with scholars of comparative politics on the transnational far-right.My dissertation contributes to the scientific literature in multiple ways. Firstly, it proposes different ways to measure the level of transnationalisation of far-right mobilisations, using a transnationalisation scale applied to political claims analysis and hyperlink network analysis as a dependent variable. Second, using strategic interactionism, the thesis provides a dynamic analysis, explaining the process of transnationalisation. Third, it contributes to the research on the far-right with a social movements perspective, taking the study of the far-right beyond electoral politics, through a comparative lens. Fourth, it contributes to the social movements literature by focusing on the transnationalisation efforts by far-right actors, rather than by the left-wing players, and by not only investigating a single movement but by looking at the far-right mobilization milieu as a whole.