Cas Mudde, associate professor of international affairs, University of Georgia

According to the international media, the European Union was shaken by a “political earthquake” in May 2014. The source of that earthquake was the electoral success of so-called “anti-EU parties” in general, and far Right parties in particular. But while it is true that unprecedented results were obtained by some far Right parties, much of what happened was either not new or not noticed. This lecture will look at the results of the far Right in a broad historic and regional perspective, arguing that the shocks were largely local and predictable, and will have relatively limited national and supranational consequences, at least in the short and medium term.

Cas Mudde is an associate professor of international affairs at the University of Georgia. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in political science at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Professor Mudde is an expert on European politics and the foremost scholar on the far right in western democracies. He has published widely on topics such as (un)civil society, democratization, Euroskepticism, extremism and democracy, political parties, and populism. His most recent book publications include the four-volume reader Political Extremism (SAGE, 2013) and the co-edited Populism in Europe and the Americas: Threat or Corrective for Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2012). His book Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2007) won the Stein Rokkan Prize and was named an Outstanding Academic Title by Choice. Professor Mudde is regularly consulted on issues of extremism and democracy by state and non-state organizations, and often contributes quotes and op-eds to the national and international media.