Nationalism in European party politics, 2011-2024

• Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
• EGPP: European Governance and Politics Programme

Join Christina Zuber as she examines the role of nationalism in European party politics and its evolving influence across multinational democracies.

Nationalism in European party politics, 2011-2024

Previous studies have tended to equate nationalism with majority nativism, cultural conservatism and authoritarian values typically espoused by the far right. Instead, this article addresses the empirically much more diverse role that nationalism plays in Europe’s multinational democracies. We draw on three rounds of the EPAC (Ethnonationalism in Party Competition) expert survey, an instrument specifically designed to measure nationalist ideology separately from cultural values, and to differentiate majority from minority nationalism. Comparing the electoral relevance of and polarisation among majority and minority nationalist parties across 2011, 2017 and 2024 shows that the general impression that nationalism has become a more important force in European party politics only holds for some multinational countries. We also find that compared to majority nationalists, minority nationalists combine their nationalist ideology with a much broader variety of cultural values and stances on European integration, immigration, as well as climate policy.