Riding the Populist Wave: Europe's Mainstream Right in Crisis [Hardcover]

Cutting-edge comparative analysis of the challenges posed by the populist radical right to Western Europe's Conservative, Liberal and Christian Democratic parties.Riding the Populist Wave?is for anyone interested in how mainstream right parties, which continue to play a crucial role in the democratic politics and governance of so many Western European countries, are fighting to maintain their footing in societies riven by values conflicts and the rise of the populist radical right.Riding the Populist Wave?is for anyone interested in how mainstream right parties, which continue to play a crucial role in the democratic politics and governance of so many Western European countries, are fighting to maintain their footing in societies riven by values conflicts and the rise of the populist radical right.In spite of the fact that Conservative, Christian democratic and Liberal parties continue to play a crucial role in the democratic politics and governance of every Western European country, they are rarely paid the attention they deserve.?This cutting-edge comparative collection, combining qualitative case studies with large-N quantitative analysis, reveals a mainstream right squeezed by the need to adapt to both 'the silent revolution' that has seen the spread of postmaterialist, liberal and cosmopolitan values and the backlash against those values  the 'silent?counter-revolution' that has brought with it the rise?of a myriad far right parties offering?populist and nativist answers to many of the continent's thorniest political problems. What explains why some mainstream right parties seem to be coping with that challenge better than others? And does the temptation to ride the populist wave rather than resist it ultimately pose a danger to liberal democracy?Preface; 1. The mainstream right in western europe: caught between the silent and silent counter-revolutions Tim Bale and Crist?bal Rovira Kaltwasser; 2. The demand side: profiling the electorate of the mainstream rigl%