The Populist Radical Right in the United States: Lessons from Europe
Abstract
This dissertation investigates the electoral phenomenon of the populist radical right (PRR) in the United States. The main venue for analysis is internal party competition within the conservative Republican Party for its nominations. The thesis draws extensively on European PRR literature, which has explored the roots of these parties’ electoral successes overseas, and applies insights gleaned to the American context. It is divided into three articles, each of which explores a Republican nomination campaign in-depth and applies lessons learned from the European literature to the American case. These cases are Pat Buchanan’s unsuccessful bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 1996, Donald Trump’s successful 2016 run for the same office, and the 2018 Arizona US Senate primary. The cases demonstrate, respectively, that Pat Buchanan fared well among voters who shared his issue priorities, though his supporters did not disproportionately receive their news about candidates from newspapers; those who felt betrayed by the Republican Party were not more likely to support Donald Trump during the primaries, despite his frequent attacks on the Party and its leadership; and supporters of PRR candidates in the Arizona primary were more likely to hold skeptical views of immigration, more likely to receive their news from social media, and more likely to be critical of “Republicans in Name Only” and to perceive no difference between the Republican and Democratic establishments. Ultimately, the dissertation provides mixed evidence for the applicability of European-derived theories in the American context.