After summarizing and integrating the key findings of the previous chapters, this conclusion considers their broader implications for party competition and for democracy, including whether there is any ‘contagion of the right,’ with other parties responding to their success. The results from the study may help to dispel certain common fallacies, while also emphasizing some overlooked factors leading to radical right success. To recap the argument, the advance of new challenger parties is open to multiple interpretations, and demand-side, supply-side, and institutional perspectives can be found in the literature seeking to explain the rise of the radical right. Let us summarize the evidence presented throughout the book, then consider some of the consequences of this phenomenon.

THE INSTITUTIONAL STRUCTURE OF OPPORTUNITIES

From Duverger onwards, the classic literature on electoral systems suggested that these rules have an important mechanical impact upon the number of parties elected to office, with the implication that minor and fringe parties, including the radical right, have more opportunities to gain seats under proportional representation than under majoritarian systems. More recently this conventional wisdom has been questioned by studies which have suggested that electoral systems play little role in the success of the radical right. Indeed it is true that there are examples where these parties have advanced within majoritarian systems (such as in Canada) as well as under PR (illustrated by the Netherlands, Norway, Belgium, and Switzerland). Nevertheless, the balance of evidence indicates that in general rules do matter.