Far-Right Parties in Europe and the Eurozone Crisis

There has been much speculation that the “reemergence” of far right political parties in Europe is attributable to the Eurozone crisis. This paper inquires into these claims by selecting all significant far right parties in Europe and tracing their voting percentages before and after the crisis. Then, the validity of previous hypotheses suggesting that the rise of far right parties were mainly due to long-term, post-industrial, sociopolitical and economic changes is tested. The tentative conclusion is that, except for the cases of Greece’s Golden Dawn and Hungary’s Jobbik party, most far right parties were unaffected in their performance by the Eurozone crisis.