Far-right extremism in Europe and Hungary

It is an interesting contradiction that while political discourse tends to attribute the occasional rise of the far right to a single cause (i.e., economic crises), social science literature seems to offer too many different explanations. It is quite difficult to systematize the various theories, partly for quantitative and partly for content-related reasons. Although research into right-wing extremism does not fundamentally differ from the study of other political trends and actors, the relationship with the far right is considered a particularly sensitive area even within the world of politics. The emergence of a new theory is therefore not only of scientific interest, but also of significant political relevance, and the search for explanations regularly becomes an important topic of public debate. Since the early 1980s, when the third wave of far-right parties began to gain ground in Europe after World War II, there has been a great deal of interest in the subject, and a significant number of academic publications have appeared, many of which are based on extensive international empirical research. A characteristic feature of the study of this phenomenon is that, amid the publication of numerous articles and studies, references to the work of a few authors have become almost inevitable in political science literature. Although the various theories reflect each other to a certain extent, there is still no consensus on the driving forces behind the far right.