From the Margins to the Mainstream: A Personal Reflection on Three Decades of Studying and Teaching Far-Right Politics

I started working on what were then commonly called "extreme right" parties in the early 1990s, doing a comparative study of the ideologies of three small "national democratic" parties in Western Europe for my MA thesis (Mudde 1995).I mostly read German-language works in the contemporary history (Zeitgeschichte) tradition, as English-language (political science) literature was still very rare at that stage.In fact, to find political science literature on the topic, I had to reach out to foreign scholars, as there was only one other scholar of the far right in the Netherlands, an anthropologist who mainly published in Dutch.It was an odd time to study the far right academically.While the far right was completely marginal in the country, and in most of the world, public interest was very high in the Netherlands.At the same time, within academia in general, and political science in particular, the study of the far right was seen as secondary at best.Fast forward four decades and the far right is among the most vibrant political forces across the globe and the study of the far right has exploded across academic disciplines (often, however, under different labels, most notably "populism").Hundreds of PhD students and thousands of MA and undergraduate students are working on the topic and there are even some, admittedly few, academic jobs that specifically look for expertise on the far right.In other words, much has changed, both in terms of the relevance of the far right and its study.In this essay, I want to reflect on this transformation with a particular focus on some of the questions that inform this special issue.Most of the essay is a personal reflection on the study of the far right, from someone who has contributed to both the literature and the infrastructure-notably the European Consortium of Political Research (ECPR) Standing Group on Extremism and Democracy and the related Routledge Studies in Extremism and Democracy.My main aim is to provide new(er) scholars in the field with a (personal) historical account of the study and teaching of the far right,