The COVID-19 pandemic has served as a pivotal moment in European politics, both speeding up the trends of preceding populist nationalism, but also transforming its ideological outlines. The paper explores the causation of the varying electoral performance of populist radical right (PRR) parties in France, Germany, and Italy in 2020-25. It is not merely a simplistic economic grievance model, but a comparative case study approach is used in this paper to combine supply-side (party strategy, institutional trust) and demand-side (voter anxiety, cultural backlash) arguments. Results have shown that the pandemic did not universally increase PRR support, but instead success depended on three mediating factors: (1) the perceived legitimacy of state pandemic management, (2) the capacity of PRR parties to switch between their so-called nativist and so-called sovereignist-health frames, and (3) the polarization of mainstream media ecosystems. In conclusion, the paper explains how a new hybrid ideology has been created, namely, pandemic nationalism, a blend of biopolitical domination and anti-globalist discourse, and this combination is here to stay, challenging liberal democratic governance.
Hari Ram (Wed,) studied this question.