Dr. Vicente Valentim: Parliamentary Representation and the Normalization of Radical Right Support
This contribution was originally posted to the CSES Blog on November 10, 2022
The 2022 GESIS Klingemann Prize for the Best CSES Scholarship was awarded to Vicente Valentim for his article “Parliamentary Representation and the Normalization of Radical Right Support” in Comparative Political Studies.
Democracy is more than just a set of legal rules. Well working democracies should also promote a culture of tolerance and inclusion of diverse social groups. Such tolerance and inclusion, however, cannot fully rest on legal enforcement, as it should exist in realms where legal enforcement is not doable or desirable. For these reasons, a democratic culture relies on social norms that define boundaries of what is acceptable and desirable in a democracy. But what are these boundaries? How do they change over time? And can the success of new political actors normalize what was previously unacceptable?