Both books under review ask the central question: What accounts for the rise of radical right-wing parties in Western Europe? Both emphasize and take as their point of departure historical context. Both provide a nice overview of existing literature and theories that attempt to explain the rise and sustained success of such parties. They both lean toward supply-side explanations. However, the goals of the two books differ. Art's book presents a model with the expressed aim from his concluding chapter of applying its logic cross-nationally and to inform understanding of other types of parties (theory building). Zaslove's book presents a single party case in rich detail, supported by extensive archival research at that party's headquarters, with the aim of evaluating existing theories of party supply and demand to explain the rise of one particular party, the Lega Nord. While Art's book challenges existing theories and offers a fresh angle, Zaslove's will appeal especially to those interested in the Italian case or those seeking the nuances and details that differentiate radical right-wing parties from one another.

The main argument of Art's book is that varied trajectories of radical right-wing parties can be explained in large part by the type of activists that comprise them. Art ultimately makes an argument about the centrality of the party organization, especially party legitimacy, but measures it uniquely in terms of the competence of party activists. For example, he finds that education proves interesting not merely as a demographic characteristic but as an explanatory factor. Art maintains that educated activists possess certain skills required by effective parties, such as the ability to mingle and negotiate effectively, craft coherent documents, address the public competently, and formulate platform positions. He finds that while emphasis has often been placed on the charisma and skillset of party leaders, emphasis is also warranted on the competencies of the party rank and file, as they are the ones directly mobilizing the electorate on a more frequent basis.

Art's book considers parties from across ten West European countries plus two more cases derived by splitting the Belgian case into Flanders and Wallonia. Focusing on an often neglected aspect of political party behavior, intraparty dynamics, he emphasizes the internal strategic decision-making process. He makes a strong case, based on the compelling evidence of his 140 personal interviews with party activists, for the importance of understanding the dynamic interplay of varied actors within parties. His analysis displaces the unitary-actor view of “the party” as being composed of a monolithic and homogeneous body of individuals. In modeling party success (31), Art places both the quantity and quality of party activists ahead of other internal supply-side factors in party development.

Art's investigation emphasizes political culture and historical context in a more thorough treatment of these factors than typically found in the literature. While other scholars have dealt with Nazi or fascist legacies affecting radical right parties, most have done so based on open rhetoric of these parties, such as widely publicized party leader gaffes. However, by speaking with activists directly about their formative experiences and ideas, Art unlocks a more nuanced understanding of how the actors themselves came to frame their political ideas and in turn those of their parties. While he admits that he received his fair share of colorful ranting, Art extracts the story with context and explanations behind the slogans or sound bites. At times, many of his interview subjects become almost sympathetic protagonists, as Art captures the rationale for their propositions in a uniquely human way through his direct interview method. He depicts the plight of the activists as they recount their sacrifices and at times the danger involved with their party activism. Many describe acts of vandalism against their property, crimes against their person, threats, ostracism, and defamation of character, along with the toll taken on their psyche as well as interpersonal relationships. While further explication of the literature on intraparty dynamics could enhance the theoretical positioning of this book, at this time that literature remains limited. Overall, this book is well situated within the work done to date on the radical right, drawing inspiration from the social-movements literature and important works on political parties.

The contribution of Andrej Zaslove's book resides less in its approach or theoretical framework than in its depth of analysis surrounding the particular case of Italy's Lega Nord (LN). Zaslove develops a richly detailed characterization of the LN emphasizing its political development. Using secondary literature to characterize radical right-wing parties and drawing from the scholarly literature on the LN, Zaslove adds archival research at party headquarters along with analysis of speeches, party platforms, and policy papers (13). He concludes that while the LN and other similar radical right-wing populist parties have likely peaked in terms of electoral success, they will not fade away but will persist in their indirect effects on their political party systems (205) and thus on political agendas and public policy.

As many studies of the radical right have done, Zaslove's exploration begins with a review of the literature on radical right parties with the aim of delineating a party family. The challenge of determining which parties to include is especially pronounced for this study as the LN has not always been included by scholars of the radical right. The LN has secessionist aims and an ethnoregionalist position, and prefers decentralization to central authority, making it somewhat different from many other radical right parties. Nevertheless, the author suggests that the LN shares its ideology, political organization, and voter profile with other “third wave” radical right-wing parties that emerged in the 1970s (5–6).

A clear strength of the book resides in the rich detail of the LN and the portrayal of party leader Umberto Bossi through his own words captured in speeches, news accounts, and other sources. Zaslove promises a supply-and-demand approach in his introductory chapter; however, the weight of evidence and balance of chapters is on the supply side. Demand is illustrated in chapter 2, which provides quite interesting survey results from secondary source data showing top reasons that supporters of the LN chose that party over other parties. Demand-side factors emerge also through details of the socioeconomic and political culture shaping LN fortunes from the “Third Italy” (described as a shift away from large scale industrialism and toward small and medium scale businesses, factories, and industrial districts beginning in the 1970s) through the Second Republic which began in 1992. Still, supply-side factors prevail in chapters 3–7 with emphasis on organization of the party, ideology, and strategic interactions within the party system. A main thrust of this book is the portrayal of the LN as a populist radical right-wing party sharing a common fate and exerting a similar influence in its party system to other parties assigned this label. In order to accomplish this, Zaslove establishes key supply-side criteria that delineate the populist radical-right and assesses the presence or absence of these in the case of the LN. He finds that the characteristic traits connecting the LN most clearly to the larger radical-right party family include nativist nationalism (anti-immigrant position), civil society emphasis on particularist culture (the author calls this “authentic civil society”), and populism.

Despite the common ground with other radical right-wing parties, a provocative point made in the first half of the book revolves around what differentiates the LN from other radical right parties, namely, its strong, regionalist decentralization position. This position driving the local identity thrust of the LN portends deeper contradictions or notable distinctions when one compares this nativist regionalist party with nativist nationalist ones. While this is not unique to the LN, applying also to the Belgian Vlaams Belang, for example, it may warrant further explication; especially given the emphasis in chapter 4 on local preference as opposed to national preference policies, the distinction drawn between decentralizing rather than centralizing tendencies of the LN, and the frequent portrayal of “regionalist nationalism” (90). The similar but still different aspect of the LN is intriguing in this fertile portrayal, and yet little becomes of it ultimately in the conclusion.