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Populist radical right parties (PRRPs) have become more mainstream, increasing their relevance in European politics. While a lot is already known about them, there are still gaps in our knowledge. This article addresses one such gap by studying Western European PRRPs' positions on education policy. It focuses on the salience of education in election manifestos, substantive positions that parties hold, and in how far these positions reflect their core ideology. Constructing a novel framework based on core ideologies and three dimensions of education policies, including an often-neglected content dimension, the article presents results from a qualitative content analysis of 15 manifestos. The results show that education policy is relevant for PRRPs, albeit to varying degrees, and that their policies are informed by their core ideologies. The findings have important implications for understanding education policy dynamics in liberal democracies as PRRPs fundamentally challenge normative foundations of Western European education systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many studies analysing partisan politics assume differing preferences based on parties’ ideological backgrounds without providing matching empirical analysis. This is especially true for specialized policy areas like higher education policy, which are often not included in large comparative analysis of manifestos addressing core policies. Additionally, the limited existing literature that includes higher education focuses only on the re-distributive dimension of partisan competition. However, the main theoretical argument of this article is that in order to fully capture partisan dynamics, it is necessary to include a second analytical dimension, addressing the question how higher education is governed. Based on this framework, theoretical expectations for partisan preferences of different party families are deduced. Subsequently, these expectations are tested using originally coded election manifestos and a qualitative content analysis for all relevant parties in four European countries (the UK, Germany, Norway, and the Netherlands). The findings show that parties do hold differing preferences which can be structured along two dimensions. While many parties fulfil the theoretical expectations, there is also a fair amount of variation within party families, which can be explained by pointing to the importance of institutions, their legacies, and the resulting constraints for the formation of partisan preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]