The Mediterranean Countries: Too Late for Nostalgia, Too Early for Post-material Protest

The extreme right never took hold in Spain, Portugal, and Greece. Their relatively new democratic regimes as well as socio-economic change eliminated the foundations of right-extremist values, and distanced the public from its traditional authoritarianism and neo-fascist heritage. Moreover, the extreme right did not provide sufficient organisational and political articulation for the populist anti-system protest during the mid-1980s, thus failing to attract a sizeable audience.