3
fundamentalism in the world, but also raised several questions about the limits of
multiculturalism, individual liberties, and cultural tolerance in the established
democracies. The trade-off between privacy and individual liberty versus national
security has become a salient issue in countries that have encountered immigration from
Islamic societies and faced the threat of terrorist attacks especially since the 2003 Iraq
War. There has also been a growing negative sentiment against immigrants from
developing countries in West European societies. Violence and harassment on the
foreigner populations recently increased in some countries. To summarize, not everything
has been going peaceful enough to be optimistic about the maintenance of social peace
and tolerance.
During the last thirty years, a series of electoral developments also raised the
concerns about the revival of political extremism, particularly right-wing extremism, in
Western Europe. Especially since the mid-1980s, the social science literature on the
extreme right has expanded. In this respect, several scholars debated the ‘legitimacy
crisis’ of today’s democracies (Ignazi 1992, Betz 1994, Eatwell 2004). There has indeed
been a clearly observable widespread antipathy among the European publics towards the
long-standing democratic institutions, established parties, and conventional politicians
since the 1970s. This has been reflected in increasing volatility, decreasing turnout, and
rising level of support for extremist and anti-establishment parties. The recent electoral
growth of several extreme right-wing parties (ERPs) demonstrate that political extremism
and scapegoating of ‘the other’ based on cultural, ethnic, linguistic, and lifestyle
differences are still far from dead in several West European societies.
Convention