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The Left/Right bipolarization oversimplifies fractionalized schisms often prompted by personal ambitions disguised as ideological dissensions. The extreme Right was exemplified by the Action Française and various fascist movements which were active during the Vichy regime. The latter prompted Gaullism's reassertion of heroic nationalism. Catholic parties competed for control of the right-centre with liberal conservatism. A populist extreme Right re-emerged in Le Pen's National Front.

This chapter explores the development of the extreme right in France. It discusses the rise of the Front National (FN), the political party perceived by other parties and its own voters and cadres as being the right extreme of the right-left continuum. It is argued that the extreme right has fallen back to its tradition of fragmentation and internal quarrels. The two parties pursue diverging strategies, confrontational for the FN and bargaining-oriented for the Mouvement National Republicain. However, none of these have produced results.

This chapter provides an account of opposition party formation and development in Zimbabwe from 1999 to 2008. It argues that the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) was able to maintain a strong and cohesive party organization, despite significant state-sponsored violence and repression, for two reasons. First of all, the party benefited from the strong organizational structures and collective identity that organized labor and other civil society actors built prior to the launch of the opposition parties. Activists and grassroots constituencies had a track record of successful protest, and there were established procedures for decision-making and conflict resolution. Secondly, political polarization in Zimbabwe strengthened the opposition’s cohesion and the commitment of its activists. By increasing the salience of partisan identity, conflict and violence made defection difficult. The chapter suggests that conflict and polarization can have important party-building consequences, for both opposition and ruling parties alike.

This chapter distinguishes between front- and back-stage discourse in locating the nature and extent of the affinity between the ex-colonials and the far right. The front stage discourse of the far right avoids the folkways, Orientalism, and collective memory of the French of Algeria, whose front-stage discourse in turn avoids partisanship. The backstage discourse of each reveals a stronger affinity: the party newspaper shows a preoccupation with French Algeria (as well as Pétainism); and the private discourse of the ex-colonials shows signs of nativism, populism, anti-communism, and suspicion of Islam. Divergences remain, significantly, over republicanism, anti-Semitism, and the deeper tradition of the French far right.

This chapter traces the origins and development of the far right under the Fifth Republic. Without discounting older roots in the interwar Ligues, the followers of Marshall Pétain, and the anti-tax movement of Pierre Poujade, it brings out the importance of the political battle for French Algeria. Uniting anti-communists and anti-Gaullists, it revitalized the French far right and paved the way for the creation of the National Front in 1972. After tracing the far right’s reaction to May ’68 and to the success of the neo-fascists in Italy in the early 1970s, the chapter reviews the early history of the National Front, and (against economic patterns) provides an alternative explanation for its electoral breakthrough in the 1980s.

Chapter 2 examines the politicization of Jews in Iran during World War II and through the early 1950s. Traditional historiography distances Jews from politics in Iran. When mentioned at all, Jewish political activity usually references support of the Shah, especially in relation to his close alliance with Israel. However, this chapter argues that political activism became a means for Iranian Jews to impact their future role and sociopolitical position in Iran. Many Jews were adamant supporters and members of the Tudeh, the Iranian Communist Party, and later engaged in many other political initiatives (such as student movements and intellectual associations). The Tudeh was the most vocal opponent of fascism in the 1940s and arguably the most popular political force in Iran. The Tudeh’s enduring defense of the Jewish community, combined with its message of equality, attracted many young Jews from the Iranian middle and lower middle classes.

The Llanos Orientales received preferential treatment during the National Front. The government agency that administrated the National Territories was revitalized, the Intendancy of Meta was elevated to a department, and the province of Casanare was separated from Boyacá and declared an intendancy. Agrarian reform, improvements in transportation and communication, preserving the rights of indigenous peoples, reforming the Concordat with the Catholic Church, and the development of an economy based on agriculture, ranching, and petroleum were issues that affected the entire region. Unfortunately so did the resurgence of violence, as the success of the Cuban Revolution inspired new Marxist-oriented guerrilla commanders.

This chapter examines how the far right won power in Toulon, and how it governed between 1995 and 2001. When corruption scandals damaged the moderate right, the National Front followed through by winning the city elections. It triumphed due to its efforts to organize, the disgrace of the moderate right, the left’s refusal to withdraw, and critical support from the ex-colonials. Constrained by law, the far right could not implement the party program of national preference. Instead, it bolstered the police force; turned the city’s annual book fair into a cultural battleground; and punished opponents and rewarded friends by fiddling with city grants to voluntary associations. Faithful to the memory of French Algeria, the far right courted the ex-colonials but also annoyed them by insisting on partisan politics. The far right reduced the city’s debt but lacked the means of proving itself.

The first of the book’s six empirical chapters examines the origins and character of the labor movement in Zimbabwe. The chapter first addresses the state of trade unions at independence, pointing out that Zimbabwe unions were fragmented and lacking in organizational reach at this time. The choices made by the post-independence Zimbabwean state were, therefore, critical in forging a strong and centralized labor movement. The ruling party helped organize the founding conference of the trade unions congress, and labor legislation strengthened trade unions’ organizational reach. These policies facilitated the creation of a strong and centralized labor movement with significant membership in both rural and urban areas. The chapter lays the groundwork for understanding how organized labor was able to coordinate large-scale economic and political protest in Zimbabwe in later periods.

This chapter introduces the topic, scope and organization of the book, presents its principal questions, findings and arguments, and summarizes the contents of each chapter. The Janata Party (1977–1980), National Front (1989–1991) and United Front (1996–1998) constituted three coalition experiments to constitute a so-called third force in modern Indian democracy, espousing a social democratic vision inspired by the broader Indian left in varying degrees. The socialist parties challenged upper-caste rule. The communist parties advanced a more egalitarian vision of development. The regional parties decentered the national political imaginary. Yet each of these governing coalitions failed to last a full parliamentary term, let alone survive, allowing the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party to exercise national power at the helm of the National Democratic Alliance (1998–2004), followed by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (2004–2014). In general, scholars advance two perspectives to explain the failure of third force politics. The first contends that personal ambition, political expediency and struggles for power undermine these inherently fragile experiments. The second emphasizes the multitude of personalities, interests and forces that divide its constituents. These standard interpretations contain important truths. But they obscure as much as they reveal.

This chapter explains the formation, performance and demise of the National Front, a minority coalition government that became the second non-Congress administration to capture national power, with the crucial outside support of the communist Left and Hindu right. Rival aspirations within its main governing party, the Janata Dal, pitting Vishwanath Pratap Singh against Chandra Shekhar and Devi Lal, threatened the minority governing coalition from the start. Deeper political tensions over the Ramjanmabhoomi movement and the Mandal Commission Report, which advocated reservations for Other Backward Classes, ruptured its ranks towards the end. And the National Front failed to resolve growing militant insurgencies in Punjab and Kashmir, despite early signs of goodwill, or to alleviate a growing fiscal crisis. Nonetheless, the coalition advanced the politics of the third force in several ways. It encompassed significant regional parties within its ranks and established stronger relations with the communist Left. The National Front also crafted new political institutions to improve Centre-state relations, such as the Inter-State Council and Cauvery Waters Dispute Tribunal, while extending a more conciliatory approach to subcontinental affairs. Ultimately, the politics of Hindutva precipitated its demise, crystallizing the idea of the third force.

This chapter examines the evolution of communist secret police networks in Czechoslovakia between 1945 and 1948. It argues that the era was widely understood by local agents as one of “national roads to socialism” with respect to local security forces as well as other areas of institution building. It details the communist takeover of power in February 1948, when, uniquely in the context of the Eastern Bloc, communist leaders formed revolutionary councils called Action Committee to expel non-communists from state institutions and public life. It then follows the debates inside the Czechoslovak communist elite following the takeover of power in 1948 and their trips abroad to examine the “Soviet model” of the secret police in other countries of the Eastern Bloc.

This chapter assesses the efforts of the National Front to exploit the Ulster problem as it sought to expand on its progress in Britain in the early 1970s and it activities in Northern Ireland thereafter. For some loyalists such early progress had initially suggested that the NF might be a valuable ally in their struggle against the Provisional IRA. However, as its fortunes in Britain diminished in the 1970s –and with it any prospect that it could significantly influence British public opinion in their interest - the NF connection appeared less as a help than a hindrance and unwelcome not least when the level of Catholic membership in its leadership was discovered. However, the persistence of the Ulster conflict, especially a series of developments from 1980, seen as a British betrayal of Northern Ireland, ensured that it would continue to attract the NF’s interest. And yet it was never entirely clear for much of this period what its involvement was for – to assist loyalist organisations or to replace them. Nor did changes of organisation and operation in the early to mid-1980s do much to progress NF interests in the region.

This chapter examines ciphered correspondence between the Comintern and the Communist Party of China (CPCh) in the 1930s and 1940s. It discusses the creation of an anti-Japanese National Front in China and examines how Stalin used the Comintern to influence CPCh while promoting cooperation with the Chinese government leadership.

This chapter examines the history of the National Front in the Var from its origins during the 1970s until its electoral victory in the 1995 Toulon municipal elections. From the recruitment of leaders, cadres, activists, and voters to the style of language used, the influence of French Algeria pervaded the development of the National Front in this part of France. By the 1990s, the Var section of the National Front was the largest of any party in France. This laid the foundations for a strong electoral performance. While the left lost ground, the non-Gaullist moderate right resisted electorally: it upheld a system of patron-client relations, remained united in party politics, and exercised influence at multiple levels of government. The moderate right helped the far right in this part of France by validating its anti-immigrant rhetoric and treating the National Front as a tactical partner.

This chapter examines how the moderate right has held power in Toulon ever since the far-right experiment of 1995–2001. Eleven towns in France elected the National Front to power in the 2014 municipal elections and three of those towns are in the Var. Still, the moderate right enjoys a strong hold over Toulon, whose mayor has built up a power base that rivals that of the moderate right before it fell in the mid-1990s. While avoiding scandal, he and his allies have attracted significant state funding. They have mounted public works projects and buttress their power at the departmental level with influence over the regional conurbation. The moderate right is also disciplined. The city is not a loser of globalization. Still, it faces other economic challenges. Further, local results from national (presidential and parliamentary) elections suggest the city’s far-right potential remains significant.

As the People's Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF) and National Liberation Front (NLF) fighters tightened their ring around Saigon in April 1975, tens of thousands of Vietnamese who had worked for the government of the Republic of Vietnam, the American government and military, U.S. construction firms, and dozens of U.S.-sponsored relief agencies were terrified. Accepting Vietnamese refugees soon became a way for Gerald Ford's administration to embarrass the Communist authorities in Vietnam by shining a spotlight on their abuse of their own citizens. And so a mass exodus of immigrants from South Vietnam to the United States began on a small scale in the spring of 1975. Over the next decade, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese made their way to the United States where they settled across the country. Eventually they and their descendants numbered over a million, and they prospered and flourished culturally in their new home. Vietnamese Americans also helped shape the memory of the Vietnam War.

This chapter covers the twelve-month period from April 2003 during which major transformations occurred in the political configurations, both of the government of Sri Lanka with its dichotomous power arrangement as well as of the monolithic Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). These had a profound impact on the ceasefire and the ‘peace negotiations’. There was growing disenchantment in the electorate with the performance of the United National Front (UNF) and its leader Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe. Two significant events define the temporal scope of this chapter—the announcement on 21 April 2003 of the decision by the LTTE high command to suspend its participation in the peace talks, and the defeat of the UNF at the parliamentary elections held on 5 April 2004. This chapter also highlights the confrontations between President Chandrika Kumaratunga and the UNF leadership.

This chapter explores the prospects that existed for constructing a progressive Third Front in the 1990s. Three major shifts altered the field of play. The destruction of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya by militant Hindu nationalists unleashed the worst communal violence since Partition. The introduction of economic liberalization by the minority Congress government created a federal market economy, compelling states to compete with each other and testing the progressive commitments of every party. Yet the increasing regionalization of the federal party system engendered multiple bipolarities in the states, producing hung parliaments and minority (coalition) governments in New Delhi. Power struggles and social conflicts within the Janata Dal and National Front, and ideological differences vis-à-vis the communist Left over caste-based social justice, caused genuine strains. The pro-liberalization stance of erstwhile regionalist allies from the south created additional tensions. And strategic disagreements and tactical disputes sowed further incoherence. Nonetheless, the centrifugal logic of the so-called third electoral system rewarded state-based parties that mobilized distinct constituencies in the regions. Mounting political corruption and factional disputes within the Congress, and the menace of growing communal violence, revived the possibility that a secular Third Front would capture national power in a post-Congress polity.