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• College of Social Sciences and International Studies

Undergraduate Module Descriptor

POL3256: Trumping the Mainstream: The Populist Radical Right and Democratic politics

This module descriptor refers to the 2021/2 academic year.

Module Aims

The aims of this module are to provide you with a detailed examination of the historical relation between the PRR and democracy, and of the manifestations of this relationship today. A key emphasis of the module will be to enrich your understanding of the role of PRR parties both as revealers of pre-existing democratic crises and cause of such crises, using a range of theoretical approaches and empirical examples. You will also learn about the strengths and limitations of some of the key methods for measuring populist discourse, ideology and attitudes, and about how to apply some these methods using manifesto databases and text-analysis. Key case studies will include the radicalization of the US Republican Party, populism in power in Central Eastern Europe, the causes of Brexit, or the historical evolution of the French Front National. If you take this module and fully participate you will leave with a grasp of key debates in populism studies, an understanding of different approaches to the theoretical conceptualization and empirical measure of populism, and knowledge of historical and contemporary trends in the relationship between democracy and PRR politics.

Module Content

Syllabus Plan

Whilst the module’s precise content may vary from year to year, it is envisaged that the syllabus will cover some or all of the following topics.

• The first few classes provides the conceptual basis for the rest of the course. Drawing on contemporary political theory and the history of political ideas, they place the evolving meaning of key concepts such as "The People", populism, the PRR, and differences between democracy and authoritarianism in historical perspective. This first part of the class also provides a  comparative overview of key trends and patterns of success in the rise of the PRR claims and parties over the past few decades in the West.
• The second part of the module focuses on major demand and supply-side factors that help explain the trends outlined in Part 1. These classes will examine a variety of factors such as the role of social change and modernization theory, the agency of radical political forces, the impact of a changing media landscape and the responsibility of mainstream political actors.
• The last part of the module turns to present and future trends, focusing on both the consequences of radical right populism for democratic politics and the ways in which these consequences might be answered, for instance through institutional engineering, the emergence of national political alternatives or transnational forms of politics.

Learning and Teaching

This table provides an overview of how your hours of study for this module are allocated:

...and this table provides a more detailed breakdown of the hours allocated to various study activities:

Online Resources

This module has online resources available via ELE (the Exeter Learning Environment).

How this Module is Assessed

In the tables below, you will see reference to 'ILO's. An ILO is an Intended Learning Outcome - see Aims and Learning Outcomes for details of the ILOs for this module.

Formative Assessment

A formative assessment is designed to give you feedback on your understanding of the module content but it will not count towards your mark for the module.

Summative Assessment

A summative assessment counts towards your mark for the module. The table below tells you what percentage of your mark will come from which type of assessment.

...and this table provides further details on the summative assessments for this module.

Re-assessment

Re-assessment takes place when the summative assessment has not been completed by the original deadline, and the student has been allowed to refer or defer it to a later date (this only happens following certain criteria and is always subject to exam board approval). For obvious reasons, re-assessments cannot be the same as the original assessment and so these alternatives are set. In cases where the form of assessment is the same, the content will nevertheless be different.

Re-assessment notes

For the case study exercises, the re-assessment will consist in 3x1000 word mini essays on three out of the six case study questions.

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