This chapter provides an explanation for the different approaches to local government taken by populist radical right parties in Austria, France, Italy and Switzerland, and their different degree of radicalism. It conducts a systematic exploration of the process by which these parties govern at the local level. The empirical basis for this analysis is interviews with 57 local government actors, semi-structured in order to investigate the two overarching themes that are theoretically expected to influence their approaches to governing. The chapter unveils the mechanisms through which moderation is imposed (or radicalism is facilitated) by, first, various institutional constraints, and, second, cross-level party linkages. As a final step, it reconstructs the process by which each populist radical right-led local government responded to the European migration crisis during the 2010s. The institutional constraints and cross-level party linkages particular to each of the four cases can explain the varied (multi-level) governance configurations that emerge, and as a result the varying degree of radicalism in their approach.