The rise of radical-right parties in contemporary European polities has been the focus of extensive political analysis in the last two decades. Vicente Valentim’s book offers an unflinching contribution to the burgeoning literature. The Normalization of the Radical Right seeks to explain why radical-right parties gain legitimacy and electoral support, emphasizing the influence of social norms and political costs. Shifts in social norms, rather than in political preferences, can alter political behavior, influence politicians’ perceptions, and facilitate the normalization of radical-right support. The book provides a typology of preferences that highlights the mediating role of norms in translating private preferences into public behavior. In doing so, the book moves beyond the usual drivers covered by previous works, such as economic factors, cultural forces, emotions, or identity concerns. The author develops his theory primarily within a comparative framework across Western European democracies because the radical right’s revival has been most visible in the region in the last twenty years. To establish a time frame for the analysis, the book positions itself in contemporaneity by drawing on references to the 2007 Portuguese election and the example of the radical right movement in Germany.

In line with this, the book uses a mixed-methods approach, combining large-N quantitative analyses covering 1325 parties in 51 countries from over two and a half decades (1996–2020) with qualitative case studies of Germany, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom. These countries were chosen because they did not experience strong radical-right parties in the past, and to increase variation in the drivers for electoral support. It is divided into nine chapters that build a comprehensive account of the impact of social norms on political behavior, more narrowly radical right support. Chapter 1 offers a general introduction, positioning the study within the literature, complemented by methodological observations, as well as a synopsis of the chapters, both to orient the reader and to ensure the book’s coherence. The theoretical framework is presented in Chapter 2 through the development of a norms-based supply-demand model of politics to show how politicians and voters traverse social costs and expressive benefits. Building on this, Valentim frames political costs as the anticipated social and reputational sanctions for expressing contranormative preferences, which explain why latent preferences remain hidden and how shifts in social acceptance can drive rapid political change. The next two chapters introduce the concept of political stigma and outline three normalization steps (latency, activation, and surfacing) and also explain how political stigma is measured. Chapters 5–7 examine each phase of normalization, integrating demand- and supply-side factors into a single explanatory framework. In these chapters, examples from Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom are analyzed to illustrate how latent preferences are activated and expressed, thereby complementing the in-depth case study of Germany. Thus, Chapter 8 covers Germany in detail with emphasis on the 2015–2016 refugee crisis as a trigger for the electoral performance of the AfD and on the step-by-step normalization process in a structured political setting. Chapter 9 presents the main takeaways of the book, discussing its contributions to the broader literature.

One of the book’s key merits is its focus on normative mechanisms beyond electoral behavior. Valentim illustrates how apparent political consensus may conceal underlying radical-right sympathies and expose democratic weaknesses. Political entrepreneurs - party strategists or leaders who capitalize on social discontent and facilitate expression of underlying preferences - are central to mobilizing latent support. Cases like Chega in Portugal, Vox in Spain, or UKIP in the UK show broader applicability of the model outside Germany.

Empirically, the evidence reveals how activation events such as terrorist attacks, migration crises, or political crises around leaders interact with latent preferences, with timing and character of events influencing the pace and scope of normalization. The book is conceptually rich and brings evidence to illustrate the ways in which social norms mediate political expression and how normalization is incrementally attained. The evidence reveals how electoral performance can be based on a relief from repression rather than attitudinal changes, thus filling a gap in the existing scholarship on radical-right support. Valentim’s work opens significant avenues for future studies, including refining leadership competence measures and analyzing interactions with other socio-political variables. It provides the grounds to extend the latent – activation – surface framework to other forms of political mobilization, including populist or issue-based parties. These findings equip scholars with tools to examine party competition and democratic resilience and outfit practitioners with options to foresee radical-right mobilization.

Despite its strengths, the book has several shortcomings. Two of these are methodological in nature. On the one hand, the book draws primarily on Western European cases, thus limiting generalizability and failing to account for variation among the Eastern European countries. Romania was one of the first European countries where the radical right had very good electoral performances. Bulgaria, Hungary, and Poland are other examples where the radical right is strong in parliament and/or government. Disregarding the new democracies or the countries characterized by democratic backsliding limits the explanatory power of the framework. On the other hand, the use of the ‘reported vote’ to measure preferences can be biased, as often criticized by the voting behavior literature.

Moreover, the context specificity of the analyses could limit the overall applicability of the framework. While ruptures from social norms can provide opportunities for radical-right parties in Western Europe, factors such as post-authoritarian transitions, institutional distrust, and social or economic systems may be relevant in other parts of Europe. Also, although the explanatory model based on norms is innovative, it tends to downplay and underestimate the role of other explanations for radical right support, such as economic crises, social inequality, emotionality, or inter-party competition. Finally, surrogates for leadership ability, including education or pre-party membership, do not capture the complete range of qualities that are relevant to effective leadership within radical-right parties. Charisma, organizational skill, rhetorical facility, and indirect party power are often essential in explaining why some leaders are successful electorally and others are not. Leaders with limited formal credentials can achieve remarkable electoral success, while educated leaders may remain marginalized.

Overall, the book is theoretically engaging, normatively stimulating, and empirically appealing. It provides an explanatory model and opens new avenues for study and debate on electoral competition. By combining formal theory with empirical robustness, the book illuminates political change and could leave a mark in the field. This is a contemporary primer on a crucial trends in contemporary societies, with lessons for the broader study of democratic politics. Scholars in comparative politics, party competition, and democratic resilience, policymakers, and journalists covering radical-right mobilization strategies can benefit from this book.