No dia 4 de Dezembro, Carlos Meléndez (ICS-ULisboa) será o orador convidado de um Seminário Conjunto dos Grupos de Investigação SPARC & RIGOP, sobre o tema The Specter of Communism Haunts the Far Right. Anti-Communism and Far-Right Support in Comparative Perspective. A partir das 14h30, na Sala 1 do ICS-ULisboa e online.

Abstract: 

This article investigates the contemporary political relevance of anti-communism as a driver of far-right support across Europe and Latin America. Drawing on original nationally representative surveys from France, Italy, Chile, and Peru, the study introduces a novel conceptual distinction between affective and instrumental anti-communism—respectively, emotional hostility toward communism and pragmatic rejection of its perceived political utility. While anti-communism has long featured in elite rhetoric, its role in shaping voter behavior remains understudied. Addressing this gap, the article theorizes anti-communism as a cross-regional political attitude and empirically demonstrates its dual function: affective anti-communism expands the reach of far-right discourse by resonating with broader conservative electorates, while instrumental anticommunism consistently differentiates far-right voters from mainstream right constituencies. By revealing the portability of anti-communism across distinct historical and institutional contexts, the article contributes to the comparative literature on far-right demand and challenges the Eurocentric bias that overemphasizes nativism as the primary attitudinal determinant. These findings underscore anti-communism’s enduring utility as a versatile ideological repertoire, capable of mobilizing electorates across both the Global North and South.

Short bio: 

Carlos Meléndez is a researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Lisbon. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Notre Dame (Indiana, United States). He was Associate Professor at Universidad Diego Portales (Chile) and postdoctoral researcher at the Central European University-Democracy Institute (Hungary) and at the Center for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (Chile). He has been a visiting professor at FLACSO-Ecuador, Universidad del Rosario (Colombia), Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (Colombia), among others.

His research explores public opinion, political identities, support for the far right, and populist demand, using survey data and experimental survey methods, with a cross-regional perspective on Latin America and Europe. His work has been published in academic journals such as the American Journal of Political Science, Democratization, Party Politics, Comparative Politics, Political Studies, Journal of Peace Research, Journal of Politics in Latin America, and Revista de Ciencia Política (Chile), Colombia Internacional, among others.