Seeing the radical right movement parties as activist parties. The case of EKRE in Estonia

Researchers often struggle to classify some radical right parties, which, on the one hand, act as regular electoral-orientated parties but, on the other, are using social movement tactics and are actively engaged in protest politics. The recent conceptual innovation by Peña (Polit Stud Rev 19:637–655, 2021), who coined the term "activist party", helps somewhat to overcome the conceptual and empirical confusion. The current analysis builds on Peña's framework and applies the activist party's conception to the Conservative People's Party of Estonia (EKRE), which epitomizes many features of the aforementioned party type. However, the paper moves beyond the original framework and shows that the radical right parties do not always have fluid social movement-like organizational structures, but they may develop relatively centralized and well-institutionalized party organizations and come to resemble even modern mass parties. Nevertheless, those mass-party-like organizations do not disqualify them as activist parties; instead, they could further reinforce some of their characteristic features. The article also demonstrates that the activist party notion could be successfully applied beyond the EKRE's case—a review of the existing literature indicates that similar activist parties could be found both in Western and Eastern Europe.