The Populist Challenge Kriesi, Hanspeter
West European politics,
03/2014, Letnik:
37, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Populism has been on the rise for some time in Europe now, and its rise has been one of the key concerns of Peter Mair. He has linked it to the increasing erosion of the representative function of ...European party systems. The spectre that haunted him was 'partyless democracy', a democratic regime where parties had lost their representative function, which opened the door for unmediated populist protest. While largely sharing his interpretation of the overall structural trends giving rise to the populist challenges in Western Europe, the article is critical of the static character of his assessment. It suggests that there are three forms of 'protest populism', all of which may eventually end up transforming the West European party systems in the name of the new structuring conflicts that characterise contemporary European societies. In addition, it proposes to extend the scope of Peter's argument to the less established democracies of Central and Eastern Europe.
"Shadow of Liberation explores the twists, turns, contestations and compromises of the African National Congress’ (ANC) economic and social policy-making, with a particular focus on the transition ...era of the 1990s and the early years of democracy. Padayachee and Van Niekerk focus on the primary question of how and why the ANC, given its historical egalitarian, redistributive stance, did such a dramatic about-face in the 1990s and moved towards an essentially market-dominated approach. Was it pushed or did it go willingly? What role, if any, did Western governments and international financial institutions play? And what of the role of the late apartheid state and South African business? Did leaders and comrades ‘sell out’ the ANC’s emancipatory policy vision? Drawing on primary archival evidence as well as extensive interviews with key protagonists across the political, non-government and business spectrum, the authors argue that the ANC’s emancipatory policy agenda was broadly to establish a social democratic welfare state to uphold rights of social citizenship. However, its economic policy framework to realise this mission was either non-existent or egregiously misguided. With the damning revelations of the Zondo Commission of Inquiry into State Capture on the massive corruption of the South African body politic, the timing of this book could not be more relevant. South Africans need to confront the economic and social policy choices that the liberation movement made and to see how these decisions may have facilitated the conditions for corruption – not only of a crude financial character but also of our emancipatory values as a liberation movement – to emerge and flourish. ""Shadow of Liberation explores in intricate detail the twists, turns, contestations and compromises of the African National Congress’ economic and social policy-making, with a particular emphasis on the transition era of the 1990s and the early years of democracy. Padayachee and Van Niekerk focus on the primary question of how and why the ANC, given its historical egalitarian, redistributive stance, did such a dramatic about-face in the 1990s and moved towards an essentially market-dominated approach. Was it pushed or did it go willingly? What role, if any, did Western governments and international financial institutions play? And what of the role of the late apartheid state and South African business? Did leaders and comrades ‘sell out’ the ANC’s emancipatory policy vision? Drawing on primary archival evidence as well as extensive interviews with key protagonists across the political, non-government and business spectrum, the authors argue that the ANC’s emancipatory policy agenda was broadly to establish a social democratic welfare state to uphold rights of social citizenship. However, its economic policy framework to realise this mission was either non-existent or egregiously misguided."
This book presents a comprehensive analysis of a remarkable and unexpected outcome of the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence.
Despite defeat in the Scottish referendum, the two leading parties ...in the Yes campaign - the Scottish National Party and Scottish Green Party - experienced an extraordinary surge in membership. The book explains these events, examining the relationship between political parties and social movements, and it assesses the long-term consequences of the surge. Based on surveys of members and interviews with party and movement actors since the referendum, the book analyses the members' involvement in the 2014 referendum, their motives for joining a party, their backgrounds and political attitudes, and their behaviour as party members. A key component of the book is how the surge changed the parties - socio-demographically, ideologically and organisationally.
This book will appeal to scholars, students and observers of electoral politics, political participation, social and political movements, and political parties and their members, and more broadly to those interested in the debate on Scottish independence, British politics and comparative politics.
Often dismissed as window dressing, nominally democratic institutions, such as legislatures and political parties, play an important role in non-democratic regimes. In a comprehensive cross-national ...study of all non-democratic states from 1946 to 2002 that examines the political uses of these institutions by dictators, Jennifer Gandhi finds that legislative and partisan institutions are an important component in the operation and survival of authoritarian regimes. She examines how and why these institutions are useful to dictatorships in maintaining power. In their efforts to neutralize threats to their power and to solicit cooperation from society, autocratic leaders use these institutions to organize concessions to potential opposition. The use of legislatures and parties to co-opt opposition results in significant institutional effects on policies and outcomes under dictatorship.
This paper aims to contribute to the nascent field of research on affective polarisation in liberal democracies by reflecting on the conceptual ambiguities as well as potentials inherent in the ...concept. Based on a systematic, critical review of 78 articles, I discuss three main ambiguities in the current literature on affective polarisation in multi-party democracies. Those concern firstly, the object of dislike; secondly, the nature of dislike; and thirdly, how to make sense of the concept of “polarisation” in the context of affective polarisation. I then propose to use the existing ambiguities as a basis to work towards a more nuanced conceptualisation of affective polarisation which allows us to distinguish it from neighbouring concepts and to further differentiate between different constellations and degrees of affective polarisation. I conclude by arguing in favour of taking a broader approach to studying affective polarisation than done so far, and by suggesting some directions for future research.
The empirical evidence concerning the ‘personalization of politics' thesis is, at best, mixed. The analysis of a new data-set on the media coverage of national elections in six Western European ...countries serves to reinforce this overall rather sceptical conclusion. The analysis shows that, in the national elections in the six countries covered (Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom UK), there is no general trend to increasing personalization or increasing concentration of the media coverage on a limited set of particularly visible personalities. Among the six countries, the exception to this overall assessment is the Netherlands, where we find both a trend towards increasing personalization and increasing concentration of the public attention on a limited set of personalities. Rather than an increasing level of personalization, what we generally observe are large country-specific differences in the overall degree of personalization and of the concentration of attention on the top candidates.
What historical factors transformed American politics into the institution we know today? This in-depth look at America's party system traces its efficacy, sustainability, and popularity through six ...influential presidencies spanning 1790 to the present day.- Theorizes how the presidencies of Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, McKinley, FDR, and Ronald Reagan marked the beginning of a new political party system at the time and considers how Obama's election might signal the latest transformation- Contains essays that explain how political beliefs affect party identification, examine each party's platform on national security issues, and identify the effects the Trump campaign has on the Republican Party- Features 15 primary documents including excerpts from the Federalist Papers and relevant sections of the U.S. Constitution- Includes maps, bar and line graphs, and pie charts to illustrate key elements of the party system
Using decades of public opinion data from the US, UK, Australia, Germany and Canada, and distinguishing between three concepts - issue ownership, performance and generalised competence - Green and ...Jennings show how political parties come to gain or lose 'ownership' of issues, how they are judged on their performance in government across policy issues and how they develop a reputation for competence (or incompetence) over a period in office. Their analysis tracks the major events causing people to re-evaluate party reputations and the costs of governing which cause electorates to punish parties in power. They reveal why, when and how these movements in public opinion matter to elections. The implications are important for long-standing debates about performance and partisanship, and reveal that public opinion about party and governing competence is, to a great extent, the product of major shocks and predictable dynamics.
This research note describes an update to Bormann and Golder's 2013 Democratic Electoral Systems (DES) dataset. We extend the temporal scope of the previous dataset by adding information for all ...legislative and presidential elections that took place in democratic states from 2011 through 2020. More significantly, the DES dataset now includes information on all elections that are considered democratic by at least one of five different measures of regime type: Democracy and Dictatorship (DD), Freedom House (FH), Polity5, Boix-Miller-Rosato (BMR), and Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The result is that the new DES dataset has greater utility and is over 30% larger than the previous one. A brief overview of the data is presented.
