How Do Populist Voters Rate Their Political Leaders? Comparing Citizen Assessments in Three Jurisdictions

Drawing from the field of management studies, we explore how a sample of voters in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom use a leader character framework to judge political leadership. We ask, how do voters actually assess the character of their current leaders? And, in light of the populist zeitgeist, do people who hold a populist attitude differ markedly in how they judge the character of political leaders? Our results show that voters generally consider character important. However, voters who lean toward populism believe character matters less in political leadership than individuals who scored low on the populism indicator. This durable difference merits more exploration in a political context marked by populism. Our findings about the factors that influence vote choice contribute to this conversation and to extant research that reports that some voters pay greater attention to leader characteristics than do others

Living Apart Together? The Organization of Political Parties beyond the Nation-State: The Flemish Case

This article aims to contribute both theoretically and empirically to the study of political parties in the EU context, focusing on party organisation. Theoretically, it draws on insights from various literatures to develop a novel typology of multilevel party organisation specific to the EU context. It argues that parties are goal-seeking actors that choose their organisation based on a cost-benefit analysis, involving both party characteristics and the institutional context. Empirically, the article applies this framework on the Flemish political parties. It finds that rational goal-seeking behaviour cannot fully account for parties’ organisational choices. Results show that normative and historical considerations play a crucial role in parties’ cost-benefit analysis. It therefore calls upon future research to expand the number of comparative studies and to further assess parties’ goal-seeking behaviour regarding their multilevel organisation

The Populist Radical Right in the US: New Media and the 2018 Arizona Senate Primary

This article analyzes the appeal of populist radical right (PRR) politics in the US after the election of Donald Trump. Specifically, I seek to explain how new media helps politicians representing the PRR secure support in Republican primaries. Using an online survey of 1052 Arizona Republicans in the lead-up to the August 2018 Senate primary, I evaluate support for three candidates: Rep. Martha McSally, former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and Kelli Ward, a physician. The findings highlight a bifurcation in the drivers for support of PRR candidacies: Skepticism of immigration drives the Arpaio vote, while use of social media news and belief in party convergence mobilize Ward’s support. The results demonstrate that support for PRR politicians in the Arizona primary is concentrated in two groups, anti-immigrant and anti-establishment, and that the anti-establishment voters are more likely to access news on social media. These findings indicate that social media news consumption does shape voter perceptions about mainstream parties favorably for the PRR

The Role of Knowledge in Food Democracy

If food democracy is about who gets to determine the food that we eat and the character of the underlying food system, then we must examine not only who gets to make decisions that impact on food but also on what evidence, or knowledge, these decisions are made. This article argues that widening the democratic scope of knowledge on which our decisions on food are based is an essential component of food democracy. Food democracies do not just call for citizens to be knowledgeable about the food system but for all stakeholders to actively contribute to the holistic understanding of the food system. Four dimensions of knowledge democracy are set out: The co-production of knowledge with stakeholders; harnessing non-cognitive knowledge represented in arts and culture; knowledge as a tool for action; and the open access and sharing of knowledge. This framework is then used to explore how knowledge is currently already produced and used in a way that enhances food democracy, including through Participatory Action Research with peasant farmers, using the arts to create a ‘contemplative commons’ about food and the unique dialogue process through which the social movement La Vía Campesina operates. Based on these, and other, examples the article concludes that universities, and other recognized centres of knowledge production, need to focus not only on creating new knowledge partnerships but also on finding spaces to challenge and shift accepted ways of knowing in order to better promote food democracy

Political Interest among European Youth with and without an Immigrant Background

Our article investigates political engagement among youth with and without an immigration background. Tapping to current debates on intergenerational assimilation processes in Europe, we look at differences in levels of political interest between immigrants, children of immigrants and natives. In particular, we argue that such differences are a function of respondents’ identification with the receiving society. We predict that among respondents with an immigrant background higher levels of national identification will be positively correlated with political interest. Among natives, political interest will not depend on levels of national identification. These expectations reflect the ideas of the social identity perspective according to which group identification increases adherence to group norms and adherence to norms is stronger among individuals who suffer from identity uncertainty. We test our model in four European countries: England, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden, using data from the CILS4EU project. Our findings indicate that interest in the politics of the survey country differs between respondents with and without an immigrant background. Respondents with an immigrant background who also have a strong national identification are more likely to report a political interest than natives. Respondents with an immigrant background who have a low national identification, are less likely to report a political interest than natives. The findings also reveal that political discussions at home and associationism positively predict political interest whereas girls show significantly lower odds to be politically interested

Welfare beyond Borders: Filipino Transnational Families’ Informal Social Protection Strategies

Remittances and caregiving arrangements are among the most significant practices of informal social protection against social risks and exclusion among transnational families. This article argues that remittances can provide social protection in cases where formal welfare services do not reach the citizens properly. Furthermore, it illustrates how members of Filipino transnational families can create sustainable informal social protection and utilise it long-term. The transnational practices are analysed to show how migrant capital, particularly the intersection of economic and social capital (Bourdieu, 1986), is transferred to informal social protection through meaningful reciprocity between the senders and recipients of remittances. Successful allocation of remittances and negotiation of care arrangements depend on the realisation of reciprocity and its social context, such as life circumstances, moral obligations and migrants’ personal goals for migration. The data draw on observations and 41 qualitative interviews conducted both in Finland and in the Philippines

Contacts between Natives and Migrants in Germany: Perceptions of the Native Population since 1980 and an Examination of the Contact Hypotheses

For decades, migration to Germany has been a relevant social phenomenon resulting in an increasing share of foreigners and Germans with migration background in the German populace. Additionally, since 2015, Germany has experienced a substantial increase in the immigration of people seeking refuge and asylum from civil war, economic and environmental catastrophes, and other adverse living conditions. These developments can be assumed to have led to an increase in intergroup contact between Germans and foreigners. We investigate this phenomenon in a multifaceted fashion by combining a social indicator and monitoring approach using repeated cross-sections over time with a new panel approach using a short-time panel to study causal relations. As a first step, we descriptively analyze the development of intergroup contact experiences of the German population with foreigners in various areas of life using data from the ALLBUS survey collected over 36 years between 1980 and 2016. Specifically, we detail the diverging contact experiences of participants with and without migration background as well as participants in the former Eastern and Western part of Germany. In a second step, based on Allport’s intergroup contact theory that contact with outgroup members may improve attitudes towards these outgroups and other related findings, we examine the longitudinal processes between positive intergroup contact with foreigners and attitudes towards foreigners using four waves of the GESIS Panel collected over approximately one and a half years. We apply special rigor to these analyses by differentiating stable differences in intergroup contact experiences and attitudes between participants from within-person processes and discussing the implications of this differentiation

A Third Wave of Selective Exposure Research? The Challenges Posed by Hyperpartisan News on Social Media

Hyperpartisan news on social media presents new challenges for selective exposure theory. These challenges are substantial enough to usher in a new era—a third wave—of selective exposure research. In this essay, we trace the history of the first two waves of research in order to better understand the current situation. We then assess the implications of recent developments for selective exposure research

Talkin’ ‘bout a Negotiation: (Un)Transparent Rapporteurs’ Speeches in the European Parliament

For policies to be legitimate, both the policy process and the underlying reasons must be transparent to the public. In the EU, the lion’s share of legislation is nowadays negotiated in informal secluded meeting called trilogues. Therefore, presentation of the trilogues compromise by the rapporteur to the European Parliament (EP) plenary is, arguably, one of the few formal occasions for ‘transparency in process,’ i.e., public access to the details of actual interactions between policymakers. The aim of this article is thus to examine the extent to which rapporteurs are transparent about trilogue negotiations when presenting legislative compromises to the EP during plenary sessions, and to assess whether the extent of transparency is linked to the extent of conflict between legislative actors and to elements of the political context related to rapporteurs. To this purpose, we coded 176 rapporteur speeches and, on this basis, concluded that these speeches poorly discuss the trilogue negotiations. Interinstitutional negotiations are discussed in only 64% of cases, and even when they are, the extent of information about trilogues is generally small. While we do not find support for an effect of political conflicts, some characteristics linked with rapporteurs are significantly related to transparency in process of their speeches. This is the case for their political affiliation and their national culture of transparence

Trans* Politics and the Feminist Project: Revisiting the Politics of Recognition to Resolve Impasses

The debates on, in, and between feminist and trans* movements have been politically intense at best and aggressively hostile at worst. The key contestations have revolved around three issues: First, the question of who constitutes a woman; second, what constitute feminist interests; and third, how trans* politics intersects with feminist politics. Despite decades of debates and scholarship, these impasses remain unbroken. In this article, our aim is to work out a way through these impasses. We argue that all three types of contestations are deeply invested in notions of identity, and therefore dealt with in an identitarian way. This has not been constructive in resolving the antagonistic relationship between the trans* movement and feminism. We aim to disentangle the antagonism within anti-trans* feminist politics on the one hand, and trans* politics’ responses to that antagonism on the other. In so doing, we argue for a politics of status-based recognition (drawing on Fraser, 2000a, 2000b) instead of identity-based recognition, highlighting individuals’ specific needs in society rather than women’s common interests (drawing on Jónasdóttir, 1991), and conceptualising the intersections of the trans* movement and feminism as mutually shaping rather than as trans* as additive to the feminist project (drawing on Walby, 2007, and Walby, Armstrong, and Strid, 2012). We do this by analysing the main contemporary scholarly debates on the relationship between the trans* movement and feminism within feminist and trans* politics. Unafraid of a polemic approach, our selection of material is strategic and illuminates the specific arguments put forward in the article