European Populism: A Communicative Aspect

This paper deals with the growing populism movement in Europe. This movement is critical of the European Union and its certain economic and immigration policies. The studies dominant in the field look at different communicative aspects of these phenomena. They point at styles and rhetoric related to populism and failures of the pro-EU forces to communicate effectively why these policies are right and populist citizens are wrong.This paper argues that the problem is not in successes or failures of communication per se, but in shutting out many European citizens from the debate in the public sphere. Not finding reflections of the concerns in the media and policies, and having fewer options to relay their messages to elites perceived to be in power in the EU, these citizens become ‘populist citizens’, and they start voting for populist parties in growing numbers.The article concludes that studies of a communicative aspect of populism need not only discuss mediation, but the policies related to this mediation. Policies may be successful only when people accept them after a free debate. That is what was in the heart of the communicative acts in European history

Shifting Welfare Policy Positions: The Impact of Radical Right Populist Party Success Beyond Migration Politics

Political parties respond strategically to the electoral success of radical right populist parties (RRPPs). While previous research has focused on programmatic responses on cultural conflict issues, we are expanding the research on policy position adaption to the economic left-right issue of welfare-state politics. Actual and potential supporters of RRPPs do not only feel threatened by migration or liberal conceptions of society but are also often confronted with real or perceived socio-economic decline. Therefore, we argue that established parties do not only react by changing their socio-cultural policy offers but also by adjusting their welfare state policy positions. Based on parties' voter potentials and issue ownership theory, we investigate whether such changes are especially pronounced for left-of-center parties. Analysing data from 18 West European countries since 1985, we find that non-RRPPs indeed advocate more leftist positions on welfare state policies in response to increasing electoral support for RRPPs. This effect is especially pronounced for economically left-of-centre parties as these parties might consider this to be a promising strategy to win back voters from the populist radical right

The Resurgence of Nationalist-Populist Movements in Central and Eastern European States and the European Union

This paper examines the causes of the resurgence of populism and nationalism in status quo Central and Eastern Europe. It analyzes the case studies of Poland, Hungary, and Czech Republic in order to test the two explanations of this resurgence. The proposed explanations include effects of transition as the causes of the observed phenomenon, while the second one emphasizes the process of EU accession as the primary cause. The findings support that the loss of social welfare benefits during transition contribute to the success of populist parties. In addition, the unique political situation of CEECs that had allowed populist parties to gain opposition spots through which it was convenient to promote an anti-establishment agenda. The accession to the EU in 2004 did not directly contribute to a negative perception of democracy or support for populist parties, however, democratic deficit of the EU and lack of coherent and sensible policy allowed the populist parties to use the EU as “the elite” against which they could mobilize support. I conclude that support of populist and nationalist parties heavily depends on post-truth and construction of economic issues, which is the same political strategy used by parties and politicians both in CEECs and other European states

Propinquity & Perturbation : addressing Cross-National Variation in the Size of the Urban-Rural Divide Regarding Attitudes Towards Immigrants

European attitudes towards immigrants are geographically clustered, with the residents of urban areas tending to view immigrants more favourably than their rural counterparts. This study employs a novel approach to understanding anti-immigration sentiment by addressing cross-national variation in the size of the urban-rural divide of attitudes towards immigrants. By drawing from threat theories, contact theories and social identity perspectives, theoretical mechanisms are proposed to explain how higher national income inequality, native-born unemployment, actual immigrant populations and perceived immigrant populations act distinctly on native urban and rural populations. Using data from Rounds 8 and 9 of the European Social Survey, Eurostat, the Special Eurobarometer 469: Integration of immigrants in the European Union and The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development for twelve Western European nations, it was first demonstrated that attitudes towards immigrants indeed differ between rural and urban populations and that these differences vary between countries. Thereupon, it was shown that income inequality and native-born unemployment moderate the influence of urban and rural settings on attitudes towards immigrants. Higher perceived immigrant populations were also found to interact with residential settings, although not as expected. Higher national income inequality, native-born unemployment and perceived immigrant populations are all associated with smaller urban-rural gaps regarding attitudes towards immigrants. By controlling for individual-level demographic variables, these findings offer empirical support for the contextual effects hypothesis. Moreover, these findings translate into strategies that policy makers can employ to mitigate divergent urban and rural attitudes towards immigrants

Entrenched time delays versus accelerating opinion dynamics: are advanced democracies inherently unstable?

Modern societies face the challenge that the time scale of opinion formation is continuously accelerating in contrast to the time scale of political decision making. With the latter remaining of the order of the election cycle we examine here the case that the political state of a society is determined by the continuously evolving values of the electorate. Given this assumption we show that the time lags inherent in the election cycle will inevitable lead to political instabilities for advanced democracies characterized both by an accelerating pace of opinion dynamics and by high sensibilities (political correctness) to deviations from mainstream values. Our result is based on the observation that dynamical systems become generically unstable whenever time delays become comparable to the time it takes to adapt to the steady state. The time needed to recover from external shocks grows in addition dramatically close to the transition. Our estimates for the order of magnitude of the involved time scales indicate that socio-political instabilities may develop once the aggregate time scale for the evolution of the political values of the electorate falls below 7-15 months.Comment: European Physical Journal B (in press

Supranational Identity Politics: Sovereignism in the EU

The implementation of identity politics policies conceived at a supranational level appears to motivate the coordination of populist movements, the radicalization of their discourses, and an increasing resentment towards minority groups. I investigate the reaction of populist sovereignist political movements, among recently admitted EU member states, to the implementation of European Union policies that involve the positive discrimination of minority groups and mandated refugee relocations. The implementation of such policies seems to have contributed to the resentment toward policy-favored minorities, the increase of anti-immigration values, the success of extremist political expressions, and the mistrust of political institutions and traditional parties. The research relies on a multiple case studies approach to identify the effects of the implementation of EU-mandated affirmative action and immigration policies. The political and economic landscapes of study cases, taken from post-communist Eastern Europe (primarily, Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary), are described based on the existing literature. The general arguments are supported through a review of quantitative studies that incorporate regression analyses on electoral data and web content analysis. Arguments are also complemented by a review of World Bank, OECD and Eurostat reports, election results, as well as the theoretical literature on ethnic competition, welfare spending, multiculturalism, and the specifics of the political parties and systems of the selected countries

Us vs. Them: A Dataset of Populist Attitudes, News Bias and Emotions

Computational modelling of political discourse tasks has become an increasingly important area of research in natural language processing. Populist rhetoric has risen across the political sphere in recent years; however, computational approaches to it have been scarce due to its complex nature. In this paper, we present the new $\textit{Us vs. Them}$ dataset, consisting of 6861 Reddit comments annotated for populist attitudes and the first large-scale computational models of this phenomenon. We investigate the relationship between populist mindsets and social groups, as well as a range of emotions typically associated with these. We set a baseline for two tasks related to populist attitudes and present a set of multi-task learning models that leverage and demonstrate the importance of emotion and group identification as auxiliary tasks.Comment: Camera-ready version in EACL 202