“Good Citizens” in Democratic Hard Times

How do citizens define their civic obligation when their country faces a democratic threat? Do citizens of a democracy think it is important to uphold liberal democratic values or to participate in governance? Do they embrace values that protect democracy, or do they just protect their political party or “side”? I examine changes to citizenship norms in the context of democratic threat using observational data from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany. I compare trends between 2004 and 2019, which show a weakening in the consensus of “good citizen” norms. Specifically, partisans on the left are more likely to value diversity, vigilance, and tolerance; while partisans on the right become more supportive of values like obeying the law. These differences are reduced in consensus-based political systems, but still the consequences are concerning: when the ties of citizenship norms become weaker, so too does national unity, which is integral to democratic legitimacy and stability

Indexing Immigration and Integration Policy: Lessons from Europe

Immigrant‐related policy indexes have become popular in both U.S. and European contexts, yet these projects boast distinct and divergent trajectories. European indices are characterized by rigorous conceptualization, specificity in elements of policy design (e.g., settings like fees or appeal process), and a variety of measurement strategies. By contrast, U.S. state‐level policy indices exhibit a lack of differentiation between immigration and integration policy and excessive generality in measurement and representation of policy instruments and settings, exacerbated in presenting a policy index as an aggregate count. This paper argues U.S. policy indexing can benefit from the European indexing experience. Following an overview of the state of each field, assessing concept differentiation, specification, and measurement in each, the paper illustrates how even the well‐conceived and specified European integration policy indices run into problems at the analysis stage. It presents a replication‐replacement study to illustrate divergent performance of highly correlated and conceptually agreeing indices, as well as methodological issues inherent to indices of low‐N, including using a policy index as a dependent variable and index selection absenta prioritheorization. It concludes with suggestions for improving American immigration policy indices, as well as general observations on working with statistical power‐challenged indices and data limitations

Immigration Threat, Partisanship, and Democratic Citizenship: Evidence from the US, UK, and Germany

Politicians and media frequently invoke immigration threats to shape public opinion. But how do outgroup threat frames affect norms of citizenship, including behavior, liberal value commitments, and national belonging? This paper presents evidence from an embedded vignette survey experiment in three immigrant-receiving societies: United States, United Kingdom, and Germany. I find immigration threats are filtered through partisanship in polarized settings, and asymmetrically affect norms of “good citizenship” among individuals on the partisan left. However, we see variation within this group: Democrats (US) de-value norms of behavior, like voting and being informed, while Labor supports (UK) repudiate liberal norms like tolerance and rally around national belonging. By contrast, in Germany, we observe more consensus in citizenship norm responses. The strong effect of immigration threat framing on the partisan left brings our attention to the strategic use of immigration discourse to move traditionally sympathetic citizens away from democratic civic ideals

Migration: a step too far for the contemporary global order?

Migration is arguably the single most salient issue in in Western democracies today. Anti-immigrant attitudes have fueled the rise of right-wing populist parties, have proved decisive in swaying a slim margin of the British public to support Brexit and have catalyzed delicate democracies down authoritarian tracks. We contend that because of predominant identity and security concerns, the free movement of people has never become a key element of the contemporary global order despite its qualifying, liberal credentials. Even in the European Union (EU), the integration of migration policy has remained fragmented and differentiated. These omissions are taking their toll as they generate friction between domestic and supranational goals, and as global problems–like the recent refugee crisis–lack ‘global’ or unified solutions. Migration has turned from an orphan of the global order to one of its primary challengers

Individual- and party-level determinants of far-right support among women in Western Europe

Abstract: Support for Western Europe’s far-right is majority-male. However, given the sweeping success of the party family, literature on this ‘gender gap’ belies support given to the radical right by millions of women. We examine differences between men and women’s support for far-right parties, focusing on workplace experience, positions on economic and cultural issues, and features of far-right parties themselves. We find that the received scholarship on blue-collar support for far-right populists is a largely male phenomenon, and women in routine nonmanual (i.e. service, sales, and clerical) work are more likely than those in blue-collar work to support the far-right. Moreover, while men who support the far-right tend to be conservative on other moral issues, certain liberal positions predict far-right support among women, at both the voter and party level. Our analysis suggests that gender differences may obscure the socio-structural and attitudinal bases of support for far-right parties and have broader implications for comparative political behavior and gender and politics

The Exclusionary Foundations of Embedded Liberalism

Abstract: Analyses of embedded liberalism have focused overwhelmingly on trade in goods and capital, to the exclusion of migration. We argue that much as capital controls were essential components of the embedded liberal compromise, so too were restrictions on the democratic and social rights of labor migrants. Generous welfare programs in labor-receiving countries thrived alongside inclusionary immigration policies, but this balanced arrangement was only tenable if migrants were politically excluded in their destination countries. That is, embedded liberalism abroad rested on exclusionary political foundations at home. In bringing together the IPE literature on the “globalization trilemma” with the comparative politics of citizenship, we provide a novel account of how embedded liberalism worked politically, with implications for current debates about the fate of the liberal order in a time of populist resurgence