How radical right populist parties use the representation of women as an electoral tool

Although radical right populist parties in Europe are still predominantly led by and supported by men, there has been a marked increase in the number of women with high profile roles in these parties. Drawing on a new study, Ana Catalano Weeks, Bonnie M. Meguid, Miki Caul Kittilson and Hilde Coffé ask whether we should view this trend as a genuine step toward better representation for women

Feminizing political parties: women’s party member organizations within European parliamentary parties

Party member women’s organizations were early features of party development. While some contemporary studies maintain these are important sites for the substantive representation of women, there is also a claim that they are in decline. Our primary purpose here is to establish the existence of party member women’s organizations – as one test of the first dimension of party feminization: the inclusion of women. We draw on new survey data of 17 European countries provided by Scarrow, Poguntke and Webb. We establish that almost half have a party member women’s organization. The new data also permits analysis of relationships between party member women’s organization and gender quotas for the top party leadership body (National Executive Committee (NEC)), women’s presence among the party leadership and candidate quota rules. Together we see these (i) as a means to establish whether women are marginalized within the party, thereby limiting descriptive representation and (ii) as surrogate measures for women’s substantive representation. We importantly find that the presence of a party member women’s organization does not come at the cost of women’s presence on the NEC. In the final section, we turn our attention to building a new comparative research agenda that more fully addresses substantive representation

Who participates in local government? Evidence from meeting minutes

Scholars and policymakers have highlighted institutions that enable community participation as a potential buffer against existing political inequalities. Yet these venues may bias policy discussions in favor of an unrepresentative group of individuals. To explore who participates, we compile a novel data set by coding thousands of instances of citizens speaking at planning and zoning board meetings concerning housing development. We match individuals to a voter file to investigate local political participation in housing and development policy. We find that individuals who are older, male, longtime residents, voters in local elections, and homeowners are significantly more likely to participate in these meetings. These individuals overwhelmingly (and to a much greater degree than the general public) oppose new housing construction. These participatory inequalities have important policy implications and may be contributing to rising housing costs.Accepted manuscrip

Satisfaction with democracy and voter turnout

Numerous studies conclude that countries in which citizens express higher levels of satisfaction with democracy also tend to display higher levels of voter turnout in national elections. Yet it is difficult to draw causal inferences from this positive cross-sectional relationship, because democracies feature many historical, cultural, and institutional differences that are not easily controlled for in cross-sectional comparisons. We apply an alternative, temporal approach to this issue by asking the question: Are over-time declines (increases) in aggregate levels of satisfaction within democracies associated with increases (declines) in levels of voter turnout within these democracies? Our temporal analysis of this relationship in 12 democracies over the period 1976–2011 reveals a pattern that is the opposite of that suggested by previous cross-sectional studies: namely, we find that over-time increases in citizens’ satisfaction with democracy are associated with significant decreases in voter turnout in national elections in these countries. </jats:p

The mobilising effect of political choice

Political choice is central to citizens’ participation in elections. Nonetheless, little is known about the individual-level mechanisms that link political choice and turnout. It is argued in this article that turnout decisions are shaped not only by the differences between the parties (party polarisation), but also by the closeness of parties to citizens’ own ideological position (congruence), and that congruence matters more in polarised systems where more is at stake. Analysing cross-national survey data from 80 elections, it is found that both polarisation and congruence have a mobilising effect, but that polarisation moderates the effect of congruence on turnout. To further explore the causal effect of political choice, the arrival of a new radical right-wing party in Germany, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), is leveraged and the findings show that the presence of the AfD had a mobilising effect, especially for citizens with congruent views

Feminist allies and strategic partners: Exploring the relationship between the women’s movement and political parties

Western political parties have been in decline in recent decades and they continue to be viewed as male institutions. Despite this, electoral politics is important to the women’s movement as a means by which to advance feminist interests. This article builds upon feminist critiques of political parties by analyzing original qualitative data undertaken with feminists in the United States and United Kingdom in order to explore how activists view political parties. The research finds that although many hold negative views, in line with broader debates concerning disengagement, they also recognize the importance of electoral politics and the need to work with individual politicians. Party and feminist ideology shapes those views, whereby politicians on the left are viewed as feminist allies and those on the right are framed as strategic partners

Zippin’ up my boots, goin’ back to my roots: Radical left parties in Southern Europe

Radical left parties actively encourage the participation of their members in internal decision-making and insist on promoting organised links to trade unions and social movements. As a party family, they deviate from what is considered to be the trend in which Western political parties have turned their backs on their social roots. Drawing on the experience of South European radical left parties from the fall of the Berlin Wall until the recent financial crisis, we argue that ideology, electoral incentives, party competition and external events explain the radical left's pronounced emphasis on linkage, while organisational trajectory explains variation within the party family in terms of the linkage strategies pursued

Can we rate public support for democracy in a comparable way? Cross-national equivalence of democratic attitudes in the World Value Survey

In this study we examine the cross-cultural equivalence of two scales that measure attitudes toward democracy across 36 countries in the World Value Survey (WVS) 2000. We examine the equivalence of these scales in order to explore if we can meaningfully compare democratic attitudes across countries. Multiple group confirmatory factor analyses (MGCFA) is applied to answer this question. The analyses indicate that the scales may be compared but only to a certain extent and not across all the countries. We close this article by discussing the implications of the findings

Opinion climates and immigrant political action: a cross-national study of 25 European democracies

We develop a model of immigrant political action that connects individual motivations to become politically involved with the context in which participation takes place. The article posits that opinion climates in the form of hostility or openness toward immigrants shape the opportunity structure for immigrant political engagement by contributing to the social costs and political benefits of participation. We argue that friendly opinion climates toward immigrants enable political action among immigrants, and facilitate the politicization of political discontent. Using survey data from the European Social Survey (ESS) 2002 to 2010 in 25 European democracies, our analyses reveal that more positive opinion climates-at the level of countries and regions-increase immigrant political engagement, especially among immigrants dissatisfied with the political system. However, this effect is limited to uninstitutionalized political action, as opinion climates have no observable impact on participation in institutionalized politics