What if the angry white man is a woman? The gender gap in voting for the populist radical right

The archetypal populist radical right voter is usually thought of as being male, with female voters less likely to back these parties in elections. But many of these parties have nevertheless drawn on a substantial share of support from women. Outlining results from a recent study, Niels Spierings writes that although there is a gender gap in support for populist radical right parties, focusing on their female supporters can provide a more nuanced understanding of their success

Trust and Tolerance across the Middle East and North Africa: A Comparative Perspective on the Impact of the Arab Uprisings

The protests that swept the Arab Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are expected to have influenced two key civic attitudes fundamental to well-functioning democracies: trust and tolerance. However, systematic comparative assessments of the general patterns and particularities in this region are rare. This contribution theorizes the uprisings’ impact and presents new society-level measurements of trust and tolerance for the MENA, synchronizing over 40 Arab Barometer and World Values Survey surveys on Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Tunisia, and Yemen, from before and after the uprisings. The analyses firstly show political-institutional trust falling in the uprisings’ aftermath in countries that went through democratic reform or regime change. It appears that politicians misbehaving and reforms not resolving social problems hurt people’s trust in politics. Secondly, in democratic transition countries Egypt and Tunisia, a decrease in social trust reflected the pattern of political-institutional trust indicating a spill-over effect. Thirdly, ethno-religious tolerance dropped region-wide after the uprisings, indicating that the aftermath of religious conflict impacted the entire Arab region. These results support rational-choice institutionalist theories, while at the same time refining them for the MENA context

Is Twitter a populist paradise?

A prominent social media presence is typically seen as critical to the success of populist politicians. However, Kristof Jacobs and Niels Spierings find that in the key case of the Netherlands, populist politicians were slower to adopt Twitter and engage with fewer people on it, seemingly preferring instead to stick to their own echo chamber

Islamic attitudes and the support for Gender Equality and Democracy in Seven Arab Countries, and the role of anti-­â€Western feelings

In the societal and scientific discussions about the support for democracy and gender equality in the Arab Middle East, this study engages the triangular theory, which predicts that Islamic orientations influence gender equality attitudes and democracy negatively, and attitudes towards gender equality are also expected to lead to more democratic support, partly channelling the influence of Islam. This theory was tested on Arab Barometer data for seven countries, including three different dimensions of Islamic-religious identity: affiliation, piety, and political-Islamist attitudes. The analyses roughly back the triangular model, but for democratic support only the Islamist values seem important, partly working through economic gender equality attitudes. Attitudes towards women’s position in politics and education seem unrelated to democratic support. In addition, this study applies the gender and postcolonial concept of ‘othering’ to the triangular model. Theoretically it predicts that in the current neo-colonial era, anti-Western feelings might create more Islamic and less democracy and gender equal attitudes simultaneously, making Islam’s impact partly spurious. Empirically, this is modestly supported for the Islamist-democracy link only. However, anti-Western feelings do relate to gender equality, democratic support, and religious attitudes, and deserves more attention when studying democracy and gender equality in the Arab Middle East

Structural position and relative deprivation among recent migrants:A longitudinal take on the integration paradox

The relevance of recent migrants? broader structural position for their destination country identification is studied in this manuscript. In three ways, we build upon previous work referring to an integration paradox, concluding that more structurally integrated migrants turn away from the destination country. First, we extend existing research that mainly tests this for migrants? educational level, by acknowledging that structural integration also includes migrants? economic position. Second, we elaborate on the relative deprivation framework by testing how a mismatch between educational and economic position affects destination country identification. Third, we not only study how migrants feel about the native population, used as outcome in most integration paradox studies, but also for a sense of belonging to the destination country. We test our hypotheses cross-sectionally and dynamically using the New Immigrants to the Netherlands Survey. Results indicate that migrants? educational and economic position hardly affects the way they feel about the native population, whilst a higher structural position does hamper a sense of belonging to the destination country. This latter finding is not explained by a mismatch between educational and economic position, as a mismatch does not systematically affect new immigrants? feelings about the native population or their sense of belonging

Populist MPs on Facebook: Adoption and emotional reactions in Austria, the Netherlands, and Sweden

The argument goes that social media can reinforce the rise of populism as populists' emotionally charged language fits well with social media algorithms. However, whether this potential materializes in practice depends on (1) populists' actual social media adoption and (2) whether their messages actually elicit more (emotional) responses. This is a study of those two core elements of populist politicians' presence on Facebook. We examine 682 members of parliament (MPs) Facebook uptake in the Netherlands, Sweden, and Austria and the emoji responses to 10,355 of their posts. First, we argue that populist parties' centralized structure enforces discipline, which makes Facebook use by populist MPs other than the leader more problematic. Our study shows indeed that populist party leaders use Facebook prolifically to reach out to their community, but relatively few of populist parties' other MPs use Facebook. Second, we argue that Facebook posts of populist MPs activate feelings of indignation, triggering responses that are more emotional. Empirically this expectation is borne out. Compared to other parties, messages posted by populist actors receive more emojis than ordinary likes. In particular, “anger” and “haha” stand out. An exploration of the content of such messages shows that both are related: “haha” also reflects sarcastic ridiculing of political opponents, paving the way for anger.publishedVersio

Changing roles of religiosity and patriarchy in women's employment in different religions in Europe between 2004 and 2016

Objective: This paper seeks to understand the changing roles of religiosity and gender attitudes in the employment of women in Europe between 2004 and 2016. Background: Religiosity and gender traditionalism are both considered to decrease the likelihood of women’s employment. This study argues that this relationship needs to be decoupled, as religiosity and gender traditionalism have different underlying mechanisms. Method: We analysed rounds 2 (2004), 4 (2008), 8 (2010), and 10 (2016) of the European Social Survey (ESS), which include, among other data, information on employment, religious affiliation, religiosity, and gender role attitudes in 16 countries (N=39,233). Results: We show that taking religiosity into account further increases the already increased likelihood of employment for Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish women compared to women with no religion. We also find, however, that religiosity decreases the employment gap between Muslim and Orthodox women on the one hand and secular women on the other. Including gender role attitudes in the model only marginally explains the employment gap. Conclusion: Our findings support the idea that the mechanisms that underlie the relationships religiosity and traditional gender role attitudes have with women's employment differ. Over time, the likelihood of employment increases for women of all religions, except for Muslim women, among whom it drops

Migrant Women’s Employment: International Turkish Migrants in Europe, Their Descendants, and Their Non-Migrant Counterparts in Turkey

When compared with native-born women, migrant women have lower employment likelihoods. However, to reveal the relationship between migration and employment, migrant women need to be compared to those remaining in the origin regions and across generations. This study is the first to fill this gap by employing a dissimilation-from-origins and across-generations perspective. We test the hypothesis that migration to more welfare-state based and liberal contexts increase women’s employment likelihood among migrants and the second generation. The 2000 Families data enable a unique comparison of Turkish international migrants, including Turkish-origin women born in Europe, and their non-migrant counterparts from the same regions in Turkey. Furthermore, we theorize and test whether differences in employment are explained by differences in family composition, education, and culture (religiosity and gender attitudes). We find migration leads to a higher likelihood of paid employment for the second generation and international migrant women, in that order. Education and religiosity are the main explanatory factors for differences between non-migrants and the international migrants, including the second generation. Parenthood, while explaining differences between migrant and destination ‘native’ women, hardly explains differences between migrant women and their non-migrant counterparts. Overall, we find strong support for the hypothesis that migration increases women’s employment

Meer parlementariërs zoals onszelf:Wie kiezen voor vrouwen, MBO’ers, dorpelingen en vakmensen?

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Working class economic insecurity and voting for radical right and radical left parties

The radical right's rise is widely assumed to go hand-in-hand with increasing economic insecurity, as manual workers are considered typical radical right voters. We question whether economic insecurity actually drives working class members to vote for radical parties, both right and left. Using European Social Survey data from 12 Western European countries (2002–2014), we tested whether less secure employment links to vote for such parties. We did this by distinguishing people in permanent employment from those in the same social class but not in permanent employment. Our outcome was surprising: whereas perceived job insecurity correlated with radical right voting, actual economic insecurity in terms of temporary employment was not associated with greater likelihood of voting for a radical right party among the working class. Instead, it was the radical left for which we found indications that it appealed more to groups of people in such an insecure economic position