Mapping the Greek party system after the 2015 elections: how the economy and Europe have merged into a single issue

The Greek government is still attempting to negotiate a long-term solution to the country’s debt problem, but what are the lasting implications of the 2015 Greek parliamentary elections for politics in Greece? Alexia Katsanidou and Simon Otjes present a new model for understanding the Greek party system. They argue that with the country’s economy becoming so closely linked to the issue of Europe, politics within Greece can no longer be understood along traditional left-right lines. Instead parties are now distinguished on the one hand by their stance toward the country’s bailout programme, and on the other by a cultural dimension which incorporates their stances on immigration and other socio-cultural issues

Shifting dynamics: Mapping the divisions between and within party groups in the European Parliament ahead of the 2019 elections

Party competition in the European Parliament has changed substantially in the aftermath of the Eurozone and migration crises. While the parliament was once characterised by a split between parties on the left and right, parties are also now sharply divided over their policies on immigration and European integration. Drawing on new research, Alexia Katsanidou and Zoe Lefkofridi illustrate how these shifting dynamics have affected the coherence of European party groups and the competition between them ahead of the 2019 European Parliament elections

Back to black:values, ideologies, and the black box of political radicalization

This article focuses on the psychological drivers of anomic and violent behaviors described as ‘new radicalisms’ in the context of the Eurozone economic crisis. The authors make a conceptual and empirical distinction between the desire for change forward against the old (defined as radicalism) and the desire for change backward against the new (defined as reactionism). Using 2015 data from Greece, multinomial logit models test the role of core values that map on the desire for change against the new and the desire for change against the old as predictors of dormant and actualized anomic and violent behaviors. The findings support that desire for conservation triggered reactionist political engagement in Greece that spans across the left/right ideology spectrum

The politics of anti-environmentalism: positional issue framing by the European radical right

The environment is traditionally considered as a valence issue where all political parties endorse the same position and differ only on the degree to which they emphasize it. Our paper challenges this view by arguing that the environment is increasingly perceived as a positional issue. We examine cross-country mass survey data and demonstrate that many voters perceive a trade-off between environmental protection and economic growth. This perception is increasingly reflected in the discourse of political parties. In particular, expert surveys and party manifesto data indicate the existence of anti-environmental positions among radical right/nationalist parties, a finding which challenges the view that the environment is a distinctively left-wing issue. By qualitatively analyzing the most recent national and European election manifestos of thirteen radical right parties in Western Europe we demonstrate the ways in which these parties frame their anti-environmental positions and conclude that analyses of voting behaviour should take into account the positional nature of the issues associated with environmental protection

Was EU-wide vaccine procurement the strategy Germans wanted?

Last year the EU made the decision to buy and distribute COVID-19 vaccines centrally, which has since proved controversial. Ann-Kathrin Reinl, Steffen Pötzschke and Alexia Katsanidou (GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences) surveyed public opinion to find out whether Germans initially agreed with the strategy

Together we stand? Transnational solidarity in the EU in times of crises

After more than a decade of consecutive crises, the issue of transnational solidarity is becoming increasingly relevant for the European Union. This research note compares the current coronavirus disease-2019 crisis to previous ones and investigates the willingness of European Union citizens to show solidarity towards fellow member states. We test the influence of socio-political attitudes of citizens on solidarity preferences in three crisis scenarios. We analyse Greece and Germany as cases differently affected by the past decade's crises and cases that chose different crisis management strategies when facing the novel virus. Our findings indicate that solidarity is highest in a pandemic, while for all crisis scenarios it is higher in Greece than in Germany. Despite variations in the degree of solidarity associated relationships with socio-political attitudes remain consistent

Data policies, data management, and the quality of academic writing

Publishing in top-ranking journals in the social sciences and international relations requires writing with clarity. Accurately described and transparent methods sections ensure high-quality academic writing. The methodology section of empirical papers should explain the exact steps taken by the authors when operationalizing concepts and testing hypotheses to facilitate replication. This also allows for monitoring quality, challenging findings, and promoting good scientific practices. The quality of methodology sections is the result of the interaction between academic cultures of data sharing, effective application of rules, and good-quality research data management (RDM). This article evaluates the impact of standards on replicability. We present an empirical analysis of a set of sixty-six articles published during the period 1984–2013 that use data from all waves of the European Values Survey. We find differences demonstrating the impact of good RDM and data policies on good scientific practice

Back to Black: Values, Ideology and the Black Box of Political Radicalization

This article focuses on the psychological drivers of anomic and violent behaviors described as ‘new radicalisms’ in the context of the Eurozone economic crisis. The authors make a conceptual and empirical distinction between the desire for change forward against the old (defined as radicalism) and the desire for change backward against the new (defined as reactionism). Using 2015 data from Greece, multinomial logit models test the role of core values that map on the desire for change against the new and the desire for change against the old as predictors of dormant and actualized anomic and violent behaviors. The findings support that desire for conservation triggered reactionist political engagement in Greece that spans across the left/right ideology spectrum

Limitations of democratic rights during the Covid-19 pandemic - exploring the citizens’ perception and discussions on dangers to democracy in Germany

The governments' mitigation measures to fight the COVID-19 pandemic are unprecedented in our post-war history. For overcoming this crisis, citizens were expected to act in compliance with these measures in order to control the spread of the virus and keep public health systems functional. This call for protecting the public health at the same time confronted citizens with several and severe limitations of their democratic freedoms and rights: confinement, restriction on freedoms of movement, religion, specific provisions for public protest and finally also limitations to the right of education by school closures. This paper analyzes how citizens perceive the threat the COVID-19 pandemic and especially the mitigation measures posed for democracy. We assume that pandemic waves and pandemic fatigue have an impact on the perception of threat. To see the overall societal picture, we exploit a large-scale archive of online discourse on Twitter out of which we extract democracy-related discourse with the same temporal and geospatial coverage for our investigation. From that data source, we apply computational methods to extract time series data reflecting aggregated opinions and their evolution over time concerned with the correlation of attitudes towards democracy. We them move deeper using a longitudinal panel survey we conducted in November/December 2020, March/April 2021, and July/August 2021. to have a view of the relationship between citizens’ socio-economic status and basic political attitudes. Our multi-method analysis bases on the German case and covers the period from December 2020 to August 2021