Suchergebnisse

Abstract
Right-wing populists are said to employ distinctive language to differentiate themselves from mainstream politicians. However, we know little about what makes their language distinct. We investigate this by assembling a novel corpus of speeches and using an automated text analysis tool to identify the keywords used by three right-wing populist leaders (Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen and Matteo Salvini) and three of their mainstream opponents (Hillary Clinton, Emmanuel Macron and Matteo Renzi). We then examine the contexts in which those keywords are used. We find that, while Trump and Salvini are stylistically populist in different ways to Le Pen, what distinguishes all of them is the clarity of the populist message (people vs elites and others) compared to their vaguer opponents. Our results have implications for how we understand populism as both ideology and style across linguistic contexts, in addition to how we conceive of its specificity compared to the mainstream.

Abstract
The party on the ground has traditionally enabled linkage with the party in office along with providing candidates, selectorates, and campaign volunteers. While this still occurs in cities, we do not know how party organisation changes have affected remote areas. To investigate, we examine two remote Australian electorates: the Barkly in the Northern Territory and the Kimberley in Western Australia. Based on interviews with grassroots members, representatives and officials, we conclude that, although parties still exert their traditional functions in some remote areas, in others they have disengaged, rendering membership less meaningful and weakening the chain of democratic legitimacy.

Political scientists have long asserted that populists use simpler language than their mainstream rivals to appeal to ordinary people and distance themselves from elites. However, there is little comparative evidence in support of that claim. In this study, we investigate the linguistic simplicity of four right-wing populists compared to their principal opponents in the United States, France, United Kingdom, and Italy. We do so by analysing a corpus of approximately one million words from leaders' speeches, using a series of linguistics measures for evaluating simplicity. Contrary to expectations, we find that Donald Trump was only slightly simpler than Hillary Clinton, while Nigel Farage in the UK and Marine Le Pen in France were more complex than their main rivals, and Italy's Matteo Salvini was simpler on some measures but not others. We conclude that the simple language claim is not borne out and that other aspects of the received wisdom about populism should be re-examined.

Scholars in recent decades have discussed the emergence of a new leader-dominated party type, variously described as 'personal', 'personalistic' and 'personalist'. However, there has been no original comparative research examining whether (and how) such parties resemble one another organizationally and whether they constitute a distinct organizational type. This article does so by comparing the parties of Silvio Berlusconi in Italy and Clive Palmer in Australia. Based on interviews with those in the parties and party documents, we find our cases share two distinctive organizational features: (1) the founder-leader's dominance of the party and perceived centrality to its survival and (2) the relationship between the party and members saw active members discouraged and organization at the local level was extremely limited/non-existent. Building on this analysis, we then propose three criteria for identifying other personal parties and point to the existence of a possible subtype. We conclude that the emergence of personal parties requires us to reconsider our understanding of contemporary party organizations in advanced democracies.