Suchergebnisse

People often vote against the political establishment, as underscored by "Brexit" and the Trump election. The current contribution proposes that overclaiming one's own knowledge predicts anti-establishment voting. We tested this idea in the context of a Dutch referendum on a European Union treaty with a clear pro- versus anti-establishment voting option. In a first wave (6 weeks before the referendum), Dutch citizens indicated their self-perceived understanding of the treaty, after which we tested their actual knowledge. We also measured participants' general tendency to overclaim knowledge by assessing their familiarity with nonexisting stimuli. In a second wave shortly after the referendum, we asked participants what they had voted. Results revealed that increased self-perceived understanding yet decreased actual knowledge of the treaty, and general knowledge overclaiming, predicted an anti-establishment vote. Furthermore, these effects were most pronounced among right-wing extremists. We conclude that knowledge overclaiming predicts anti-establishment voting, particularly at the radical right.

When political commentators talk about polarization, they often mean a partisan ideological divide: the left vs the right, republicans vs democrats, progressives vs conservatives. But what if there is a different dichotomy driving our political disagreements that is orthogonal to ideological differences?

That's what University of Miami political scientist Joseph Uscinski argues in a recent paper, "American Politics in Two Dimensions: Partisan and Ideological Identities versus Anti-Establishment Orientations. Using two national surveys from 2019 and 2020, he shows that anti-establishment and anti-elite sentiments may be more of a driving force in our politics than partisan ideology.

Attempts to explain the emergence of the peace movement in the 1980s often point to factors like fear of nuclear weapons, Soviet manipulation of public opinion in the West and NATO's double-track decision in 1979. Among these, the author emphasizes the third factor. He argues that NATO's double track de cision made the threat of nuclear war seem nearer and more real, thus motivating people to involve themselves in the peace movement. The author also introduces a fourth factor, arguing that anti- establishment attitudes constitute the most important single impulse behind the emergence of the peace movement in the 1980s. The movement reflects a subculture which is permanently pitted against establishment norms. It is this environment of critical attitudes, rather than a quest for peace or an op position against nuclear weapons, which induces people to involve themselves in the peace movement. The author substantiates this thesis through a discussion of the social groups which tend to actively sup port the peace movement, the political preferences of the peace activists and their goals and methods. The peace movement is also shown in a historical perspective, which emphasizes its relationship with other popular movements of the post-war era.

In this article, I attempt to clarify the relationships among three contemporary concepts that are often used interchangeably or conflated in the literature: anti-establishment politics, political outsiders and populism. In order to make sense of these manifestations of public discontent, I argue that one must examine the nature of political appeals, political actors' locations vis-à-vis the party system and the linkages between citizens and government. Doing so, furthermore, helps clarify the meaning of populism, one of the most elusive concepts in political science. The definition of populism I offer allows us to synthesize much of the literature on the subject while weeding out unnecessary and secondary characteristics. Importantly, too, this definition allows us to separate competing claims of `direct democracy' and thus populists from non-populists.

Public attention has been drawn to the recent successes of the far right. This article claims that a new wave of anti-establishment parties has shaken European politics. A diverse array of outsiders from the left, right and no fixed ideological abode are attacking the mainstream centre–left and centre–right. Their anti-elitist approaches to politics have strategy, topics and style in common. Examples such as Syriza (The Coalition of the Radical Left), Podemos (We can!) and the Five Star Movement (MoVimento Cinque Stelle) show that this provocative new spectre of the twenty-first century is not just right wing.

The party systems in many democracies are in flux due to the emergence and electoral successes of new, alternative political parties. This phenomenon has a particular dynamic and, drawing on a case study from Slovakia, it is argued that compared to their predecessors the most recent political newcomers may have a more radical, even anti-system character. The paper deals with theories of new political parties and the conceptual definitions of anti-system parties in general while the empirical part focuses on the developments, characteristics and profiles of two political parties in Slovakia, namely the anti-establishment group Ordinary People and Independent Personalities (OĽaNO) and the extreme right-wing People's Party – Our Slovakia (ĽSNS), which represents an anti-system party. Based on empirical data from several surveys the study points to variance in the profiles of anti-establishment and anti-system voters. It is argued that the voters of the anti-system party (ĽSNS) show an ideological distance from other political parties, as well as a strong identification with the party of their electoral choice as opposed to the voters of OĽaNO. The concluding discussion displays the differences between anti-establishment and anti-system parties in general, and in this specific perspective the Slovak case fits into the much broader debate about illiberal tendencies in Central and Eastern Europe. Anti-system political parties – the next generation of the new alternative parties – could be a real threat to liberal democracy in the region.

Populism is a dynamic phenomenon. Yet scholars studying populism in post-communist Europe have often treated their topic as static. For example, in the 1990s researchers concentrated on the idea of a politically scary marriage of populism with nationalism, without allowing for variation or complexity among individual cases. This text contends that populism in East Central Europe (ECE) should be treated as a dynamic phenomenon in which radical ideological components are becoming overshadowed by pure anti-establishment appeal. It explores ECE populism through Western-developed populism frameworks. Finally, it argues that in this context populism's strong anti-establishment posture is based on blaming the post-communist mainstream for its political & moral misconduct, rather than on the challenges inherent in the democratic transition. Tables. Adapted from the source document.

This scholarly volume explores the most successful group of new political parties in Central and Eastern Europe: centrist anti-establishment parties (CAPs). Sarah Engler asks how these parties survive when newness is their only selling point and focuses on CAPs' electoral strategies after their first elections.

To what extent do representational gaps between parties and voters destabilise party systems and create electoral opportunities for anti-establishment parties on the left and right? In this paper, we use multiple measures of party-partisan incongruence to evaluate whether issue-level incongruence contributes to an increase of political disaffection and anti-establishment politics. For this analysis, we use data from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES) for party positions and public opinion data from the European Election Study (EES). Our findings indicate that multidimensional incongruence is associated with disaffection at the national and European level, and that disaffected mainstream party voters are in turn more likely to consider voting for anti-establishment challenger parties. This finding suggests that perceived gaps in party-citizen substantive representation have important electoral ramifications across European democracies.