Suchergebnisse

European democracies are moulded by a 'transnational cleavage' between green-alternative-libertarian and traditionalist-authoritarian-nationalist parties and attitudes. The territorial reverberations of this new cleavage are still scarcely analysed. Therefore, this article aims to explore how the transnational cleavage relates to political opinions and choices at the local level, by uncovering connections between such cleavage and the characteristics of metropolitan places. What are the implications of living in different metropolitan contexts on citizens' positions on the transnational cleavage? I answer this question by investigating how metropolitan contextual factors shape transnationalism attitudes and support for green-alternative-libertarian and traditionalist-authoritarian-nationalist parties within London. Findings highlight that transnationalism attitudes and support for green-alternative-libertarian/traditionalist-authoritarian-nationalist parties are statistically significantly related to contextual factors; among the latter, the boroughs' housing conditions and ethnic structures are the best predictors of transnationalism attitudes and party choices; residents of disadvantaged metropolitan contexts exhibit lower support for transnationalism and green-alternative-libertarian parties.

The relation between science and populism has already been investigated by relevant sociopolitical literature. However, the Covid-19 pandemic has produced remarkable changes in how politics, science, and society relate to each other. Therefore, there is a need to explore further what science is to populists and how populist parties have dealt with science in times of pandemic. How much has science-related communication by populist parties changed after the outbreak of Coronavirus? What topics have populist science-related messages been about? Are there differences in the science-related communication of ideologically different populist parties, and between populist parties in government and in opposition? The research tries to answer these questions through a thematic analysis of populist communication on Twitter. The empirical investigation is carried out through topic modelling on a dataset of 1.133 science-related populist tweets. The focus is on a pertinent single case study, Italy. Here there are three different populist parties in terms of ideology, which have been both in government and in opposition during the pandemic. Findings highlight that different populist parties have resorted to different science-related rhetoric and that the two Italian populist parties on the radical right, the League and FdI, have engaged in "counter-science" and "anti-science" communication.

This paper questions the thesis that transformations in European politics after the financial, eurozone, and migrant crises have been led by populist radical right (PRR) and left (PRL) parties and attitudes in Northwestern (NWE) and Southern (SE) Europe, respectively. Contrary to most of the literature, we claim that, although the populist radical left has grown in SE, the more significant outcome of the crises has been to push PRR parties to a similar (high) consensus in SE and NWE. We also argue that the crises facilitated the growth of PRR forces in SE more than NWE. To test this perspective, we analysed elections and citizens' orientations towards the key issues of populism - immigration, European integration, "authoritarianism versus liberal democracy" and "state versus market" - in five NWE and four SE countries. Findings show that during the "long crisis decade" (2008-2019) there has been an alignment on right-wing populism between European regions.