Suchergebnisse

The 2014 European Parliament elections were hailed as a 'populist earthquake' with parties like the French Front National, UKIP & the Danish People's Party topping the polls in their countries & commentators warning about the consequences of a large radical right populist bloc in the Parliament. But what happened after the elections? Based on policy positions, voting data, & interviews conducted over more than four years with senior figures from 14 radical right populist parties & their main partners, this major study explains these parties' actions & alliances in the European Parliament.

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.

Abstract
The Australian House of Representatives contains far fewer women than men. But is this because parties of left and right discriminate against women or because voters do? Using a new dataset comprising 7271 House candidates from 2001 to 2019, firstly, we find that the percentage of women candidates is increasing, but is consistently higher for parties of the left than the right. Secondly, women tend to be selected more by parties of both left and right in unsafe seats. Thirdly, all else being equal, voters reward women running for Labor with over 1400 votes more, are neutral towards those of the Liberals and Greens, but tend to penalise women standing for the Nationals. We conclude that, overall, it is parties, not voters, driving under-representation of women in Australia's lower house.

Sweden and Denmark have presented contrasting relationships between centre-right and populist radical right (PRR) parties. In Sweden, the centre-right has refused cooperation with the Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna) (SD), even when this cost the centre-right office. However, in Denmark, coalitions led by centre-right parties have cooperated with the Danish People's Party (Dansk Folkeparti) (DF) on multiple occasions. Through a controlled comparison, we examine what explains these different outcomes. Using Chapel Hill Expert Surveys and public opinion data, we firstly look at the policy congruence between parties and the social acceptability of cooperation. We then examine interview material with representatives from centre-right and PRR parties in Sweden and Denmark to see their explanations of cooperation and non-cooperation. We conclude that, while the office goals of Danish centre-right parties, along with the policy focus and uncontroversial past of DF, explain that case, the reputation and past of SD has precluded a similar outcome.

AbstractConceptualizations and measurements of Euroscepticism tend to assume that, while parties may change positions from one period to another, they unequivocally espouse hard or soft euroscepticism at a given point in time. However, there are good theoretical reasons for some parties not to do so, in order to speak to different audiences and keep their decision‐making options open. Through an analysis of manifestos and leaders' speeches we show how two populist radical right parties, the Italian Northern League and the Austrian Freedom Party, espoused what we term 'equivocal euroscepticism' in the years around the 2014 European Parliament elections. Specifically, these parties articulated a distinct, albeit ambivalent, stance by combining elements of both soft and hard euroscepticism at the same time. We argue that 'equivocal euroscepticism' can give these parties strategic advantages, including the freedom to cooperate both with other radical right, hard eurosceptic, parties at European level and more moderate parties at the national one.