Populism on Difficult Terrain: The Right- and Left-Wing Challenger Parties in the Federal Republic of Germany

Right-wing populist parties in Germany were unable to benefit from the success of their counterparts in neighbouring Western European states from the mid-1980s. Despite this failure, there were several attempts to establish such a party in Germany. Even the ‘centre’ of the political spectrum attempted to approach populist structures and content, and this was especially true of the FDP during the 2002 parliamentary election campaign. After a discussion of the term ‘populism’, we analyse the different parties' opportunities, political proposals and the reasons why they ultimately failed. We then examine the recently founded party ‘The Left’ as a case of left-wing populism, a rarely discussed topic, and we pay particular attention to the development of the leftist alliance between PDS and WASG. Finally, we discuss whether a leftist populist grouping could, perhaps, have better prospects for success in the German party system than a right-wing populist party.     

Nashi Devushki: Gender and Political Youth Activism in Putin's and Medvedev's Russia

In Russia, as elsewhere, hegemonic ideas about gender are invoked in the political realm. This article explores some of the gendered ways in which political youth organizations voice their criticism of and support for the Putin-centered regime. Interviews and a wide range of mass media sources, including blogs and YouTube videos, as well as the scholarly literature are used to look at political youth group actions and rhetoric on both sides of the Kremlin. The focus is on how gender is used by political youth groups as an organizing principle for exhibiting or with holding support for state leaders and opposition leaders.     

The 1999 Berlin land election

The Berlin election of 1999 resulted in the continuation of the city's Grand Coalition with the veteran CDU leader, Eberhard Diepgen, at the helm, and confirmed the PDS as the strongest party in East Berlin. This article examines the election campaign in Berlin and considers the key factors which determined the outcome. It also considers whether or not the ‘wall in the ballot box’, a political manifestation of the infamous ‘wall in the mind’, still exists over nine years after German reunification. The author argues that the unique history, demography and social make‐up of Berlin, coupled with the prevailing political mood throughout the Federal Republic, made another grand coalition inevitable. She demonstrates that, judging by voting behaviour, ‘inner unity’ remains elusive in Germany's new capital.     

Singapore General Election 2015 and the Role of Citizenship Education

Abstract

This article explores the role of education, in particular citizenship education, in shaping the Singapore electorate. An understanding of the history of citizenship education helps to shed light on the contemporary political culture in Singapore. The extent to which democratic citizenship education has been taught in schools since 1958 is explored. Singapore’s citizenship education has consistently stressed the duties and responsibilities of citizenship, patriotism, national identity and moral values—with the goal of nation-building and legitimising the People’s Action Party state. This reflective historical piece on Singapore’s educational history adds a relatively unexplored facet to the discussions on the general election 2015 results as well as Singapore’s subsequent political development. The results of the 2015 general election in Singapore, seen in this light, are not so surprising, as they reflect the success of the state’s citizenship education in shaping the current political culture.     

It's Only a Flaming Game: A Case Study of Arabic Computer-Mediated Communication

This article explores the online Arabic communication between partisan Algerians, Egyptians and Arabs of other nations during the recent soccer qualification matches for the 2010 World Cup. It assesses the role of computer-mediated communication (CMC) in the online furore that developed in connection with those matches. It focuses mainly on the way YouTube (vlogging) and blogging are used, and explores the premise that most interpretations of ‘flaming’ (aggressive interactions online) do not take into sufficient account cultural factors that may influence the perspective of the sender, the recipient and the third party. This article also looks at the effects of ‘soccer nationalism’ and some of the political issues stirred up by the online debate.     

The Spring 2011 Landtag Elections: Regional Specificities or National Electoral Dynamics?

The year 2011 is a Superwahljahr in Germany, with five states (Hamburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Baden-Württemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate and Bremen) holding Land-level elections in the spring and two more (Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania) following in the autumn. The debate on the ‘second-order’ nature of Land elections – whether they are to be understood by their own regionally specific dynamics or whether they primarily serve as a proxy for national electoral trends – provides the frame for this election report and its discussion of campaigns, election results and coalition outcomes. These elections could perhaps best be described as ‘one-and-a-half-order’ elections: in some of these elections there was evidence of national electoral trends and national political issues, and voters undoubtedly rendered something of a judgement on the federal coalition government. Nevertheless, election and coalition outcomes probably had more to do with the specific political conditions prevailing in each of these states than with any overarching national dynamic.     

The Baden-Württemberg State Election of 2011: A Political Landslide

After 58 years in the position of dominant political party, the Christian Democrats suffered from an electoral defeat in the Baden-Württemberg state election of 27 March 2011 and, as a result of the election, the first Green prime minister was elected and headed a state government formed by the Green and the Social Democrat parties. The main reasons for this political landslide were the unique constellation of political issues and the voters' attitudes towards the candidates for the office of prime minister. Instead of economic issues traditionally ‘owned’ by the Christian Democrats, the nuclear catastrophe in Fukushima and the bitter conflict over the reconstruction of the Stuttgart railway station brought ‘new politics’ issues to the top of the agenda. Moreover, never before in the history of German state elections was a prime minister running for re-election as unpopular as the leading candidate of Christian Democrats. Finally, many voters were convinced that it was just time for a change.     

‘The Root Is Maya,the Practice Is Pluralist’: Xel‐jú and Indigenous Political Mobilisation in Quetzaltenango,Guatemala

Since the 1990s Latin America has witnessed the emergence of ethnic, often social movement‐based, political parties. Within this context Rigoberto Quemé Chay became the first indigenous mayor of Quetzaltenango, the second‐largest city of Guatemala, a place that until then had been marked by indigenous political exclusion and racism. This article seeks to explain why Quemé was victorious in 1995 and also why he subsequently lost the election in 2004 through an analysis of the ideational struggle within the (indigenous) political organisation, Xel‐jú, which backed Quemé's candidacy twice. I use the movements of ‘departure’, ‘manoeuvre’ and ‘arrival’ in the process of the constitution of hegemonic visions of power to analyse Xel‐jú's rise to political power.     

Questioning the ‘immortal state’: the Gezi protests and the short-lived human security moment in Turkey

This article has three interrelated objectives: firstly, it challenges monolithic depictions of the 2013 Gezi protests and conceptualizes the so-called ‘Spirit of Gezi’ as a highly influential—albeit temporary—power in the politics of Turkey. Secondly, it traces the success of the HDP (Peoples’ Democratic Party) in the 7 June 2015 parliamentary election back to Gezi while acknowledging the roots of the party within the Kurdish political movement. Thirdly, it examines the manifestation and subsequent decline of what is termed the human security moment in Turkey. The arguments of the work are mostly based on interviews with Gezi activists. It is argued that Gezi produced a discursive challenge to the national security-oriented understanding of the ‘Kurdish question’. Yet, even though the human security-oriented Gezi discourse had brought the Kurdish political movement and the Turkish left together, it ultimately failed to permanently transform Turkish politics due to the collapse of the peace process in June 2015. In addition to contributing to the literature on Gezi, the article also draws insights for security studies. It concludes that alternative discourses to the state-centric securitization approach to conflicts such as the Kurdish question can only have a lasting effect under conditions of ceasefire.     

The Remorseless Power of Incumbency in Fiji’s September 2014 Election

Abstract

Fiji’s September 2014 election was the first since the military takeover of December 2006 and the first under a new open list proportional representation system. It proved a landslide victory for coup leader turned Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama’s FijiFirst Party. This was a ‘competitive authoritarian’ election, characterised by careful controls over media outlets, manipulation of rules regarding political parties and candidate nominations, and selective use of state finances to harass opponents. It was a genuine contest only in so far as the government could control the process. The outcome demonstrates the potency of incumbency in Fiji, which was also an important factor in the country’s previous post-coup elections in 1992 and 2001.     

Piercing the Incumbency Syndrome: Ghana’s Democratic Transition in 2017

Ghana’s political landscape changed dramatically in 2017, with the election of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo as president. Ghana’s political transition in 2017 raises new insights into presidential recruitment and politics in Ghana. The purpose of this article is to examine the 2016 elections within the spectrum of the politics of Ghana’s presidential recruitment. This article discusses the hurdles that were surmounted by the opposition New Patriotic Party party, in unseating the incumbent National Democratic Congress (NDC) party. The author coins the term ‘the John Syndrome’ to highlight the mythology held by some commentators that Akufo Addo could not be elected president, because his name is not ‘John’. Discussions about intra-party squabbles that resulted in the loss of NDC’s incumbency are provided. The article concludes that Akufo Addo’s presidency symbolises a de-mythologisation of ‘the John Syndrome’. The perception that Akufo Addo saved the nation in 2012 was his major weapon in piercing John Mahama’s incumbency. The demise of the NDC is likely to create an intra-party shift in favour of the party’s founder.     

Chiquitano and the Multiple Meanings of Being Indigenous in Bolivia

To be ‘indigenous’ in Bolivia is not only a rights‐ and resource‐bearing identity, but the national MAS party has recently actively promoted the ‘indigenous’ as an inclusive national political project. This article seeks to shed further light on the different meanings Bolivians attach to ‘indigeneity’ by focusing on the Chiquitano people of the Bolivian lowlands. This reveals that while Chiquitano employ the term to advance their political project, some nevertheless simultaneously reject its power to categorise and subordinate Chiquitano. This highlights some of the paradoxes faced by those employing an indigenous political strategy, be it at the local or ‘more inclusive’ national level.     

Beyond ‘brotherhood’ and the ‘caliphate’: Kurdish relationships to Islam in an era of AKP authoritarianism and ISIS terror

ABSTRACT

Since the rise of the Adalet ve Kalk?nma Partisi (AKP), Islam has come to play a more prominent role in public and political spheres in Turkey. This paper draws on ethnographic data gathered in Istanbul and Diyarbakir between 2013 and 2015 to highlight Kurdish attitudes to Islam. Following the electoral success of the AKP amongst Kurds in the general election of 2007, Kurdish actors have sought to incorporate Islamic sensibilities into their political offering in order to appeal to Kurdish constituents. Amid the AKP’s recent authoritarian turn and instrumentalization of religion, and the rise of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), many Kurds have sought to redefine their relationship with Islam to clearly demarcate distinctly Kurdish religious and political spaces.     

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement and the questions of identity,territory and political destiny of the indigenous Nuba of the Sudan

ABSTRACT

The Sudan Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) of 2005 was successful in ending the longest war in contemporary Africa. However, its implementation has been below the expectations of several communities, particularly in the war-torn regions of the Nuba Mountains, the Southern Blue Nile and the Abyei Area, widely referred to as ‘contested’, ‘marginalised’, ‘transitional’ areas or ‘border territories’. While many interwoven causes were behind the eruption of the protracted civil wars in the Sudan (Elnur 2009; Johnson 2006; Khalid 1987), the political question of sub-national identities and their intrinsic link with specific territories (Murphy 1991; William and Smith 1993) is hypothesised here as a prime factor in extending the civil war into these three areas. Taking the Nuba and their claimed territory of the Nuba Mountains as an example, this article will, first, trace the political striving of the Nuba people and their shift from peaceful political movement to armed struggle; second, it will examine their political status during the peace negotiation process; and third, it will analyse their political responses to the outcome of the CPA and its impact on their future political choices in view of the April 2010 election results, and the projected right to self-determination for the people of Southern Sudan, to be exercised through the referenda in 2011.     

Social Media and the 2014 Elections in Fiji

Abstract

After seven and half years Fiji returned to parliamentary democracy with elections on 17 September 2014. For the first time there was a ‘one’-day election, with the results confirmed a few days later. Reactions to the election results were swift, thanks to the media, particularly social media. While reactions to such events have often been sought from or dominated by political commentators and academics, a new trend emerged in post-election Fiji. Ordinary people through social media were actively participating in this process, extending conversations beyond their immediate family and community environments. Social media has been touted as a valuable tool for public participation. In Fiji the infancy of social media raises questions regarding whether it facilitates public participation and engagement, whether it has a place in Fiji’s new democracy and if it does, how it affects public discourse that, since December 2006, has been one-dimensional.     

Secularizing Islamism and Islamizing Democracy: The Political and Ideational Evolution of the Egyptian Muslim Brothers 1984–2012

The Muslim Brotherhood (MB) emerged in Egypt in the early twentieth century to resist secularism and political pluralism in favour of religious revival and a unitary Islamic state. After three decades of political participation culminating in its formation of a government in Egypt, the MB has prioritized electoral paths to power, while claiming to defend individual rights, popular majorities and a civil state. Nevertheless, the MB's discourse continues to straddle religious and secular terrain: in recent election campaigns, MB leaders promised to build an ‘Islamic state’ and a ‘caliphate’, all the while insisting that the people, not God are the source of all power. What explains these contradictions, and what do they tell us about the Brotherhood's apparent adoption of political and ideational pluralism and democratic values? The article contends that the MB's ambivalence about democracy is not a sign of dissimulation or lack of ideological evolution. Instead, it has its roots in a 30-year process of partially adapting to democratic and ‘secular’ political ideas by reframing them in religious terms which, however, resulted in creating what the article discusses as a hybrid ‘secularized’ Islamism. This hybridization has both enabled and constrained the Brothers' adaptation to democracy in the post-Mubarak period.     

‘Bridging the differences’: political communication experts in Germany

A process of modernisation and professionalisation has been affecting the political communication culture in Germany. The emergence and rise of the so-called ‘spin doctors’ particularly symbolises this trend. But how do the numerous political communication experts in Germany bridge the differences between the diverging objectives of the political and media realms? By what means do they link political issues and images to anticipated media logics? And how successful are their efforts in agenda- and image-building? To answer these questions, first, a contextual framework is provided identifying political communication experts as dually conditioned linking pins. Second, a hermeneutic content analysis of 63 interviews with high-ranked German ‘spin doctors’ gives some empirical evidence of the practical relevance of widely discussed communicative strategies. The longitudinal perspective provides insights into an enormous and expanding set of communicative strategies. Here, the cultivation of interpersonal networks is most promising, although it is a rather shaky tool of modern political communication in Germany. Overall, the new myth of the ‘powerful spin doctor’ has to be modified since their ‘success’ is contingent on individual variables.     

The wall in the ballot box: The Berlin election of 1995

The Berlin election of October 1995 produced very different results in the eastern and western halves of the city, and although the end result was a continuation of the Grand Coalition, it was the PDS and Bündnis 90/Die Grünen who stole the limelight once the votes were counted. This article attempts to account for the performance of the parties in each half of the city and considers the political consequences for them. It concludes by considering what the election can tell us about the public mood in Berlin and about political trends in the Federal Republic in general. What emerges is a ‘wall in the ballot box’, a practical manifestation of die Mauer im Kopf which clearly continues to exist five years after the first all‐German election.     

Clientelism and Control: PAP’s Fight for Safety in GE2015

Abstract

This article looks at the reasons the People’s Action Party (PAP) secured its decisive victory in the 2015 general election. The discussion examines the impact of the campaign and pre-election period on voting behaviour. While the opposition’s performance before and during the campaign reactivated its core supporters, the PAP’s control of the political narrative, rejuvenation of its grassroots machinery and effective use of resources provided an advantage that was instrumental in their electoral success. Most Singaporeans had decided how they would vote before the campaign began. Despite perceptions that the election was about the economy and the nationalist rhetoric associated with Singapore’s 50th anniversary and the passing of statesman Lee Kuan Yew, the argument in the paper suggests that the 2015 election provides insights into the breadth of clientelist politics in Singapore and how important state patronage and the control of the state are for holding on to political power in the city-state.     

Kenya's political ‘transition’ through the eyes of its ‘foot soldiers’ for democracy and human rights (1997–2012)

This is a study of young human rights activists who provide a unique window on Kenya's recent and turbulent political history (1997–2012). The period includes the end of authoritarian rule and election of a ‘reform’ government in 2002 that expanded some human rights but abused others. Based on archival materials and periodic, multiple interviews by the author with key youth activists, the findings make three contributions to the study of human rights and democracy. First, it identifies the often overlooked role of secondary level activists in a human rights/democracy social movement, the so-called ‘foot soldiers’. Second, it explores the failure of Kenya to consolidate its democracy and quell police violence, including the assassination of two human rights investigators, an event which sent a chill through the activist community. Third, by tracing the trajectory of some ‘foot soldiers’ during this period, the study confirms a theory of a cycle of social movement activism but suggests modifications.