The gender gap in populist radical-right voting: examining the demand side in Western and Eastern Europe

ABSTRACT

In most countries, men are more likely to vote for parties of the populist radical right (PRR) than women. The authors argue here that there are two mechanisms that might potentially explain this gender gap: mediation (women's attitudes and characteristics differ from men's in ways that explain the PRR vote) and moderation (women vote for different reasons than men). They apply these two mechanisms to general theories of support for PRR parties—the socio-structural model, the discontent model, and the policy vote model—and test these on a large sample of voters in seventeen Western and Eastern European countries. The study shows that the gender gap is produced by a combination of moderation and mediation. Socio-structural differences between men and women exist, but the extent to which they explain the gender gap is limited, and primarily restricted to post-Communist countries. Furthermore, women generally do not differ from men in their level of nativism, authoritarianism or discontent with democracy. Among women, however, these attitudes are less strongly related to a radical-right vote. This suggests that men consider the issues of the radical right to be more salient, but also that these parties deter women for reasons other than the content of their political programme. While the existing research has focused almost exclusively on mediation, we show that moderation and mediation contribute almost equally to the gender gap.     

Positive identification by a skull with multiple epigenetic traits and abnormal structure of the neurocranium, viscerocranium, and the skeleton

Wormian bones are small ossicles appearing within the cranial sutures in more than 40% of skulls, most commonly at the lambdoid suture and pterion. During the skeletal analysis of an unidentified male war victim, we observed multiple wormian bones and a patent metopic suture. Additionally, the right elbow was deformed, probably as a consequence of an old trauma. The skull was analyzed by cranial measurements and computerized tomography, revealing the presence of cranial deformities including hyperbrachicrania, localized reduction in hemispheral widths, increased cranial capacity, and sclerosis of the viscerocranium. Besides unique anatomical features and their anthropological value, such skeletal abnormalities also have a forensic value as the evidence to support the final identification of the victim.     

Inheritance regimes: Medieval family structures and current institutional quality

This study highlights the impact that medieval patterns of intrafamily inheritance practices wield on contemporary institutional quality. We argue that regions that practiced inegalitarian inheritance developed stronger institutions than regions that practiced egalitarian inheritance, for two reasons. First, we argue that transmitting land to a single heir resulted in a sense of personal ownership and, by extension, encouraged individual property rights. Second, we argue that the fact that disinherited children were incentivized to seek training and employment outside the family domicile in regions practicing inegalitarian inheritance resulted in trust‐building social interactions. We test our argument using data on medieval inheritance patterns and modern‐day institutional quality in European subnational regions and across countries globally. Our results show that historical inegalitarian inheritance practices are strongly positively associated with contemporary institutional quality. We conclude that historical norms at the family level are still affecting important modern‐day societal functions.     

Adapting to party lines: the effect of party affiliation on attitudes to immigration

Public opinion on immigration is increasingly relevant for political behaviour. However, little is known about the way in which citizens’ political allegiances in turn shape their attitudes to immigration. Abundant existing evidence suggests that voters often take cues from the parties they support. Using panel data from the Netherlands and Sweden, this article investigates the dynamic relation between attitudes to immigration and party preferences. The longitudinal nature of the data allows for making stronger claims about causal mechanisms than previous cross-sectional studies. The analysis shows that voters who change their preference to the Radical Right become stricter on immigration, whereas voters changing to the Greens become less strict on immigration over time. This confirms that citizens’ support for anti- and pro-immigration parties results in a ‘radicalisation’ of their views on immigration along party lines. A similar ‘spiral’ of radicalisation can be found around the issue of European integration.     

Regulating internet platforms in the EU - The emergence of the ‘Level playing Field’

This paper analyses the European Union's regulatory policy on platforms. The first part of the paper looks at the how the EU formulates platform policy while the second analyses the proposed and existing laws that already cover them. The final part looks at the consequences of the level playing field as the guiding regulatory principle. The main argument is that EU regulatory intervention concerning platforms seeks to bring linear providers in line with platforms through the "level playing field" or, in other words, that the EU seeks to protect the incumbents and minimise disruption rather than enhance the value-creating potential of platforms.     

Social Stigma and Support for the Populist Radical Right: An Experimental Study

The ‘taboo’ or ‘stigma’ associated with many populist radical right parties (PRRPs) has been argued to be an important constraint on their electoral success. In comparison to mainstream parties, there seems to be a higher barrier keeping voters from supporting PRRPs. However, this mechanism has not been tested directly. We conducted a randomized survey‐embedded experiment manipulating the social stigma of a fictitious radical right party in Sweden. We compare three conditions. Two of these contain subtle signals about how other respondents feel about this party. In one condition the fictitious party is supported by many voters (the neutralizing condition) and in the other it is evaluated negatively by the overwhelming majority (the stigma condition). Both experimental groups do not differ significant from the control group in support for this fictitious party. However, the difference between the two experimental groups is borderline significant. This suggests that there is a causal effect of social stigma on support for a RRP, even though the evidence is rather tentative.