Europe,Land of Anguish and Nostalgia

Three years into the protracted Eurocrisis “all choices are ugly,” as former British prime minister Tony Blair comments. Indeed, the high cost of bad options is prompting some to question whether Europe is worth saving the euro. Along with Tony Blair, the former Italian prime minister Romano Prodi as well as two of the best financial minds around—Nouriel Roubini and Mohamed el‐Erian—warn of the dire consequences of a euro breakup. One of France's most prominent philosophers, André Glucksmann, wonders whether the idea of a united Europe—a reaction to the horrors of World War II—can hold everyone together in the future when peace is the norm.     

Headquarters of Terrorists Is “Virtual Ummah”

Though anti‐American terrorism springs these days as much from Yemen and the “virtual ummah” as from Afghanistan, President Obama has nontheless further committed US troops to stabilizing a country well‐known as the graveyard of empires. What can the only Muslim country that belongs to NATO offer by way of advice? How best can the US keep its focus on the terrorist threat despite its diversion in Afghanistan? Turkey's former envoy to Afghanistan and two of Europe's leading experts on Islamist terrorism offer their views.     

From chasing populists to deconstructing populism: A new multidimensional approach to understanding and comparing populism

This paper challenges some widespread theoretical assumptions and practices in the study of populism and proposes a new multidimensional approach to generate and analyse data on this latent construct. Rather than focusing on categorising subjects as populists or not, it recommends reaching a better understanding of what populism is, the salience and relative weight of its attributes and how they interact creating an inner populist logic. Despite the increasing media and academic attention, historical discrepancies in how to conceptualise and operationalise populism have hindered cumulative progress in the literature. Initially most efforts were devoted to the study of specific movements, without a clear comparative angle, and the concept of populism was often conflated with that of nationalism. When the literature started to pay more attention to the analysis of the attributes associated with populism serious disagreements emerged concerning its true essence. Populism has been conceptualised as an ideology, a cynical strategy, a performative style and a discursive logic of articulation. The disputes between these competing interpretations have arguably slowed down the generation of comparative data. Although this article is meant to be a critique of the current state of the field and a call to make it pivot into a slightly different direction, it does not adopt an iconoclast stance and largely tries to reconcile the different existing research traditions – ideational, discursive, performative and strategic. It shows that their efforts are to a great extent complementary but mostly operating on different rungs of the ladder of abstraction. This paper argues that shifting from minimal definitions into a multidimensional approach may stimulate the generation of comparative data on a wider range of attributes and facilitate the identification of degrees and varieties within populism. This paper develops a new analytical framework which deconstructs populism into five dimensions: (1) depiction of the polity, (2) morality, (3) construction of society, (4) sovereignty and (5) leadership. These dimensions, that synthesise the most influential conceptualisations of populism, are empirically and theoretically interconnected and encompass ideational, discursive and performative attributes suggested in the literature. These dimensions are in turn composed of lower order attributes forming a multilayered network structure. This multidimensional framework provides a heuristic template that can be adapted and operationalised in diverse ways depending on the hypotheses, type of data and subjects of the analysis. Some examples of how to turn these dimensions into variables to capture supply- and demand-side populism are introduced. Future empirical research could help map and better understand the network of interactions and intersections among these dimensions and attributes. This could be the key to settle some of the current conceptual debates about populism and its varieties.     

Multilevel governance and women's legislative representation

Research shows that electoral systems, gender quotas and a country's socio-economic development affect women's legislative representation (WLR). Less attention is paid to the effects of the rise of regional political arenas and multilevel politics on WLR. Due to less costly and competitive electoral campaigns, women can have easier access to regional legislatures. We argue that this relationship is mitigated by the distribution of competences between the different levels of the political system and that decentralization's effect on WLR at the regional level is dependent on the regions’ political power. To test this, we use an original dataset on WLR in 383 regional parliaments in 19 European countries from 1970 to 2018. Results of the three-level models show that more political authority vested into regions leads to a lower level of WLR in the legislatures of the more politically powerful regions in comparison with not only the regions possessing less authority but also with the national parliament. Possible explanations for this effect, such as the attractiveness of these positions to the mostly male political elite and, consequently, increased costs and competitiveness of electoral campaigns, are suggested.     

Congruence between voters and parties: The role of party-level issue salience

The level of congruence between parties and their voters can vary greatly from one policy issue to another, which raises questions regarding the effectiveness of political representation. We seek to explain variation in party–voter congruence across issues and parties. We focus on the hypotheses that (1) average proximity between the positions of voters and the party they vote for will be highest on the issues that the party emphasises in the election campaign and that (2) this relationship will be stronger for niche parties. We test these hypotheses using data on the policy preferences of voters, party positions, party attention profiles and salience on concrete policy issues in four countries: The Netherlands, Ireland, Germany and Sweden. Overall, we find that voter–party proximity tends to be higher on issues that the party emphasises. As these are the issues where parties typically have the greatest policy impact, this implies that the quality of representation is highest where it matters most. There is some limited evidence that the positive relationship between issue salience and proximity is stronger for niche parties. In sum, the quality of policy representation varies strongly with party-level issue salience and to a lesser extent with the type of political party.     

Exploring the Deep Antecedent of Public Service Motivation

Contrarily to most studies of the antecedents of public service motivation (PSM) focusing on the proximal work environment or personal characteristics, we seek to explore plausibly important deep antecedents of PSM that lie in the formative years of a person’s upbringing. Using an online survey of public service professionals that asked detailed background questions, we find that three deep antecedents are associated with lower overall PSM and its constitutive elements: growing up in a religious family, growing up in a family with a conservative point of view, and (surprisingly) being raised by a parent who served in the military.     

POLICY IMPLEMENTATION IN AN AFRICAN STATE: AN EXTENSION OF KINGDON'S MULTIPLE‐STREAMS APPROACH

Kingdon's multiple‐streams framework, which emerged in the mid‐1980s, today forms one of the indispensable analytical frameworks for understanding public policy agenda‐setting. However, it is only in the context of wealthy countries that this approach has been validated for setting the agenda of national and international policies. This article reports the results of empirical research in an African state studying the transferability of a threefold theoretical innovation. The question under consideration is whether the multiple‐streams framework is useful for examining public policy implementation at the local level and in the context of a low income country. The research findings confirm the premise that the multiple‐streams framework can be extended and can lead to the formulation of several theoretical propositions.