A Lib Dem Perspective on Centre‐Left Politics Post‐2015

This article analyses the political crisis faced by the centre‐left, not just in the UK but throughout the Western world, with few exceptions (Canada). The Liberal Democrat party has been a victim of that crisis, though there are encouraging signs of recovery and there is scope for a wider realignment on the centre‐left.     

Reshaping EU Attitudes? The Case of Social Democratic and Radical Left Parties in Spain and Italy

Since the beginning of the Great Recession, the issue of European integration has become increasingly salient in many European polities. The European left has adopted a different stance toward European integration, both in terms of economic and welfare‐state integration. On the one hand, radical left parties (RLPs) have always opposed a process of integration dominated by neoliberal logic; on the other hand, the social democratic parties (SDPs) have appeared as one of the main pro‐EU party families, identifying the EU as a privileged space in which to promote the building of a European social model. In this paper, we propose a binary comparison between RLPs and SDPs in Italy and Spain with a qualitative content analysis methodology. Our results show that albeit the crisis brought SDPs closer to a Eurocritical stance vis‐à‐vis the social‐Europe, this dimension along with the political integration are still dividing issues for the RLPs and SDPs families.     

农村家庭结构变化对家庭成员心理的影响及其对策

改革开放以来,我国农村传统的家庭结构发生了巨大的变化,完整的家庭逐渐分化为由留守儿童、空巢老人组成的农村留守家庭和由青壮年农民工组成的城镇流动家庭两部分。由于家庭成员在当前经济转型时期仍属弱势群体,因而较易出现心理问题。心理科学应研究他们的心理健康状况,帮助他们树立科学的家庭理念,建立健康的心灵家园,使心理科学在社会主义新农村建设中发挥出支持作用。     

20世纪70年代中越关系剧变分析

在国际关系史上,恐怕鲜有如20世纪70年代中越关系的变化那样出人意料,中越两国在短短十年时间就从肝胆相照的兄弟变为彼此不共戴天的敌人,是什么因素促成了这一剧变的发生呢?本文认为20世纪70年代中越关系之所以会发生急剧变化,与如下四个方面的原因密不可分:(1)中越出于国家利益考虑,推行各自倾向性政策;(2)中越两国在与之密切联系的四对三角关系中的互动;(3)历史与现实的困惑;(4)精英认知的不同.     

Change and continuity in the ideological gender gap a longitudinal analysis of left-right self-placement in OECD countries

When asked to place themselves on a left-right scale, men and women tend to take different positions. Over time, however ideological gender differences have taken a different form. While women were traditionally more right-leaning than men, from around the mid-1990s onwards they have been found to take positions to the left of men. Using an originally constructed dataset that includes information on the left-right self-placement of more than 2.5 million respondents in 36 OECD countries between 1973 and 2018, I empirically verify how the ideological gender gap has evolved since. The results show, first, that while women have shifted to the left since the late 1970s, the pace of this change has strongly diminished since the late 1990s. Second, there is important between-country variation in the size of the reversal in the ideological gender gap. Third, with the exception of the Silent generation and the Baby-boomers, newer generations of women have not taken more left-leaning positions than generations before them.     

A Strategic Left? Starmerism,Pluralism and the Soft Left

This article places the Labour Party’s present post‐Corbyn renewal in the context of previous periods of renewal in the party’s recent history, associating with the new leadership of Keir Starmer a potential to rediscover the strategic project of the pluralist soft left as an alternative to the programmatic character of the hard left. After assessing the Corbynist hegemony established in the Labour Party between 2015 and 2019, it considers the current absence of any clearly defined set of principles or values underpinning ‘Starmerism’. It then looks back to the Kinnockite ascendency in the 1980s, and the Blairite ascendency in the 1990s, as possible templates for how the party reassesses its positioning with reference to changing electoral, social and economic circumstances. A critique of Corbynism’s left populism culminates in a consideration of the possible grounds for a new pluralist agenda attuned to the policy and electoral challenges Labour faces today.     

The Age of Anxiety: The Crisis of Liberal Democracy in a Post-Hegemonic Global Order

The crisis of liberal democracy is closely associated with major global shifts, which have been accelerated by the global financial crisis of 2008, with its dislocating effects in the established democracies of the global centre. Relative stagnation and rising problems of inequality and unemployment, coupled with additional shocks in the form of mass migration and terrorist attacks have generated fertile grounds for the rise of right-wing radical populist sentiments, which have been turned into electoral advantage by charismatic leaders. The crisis of liberal democracy is also a global phenomenon in the sense that liberal democracy has been severely challenged by the rise of strategic models of capitalism, notably its authoritarian version represented by the growing power and influence of the China-Russia coalition. Indeed, the success of the latter has served as a kind of reference for many authoritarian or hybrid regimes in a changing global context, at a time when the key Western powers appear to be losing their previous economic and moral appeal.     

Young people,parents and radical right voting. The Case of the Swiss People’s Party

It is commonly found that young people tend to adopt the political party choice of their parents. However, far less is known about the applicability of this theory when investigating radical right support. Using the Swiss Household panel data (1999–2007), this study empirically identifies the relationship between parents’ preference for the Swiss radical right party SVP and their attitudes toward immigrants and the EU, and their offspring’s preference for the SVP. Disaggregating fathers’ and mothers’ influence reveals that in particular, mothers’ SVP support plays a role in SVP support among young people, even after controlling for educational similarities. We also demonstrate that girls are more likely to be influenced by their mothers than are boys. Furthermore, parents’ negative attitudes toward the EU exert a positive influence on their children’s radical right voting, independent of their voting pattern.     

Right-wing populism against diploma democracy. The evolution of parliamentary elites in Austria,Italy, and Switzerland

Are the sociological profiles of radical right-wing populist parties' (RRPPs) representatives really unlike those of their counterparts in mainstream parties? Once RRPPs occupy positions of legislative power for an extended period, do their MPs' profiles increasingly converge with those of more mainstream parties? This paper examines three right-wing parties in Austria, Italy, and Switzerland (FPÖ, LEGA, and SVP), and shows how RRPPs' MPs persistently contrast the “diploma democracy”, that is the increasingly dominant high-educated trend in political representation. Inspired by the current scholarship's diachronic and comparative perspectives of political elites and MPs, the analysis focuses trends since the 1980s.