Housing and populism

Abstract

The recent success of populist candidates in the UK and Continental Europe has sparked a major debate between those who view populism as a reaction of the economically ‘left behind’ and those who view it as a cultural ‘backlash’ by groups with declining social status, pointing to stark divisions between urban and rural areas, core and periphery. This paper bridges the economic and values-based approaches to populism by arguing that the geography of wealth inequality offers a convincing explanation for the pattern of populist vote share. Drawing on fine-grained house price data in the UK and France, it is shown that the pattern of house prices ? even within small districts ? plays a major part in shaping support for Brexit and Marine Le Pen. The findings illustrate how longstanding variation in local wealth shapes the geography of discontent and drives populist appeal. Populism, the article concludes, is primarily a politics of place, and place is a product, in part, of the housing market.     

Strategies of mainstream parties towards their right-wing populist challengers: Denmark,Norway, Sweden and Finland in comparison

Although right-wing populist parties (RPPs) have established themselves in most European countries, the academic discourse on political strategies towards them has been slow to start. This article compares the strategic reactions of the mainstream parties in the Nordic countries. The main findings are threefold: (1) in Denmark, Norway and Finland there has been a gradual change from various disengage to engage strategies over time, while in Sweden there has always been a strong cordon sanitaire; (2) one key difference has been in the speed and extent of the strategy changes; and (3) the choice of strategies, which is a very complex process, can be traced back to a combination of factors at the individual, party and systemic levels. There is a need for more research into the impacts and effectiveness of the strategies, the timing of the choice of strategies and the potential learning effects of political parties.     

Beyond protest and discontent: A cross‐national analysis of the effect of populist attitudes and issue positions on populist party support

Studies on populist parties – or ‘supply‐side populism’ more generally – are numerous. Nevertheless, the connection with demand‐side dynamics, and particularly the populist characteristics or tendencies of the electorate, requires more scholarly attention. This article examines in more detail the conditions underlying the support for populist parties, and in particular the role of populist attitudes amongst citizens. It asks two core questions: (1) are populist party supporters characterised by stronger populist attitudes than other party supporters, and (2) to what extent do populist (and other) attitudes contribute to their party preference? The analysis uses fixed effect models and relies on a cross‐sectional research design that uses unique survey data from 2015 and includes nine European countries. The results are threefold. First, in line with single‐country studies, populist attitudes are prominent among supporters of left‐ and right‐wing populist parties in particular. Second, populist attitudes are important predictors of populist party support in addition to left‐wing socioeconomic issue positions for left‐wing populist parties, and authoritarian and anti‐immigration issue positions for right‐wing populist parties. Third, populist attitudes moderate the effect of issue positions on the support for populist parties, particularly for individuals whose positions are further removed from the extreme ends of the economic or cultural policy scale. These findings suggest that strong populist attitudes may encourage some voters to support a populist party whose issue positions are incongruous with their own policy‐related preferences.     

The European ‘Other’ in Poland’s Conservative Identity Project

Since taking office in November 2015, Poland’s conservative government has pressed for a sweeping reinterpretation of the past, and a re-envisioning of the future, of the political community. This conservative identity project idealises the allegedly fully sovereign Poland of the interwar period and repudiates the normative commitments underpinning Poland’s accession to the European Union. The worldview of the conservative government’s liberal critics, by contrast, represents a fusion of the inclusive nationalism asserted in opposition to communist rule with the affirmation of a European identity. The reawakening of historically resonant debates about the nature of Poland’s European-ness, emphasizing the centrality of the (Western) European ‘other’ in Poland’s national idea, carries significant implications for its relations within the international environment.     

Populism and Connectivism: An Analysis of the Sanders and Trump Nomination Campaigns

This paper is an analysis of the Trump and Sanders’ campaigns for the presidential nomination of their respective parties. It studies the structure of the relationship between the campaign and its supporters through communication on each candidate’s Facebook page. While both campaigns have been termed populist, we differentiate populism from connectivism and develop an account of a connective campaign as a species of connective action. Whereas populism is predicated on a singular people, connectivity involves the acceptance and recognition of difference as a resource for political activity. Whereas populism involves a hierarchical authority relationship, connectivity is based on a reciprocal authority relationship. Finally, populism articulates an anti-establishment demand while connective campaigns demand for citizens to have the capacity for consequential engagement with political life. The empirical results demonstrate that connectivism and populism are distinct in practice and that these attributes hang together as two separate concepts. Further, we find that Trump’s campaign communications emphasize populist themes, for Sanders such themes are limited and in the shadow of connectivism.     

The Rise of Referendums: A Death Sentence for Multilateralism?

Perhaps the most notable development of the second half of the twentieth century, and its greatest achievement, is the rapid global spread of two institutions: democracy and multilateralism. These institutions have collectively made us safer and more prosperous than any previous generation in history. But could the two now be coming into conflict? Recent experience regarding the EU suggests both that referendums as a tool of foreign policy decision-making are likely to become more common in the future, and that they pose major risks for multilateralism and international cooperation.     

The Agrarian question: the scholarship of David Mitrany revisited

This paper reassesses aspects of the scholarship of David Mitrany, who first in the 1920s and then in the late 1940s approached the ‘agrarian question’ – whether and if so how socialism is possible in a state where there is only a small manufacturing sector and therefore no significant industrial proletariat – from the perspective of countries in Central and Eastern Europe where, between the two World Wars, political parties representing small-scale agricultural producers won large numbers of votes in democratic elections. His 1951 book Marx against the peasant was his response to the failure of those parties to hold on to power, and their crushing by the Communist governments that took control from 1948 on. Mitrany showed that the populist tradition, the ideology of independent small farmers, came from similar roots to Marxism, and that Marx himself late in his life came close to endorsing it. Whether increased agricultural productivity is feasible without large-scale farming was the subject of intense debate among socialists in Europe from the 1850s onwards. It is on the agenda today in many underdeveloped countries where there are strong disagreements about the role of agriculture and rural development in development strategy.     

Rural rage: the roots of right-wing populism in the United States*

ABSTRACT

In the United States, right-wing populism is a major factor in national politics, as evidenced by the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States in 2015. Right-wing populism is defined by an appeal to ‘people’ (usually white, heterosexual Christians) to rebel – against both liberal ‘elites’ from above and ‘subversives’ and ‘parasites’ from below – by engaging in a hardline brand of conservative politics. There are a variety of right-wing populist political currents in the U.S. One of the most visible is the contemporary ‘Patriot’ movement, which is the successor to the Armed Citizens Militia movement which swept the across the nation in the 1990s. Today, the core Patriot movement groups are united by an interpretation of the Constitution that derides federal power (especially regarding environmental regulations, public lands, and progressive taxation) and advocates for a radical brand of right-wing decentralization. This opposition to federal government policies is framed in a way that inflames preexisting White, Christian nationalism (including anti-immigrant xenophobia and Islamophobia), as well as Christian Right support for patriarchy and opposition to LGBTQ rights.     

The rural roots of the rise of the Justice and Development Party in Turkey

ABSTRACT

This paper puts forward four main arguments regarding the persistence of significant rural support of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalk?nma Partisi, AKP) in Turkey since late 2002. Firstly, since the previous coalition government implemented the harshest neoliberal measures in the agricultural sector, small farmers do not directly associate neoliberal assault with the AKP administration. Secondly, villagers have utilized both the ballot box and direct action in order to bargain with the AKP. Thirdly, although the AKP government did not fundamentally depart from neoliberalism, the return of agricultural subsidies, significant expansion of social assistance, and rapid infrastructure construction have secured a large rural following for the party. Finally, the AKP government has effectively used coercive methods to prevent the emergence of an emancipatory political alternative.     

Populist parties in European Parliament elections: A new dataset on left,right and valence populism from 1979 to 2019

Despite the increasing interest in populism, there is a lack of comparative and longterm evidence on the electoral performance of populist parties. We address this gap by using a novel dataset covering 92 populist parties in the European Parliament elections from 1979 to 2019. Specifically, we provide aggregate data on the electoral performance of all populist parties as well as the three ideational varieties of populism, i.e. right-wing, left-wing and valence populist parties. We show that there is significant variation both across countries as well as between the ideational varieties of populism. Most notably, while the success of left-wing and valence populists is concentrated in specific areas, right-wing populist parties have consolidated as key players in the vast majority of EU countries.