Vox populi or vox masculini? Populism and gender in Northern Europe and South America

ABSTRACT

Conceptually, populism has no specific relationship to gender; in fact, gender differences, like all other differences within ‘the people’, are considered secondary, if not irrelevant, to populist politics. Yet populist actors do not operate in a cultural or ideological vacuum. So perhaps it is the national culture and broader ideology used by populists that determine their gender position. To explore this argument, we compare prototypical cases of contemporary populist forces in two regions: the Dutch Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV, Party for Freedom) and the Dansk Folkeparti (DF, Danish People's Party) in Northern Europe, and the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV, United Socialist Party of Venezuela) and the Bolivian Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS, Movement for Socialism) in South America. Populists in Northern Europe are predominantly right-wing, yet mobilize within highly emancipated societies, while populists in South America are mainly left-wing and mobilize in strongly patriarchal societies. Our analysis provides a somewhat muddled picture. Although populists do not necessarily have a clear view on gender issues, the latter are clearly influenced by ideology and region. While left-wing populists tend to be relatively progressive within their traditional South American context, right-wing populists mainly defend the status quo in their progressive Northern European context. However, in absolute terms, the relatively high level of gender equality already achieved in Northern Europe is at least as advanced as the one proposed by the populists in South America.     

A Rising Tide? The Salience of Immigration and the Rise of Anti‐Immigration Political Parties in Western Europe

In this article, we consider the causes of the increase in voting for anti‐immigration parties in western Europe in the past decade. We first note that one of the most commonly assumed reasons for this increase is an associated increase in anti‐immigration sentiment, which we show is likely to be false. We also outline the major theoretical explanations, which we argue are likely to be incomplete. We then introduce our proposed explanation: these parties have benefitted from a sharp increase in the salience of immigration amongst some voters. We show that there are strong correlations over time between the salience of immigration and the polling of such parties in most western European countries. We argue that aspects of immigration in the last decade have activated pre‐existing opposition to immigration amongst a shrinking segment of the populations of western European states.     

Variation in policy success: radical right populism and migration policy

How do radical right populist parties influence government policies in their core issue of immigration? This article provides a systematic analysis of the direct and indirect effects of radical right anti-immigration parties on migration policy reforms in 17 West European countries from 1990 to 2014. Insights from migration policy theory serve to explain variations in the migration policy success of the radical right. While previous studies mostly treat migration policy as uniform, it is argued that this approach neglects the distinct political logics of immigration and integration policy. This article reveals significant variations in policy success by policy area. While immigration policies have become more liberal despite the electoral success of the radical right, when the radical right is in government office it enacts more restrictions in integration policies. Accordingly, anti-immigrant mobilisation is more likely to influence immigrants’ rights than their actual numbers.     

Suffrage in San Juan: The Test of Women's Rights in Argentina

The 1927 reform of the Constitution of San Juan province, Argentina, contained a variety of innovative reforms that set a precedent for later national events. Of these, one of the most unusual was the provision for female participation in provincial elections. The authorisation of this right, which preceded the national suffrage law by twenty years, came about as a consequence of local and national circumstances. The fundamental conditions for suffrage had taken root in Argentina prior to 1927, but for suffrage to become a reality, a government had to be in place that could take advantage of an influx of new voters.     

Trajectories of Administrative Reform: Institutions,Timing and Choices in France and Spain

The influence of national administrative institutions on contemporary reforms has often been noted but insufficiently tested. This article enriches the comparative perspective of administrative reform policies by focusing on four interrelated dimensions: the choices of reformers, institutional constraints, timing and sequencing and long-term trajectories. This article tries to determine whether most similar administrative systems exhibit analogous contemporary reform trajectories in content, timing and sequence. By comparing the administrative reform policies of two ‘most similar’ Napoleonic countries, France and Spain, this article analyses the commonalities and divergences of decentralisation, territorial state reorganisation, civil service reforms and policies that focus on performance management and organisational design. The article identifies the ‘causal mechanisms’ that characterise the specific role of institutions and considers both the role of context and the importance of policy intersections.     

The roots of the Lega Nord’s populist regionalism

ABSTRACT

Newth’s paper contributes to a greater understanding of the connection between regionalism and radical-right ideology by examining the roots of the Italian Lega Nord’s regionalist, populist and nativist discourse with a new framework of populist regionalism. By analysing the discourse of two waves of regionalist activism in Lombardy and Piedmont, represented respectively by movements for regional autonomy (MRAs) and the Lega Nord (Northern League), Newth underlines a significant connection between populist regionalism and the radical right, represented by the process of Othering directed against both internal and external migrants. At the same time, examination of narratives used during these two waves of activism reveals differences—at times nuanced, at times more explicit—between their respective populist and nativist identities.     

Tremors from afar: negotiating the rise of Donald Trump on Sweden’s populist right

ABSTRACT

While commentators often describe transnational far-right populism as a unified movement, Teitelbaum’s article investigates incongruities among anti-immigrant, nationalist actors in two locations today. It focuses on the implications of Donald Trump’s success for the Sweden Democrats, highlighting party leaders’ inability to establish a coherent position on the US Republican. Their struggle derives from Trump’s mismatch with the party’s emerging reformist ideals. Accordingly, the public sphere analysed in this article provides insight, not only into the internal divisions and fraught history of the Sweden Democrats, but also into the dynamic nature of contemporary right-wing populist movements in the West.     

The Monetisation of Consent and its Limits: Explaining Political Dominance and Decline in Malaysia

ABSTRACT

Malaysia’s 14th General Election in 2018 toppled the Barisan Nasional government after six decades in power. Barisan Nasional’s longevity was due to its performance legitimacy and a capacity to manipulate electoral mechanisms. However, it was the use of money in eliciting consent that led to a political change. This article traces how sustaining the dominance of the Barisan Nasional under Najib Razak used a strategy which we term the monetisation of consent. However, when monetising consent loses its efficacy, political dominance is challenged. We discuss why and how manufacturing consent through the use of money has its limits when regime legitimacy is challenged. Intense political competition on the electoral terrain from 2008 and the multiplication of Malay-Muslim political parties induced Najib’s greater personal grip on state funds to gain political support. This resulted in the Najib regime’s kleptocratic turn. Beyond the disbursement of largesse to political power brokers and business elites, his government monetised consent as a populist strategy. The reduced efficacy of electoral manipulation made the monetisation of consent imperative for regime survival but the use of money and unpopular fiscal policies, which deprived citizens of disposable income, led to a legitimacy crisis and the Barisan Nasional’s defeat.     

Populism in the Manifestos of Latvian Political Parties: Increasingly Used but Ineffective?

It is often stated that we live in an era of populist zeitgeist, namely, that populism today has become part of everyday politics. Despite systematic attempts to investigate the validity of this claim in Western European democracies, the situation in the Baltic states has been overlooked. This article marks the first attempt to investigate the dynamics of populism in the Latvian party manifestos by using novel research methodology to quantitatively estimate how populist Latvian political parties have become over an extensive period of time. Our findings reveal that in the last two decades populism has indeed become more widespread in Latvian party manifestos, yet it does not seem to be very effective and is largely primarily used by electorally unsuccessful parties.     

Populism and the politics of misinformation

ABSTRACT

The proliferation of fake news and of conspiracy theories has coincided with the emergence of the digital media. Although the extensive distribution of misinformation is nothing new, the emergence of online media proved to be especially fertile for conspiratorial populists in transmitting distorted information. Since 2016, conspiracy theories, disguised as news, have spread like a snowstorm across the political scene on both sides of the Atlantic. As I discuss in this paper, this climate has enabled conspiratorial populists to be especially successful in spreading suspicion of established knowledge, which they claim to have been produced by the elite and which is eschewed for its association with the powerful. Alongside the diminished gatekeeping capabilities of the mainstream media, it thus becomes ever more difficult for people to distinguish between factual stories and fictitious news often spread via unscrupulous websites, as both can be presented in the same guise.