Annika Werner
Biographic Data
| ID | 3717930 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Annika Werner |
| GIVEN NAMES | Annika |
| FAMILY NAME | Werner |
| SIGNATURE | WERNER A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Australian National University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7341-0551 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 37 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 317 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 37 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
The personal efficacy of party youth wing members
Although young people are said to be increasingly withdrawing from participation in political parties, some still join because they believe they can influence them to achieve change. We examine this sense of personal efficacy among contemporary youth wing members and ask: how is youth wing members’ personal efficacy associated with their activity levels and membership length, and with intra-party democracy and youth wing integration into the part…
More social, less material, more influenced by family ties
Do young women and men join political parties for different reasons? To investigate, we theorize the following: first, women will be more attracted by social incentives and men by material ones, while purposive incentives will be equally appealing to both; second, before signing up, women will have more party-affiliated family ties than men; and third, these ties will moderate the gender gap in incentives. Drawing on YOUMEM survey data from over …
The added value of youth wings
Political parties expect youth wings to recruit and socialize young people into the norms and values of the party, nurturing aligned future grassroots members, officials, and candidates. However, embeddedness in youth wings – understood in terms of membership length and activity levels – may not necessarily deliver this. In our study, we examine whether youth wings nurture the members parties want using YOUMEM survey data from over 5000 members o…
Party Youth Wings as Forces of Renovation
Party youth wings are a vital pipeline to power, but have been overlooked by gender scholars. We investigate the political socialization that youth wings offer their women members, focusing on gendered trends as regards two key political attitudes. We ask: Do women and men in youth wings differ in their acquisition of personal efficacy and electoral ambition? Using YOUMEM survey data from over 3,100 youth wing members in Australia, Austria, Germa…
Parties’ Ideological Cores and Peripheries
How do political parties balance policy adaptation with ideological continuity? While spatial models emphasise external factors driving party behaviour, less attention has been given to internal party choices. This article innovates by proposing that parties differentiate between and make distinct strategical decisions regarding their ideological core and peripheral policy areas. We argue that parties maintain continuity in their ideological core…
Inside party youth wings
Youth wings fulfil vital democratic functions. They connect parties with young people, socialise them into political life, and train future candidates and officials. Yet, youth wings have been largely overlooked by party scholars. In this article, we present the Youth Wing Membership Survey (YOUMEM) dataset. With responses from over 5000 members of 12 centre-left and centre-right youth wings in Australia, Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Swede…
Young radicals, moderates and aligned
The ideological fit between party grassroots and leaderships has long been a concern for political science, with members in general, and young members in particular, thought to be more radical. However, we do not know, first, whether this is still the case and, if it is, what drives members in different ideological directions. To investigate, we propose a new typology of members as radicals, moderates and aligned, and develop a theoretical framew…
Why top politicians are pessimistic or optimistic about democracy and its evolution
Do voters support democracy at all costs? Input and output legitimacy in Australia and the United Kingdom
Are voters willing to sacrifice democracy if they get everything else they want from their political leaders? Recent trends towards illiberalism in established democracies have called into question voters’ commitment to democratic values in the face of competing incentives like partisan identities and policy rewards. This article investigates whether voters tolerate breaches of democratic norms (input legitimacy) in the face of policy congruence …
Democracy Amid Pandemic
Do people support ostensibly effective policy measures that curtail liberal rights and civil liberties or instead stick to liberal principles when confronted with an unprecedented crisis? This article examines the relationship between individuals’ perceptions of the Covid-19 pandemic and their attitudes toward democracy as they consider effective countermeasures. It asks (a) whether individuals’ sense of being affected by the pandemic shapes thei…
Using survey experiments for construct validation
Survey experiments are an increasingly popular tool for causal inference in political science. We argue that an under-utilized application for survey experiments is nomological/construct validation, where researchers evaluate whether indicators really measure systematized concepts. We demonstrate this approach by examining respondents’ preferences for autocratic leadership by asking whether those that say they want strong leaders who bend the rul…
Ideological beasts or effective organizations? Do voters’ views of democracy affect their expectations of political parties
While the functions of political parties have been extensively defined in the political science literature, it is still an open question whether citizens attribute the same roles to parties. Established theories of parties emphasize their linkage functions geared towards representation or effectiveness. This article investigates where citizens locate parties within these perspectives and whether their understanding of party functions is connected…
Cue-taking, populist attitudes, and support for holding a referendum
Why do citizens support holding a referendum? In this article, we argue that citizens are instrumental by using heuristics and cues from parties, independent experts, and the population to decide whether to hold a referendum. We further expect that populist and non-populist citizens differ in how they respond to these cues. Using pre-registered survey experiments in Austria and Germany, we find that citizens’ support depends mainly on their attit…
The strange bedfellows of populism and liberalism
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on everyday life, where people feel affected both economically and health-wise by the spread of the novel virus, regardless of whether they have contracted it or not. At the same time, we know that populist attitudes influence how people perceive their individual situation, the political environment, and available policy solutions. Are these two factors interrelated? This article examines the rol…
Nativism, civic nationalism and the malleability of voter attitudes
Nativism is one of the defining phenomena of the contemporary era. Yet, we know little about how malleable citizen attitudes associated with nativism and nationalism are to priming effects when media frames which deal with key issues such as immigration are introduced. In this article, we present the findings from a survey experiment fielded to a nationally representative sample of voters in Australia in May 2019. In it, we explore whether the at…
How non-radical right parties strategically use nativist language
Radical right parties and their nativist ideas have gained considerable momentum, compelling non-radical parties to “engage” with this nativist “Zeitgeist.” Yet, aside from general trends such as tougher stances on migration, we know little about the strategic choices of parties when balancing their commitment to core policy goals and the need to be “timely,” that is, to respond to changing environments. Theoretically, parties may either adapt th…
How rational are voters when expecting government parties to fulfil pledges? A cross‐national survey experiment
That parties fulfil their pre‐election pledges once they are in government is a fundamental idea of many democracy models. This paper addresses the question of whether the government/opposition status of their party affects how much citizens want governments to fulfil their promises. We hypothesize that interest‐driven, rational voters are more likely to prefer their own party to keep its promises and investigate whether this rationale is impacte…
Populist Attitudes
The study of populist attitudes has thus far drawn heavily on ideational definitions of populism, focussing almost exclusively on attitudes related to dimensions such as people-centredness and anti-elitism. However, these accounts have largely ignored other approaches to populism, especially the discursive-performative school which see populism as something that is communicated and done by political actors. We argue that when studying populist at…
The effect of radical right fringe parties on main parties in Central and Eastern Europe
Do radical right fringe parties affect main parties in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)? Using data from the Manifesto Project, we analyze the relationship between radical right fringe parties’ and main parties’ policy programs regarding sociocultural issues in six post-communist countries of CEE. Even though radical right fringe parties have participated in government in several of these countries, and in Hungary a fringe party has become the co…
Equivocal Euroscepticism
Conceptualizations and measurements of Euroscepticism tend to assume that, while parties may change positions from one period to another, they unequivocally espouse hard or soft euroscepticism at a given point in time. However, there are good theoretical reasons for some parties not to do so, in order to speak to different audiences and keep their decision‐making options open. Through an analysis of manifestos and leaders' speeches we show how tw…
Reputation versus office
Sweden and Denmark have presented contrasting relationships between centre-right and populist radical right (PRR) parties. In Sweden, the centre-right has refused cooperation with the Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna) (SD), even when this cost the centre-right office. However, in Denmark, coalitions led by centre-right parties have cooperated with the Danish People’s Party (Dansk Folkeparti) (DF) on multiple occasions. Through a controlled c…
Localising political party appeals
Democratic political parties get categorised in manifold ways, for instance with reference to their size, ideology or roles in the political system. Yet, when it comes to their spatial focus in terms of representation, strategy and policy, we rather crudely identify some as regional parties and assume that all other parties focus on the whole nation in a uniform manner. Scott Morgenstern's book challenges this limited vision and provides us with …
International Populism
Cure, Poison or Placebo? The Consequences of Populist and Radical Party Success for Representative Democracy
The spread and success of radical and populist parties has triggered a profound debate on the state of democracy. Not only are these parties described as the outcome of a democratic malaise in which democratic regimes had ceased to integrate, represent and engage all their citizens. At the same time, questions arose as to the consequences of these parties for existing representative democracies. Could radical and populist parties be a (partial) c…
Representation in Western Europe
One of the most common critiques of political parties is that they no longer represent the interests of their voters. On one hand, representation literature tasks all parties equally to ensure high ideological congruence with their voters. On the other hand, party behaviour literature acknowledges that parties have legitimately different primary goals, in particular vote-maximisation or policy-seeking. Thus, this article analyses whether ideologi…
Equivocal Euroscepticism
Conceptualizations and measurements of Euroscepticism tend to assume that, while parties may change positions from one period to another, they unequivocally espouse hard or soft euroscepticism at a given point in time. However, there are good theoretical reasons for some parties not to do so, in order to speak to different audiences and keep their decision‐making options open. Through an analysis of manifestos and leaders' speeches we show how tw…
Respectable radicals
Policy congruence has been identified as the main driver of European Parliament (EP) alliances. Yet, radical right parties are divided between three EP groups: European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR); Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD); Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF). This article investigates why four radical right parties in the ECR and EFDD – the Danish People’s Party, the Finns Party, the Sweden Democrats and UKIP – neithe…
Differently Eurosceptic
Since the 2008 crisis, radical right populist (RRP) party positions on European integration have hardened and/or increased in salience. But do their supporters align with them on this? And what role does Euroscepticism play in driving support for these parties? Using data from the ‘euandi’ voting advice application, we examine how close over 8000 RRP supporters in the UK, France, the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden and Belgium were in 2014 to their …
Populist Attitudes
The study of populist attitudes has thus far drawn heavily on ideational definitions of populism, focussing almost exclusively on attitudes related to dimensions such as people-centredness and anti-elitism. However, these accounts have largely ignored other approaches to populism, especially the discursive-performative school which see populism as something that is communicated and done by political actors. We argue that when studying populist at…
Who Do Populist Radical Right Parties Stand for? Representative Claims, Claim Acceptance and Descriptive Representation in the Austrian FPÖ and German AfD
Populist radical right parties are known for focussing on a vague idea of ‘the people’ and rejecting social groups like immigrants. The representative relationship between parties and voters, however, is a positive one. Thus, this article investigates (a) who populist radical right parties claim to represent, (b) whether these groups accept the claim, and (c) whether the parties indeed represent these groups descriptively. Our analysis of the man…
Reclaiming national sovereignty
This article investigates how and why Austrian parties have \n(re)constructed claims of national sovereignty and brought them to \nthe centre of political competition. Theoretically, claims for national \nsovereignty are directed at recovering the people’s autonomy from \n‘sinister’ elites and ‘harmful’ outsiders like immigrants. As such \nclaims vary in terms of policy content, salience, and discursive \nmeans, this article uses the analysis of …
Voters’ preferences for party representation
The functioning of representative democracy is crucially dependent on the representative behaviour of political parties. Large parts of the party representation literature assume that voters expect parties to fulfil the promises of their election programs. What voters actually want from parties, however, remains largely unclear. Within the Australian context, this article investigates the preferences of voters regarding three ideal party represen…
Compulsory voting and ethnic diversity increase invalid voting while corruption does not
Invalid voting, meaning blank and spoiled ballots, is a regular phenomenon in democracies around the world. When its share is larger than the margin of victory or greater than the vote share of some of the large parties in the country, invalid voting becomes a problem for democratic legitimacy. This article investigates its determinants in 417 democratic parliamentary elections in 73 countries on five continents from 1970 to 2011. The analysis sh…
What voters want from their parties
Do Populists Represent? Theoretical Considerations on How Populist Parties (Might) Enact their Representative Function
Are populist parties bad for representative democracy or are they \nfilling a representative gap? While it has been broadly established \nthat the emergence and success of populist parties is not merely \na sign of protest, there is still a sparsity of empirical investigations \ninto whether these parties represent hitherto under- or \nunrepresented social groups or whether they offer a policy profile \nthat was in demand but not present. Using P…
How non-radical right parties strategically use nativist language
Radical right parties and their nativist ideas have gained considerable momentum, compelling non-radical parties to “engage” with this nativist “Zeitgeist.” Yet, aside from general trends such as tougher stances on migration, we know little about the strategic choices of parties when balancing their commitment to core policy goals and the need to be “timely,” that is, to respond to changing environments. Theoretically, parties may either adapt th…
The Supply Side of Second-Order Elections
The second-order character of past European elections is a well-established hypothesis with respect to voter turnout and voting behaviour. This paper presents a conceptual framework for testing this hypothesis on the supply side of European elections. It includes three groups of indicators allowing for the comparison of national and European election manifestos to determine the latter's second-order nature: (1) resource allocation, measured by th…
Reputation versus office
Sweden and Denmark have presented contrasting relationships between centre-right and populist radical right (PRR) parties. In Sweden, the centre-right has refused cooperation with the Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna) (SD), even when this cost the centre-right office. However, in Denmark, coalitions led by centre-right parties have cooperated with the Danish People’s Party (Dansk Folkeparti) (DF) on multiple occasions. Through a controlled c…
Representation in Western Europe
One of the most common critiques of political parties is that they no longer represent the interests of their voters. On one hand, representation literature tasks all parties equally to ensure high ideological congruence with their voters. On the other hand, party behaviour literature acknowledges that parties have legitimately different primary goals, in particular vote-maximisation or policy-seeking. Thus, this article analyses whether ideologi…
The effect of radical right fringe parties on main parties in Central and Eastern Europe
Do radical right fringe parties affect main parties in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)? Using data from the Manifesto Project, we analyze the relationship between radical right fringe parties’ and main parties’ policy programs regarding sociocultural issues in six post-communist countries of CEE. Even though radical right fringe parties have participated in government in several of these countries, and in Hungary a fringe party has become the co…
Cue-taking, populist attitudes, and support for holding a referendum
Why do citizens support holding a referendum? In this article, we argue that citizens are instrumental by using heuristics and cues from parties, independent experts, and the population to decide whether to hold a referendum. We further expect that populist and non-populist citizens differ in how they respond to these cues. Using pre-registered survey experiments in Austria and Germany, we find that citizens’ support depends mainly on their attit…
Inside party youth wings
Youth wings fulfil vital democratic functions. They connect parties with young people, socialise them into political life, and train future candidates and officials. Yet, youth wings have been largely overlooked by party scholars. In this article, we present the Youth Wing Membership Survey (YOUMEM) dataset. With responses from over 5000 members of 12 centre-left and centre-right youth wings in Australia, Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Swede…
Party responsiveness and voter confidence in Australia
Numerous studies have shown that Australians have little confidence in their political parties. This article presents the results of a study investigating whether the responsiveness of Australian parties to what their voters want drives this lack of confidence. It analyses two aspects of party responsiveness: programmatic responsiveness in electoral manifestos and perceived responsiveness that centres on Australian voters’ assessment of how well …
Policies, institutions and time
This article examines the relation between policies, institutions and time by addressing the case of eastern enlargement policy and the European Commission. Our main question is how the special challenges and requirements of EU eastern enlargement policy impacted on the administrative level of the Commission, i.e. the level in charge of structuring, monitoring and steering the policy's implementation. We provide empirical data on institutional ch…
Cure, Poison or Placebo? The Consequences of Populist and Radical Party Success for Representative Democracy
The spread and success of radical and populist parties has triggered a profound debate on the state of democracy. Not only are these parties described as the outcome of a democratic malaise in which democratic regimes had ceased to integrate, represent and engage all their citizens. At the same time, questions arose as to the consequences of these parties for existing representative democracies. Could radical and populist parties be a (partial) c…
Using survey experiments for construct validation
Survey experiments are an increasingly popular tool for causal inference in political science. We argue that an under-utilized application for survey experiments is nomological/construct validation, where researchers evaluate whether indicators really measure systematized concepts. We demonstrate this approach by examining respondents’ preferences for autocratic leadership by asking whether those that say they want strong leaders who bend the rul…
The strange bedfellows of populism and liberalism
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on everyday life, where people feel affected both economically and health-wise by the spread of the novel virus, regardless of whether they have contracted it or not. At the same time, we know that populist attitudes influence how people perceive their individual situation, the political environment, and available policy solutions. Are these two factors interrelated? This article examines the rol…
How rational are voters when expecting government parties to fulfil pledges? A cross‐national survey experiment
That parties fulfil their pre‐election pledges once they are in government is a fundamental idea of many democracy models. This paper addresses the question of whether the government/opposition status of their party affects how much citizens want governments to fulfil their promises. We hypothesize that interest‐driven, rational voters are more likely to prefer their own party to keep its promises and investigate whether this rationale is impacte…
Young radicals, moderates and aligned
The ideological fit between party grassroots and leaderships has long been a concern for political science, with members in general, and young members in particular, thought to be more radical. However, we do not know, first, whether this is still the case and, if it is, what drives members in different ideological directions. To investigate, we propose a new typology of members as radicals, moderates and aligned, and develop a theoretical framew…
Democracy Amid Pandemic
Do people support ostensibly effective policy measures that curtail liberal rights and civil liberties or instead stick to liberal principles when confronted with an unprecedented crisis? This article examines the relationship between individuals’ perceptions of the Covid-19 pandemic and their attitudes toward democracy as they consider effective countermeasures. It asks (a) whether individuals’ sense of being affected by the pandemic shapes thei…
Policies, institutions and time
This article examines the relation between policies, institutions and time by addressing the case of eastern enlargement policy and the European Commission. Our main question is how the special challenges and requirements of EU eastern enlargement policy impacted on the administrative level of the Commission, i.e. the level in charge of structuring, monitoring and steering the policy's implementation. We provide empirical data on institutional ch…
Programmatic Supply and the Autonomy of US State Parties in 2008 and 2010
This paper examines the extent to which US state parties are autonomous from national party influence, evaluates how much state party autonomy varies across the USA, and examines possible explanations for this variance. We use newly collected party platform data from US state parties between 2008 and 2010 to examine the policy autonomy of state vis-à-vis national parties. In general, we find that US state parties have more extreme policy position…
The Supply Side of Second-Order Elections
The second-order character of past European elections is a well-established hypothesis with respect to voter turnout and voting behaviour. This paper presents a conceptual framework for testing this hypothesis on the supply side of European elections. It includes three groups of indicators allowing for the comparison of national and European election manifestos to determine the latter's second-order nature: (1) resource allocation, measured by th…
Party responsiveness and voter confidence in Australia
Numerous studies have shown that Australians have little confidence in their political parties. This article presents the results of a study investigating whether the responsiveness of Australian parties to what their voters want drives this lack of confidence. It analyses two aspects of party responsiveness: programmatic responsiveness in electoral manifestos and perceived responsiveness that centres on Australian voters’ assessment of how well …
Respectable radicals
Policy congruence has been identified as the main driver of European Parliament (EP) alliances. Yet, radical right parties are divided between three EP groups: European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR); Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD); Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF). This article investigates why four radical right parties in the ECR and EFDD – the Danish People’s Party, the Finns Party, the Sweden Democrats and UKIP – neithe…
Representation in Western Europe
One of the most common critiques of political parties is that they no longer represent the interests of their voters. On one hand, representation literature tasks all parties equally to ensure high ideological congruence with their voters. On the other hand, party behaviour literature acknowledges that parties have legitimately different primary goals, in particular vote-maximisation or policy-seeking. Thus, this article analyses whether ideologi…
Differently Eurosceptic
Since the 2008 crisis, radical right populist (RRP) party positions on European integration have hardened and/or increased in salience. But do their supporters align with them on this? And what role does Euroscepticism play in driving support for these parties? Using data from the ‘euandi’ voting advice application, we examine how close over 8000 RRP supporters in the UK, France, the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden and Belgium were in 2014 to their …
Who Do Populist Radical Right Parties Stand for? Representative Claims, Claim Acceptance and Descriptive Representation in the Austrian FPÖ and German AfD
Populist radical right parties are known for focussing on a vague idea of ‘the people’ and rejecting social groups like immigrants. The representative relationship between parties and voters, however, is a positive one. Thus, this article investigates (a) who populist radical right parties claim to represent, (b) whether these groups accept the claim, and (c) whether the parties indeed represent these groups descriptively. Our analysis of the man…
Do Populists Represent? Theoretical Considerations on How Populist Parties (Might) Enact their Representative Function
Are populist parties bad for representative democracy or are they \nfilling a representative gap? While it has been broadly established \nthat the emergence and success of populist parties is not merely \na sign of protest, there is still a sparsity of empirical investigations \ninto whether these parties represent hitherto under- or \nunrepresented social groups or whether they offer a policy profile \nthat was in demand but not present. Using P…
Voters’ preferences for party representation
The functioning of representative democracy is crucially dependent on the representative behaviour of political parties. Large parts of the party representation literature assume that voters expect parties to fulfil the promises of their election programs. What voters actually want from parties, however, remains largely unclear. Within the Australian context, this article investigates the preferences of voters regarding three ideal party represen…
Compulsory voting and ethnic diversity increase invalid voting while corruption does not
Invalid voting, meaning blank and spoiled ballots, is a regular phenomenon in democracies around the world. When its share is larger than the margin of victory or greater than the vote share of some of the large parties in the country, invalid voting becomes a problem for democratic legitimacy. This article investigates its determinants in 417 democratic parliamentary elections in 73 countries on five continents from 1970 to 2011. The analysis sh…
Reclaiming national sovereignty
This article investigates how and why Austrian parties have \n(re)constructed claims of national sovereignty and brought them to \nthe centre of political competition. Theoretically, claims for national \nsovereignty are directed at recovering the people’s autonomy from \n‘sinister’ elites and ‘harmful’ outsiders like immigrants. As such \nclaims vary in terms of policy content, salience, and discursive \nmeans, this article uses the analysis of …
What voters want from their parties
Localising political party appeals
Democratic political parties get categorised in manifold ways, for instance with reference to their size, ideology or roles in the political system. Yet, when it comes to their spatial focus in terms of representation, strategy and policy, we rather crudely identify some as regional parties and assume that all other parties focus on the whole nation in a uniform manner. Scott Morgenstern's book challenges this limited vision and provides us with …
International Populism
Cure, Poison or Placebo? The Consequences of Populist and Radical Party Success for Representative Democracy
The spread and success of radical and populist parties has triggered a profound debate on the state of democracy. Not only are these parties described as the outcome of a democratic malaise in which democratic regimes had ceased to integrate, represent and engage all their citizens. At the same time, questions arose as to the consequences of these parties for existing representative democracies. Could radical and populist parties be a (partial) c…
The effect of radical right fringe parties on main parties in Central and Eastern Europe
Do radical right fringe parties affect main parties in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)? Using data from the Manifesto Project, we analyze the relationship between radical right fringe parties’ and main parties’ policy programs regarding sociocultural issues in six post-communist countries of CEE. Even though radical right fringe parties have participated in government in several of these countries, and in Hungary a fringe party has become the co…
Equivocal Euroscepticism
Conceptualizations and measurements of Euroscepticism tend to assume that, while parties may change positions from one period to another, they unequivocally espouse hard or soft euroscepticism at a given point in time. However, there are good theoretical reasons for some parties not to do so, in order to speak to different audiences and keep their decision‐making options open. Through an analysis of manifestos and leaders' speeches we show how tw…
Reputation versus office
Sweden and Denmark have presented contrasting relationships between centre-right and populist radical right (PRR) parties. In Sweden, the centre-right has refused cooperation with the Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna) (SD), even when this cost the centre-right office. However, in Denmark, coalitions led by centre-right parties have cooperated with the Danish People’s Party (Dansk Folkeparti) (DF) on multiple occasions. Through a controlled c…
Populist Attitudes
The study of populist attitudes has thus far drawn heavily on ideational definitions of populism, focussing almost exclusively on attitudes related to dimensions such as people-centredness and anti-elitism. However, these accounts have largely ignored other approaches to populism, especially the discursive-performative school which see populism as something that is communicated and done by political actors. We argue that when studying populist at…
The strange bedfellows of populism and liberalism
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on everyday life, where people feel affected both economically and health-wise by the spread of the novel virus, regardless of whether they have contracted it or not. At the same time, we know that populist attitudes influence how people perceive their individual situation, the political environment, and available policy solutions. Are these two factors interrelated? This article examines the rol…
Nativism, civic nationalism and the malleability of voter attitudes
Nativism is one of the defining phenomena of the contemporary era. Yet, we know little about how malleable citizen attitudes associated with nativism and nationalism are to priming effects when media frames which deal with key issues such as immigration are introduced. In this article, we present the findings from a survey experiment fielded to a nationally representative sample of voters in Australia in May 2019. In it, we explore whether the at…
How non-radical right parties strategically use nativist language
Radical right parties and their nativist ideas have gained considerable momentum, compelling non-radical parties to “engage” with this nativist “Zeitgeist.” Yet, aside from general trends such as tougher stances on migration, we know little about the strategic choices of parties when balancing their commitment to core policy goals and the need to be “timely,” that is, to respond to changing environments. Theoretically, parties may either adapt th…
How rational are voters when expecting government parties to fulfil pledges? A cross‐national survey experiment
That parties fulfil their pre‐election pledges once they are in government is a fundamental idea of many democracy models. This paper addresses the question of whether the government/opposition status of their party affects how much citizens want governments to fulfil their promises. We hypothesize that interest‐driven, rational voters are more likely to prefer their own party to keep its promises and investigate whether this rationale is impacte…
Democracy Amid Pandemic
Do people support ostensibly effective policy measures that curtail liberal rights and civil liberties or instead stick to liberal principles when confronted with an unprecedented crisis? This article examines the relationship between individuals’ perceptions of the Covid-19 pandemic and their attitudes toward democracy as they consider effective countermeasures. It asks (a) whether individuals’ sense of being affected by the pandemic shapes thei…
Politics (32 works) · Political science (31 works) · Law (29 works) · Law (28 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (27 works) · Political economy (23 works) · Sociology (22 works) · Populism, Right-Wing Movements (20 works) · Democracy (13 works) · Economics (13 works)