Mainstream Politics Research Articles

Not exactly twins: Authoritarians and populists differ in their attitudes toward trust in government, elitism, pluralism, political identification, and identity fusion.

Authoritarianism and populism are used regularly to describe the individuals responsible for anti-democratic action. These two constructs share some similarities with regard to how they hinder democracy and at times have been used interchangeably to describe such issues. However, authoritarians and populists may differ with regard to their political identification, as well as how they view the government and the existing establishment. With a US college sample, this study's goal was to examine how authoritarianism and populist attitudes influence views on pluralism, elitism, trust in government, identity fusion, and political identification (identification with American political parties). The findings indicated that right-wing authoritarians trusted the government, endorsed elitist attitudes, but were low on pluralism; this pattern was the opposite for those high on populist attitudes. Left-wing authoritarianism was related only to low pluralism. Moreover, low trust in the government partially mediated the link between populist attitudes and pluralism. Results also indicated that right-wing and left-wing authoritarians identified with the Republican and Democratic parties, respectively, whereas political identification was unrelated to populist attitudes. Furthermore, identity fusion partially mediated the link between right-wing authoritarianism and identification with the Republican Party. Authoritarianism and populist attitudes may explain different motivations for anti-democratic thought and behaviors. This study contributes to ongoing debates found in contemporary populism and authoritarianism research as well as different solutions to addressing their rise in mainstream politics.

Evaluating the concept of political masculinity/ies: a simple idea or a case of too many ideas?

This article critically interrogates and evaluates the concept of political masculinities as part of enhancing dialogue between political science and critical studies on men and masculinities. It discusses what counts as masculinity, what counts as political and how they connect. The connections are all too clear in mainstream politics, not only in populist, authoritarian, ethno-nationalist and militaristic politics but also in democratic, socialist and various activist politics. The evaluation of the concept of political masculinities is conducted by asking three main questions: how does the concept add to, complement or contradict existing and established external concepts and theories? How is the concept constructed internally, and with what structure, elements and interrelations? And how can the application of the concept be possibly extended into fields beyond those usually recognized and labelled explicitly as specifically political fields, including the politics of the everyday and the politics of multiple global crises?

Can Ethnic Minority Political Parties Influence the Policy Process in Fragmented Societies? Insights from Sri Lanka

Existing scholarship from developing countries explores the dynamics of identity/ethnocentric politics and finds that in fragmented societies, politicians’ identities tend to influence government policies to favour their own community or group. Against this backdrop, the article explores how the Hill Country ethnic minority community of Sri Lanka influences the policy process through electoral politics. Findings reveal that ethnic minority parties systematically use rational choice theory to influence policy processes to gain material and welfare benefits. The study highlights the fact that ethnic parties tend to induce strong ethnic feelings using ethno-populism to mobilize voters, provide unconditional support, maintain an ever-changing coalition with the ruling administration and have political bargaining based on ethnic headcounts to influence policies. The article informs that this pattern is harmful to post-conflict societies striving for sustainable peace and reconciliation and highlights the necessity of inclusive and impartial policies and institutions, political consolidation and inter-ethnic justice to accommodate ethnic minorities in the mainstream politics and development to prevent deepening ethnopolitical cleavages in the guise of electoral politics.

How Far-Right Extremism Changed American Body Politic

Abstract Aggressive rhetoric was part and parcel of the rising Tea Party and the related anti-Obama conspiracy theories. The argument here is that Donald J. Trump, as the leading public promoter of Birther rumors, first-time presidential candidate, and U.S. president, played a starring role in bringing hate speech, violent threats, and political violence into the political mainstream. As a result, political violence increased significantly and several violent far-right extremist groups, domestic terrorist entities, were newly founded after Trump announced his presidential campaign in mid-2015. As ex-president and once again presidential candidate, Trump glorified the criminally convicted participants in the violent breach of the U.S. Capitol on 6 January 2021 and honored violent far-right fringe groups that were active in the late 20th century while threatening revenge against his political enemies. To assess, whether Trump, as 47th U.S. president, would be able to have his political foes investigated and jailed upon his return to the highest office, we looked for answers in the Heritage Foundation's “Project 2025,” the most detailed blueprint for the dismantling of the “deep state” and the best-laid plan for a takeover by Trump and vetted conservative “Make America Great Again” loyalists in January 2025.1 Although the sole focus here is on the rhetoric of far-right extremism and violence in the past 15 years, there were no similarly extreme far-left hate speech patterns and violent extremism related to the Democratic Party during the same time.

A primer on trade and inequality

Abstract Economists have generally underplayed, until recently, globalization’s role in exacerbating inequality in the advanced economies. But in the public imagination, globalization’s adverse effects have loomed much larger, significantly contributing to the backlash against the political mainstream and the rise of far-right populism. The literature on trade and inequality is in fact exceptionally rich, with important theoretical insights as well as extensive empirical findings covering recent experience. In these comments, I will summarize a few key takeaways.

The wellbeing economy in practice: sustainable and inclusive growth? Or a post-growth breakthrough?

A wellbeing economy (WE) has gained a wide range of adherents in recent years, although the meanings they give to it vary. One point with conflicting understandings is whether a WE is a post-growth economy. Many environmentalists and other growth critics have long called for a move beyond the pursuit of economic growth as a societal priority and an embrace of an ethic of sufficiency. Some WE proponents highlight not only the WE’s post-growth character but also its ability to bring post-growth ideas into the political mainstream, pointing, for example, to the Wellbeing Economy Governments (WEGo), a partnership of governments with shared ambitions of creating a WE. Does increasing support for a WE represent the long-sought breakthrough for a post-growth, sufficiency-oriented environmental approach? If not, how can efforts to implement a WE be taken further in a post-growth direction? These questions are examined through case studies of countries participating in WEGo, using an analysis of government documents and other sources to determine whether they have adopted a post-growth orientation. Expanding on previous analysis of the three founding WEGo members, this article examines three more recent cases: Finland and Wales, which are both WEGo members, and Canada, which has participated in WEGo gatherings. It confirms previous findings that WEGo nations have taken only limited steps in a post-growth direction, with emerging WE practice amounting at most to a “weak post-growth approach.” However, while previous studies have emphasized conclusions applying broadly to all WEGos, this article identifies greater variation among WE cases. One case, Wales, stands out for moving further in a post-growth direction, including significant sufficiency-oriented policies such as limits on road building, although a commitment to economic growth remains evident. Building on the findings, the article concludes with some options that WEGo nations and others could take to strengthen the WE’s post-growth character.

Pacifism and peace activism in modern Britain: A history of the ‘peace studies problem’

AbstractIt is over 40 years since Ceadel defined interwar British pacifism as a ‘faith’. During that time, pacifism has had little political significance and the influential peace movement of the interwar years is now scarcely within living memory. Yet, what Margaret Thatcher once described as ‘the peace studies problem’ is a diverse and interdisciplinary field, and one in which scholarship, peace activism and mainstream politics are all closely intertwined. Feminist scholars and peace activists have queried the links between militarism and patriarchy; historians and ethicists have explored medical pacifism and have asked whether medicine is (or should be) a pacifist profession. More recently, scholars have looked at interwar pacifism through the lens of the Empire and have challenged the imperialist pacifist delusion. Despite pacifism's limited political influence, its history over the last 40 years has explored the beliefs and motivations of men and women struggling to respond to militarism and the threat of war.

Representing Albania in the Travel Writing and Political Commentary of Edith Durham and Aubrey Herbert during the Albanian Path to Independence, c. 1904–1923

Recent imagological scholarship about the Balkans has revised the Balkanism thesis by examining the sympathetic lens through which British liberals viewed the peninsula's Christian and Slavic nationalities following the 1903 establishment of the Balkan Committee. Revisionist historiography has, however, overlooked how non-Christian and non-Slavic communities were represented in Britain beyond overgeneralized orientalist stereotypes of ‘the villainous Turk’. This article aims to correct this imbalance by examining representations of Albania in the travel writing and political commentary of Mary Edith Durham and Aubrey Nigel Henry Molyneux Herbert, Britain's most notable supporters of Albania's national movement in the early twentieth century, who came to sympathize with the country because of their own peripheral position in relation to the British cultural and political mainstream, by virtue of gender and an unfashionably conservative worldview. Focusing on their published travel writing and political commentary between the 1904 publication of Durham's first narrative, Through the Lands of the Serb, and Herbert's untimely death in 1923, this article proposes that they articulated a counter-discourse to liberal writing on south-eastern Europe and that their representations of Albania foregrounded the capacity for self-governance, in contrast to the cultural chaos attributed to the country by liberals.

Entangled Crisis Narratives in Germany: Strengthening the Anti-Systemic Public?

This article studies how crisis management and its narrative discourse are able to strengthen anti-systemic and far-right narratives. We compare government and opposition discourses during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020/2022 and the energy/inflation crisis of 2022/2023 in the German federal state of Saxony. The paper argues that the two crises were intertwined not only through the existence of a ‘new cleavage’ between political mainstream and right-wing populists, but also through the authorities’ public communication that contained similar ‘crisis management’ elements: a—fairly unprecedented—stress on urgency, lack of alternatives, and rejection of consultation, justified by how high the stakes were to public health and welfare, and to national security. Our study offers insights into the interconnectedness of crises narratives and underscores the importance of long-term crisis governance that needs to better acknowledge the risk of turning opposition to government policies and its discourses into far-right anti-systemic mobilizations.

The Erosion of Voters’ Trust: How eWOM Shapes perceptions of Mainstream Political Parties in Pakistan?

The Erosion of Voters’ Trust: How eWOM Shapes perceptions of Mainstream Political Parties in Pakistan?

Understanding October 7 through Hamas’s Adaptability and Leadership Structure

This essay examines Hamas’s pragmatic adaptability and its decentralized leadership structure in order to offer insight into the movement’s decision to attack on October 7, 2023. It hones in on Hamas’s decision-making processes since it gained control of Gaza in 2007, situating the discussion within regional and international attempts to contain the movement into mainstream politics. The essay presents a critique of this approach to Hamas since 2007, highlighting regional and international failures to engage with Hamas as both a resistance movement and governing ­authority. Ultimately, the essay aims to clarify the complex interactions between Hamas’s leadership model and regional actors that preceded the October 7 events.

Euroscepticism in the Discourse of “Russian Parties” in Estonia

Introduction. The party-political system of Estonia, with traditionally Euro-optimistic elites leading it, was previously characterized by the presence of a number of so-called “Russian political parties”, which traditionally professed Euroscepticism and criticized the European Union as whole or certain areas of its activities. The purpose of the article is to determine the specific features of the Eurosceptic party discourse of “Russian parties” in Estonia. Materials and Methods. The information basis of the paper consisted of the results obtained using a combination of the comparative method (method of comparative analysis) and the method of discourse analysis. A single case study design was chosen for the paper. The data obtained as a result of using the discourse analysis method made it possible to study the indicators of the Eurosceptic discourse of “Russian parties” and process their programs, manifestos, electoral platforms, as well as statements of their high-ranking representatives. Results. It was revealed that the use of Euroscepticism by the analyzed “Russian parties” when targeting the Russian-speaking diaspora of the state in a number of cases (for example, in case of the Estonian Center Party) has shown some efficacy, allowing it to mobilize the electorate among Russian-speaking citizens. However, it was found that for small marginal “Russian parties” in Estonia this did not demonstrate productivity and benefit, since such efforts did not bring them a significant number of votes in elections at various levels. Most of them, adhering to Eurosceptic protest declarations, were never able to take part in “mainstream politics” of Estonia; thereby they failed to implement their Eurosceptic political agenda. Discussion and Conclusion. The results allow us to conclude that a specific characteristic of the Eurosceptic party discourse of the majority of “Russian parties” in Estonia is its focus on pragmatism for ethnic Russian residents living in this state in the form of concrete results that are useful for them: the desire to improve the existing discriminatory position of ethnic Russian population in Estonia through appealing to Brussels, to solve the problem of so called non-citizens, and, finally, to establish good relations between Estonia and its eastern neighbor state – Russia. The results of this study can find application in the academic activities of universities in our country, may be of interest to political and regional scientists studying political processes in the Baltic States.

Problems and Prospects of Elected Women Representatives at Grass Root Level in Kerala with Special Reference to Palakkad District

It’s been decades after implementing the 73rd Amendment to the Indian Constitution. The capacity-building measures taken by the Government aim to develop the Elected Women Representatives at the Panchayat level to lift them to societal needs and to adapt themselves to the forefront leaving behind all the difficulties they faced in the past which will make them completely competent to be a leader. Local Governance had remarkable progress after the inclusion of women into the mainstream of politics. Here, attempts are made to analyze the socio-economic and political profile of the Elected Women Representatives and the problems faced by the elected women representatives at the individual level and institutional levels in the Palakkad district of Kerala.

Mainstreaming democratic backsliding: The role of gender stereotypes

AbstractRadical‐right parties have gradually penetrated the political mainstream in many liberal democracies, marking a trend of ‘democratic backsliding’. We propose that women's increasing visibility as representatives of radical‐right agendas makes democratic backsliders, their policies and their parties seem more legitimate, and may help explain their growing public acceptance. Our studies provide the first systematic examination of this hypothesis in three countries – Israel, Germany and the United States (N = 7203). In Studies 1a‐c, we show that voters perceive democracy‐eroding policies through a gendered lens – they attribute gender stereotypes to the parties promoting these policies and to the public supporting these policies. In Studies 2a‐c, we experimentally demonstrate the effect of politicians’ gender on public acceptance of democracy‐eroding policies, politicians and parties, and demonstrate the role of gender stereotypes in mediating this effect. Finally, we show that the audiences susceptible to the mainstreaming effect of politicians’ gender are precisely those that are often particularly repelled by radical‐right agendas and their perceived masculine image: Women and left‐wing voters.

Analysis of Trade Union Movements in The South African Mainstream Politics

Analysis of Trade Union Movements in The South African Mainstream Politics

Does being ‘left behind’ corrode government legitimacy? Tax morale and economic stress

By now we are familiar with studies which tie being ‘left behind’ to voter support for populist or other extreme views. In the UK case, this is seen in support for Brexit but can also apply to support of parties such as UKIP (e.g. Bolet, 2021; Ford and Goodwin, 2014). Comparative studies show that electoral support for populist parties in part reflects lowered trust in mainstream politics (e.g. Geurkink et al., 2020; Keefer et al., 2021; Mauk, 2020), which is seen as a behavioural indicator of slipping legitimacy. Political support for populist movements is interpreted as declining legitimacy of existing governments, and that decline is seen as being tied to economic stress and the ‘left behind’ areas. In this article, we ask whether economics stresses also have impact upon another and possibly more direct measure of government legitimacy – tax morale.

The role of political hate speech in promoting extreme ideologies and manipulating public discourse for social approval in Pakistan

AbstractThe proliferation of politically motivated hate speech towards rival politicians has been rapidly increasing in Pakistan. However, the literature on political hate speech and its association with extreme ideologies is under‐theorized in the Pakistani context. We have utilized van Dijk's manipulative discourse and Walther's social approval theory to structure political hate speech and its consequences. The data was based on two Pakistani mainstream politicians’ public speeches and partisans’ comments available on YouTube. Findings reveal that politicians commonly exploit discursive categories, such as name‐calling, offensive metaphors and sarcasm, in their hate speech to dehumanize, ridicule and threaten their rivals. Their hateful slurs showcase extreme ideologies, such as polarization, intolerance, threat and violence. They use the hateful epithets to manipulate partisans, to sell fear of being betrayed and enslaved to the military and foreign powers, and to obtain, in exchange, audience and consent. The study theorizes that Pakistani mainstream politicians deliberately sensationalize hatred in their public speeches to harangue their rivals and foment extreme ideologies for the purpose of increasing their audience.

Populism as “Truth”: How Mediated Authenticity Strengthens the Populist Message

The rise of populism is often explained by political factors, economic factors, and media and communication factors. This article analyzes populism in the context of an increased focus on authenticity in political communication. The main aim is to discuss to what degree mediated authenticity strengthens the populist message and what consequences the nexus between authenticity and populism might have for the quality of democratic governance. As a theoretical backdrop, the article discusses the implications of increased valorization of authenticity in times of distrust, and how perforned truth is a key appeal of populism in representative democracies. The methodological approach is a systematic analysis of seven authenticity strategies identified in previous research: consistency, spontaneity, ordinariness, confession, immediacy, ambivalence, and imperfection. In addition to the theoretical analysis, the article offers a case study of the performance of Donald Trump, focusing on how mediated authenticity strengthens the populist message. The study is conducted in a mainly U.S.-context and includes material collected between 2016 and 2023. A key argument is that although performed authenticity can be both advantageous and disadvantageous, depending on the status of the candidate, there is lower risk involved for populist politicians than mainstream politicians because the strategies correspond more with the ideology. In conclusion, the article argues that performed authenticity might legitimize hate speech, conspiracy theories, and post-truth politics because populists claim to have a particular relation to the truth.

The Effects of Import Shocks, Electoral Institutions, and Radical Party Competition on Legislator Ideology: Evidence from France

Abstract Across advanced industrialized democracies, the political centre is collapsing as politicians on the far right and far left enjoy increasing electoral success. Recent research links import shocks to voter support for far-right parties. However, we know comparatively less about how these shocks impact individual legislator ideology, especially that of mainstream politicians. Do import shocks drive economic or cultural ideological shifts among mainstream legislators? If so, to what extent do local competitive contexts shape these shifts? Using a dataset of French Senate roll call votes, we find that localized increases in import exposure moves elite ideology to the left economically; this is magnified in departments with majoritarian electoral systems. We show that legislators shift their cultural positions in response to import shocks, but only when faced with extremist political competitors focused on cultural issues. Our results suggest the value of attending to how political and economic geography intersect to shape elite policy positions.

Komitety uczelniane PZPR w systemie władzy. Przykład środowiska gdańskiego (do 1980 roku)

This article contributes to the history of the development of Polish United Workers Party university committees on the example of the Tricity academic community. The goal of the communist party’s actions at universities was to seize control over academic affairs while simultaneously bringing students into the political mainstream through ongoing ideological and instructional initiatives. As a result, higher education’s independence was reduced and subjugated to political agendas. Recruitment of students into the PZPR ranks was not given much importance at first; it wasn’t until the 1960s that it started to receive significant attention. As a result, duties delegated by higher authorities were formalized, and there was more control over how they were carried out. Despite intensive activities aimed at increasing youth participation in party life, until the end of the existence of the Polish People’s Republic, the scope of the PZPR’s influence among students was limited. The only measurable criterion of the party’s offensive in the academic community was quantitative, not qualitative.