Nationalist-populist Party Research Articles

Independent Media, Propaganda, and Religiosity: Evidence from Poland

Exploring a drastic change in media landscape in Poland, we show that mainstream media can significantly affect religious participation. After nationalist populist party PiS came to power in 2015, news on state and private independent TV diverged due to propaganda on state TV, resulting in a switch of some of its audience to independent TV. Municipalities with access to independent TV continued to follow a long-term secularization trend, while municipalities with access only to state TV experienced a reversal of this trend. An online experiment sheds light on the mechanisms underlying the effect of exposure to independent news on religiosity. (JEL D12, D83, L82, Z12)

Territorializing threats in nationalist populist narratives: an Italian perspective on the migration and Covid-19 crises

ABSTRACT This article explores the capacity of ‘territorialising threats’ expressed by nationalist populist parties by reinventing and replicating the geopolitical ability to speak in territorial terms exploiting emergencies to advance nationalistic claims. We focus on the Italian case exploring the narratives and political positions on borders and sovereignty adopted by the Lega party during 2019, when the ‘crisis’ was related to migration flows, and in the first half of 2020, when the Covid-19 emergency reached its first peak in Italy. Our aim is to contribute to the effort of political geographers to unveil the spatial methods of nationalist populism.

Social Inclusion or Gender Equality? Political Discourses on Parental Leave in Finland and Sweden

During the 2010s, both Finland and Sweden made advancements in their parental leave systems by widening the right to paid parental leave to a greater diversity of family constellations and investing in gender-equal leave distribution through longer leave periods reserved for the father. However, in the latter respect, Sweden has remained more successful than Finland. This article analyses government and political party discourses in Finland and Sweden during the 2010s in pursuit of an explanation to this difference and for understanding how ideas on social inclusion and gender equality have been used to drive, or block, policy reforms in the field of parental leave. The results show that the parental leave discourses have become influenced by ideas on social inclusion and gender equality in both countries, but in somewhat different ways. While gender equality has retained a stronger position in the Swedish discourse and its policy, social inclusion, and notably the rights of same-sex parents, have become more visible in the Finnish. However, the results also show that both ideas have remained contested on a party level, especially by confessional and nationalist-populist parties.

Populations and Policies in a Younger but Faster-Aging East Central Europe: The Political Demography of Missed Opportunity

The new democracies in East Central Europe started the post-communist era with comparatively young populations. After 1989-1990, they have largely spurned a quarter-century long demographic window of opportunity for reform, by insufficiently adapting their policy models to prepare for fast population aging ahead. Especially in Romania, Bulgaria and the Visegrad Four, this is reflected in low active aging and child wellbeing index rankings, relatively small social investment in early human capital, weak improvements in prospective old age dependency ratios, and large-scale emigration. Slovenia and the Visegrad Four, but not the Baltics, also became „pensioners‘ welfare states“ with prematurely strong pro-elderly policy bias. In some cases, massive early exit worsened pension system sustainability while boosting pensioners‘ electoral power (political push before demographic pull). However, around the time when the demographic window started closing (2010-2015), the political salience of family policies, work-family reconciliation policies, and active aging policy increased, often spurred by the same Christian-conservative and/or nationalist-populist parties that caused illiberal democratic backsliding. But by then, the relative political power of elderly voters during elections in East Central Europe was among the highest in the world.

The Costs of Austerity: Labor Emigration and the Rise of Radical Right Politics in Central and Eastern Europe.

The right to free movement, to move and work freely within the European Union (EU), is a cornerstone right held by EU and European Free Trade Area (EFTA) citizens. Labor flows across the EU are, however, not uniform but are characterized by significant geographic disparities. In particular, since the 2008 global financial crisis, labor emigration, measured by the rate of EU citizens living and working in other EU countries, has increased exclusively among certain Central and Eastern European nations. This paper seeks to examine the link between labor migration, austerity policies, and the rise of radical nationalist politics. This paper uses Boolean analysis to examine the relationships between labor migration, nationalism, welfare support, and austerity. I argue that austerity measures have pushed certain Central and Eastern European countries into the roles of labor-sending nations, so that emigration and scarcity put pressure on traditional conceptions of belonging, fueling radical politics. In this way, austerity provides the material and ideological conditions under which emigration comes to be seen as a threat to the well-being of the nation, stoking support for nationalist populist parties.

Religion, partisanship and preferences for redistribution

AbstractThis article offers a new theoretical explanation of the relationship between religion and the demand for redistribution. Previous literature shows that religious individuals are less likely to favour redistribution either because (a) religion provides a substitute for state welfare provision, or (b) it adds a salient moral dimension to an individual's calculus which induces them to act contrary to their economic interests. In this article, it is argued that the effect of religion on an individual's redistributive preferences is best explained by their partisanship, via a process of partisan motivated reasoning. In contexts where parties are able to combine religion with pro‐redistribution policies, religious individuals are more likely to favour redistribution as doing so reinforces their partisan identity. In advanced democracies, religious individuals are more likely to be supporters of centre‐right parties that oppose redistribution. However, in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) the historical and political context leads to the opposite expectation. The nature of party competition in CEE has seen nationalist populist parties adopt policy platforms that combine religion and leftist economic programmes. They are able to credibly combine these two positions due to the way in which religion and the welfare state became linked to conceptions of the nation during the inter‐war state‐building years. Using data from 2002–2014, the study shows that religiosity is associated with pro‐redistribution attitudes in CEE. Furthermore, religious supporters of nationalist populist parties are more likely to favour redistribution than religious supporters of other parties. The results of this research add greater nuance to our understanding of the relationship between religiosity and economic preferences.

Culture, Health, and Religion at the Millennium: Sweden UnparadisedTrust Us: Reproducing the Nation and the Scandinavian Nationalist Populist Parties

Culture, Health, and Religion at the Millennium: Sweden UnparadisedTrust Us: Reproducing the Nation and the Scandinavian Nationalist Populist Parties

The Explosive Rise of a Political Party: The Logic of 'Sudden Convergence'

What is it that makes events difficult to predict? Starting with the assumption that unpredictability is commensurate with complexity, the article examines a highly complex process of discontinuous change, defined as ‘sudden convergence’—spontaneous, momentary correlation between components or preferences that were heretofore unrelated. This process is illustrated through the rise of ‘Ataka’—a nationalist–populist party in Bulgaria, which attained 9 per cent of the parliamentary vote shortly after its creation. Making use of multiple data sources, the analysis finds a highly heterogeneous support base of ‘Ataka’, with diverse protest rationales abruptly realigned in the same political corner in seemingly haphazard manner and with little indication for strategic oversight. A complex amalgam of interests is forged under substantial ambiguity. The analysis contributes to understanding a general problem—how individual preferences that are not supposed to be correlated become suddenly tied together, giving rise to events that severely strain our predictive capabilities, such as mass protest or economic crises.