Political Newcomers Research Articles

Greece: Political Developments and Data in 2023

AbstractThe year 2023 was marked by two national elections during the summer months, as well as regional and municipal elections in October. New Democracy dominated electorally in both. Another key political change was the resignation of the head of the Coalition of the Radical Left, Alexis Tsipras, following his party's devastating defeats in national elections. He was replaced in internal elections later that year by Stefanos Kasselakis—a political newcomer with no prior experience. The deadly Tempi train crash, wildfires across the country, hooligan violence, and the devastating floods caused by Storm Daniel in Thessaly raised issues about the effectiveness of the government and added to the general mistrust of politics and politicians. In October, Greece regained investment grade in its credit rating from Standard & Poor's Global Ratings. Inflation, at 3.5 per cent in December, continued to be top of mind for most citizens. The devastating consequences of gender‐based violence persisted this year, with a staggering 15 femicides recorded in total.

The framing of politics in a Ukrainian comedy show: a populist appeal?

ABSTRACT In this study we used computer-assisted (Atlas.ti software) quantitative analysis of framing politics in a popular Ukrainian television comedy show Vechernii Kvartal (VKv) to evaluate whether and to what extent it used populist frames in 2019-2020, after its star and director Volodymyr Zelensky won the presidency with populist narratives. We found that VKv offered a consistently populist perspective for looking at politics. Its main element was anti-elitist humor targeting both old politicians and political newcomers, including those from Zelensky’s party Sluha Narodu. The only exception was Zelensky himself, who was portrayed via the characteristic of populism people-centrist template—as a simple man genuinely caring about the people. We found no exclusionist framing, which is typical, for example, for European right-wing populist rhetoric and which discursively excludes all who are not natives (minorities, migrants, asylum-seekers) from a country’s “pure and virtuous people.”

The anti-elitist strategy of political parties as a populist tool to (re)gain electoral support

ABSTRACT The growing distrust of citizens towards political parties being the main actors of institutionalised politics, expressed through anti-establishment emotions, triggers an adaptive supply-side response. European political scenes coexist with politicians using anti-elitist and people-centred rhetoric, political movements eschewing the party organisational format, and institutionalised parties seeking a new formula for their relationship with citizens. The use of populist tools by political newcomers and old-timers was analysed using examples from Poland. The main methods of the analysis include a critical analysis of the literature on the subject, content analysis of the statements presented by politicians in traditional and social media, individual in-depth interviews, and participant observation of political events. Adopting a demand-supply approach, three populist-based tactics were identified to gain, maintain, or regain electoral support, which make varying degrees of use of anti-elitism, people- or citizen-centred rhetoric, and anti-party resentment.

Slovenia: Political Developments and Data in 2022

AbstractIn 2022, voters in Slovenia were invited several times to the polling stations, starting with the National Assembly elections in spring, followed by presidential and local elections. In addition, three nationwide referenda were held in November. The National Assembly elections saw the victory of a newly established party and the appointment of yet another political newcomer to the position of Prime Minister. Only five parties managed to pass the parliamentary threshold, the smallest number since the country's democratic transition. The centre‐left coalition government was formed by three parties. Many reforms were promised to be prepared by the new government, including a revitalisation of democracy after several years of democratic backsliding, along with a promise that those in public office will behave differently. The new government formed in June enjoyed high public support in 2022, and by the end of the year, 45 per cent of voters assessed its work as (very) positive.

Previous History

Previous History Lea Page (bio) It's not that I can't say thank you—I can and do. And it's not that I don't trust words—well, truthfully, I don't—but thank you is so easy, so impersonal. I like to be clear. Pot roast is clear. When I hear trucks turning into our driveway, I close the door to the oven, wipe my hands on a dish towel, and step outside in bare feet. Our friend Sidney and his son had some legal business to attend to in town with my husband Ray, and now they're here for dinner. In 2018, Ray, along with a slew of political newcomers, threw his hat into the election ring, running for the position of District Judge serving three rural counties in Montana, including the one made up in large part by the Crow Reservation. Based on Ray's previous years as a tireless advocate, Sidney, a Crow Tribal Commissioner, offered his support. During the campaign, the phone would often ring in the very early hours of the morning. It was Sidney, whose check-ins would begin with a long, cheerful salutation in the Crow language, which he then translated so that we—I could hear him well enough, lying beside Ray in bed—would know just how much of the morning, the day, the world, all of it, he had called upon and gathered together into his voice. In the end, Ray lost the election—politics. We still get the early morning calls, just not as often. ________ Sidney's son is talking with Ray, both their heads bent together in appreciative contemplation of the various pieces of diesel equipment that litter—or grace, depending on your point of view—our driveway. While they are waylaid by the machinery, Sidney comes up to the step and gives me a big hug. When he lets go, he looks over me—he is very tall—taking in the vegetable garden where a front yard would normally go and the rolling fields beyond. Bound only by the Absaroka Mountains just miles to the south, we are surrounded by hundreds of acres of pasture, seemingly empty as far as the eye can see but for an abandoned barn and the collapsing remains of two log cabins. "Do the bears disturb the garden?" Sidney wants to know. "Not yet," I say, and then he asks about deer, and in an exaggerated gesture, [End Page 96] eyes wide-open for emphasis, I draw my finger across my throat to indicate that we will not conjure the presence of deer and their potential garden predation by speaking their names. We have a fence, but still. Sidney throws his head back and laughs. Then he asks, "How did you find this place?" "Most of it isn't ours," I say, aware that all the land we are standing on and looking at was recently populated by the Crow people, the transfer of which was based on all manner of cheating, stealing and worse, but I don't suppose he means that. Our piece—the one we claim as ours, anyway, because our names are recorded on the deed at the courthouse in town—is a few oddly shaped acres. "A neighbor bought everything around us at a foreclosure sale," I tell Sidney, "but this lot wasn't included because it was the original homestead." I pause at the irony of telling him this. He holds his expression still, only missing one blink of his eyes. The area is known for its winds, the road notorious for getting drifted in with snow. The leftover lot itself was too small to farm, with no obvious place to build. "It was cheap," I say, "so we jumped on it." Also, I explain, we had a previous history with the place, a history involving cow shit. Sidney raises his eyebrows. This is unexpected. ________ When we first moved to Montana in 1997, we bought a twenty-acre lot that sits only a mile away from us as the crow flies, although around here it is more often a raven. Ray and I, fresh off of signing the bill of...

Making Sense of a Surprise: Perspectives on the 2020 “Belarusian Revolution”

AbstractDrawing on three theoretical perspectives—“protest-democracy,” “authoritarian/patronal regime dynamics,” and “contentious politics”—developed in the study of popular protests in post-Soviet electoral autocracies, this article argues, first, that the 2020 postelection mobilization in Belarus was not to be expected for both structural and agency-related reasons. Second, by the summer of 2020, the political opportunity structure had opened up because of contingent choices by individual actors, with Alyaksandr Lukashenka committing several major mistakes, particularly on pandemic (non)control and the administration of the upcoming presidential election, and political newcomers taking on the role of challenging him. After the election, mass mobilization unfolded in two waves triggered by two additional regime mistakes: blatant electoral fraud and excessive repression. These mistakes served as focal points for spontaneous coordination, substituting for the deliberate “engineering” of protest by an organized opposition typical of the post-Soviet color revolutions. Third, Lukashenka survived in office because popular protests did not lead to elite defection. Instead, he was able to secure the loyalty of elites because he avoided gross blunders against both regime insiders and Russia. The case of Belarus indicates that hegemonic-authoritarian regimes are more vulnerable to mistakes by incumbents than to challenges from below and outside the regime.

No Experience Required: Early Donations and Amateur Candidate Success in Primary Elections

The electoral dominance of “quality” candidates—political insiders with a history of holding office—is well‐established. However, research on the recent rise in successful political neophytes is less studied. Despite longstanding trends in the predominance of experienced candidates in primary elections, nearly half of all quality candidates who ran in non‐incumbent races lost to a candidate without prior electoral experience in 2018. In this article, we investigate the success of political newcomers in elections for the U.S. House of Representatives by examining a topic often overlooked in the growing literature on primaries: campaign finance. We show that, from 2016 to 2020, political newcomers saw (1) greater success in future fundraising, and (2) an increased likelihood of primary election victory when they garnered more early contributions from outside their district. This contrasts with prior elections, where early money from inside a candidate's own congressional district served as the strongest predictor of future fundraising and electoral success.

The normalisation of the far right in the Dutch media in the run-up to the 2021 general elections

Although there is widespread agreement in the literature that the media play an instrumental role in furthering or limiting the spread of right-wing populism, there are few studies that examine the micro-mechanisms at play that facilitate the normalisation of the far right in and by the media. This contribution seeks to redress that gap. Focussing in particular on the Netherlands, we trace the ways in which the media have accommodated populist radical right politicians and their parties in the run-up to the 2021 Dutch general elections, thereby discursively shifting the boundaries of what is considered appropriate or ‘normal’. We do so by concentrating on the far-right political newcomer, Thierry Baudet, who is the leader of the Forum voor Democratie (Forum for Democracy or FvD, also referred to as Forum). Using discourse-conceptual analysis of Dutch newspaper articles, the article provides illustrative evidence that Dutch mainstream media outlets adopted an accommodative stance towards Baudet and his party in the run-up to the elections. The findings suggest that this media strategy contributed to the normalisation of the far right in the Dutch public sphere.

The 2018 Congressional Midterms, Symbolic Empowerment, and Ayanna Pressley’s Mobilizing Effect: A Case Study for Future Analysis of Historic Firsts

ABSTRACT Ayanna Pressley was elected in 2018, becoming the first Black woman from Massachusetts to serve in the US House of Representatives and the first person of color to represent its only majority-minority congressional district (which includes three-quarters of Boston, and most of Cambridge). While Pressley was no political newcomer to the city of Boston, her campaign garnered widespread media attention on account of her victory – that is, having defeated a ten-term incumbent, Michael Capuano, of the same political party. Here I argue that the electoral context mattered, given the historic nature of the campaign and its mobilizing effect on a racially and ethnically diverse electorate. Although highlighting qualifications and experience was the preferred tactic of her opponent, it was important for Pressley to choose a strategy that best fit the electoral context. Here I offer a case study, with information that will bear on the applicability of causal generalizations to be empirically tested via formal modeling or large-N analysis in future studies. The sort of specific, intensive, and detailed information provided is necessary in advance of forecasting results across similar subjects and comparable target populations using quantitative or statistical methods.

Democratizing candidate selection: Controlled turnover in Botswana’s Bulela Ditswe primaries

Why do political parties implement primary elections? With multi-party elections firmly established, political parties in many young democracies have begun to democratize internally by adopting mass primaries. Previous work argues that parties institute primaries to select for high quality candidates, incentivize campaigning effort, and reduce intra-party conflict. In this paper, I theorize that parties also implement mass primaries to open up the political elite while protecting their most senior members. Consistent with this hypothesis, using original data from Botswana’s ruling party, I find that primaries facilitate a limited and controlled turnover, decreasing the likelihood of re-nomination of long-term incumbents in favor of political newcomers while still protecting senior ministers. Combined with qualitative and historical evidence, these results suggest that electorally successful political parties may implement mass primaries to replace unpopular and entrenched leaders.

Cross-platform analysis of PLCs’ (parties, leaders, candidates) social media presence in Israel’s 2015 electoral campaign

ABSTRACT This article analyzes social media presence of all parties, leaders, and candidates (PLCs) during Israel’s 2015 electoral campaign, within a transformational era for online campaigns. The article adheres to the theoretical frameworks of normalisation/equalisation hypotheses and personalised politics. Its research design is based on a cross-platform analysis. Findings indicate not only a centralised personalisation trend but rather a depersonalised web sphere. Leaders are more prominent online compared to other candidates; and parties out-perform their leaders, too. Furthermore, findings point to a normalised web sphere, even when referring to new and trendy platforms, revealing that the chances of political newcomers entering the parliamentary arena are scarce.

Parliamentary Elections in Bulgaria

The subject of this paper is the 2021 Bulgarian election to the National Assembly, which in fact turned into an electoral revolution. It scrutinizes its outcomes along with the reasons for the failure of all existing parties and the success of political newcomers. It considers the “stalemate” alignment of forces of an extremely fragmented parliament and forecasts possible developments. It resumes that the end of the ten-year tenure of Boyko Borisov was enforced by the new generation of the electorate that did not see life prospects under the current regime. The entry into politics of the showman Slavi Trifonov as a next idol of public opinion, is consistent with similar processes in neighboring countries and replicates the political cycle already observed twice in Bulgaria. This experience prompts caution in assessing the chances of a genuine renewal of the system of governance under new leadership.

Cross-Platform Analysis of PLCs’ (Parties, Leaders, Candidates) Social Media Presence in Israel’s 2015 Electoral Campaign

This article analyzes social media presence of all parties, leaders, and candidates (PLCs) during Israel’s 2015 electoral campaign, within a transformational era for online campaigns. The article adheres to the theoretical frameworks of normalisation/equalisation hypotheses and personalised politics. Its research design is based on a cross-platform analysis. Findings indicate not only a centralised personalisation trend but rather a depersonalised web sphere. Leaders are more prominent online compared to other candidates; and parties out-perform their leaders, too. Furthermore, findings point to a normalised web sphere, even when referring to new and trendy platforms, revealing that the chances of political newcomers entering the parliamentary arena are scarce.

Gender and Dynastic Political Selection

Throughout history and across countries, women appear more likely than men to enter politics on the heels of a close family relative or spouse. To explain this dynastic bias in women’s representation, we introduce a theory that integrates political selection decisions with informational inequalities across social groups. Candidates with dynastic ties benefit from the established reputations of their predecessors, but these signals of quality are more important to political newcomers such as women. Legislator-level data from twelve democracies and candidate-level data from Ireland and Sweden support the idea that dynastic ties are differentially more helpful to women, and that the quality of predecessors may be more relevant for the entry and evaluation of female successors than their male counterparts. The role of informational inequalities is also reflected in the declining dynastic bias over time (as more women enter politics), and in the differential effect of a gender quota across Swedish municipalities.

Taiwanese Attitudes toward the Political Newcomers in 2016

Taiwanese Attitudes toward the Political Newcomers in 2016

Transformation of the media reception of the presidency institute in Ukraine (based on the materials of European newspapers)

The research is dedicated to the study of the process of transformation of media reception of the Institute of the Presidency of Ukraine based on the articles published by the European newspapers on their websites during the year 2019. Particular attention was paid to the key substantive concepts that underpinned the media discourse of the British, French and German press during the election and post-election periods.In the process of study, the method of conceptual analysis, which allowed to reveal the core and peripheral meanings of the concepts under study as well as point to key concept compounds and capture the phenomenon of concept separation under conditions of changing reference situation was used. The phenomenon of content homogenization, which is now the characteristic of Western media discourse was also considered. We have confirmed its manifestations by almost complete convergence of conceptual representations presented in the media systems of Britain, Germany and France.
 In the article the concept of presidency in Ukraine, represented by the name of V. Zelensky, is under exploration. Carrying out the conceptual analysis, we first identified the reference situation that caused the actualization of the concept, and paid attention to the extra-linguistic factors of its change in the media discourse. In the process of study, the following frequently used concepts to denote President Zelensky, which represented the atypical character of the Ukrainian incumbent presidency, were found: “political newcomer,” “newcomer to politics who came from show business,” “politician newcomer,” “television clown,” “Ukrainian television comedian,” “cabaret artist,” “joker,” etc.We have also stated the process of transformation from personal, negatively connotated to institutional concepts with a neutral core sense. We particularly pointed to the separation of stereotypical conceptual connections of “president-comedian,” first by introducing the predicate “former” and actualization of the combination “president-former comedian” and later by approving new semantic connections. We also pointed to the negative role of the Ukrainegate concept, which manifested Ukraine’s minor role on the international arena.

The Fourth Generation: From Anti-Establishment to Anti-System Parties in Slovakia1

The party systems in many democracies are in flux due to the emergence and electoral successes of new, alternative political parties. This phenomenon has a particular dynamic and, drawing on a case study from Slovakia, it is argued that compared to their predecessors the most recent political newcomers may have a more radical, even anti-system character. The paper deals with theories of new political parties and the conceptual definitions of anti-system parties in general while the empirical part focuses on the developments, characteristics and profiles of two political parties in Slovakia, namely the anti-establishment group Ordinary People and Independent Personalities (OĽaNO) and the extreme right-wing People's Party – Our Slovakia (ĽSNS), which represents an anti-system party. Based on empirical data from several surveys the study points to variance in the profiles of anti-establishment and anti-system voters. It is argued that the voters of the anti-system party (ĽSNS) show an ideological distance from other political parties, as well as a strong identification with the party of their electoral choice as opposed to the voters of OĽaNO. The concluding discussion displays the differences between anti-establishment and anti-system parties in general, and in this specific perspective the Slovak case fits into the much broader debate about illiberal tendencies in Central and Eastern Europe. Anti-system political parties – the next generation of the new alternative parties – could be a real threat to liberal democracy in the region.

A new party system in the making? The 2017 French presidential election

The 2017 presidential election represents a turning point in French electoral politics. It was marked by the poor performance of the main governing parties’ candidates and the victory of political newcomer Emmanuel Macron. More surprisingly, four candidates with clearly distinct policy lines were neck and neck in the first round. This article sheds light on this outcome and assesses its consequences for the French party system. We sketch alternative scenarios regarding the format and content of the emerging party system. Using geometrical analyses on data from the French Election Study 2017 (Gougou and Sauger 2017), we show that the current political space is structured by two main conflict dimensions: the first and dominating dimension sets an anti-immigration/authoritarian pole against a pro-immigration/libertarian pole; the second pits an ecologist/interventionist pole against a productivist/neoliberal pole.

Social change and markets for urban credit: political elites as investors in urban annuities in sixteenth-century Ghent

Financial historians have devoted considerable attention to the investment behaviour of urban politicians in the market for public debt in the Low Countries. They have focused not only on how many urban officials invested in annuities, but also why they did so. On the one hand, it has been suggested that political elites often had political and economic motivations for investing in urban annuities. By contrast, historians from the institutional school defend the thesis that inclusive governance led to broader participation in the market for urban credit. A variable that has gone largely unnoticed in explaining investments by the political elite is the impact of the changing composition and social profile of the ruling elites on their investment behaviour. In this article, I examine the case of sixteenth-century Ghent to argue that changes in the city's power structure resulted in profound changes in attitudes towards public debt management. While the old political elite in the early sixteenth century prioritised selling annuities to individuals who belonged to the political networks of their time, the group of political newcomers that dominated urban politics at the end of the sixteenth century had much more of a market-oriented attitude, giving priority to non-political investors in the free market.

Institutions, governmental performance and the rise of political newcomers

AbstractThis article analyses the institutional and contextual factors that facilitate the election of political newcomers as heads of government in democratic regimes. Using data from 870 democratic elections between 1945 and 2015, it is found that political newcomers are more likely to be successful in presidential systems, in new democracies and when party systems are weakly institutionalised. The election of politically inexperienced candidates is also related to governmental performance. Political newcomers are more successful when the economic performance of the government is bad and when the government engages in high‐level corruption.