Populist Views Research Articles

Right-wing populist attitudes among European public servants – A cross-country comparison

Thus far, there has not been any investigation into the populist held beliefs and attitudes among public servants. These attitudes, given the considerable discretionary decision power of public servants, and their influence in policy-making processes, could have a significant impact on public policies. This paper investigates the populist attitudes of public servants, based on data that are retrieved from the European Social Survey. The paper compares public servants from Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. The results show that public servants hold surprisingly similar populist views as compared with non-public servants, and that there are striking differences between countries. There are significant implications for the work public servants do, and the representativeness of the administration.

The personality of populists: How the Big Five traits relate to populist attitudes

Recent years have witnessed striking successes of populist movements. Yet, while populism on the supply side is fairly well studied, we know surprisingly little about individuals who hold populist views. This article attempts to shed light on how populist attitudes are shaped on the demand side by taking a person's personality structure into account. Drawing on the framework of the Big Five personality traits, we first propose relationships between each trait and populist attitudes. Second, we suggest a more dynamic perspective by considering which personality trait might make a person more susceptible to adopting populist views throughout an election campaign, particularly if she identifies with a populist party. We test the relationships in two distinct contexts making use of the internet panel of the 2015 British Election Study and the campaign panel of the 2017 German Longitudinal Election Study. Regression results show that some traits are significantly associated with populist attitudes, but relationships differ between countries. Moreover, change in populist attitudes appears to be largely independent from personality traits and their interaction with being close to populist parties. The findings not only contribute to our understanding of populism among voters, but also enrich the debate on political implications of personality.

Functional and territorial jurisdictions: Regulating a globalized shipping industry

Globalization undermines the effectiveness of state-based regulation and implies the need for alternative mechanisms. Regulatory control exercised by international or European institutions provides scope for understanding functionalist rationales when comprehending the construction of ‘ocean space’. This paper contributes to appreciating effective functional forms of regulation by investigating the enforcement practices and control in the international maritime tanker industry. Through a study of shipping we explore the extent that functional regulation has been implemented and how this may inform regulatory formation in other industries/sectors affected by global variables. In general, the study suggests that in the context of the shipping industry functionalism has undergone a metamorphosis in terms of normative underpinning; rather than identifying peace as the basis of non-state regulatory initiative it is triggered by wider populist views regarding political ecology (ecopolitics) and environmental sustainability. ‘Ocean space’ and mobilities are constructed through normative considerations that rely on agencies beyond the nation-state and implementation of regulation through functional variables.

THE POLITICAL MEANING AND THRUST OF POPULIST MOVEMENTS

Populist movements are abound in Europe: since the 1990s such movements and parties as Podemos in Spain, the Lega Nord in Italy, the UKIP in England or the Front National in France sprang up and attracted substantial numbers of voters and followers over time. This articles restricts itself to populist movemements which claim to speak for the people, oppose elites in politics and economy and large associations and demand direct democracy. The thesis of this primarily theoretical paper is that these movements and parties protest against the perceived erosion of the political status of the people as the legitimate constituent of democratic rule. According to populist views, political and social elites violate the obligation of the implicit contract between elites and the people to pursue the common good of the people in exchange for the people's loyalty to political rule. This loyalty appears to be challengd by perceived corruption, fatal governmental decisions and actions risking the wealth and the security of the nation, among which immigration politics rank highly. Immigration violates this contract because, as populists see it, only the people (that is: the legal and legitimate members of a constituency) should profit from the provisions of the state (welfare, safety, public order). The paper will illustrate this thesis by elaborating on the meaning of Pegida populism and reflect on the possible consequences of populism for representative democracy.

Popular Punitivism — The Role of the Courts in the Development of Criminal Justice Policies

This paper was presented as a keynote address to the Annual Conference of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology in 2009. It contends that it is of the utmost importance that the community have the benefit of empirical research and analysis undertaken in the field of criminal justice by impartial experts. Its central proposition is that the development of policy and sentencing practices in this important area appears to be influenced more by the perception of populist views, than the scientific evaluation of empirical data.

Deaths and injuries from car accidents: an intractable problem?

This paper presents an analysis of the implications of motorisation in emerging economies for deaths and injuries from road traffic accidents. It is shown that emerging economies have high rates of death and injury alongside low vehicle ownership rates. If vehicle ownership rates increase, so too could be the rate of deaths and injuries. Taking a broad view of automobility culture to include cars, infrastructure, legal systems, medical services, and populist views of motoring, it is argued that reducing the human cost of motorisation (and making motorised mobility more sustainable) cannot be achieved only by technical fixes to the car. Rather, approaches that are sensitised to the particularities of place, and resonant with distinct cultures of automobility, represent the most likely means to achieve more sustainable mobility.

Manifesto for Development Communication: Nora Quebral and the Los Baños School of Development Communication

How did the discipline and practice of development communication begin? Who were the founders and how were the first experiments implemented? Rejecting the ideologically populist views that locates development communication origins within western development scholarship, the following postcolonist exposé appraises various communication uses in development that emerged from different parts of the world in the past 50 years. The discussion holds that the pioneering development communication experiments were located between postcolonial and underdevelopment theories, and as such, to understand its origins, a study must focus on the earliest non-commissioned and community-originated experiments, as this study purports to do.

Rethinking Muslim Women and the Veil

Much has been written about Muslim women, dress, hijabs, veils, and, more recently, burqas. Bullock's book, based on her doctoral work with 16Muslim women in Canada, critically examines the western media's representations and perceptions of the veil. What perhaps marks this book as different from many others focusing on the "ubiquitous veil" is not just that Bullock converted to Islam during the course of her study, but her embed­ dedness in the material as she describes her conversion and adoption of the hijab. Her personal responses to much western journalistic writing is reflected in her clear fustration at the almost overwhelming refusal of western commentators to acknowledge and respect the concept of choice Muslim women make when regarding dress. As Algerian sociologist Marnia Lazreg noted in 1988, Muslim women are denied the authority to define their own lives by having to satisfy frames of reference dictated and inserted by "Outsiders." This theme surfaces throughout the book, which seeks to challenge "the popular western stereotype that the veil is oppressive" and to stress the multiple meanings and heterogeneity behind Muslim women's choices in covering. Bullock argues that such misconceptions are social constructions that do not necessarily reflect the lives of those under discussion. She care­fully avoids generalizing and presenting an overly positive angle on Muslim women's lived experiences. She acknowledges that for some Muslim women, in certain sociopolitical and historical contexts, enforced veiling is a reality. Thus marked by an absence of choice and the denial of basic rights, the veil can symbolize oppression. The Taliban's restrictions on women are presented as a prime example. Bullock differentiates between populist views on Muslim women and clothing practices and those of western or westernized feminists. She argues two main schools of thought. The first comprises feminists who believe and stress that religions like Islam are patriarchal, and therefore are inherently oppressive toward women and deny them opportunities for ''true" liberation. This school of thought, which Bullock calls "liberal feminism," remains sus­picious of arguments advanced by Muslim women who speak positively of their faith and their choices to cover, believing them to be inflicted with a form of "false consciousness." ...

The Fable of the Allegory: The Wizard of Oz in Economics

L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has become popular as a teaching tool in economics. It has been argued that it was written as an allegory of Populist demands for a bimetallic monetary system in the late 19th century. The author argues that Baum was not sympathetic to Populist views and did not write the story as a monetary allegory.

Informational Standards in Development Agency Management

How well do international development agencies support development in poor countries? Idealist, legal-bureaucratic, and populist views insist that they often do a good job, and documentary evidence suggests that aid generally works (Cassen and Associates, 1994, Does Aid Work? Report to an Intergovernmental Task Force, second edition. Oxford University Press, New York). Realist, neomarxist and neoliberal critiques, however, suggest that documents may not be reliable. This paper presents evidence of informational standards and development impacts from four US Agency for International Development (USAID) and four World Bank projects in Africa. We find significant positive bias in project documents; promotional and analytical purposes often collide. Weak informational standards undermine incentives to manage for impact and reduce the prospects for bureaucratic learning.