Rise Of Right-wing Populism Research Articles

Social Media Techno-Discursive Design, Affective Communication and Contemporary Politics

The paper examines the intersection of technological design of Social Media communication, the notion of post-politics-affective turn in contemporary (Western) societies and the rise of populism as a trend in political communication. Following on conceptualizations for a Social Media approach to a broadly defined critical discourse studies framework (KhosraviNik, in: Kalyango and Kopytowska (eds) Why discourse matters: negotiating identity in the mediatized world, Peter Lang, New York, 2014, in: Flowerdew and Richardson, Routledge handbook of critical discourse studies, Routledge, London, 2017b), the paper attempts to integrate discussions on affective nature of communication in participatory web ecology and consequences of algorithmic regimentation of meaning bearing resources (e.g., news and entertainment) on Social Media. Issues around quality and distribution of digital discursive practices and their relations to traditional perceptions of rational politics, within the internalised ethos of visibility-as-legitimacy, are critically elaborated and examined. While the rise of right wing populism (e.g., Trump presidency, Brexit vote) should primarily be explicated within qualities of the context on the ground, i.e., the deliberate and well-orchestrated misplacement of real grievances in society through discursive operation and manipulation (KhosraviNik in Insight Turk 19(3):53–68, 2017a), it is equally important to critically elaborate the function and consequences of (digital) media practices as a main part of this socialization context. The overall argument here is that the hyper-normalization and triumph of neo-liberal rationality together with new media technological affordances, design and requirements have created a momentum for the growth of haphazard populist politics, i.e., the valorization of affective relevance over rational significance.

Right-wing populism and the climate change agenda: exploring the linkages

ABSTRACTThe rise of right-wing populism (RWP) poses a challenge for the climate agenda, as leaders and supporters tend to be climate sceptics and hostile to policy prescribing action on climate change. However, there is a surprising dearth of research that investigates the nature and causes of this association. Two kinds of explanation are considered, drawing on the literature on populism. One is termed ‘structuralist’, drawing on accounts of the roots of populism in economic and political marginalisation amongst those ‘left behind’ by globalisation and technological change. A second focuses on the ideological content of RWP, especially its antagonism between ‘the people’ and a cosmopolitan elite, with climate change and policy occupying a symbolic place in this contrast. It is argued that there are limits to the structuralist approach, and that an ideologically based explanation is more compelling. An agenda for future research on RWP and climate science and policy is proposed.

Contemporary Populisms

The rise of right-wing populism in recent years can be interpreted as a direct consequence of the crisis in the relationship between traditional parties and the civilian population. A careful reflection on this phenomenon, though, requires a more extensive and ramified explanation of its material and ideological causes. A significant role has also been played by the inability of the media and institutions to understand the needs of less well-to-do classes, driven, as they are, to search for alternatives in right-wing populism. This is accompanied by the structural crisis within the traditional left-wing political parties and their movements. They were unable to respond in a credible way to the devastating socio-economic effects of the 2008 global crisis and are now unable to restore a balance between welfare and development at a time when financial capital is volatile. These considerations are then augmented by a series of comparisons between the many forms that populism has taken both in the western world and beyond, in particular comparisons between protectionist populism in the United States, nationalism in Turkey and Hindu extremism in India. Taking these differences into account, today’s populism seems to have originated in the cyclical worsening of popular resentment and in the weakening of social democratic bonds between social classes. These tensions can only be countered by politics that are more human and attentive to the actual needs of the civilian population.

Lost in Discourse: The Mass Media’s Role in Creating Trump and Right-Wing Populism

This article is based on a talk given at the London School of Economics and Political Science on November 18, 2016. Europe is currently facing severe political challenges, some of which seem to be connected. Take for example, the refugee crisis and the rise of right wing populism in countries such as Great Britain, France, or Germany. The connection between these issues is not only factual, but also based on a certain construction of public discourse. European media coverage of the ongoing refugee crisis has been characterized by a combination of sympathy, suspicion, and hostility. Ahead of any other European state, the media outlets in Germany began to frame the issue in a negative manner in 2015, contributing to a change in public perception. Here it was less a matter of a response to terrorist attacks and more the burden handling an influx of some 800,000 refugees. However, fluctuations in discourse as suchhave been an overall pattern in European media for some time. To ensure a hospitable atmosphere, the values of empathy and liberalism require a “grand coalition” of all major parties in a country, particularly the government and media. While the West has managed to build stable democracies, the two key pillars of social solidarity and liberalism are on the retreat. When any democratic component becomes compromised, it triggers a collapse of the whole house of cards, leaving fertile ground for xenophobia.

Populist knowledge: ‘Post-truth’ repertoires of contesting epistemic authorities

ABSTRACT ‘Post-truth politics’, particularly as manifested in ‘fake news’ spread by countermedia, is claimed to be endemic to contemporary populism. I argue that the relationship between knowledge and populism needs a more nuanced analysis. Many have noted that populism valorises ‘common sense’ over expertise. But another populist strategy is counterknowledge, proposing politically charged alternative knowledge authorities in the stead of established ones. I analyse countermedia in Finland, where they have played a part in the rise of right-wing populism, using a combination of computational and interpretive methods. In my data, right-wing populists advocate counterknowledge; they profess belief in truth achievable by inquiry, not by mainstream experts but alternative ones. This is a different knowledge orientation from the valorisation of ‘common sense’, and there is reason to believe it is somewhat specific to contemporary right-wing anti-immigration populism. Populism’s epistemologies are multifaceted but often absolutist, as is populism’s relationship to power and democracy.

Rethinking Religion and Language in North India: The Hindi-Urdu Dispute and the Rise of Right-wing Populism

Rethinking Religion and Language in North India: The Hindi-Urdu Dispute and the Rise of Right-wing Populism

Rethinking Religion and Language in North India: The Hindi-Urdu Dispute and the Rise of Right-wing Populism

espanolDurante las decadas de 1930 y 1940 en Uttar Pradesh los debates sobre la primacia del hindi o el urdu como la lengua oficial, ‘nacional’ se solapaban en gran parte con el enfrentamiento entre hindues y musulmanes. Atendiendo a la postura que adopto la ‘izquierda’ del Partido del Congreso, vemos que la relacion entre lengua e identidad religiosa es bastante compleja y en ocasiones paradojica. En este articulo exploramos como las caracteristicas de sendos idiomas se asociaban a determinado comportamiento social y politico y como de esa correlacion de fuerzas surgio la hegemonia del hindi. EnglishIn 1930s and 1940s Uttar Pradesh, the question of the relationship between Hindi and Urdu in debates about a possible ‘national’ language has been widely assumed to interface with a politics of communal antagonism between Hindus and Muslims. However, the politics of figures on the ‘left’ of the Congress in this period suggest that the role of language in relation to religious antagonism was complex and sometimes paradoxical. We will explore the ways in which characteristics of the two languages were associated with particular forms of social and political behaviour, and how these associations between language and behaviour came to characterise the rise of Hindi.

Radical Democracy with what Demos?

This paper considers the radical democratic theory of Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau with reference to the recent rise of Right-wing populism. I argue that even as Mouffe and Laclau develop a critical political ontology that regards democracy as an end in itself, they simultaneously exclude certain elements of the demos. In other words, they appeal to formal categories but decide the political content in advance, disqualifying Right-wing movements and discourses without justification. This ambivalence between form and content reveals the limits of Mouffe and Laclau’s brand of radical democracy for understanding and critiquing the present political conjuncture.

Trade Union Trade-Offs: Unions, Voters, and the Rise of Right-Wing Populism

Trade union membership in European Union member states has been in decline for decades, which has many concerned about the future of workers’ rights. While existing work examines the reasons for this decline, my research shifts the focus from union density to the functions unions serve and how these functions affect and are affected by changing electoral behavior. I examine the rise of right-wing populist movements in Europe and how these movements and the challenges today’s labor unions face can be traced to the same underlying forces. I argue that, as the relevance of trade unions declines for blue-collar workers, support for right-wing movements increases. I test this claim with the help of statistical analyses of European Values Study data. I find preliminary support for my hypothesis, and suggest how this can inform our responses to the rise of populism in Europe.

Welfare Chauvinismm vs. Race to the Bottomm: Immigration and Electoral Support for Populist Right in Industrial Democracies, 1990-2009

Some propose that the rise of right-wing populism in many industrial democracies is due to economic insecurities stemming from globalization — the so-called “race to the bottom” argument. They suggest that greater social protection can cushion society from communal disharmony. Others suggest that the anti-immigrant backlash is driven by “welfare chauvinism” where people already enjoying high levels of social welfare are likely to see immigrants as a threat to the system and that traditional xenophobia and racism are compounded by the view that immigrants are interlopers that free-ride on welfare. We test these competing propositions using panel data for 27 OECD countries between 1990 and 2009 (20 years). We find that the positive effect of immigration on support for right-wing populism is not direct but conditional upon higher degrees of social welfare, which supports propositions about “welfare chauvinism.” Support for right-wing parties increase when the degree of economic freedom is low and the degree of social protection is high. The results clearly fail to support propositions about the “race to the bottom” but support liberal arguments about the distorting effects of high welfare on communal harmony. Our results are robust to a host of alternative data, sample size and estimation techniques.

Predicting the Rise of EU Right-Wing Populism in Response to Unbalanced Immigration

Among the central tenets of globalization is the free migration of labor. Although much has been written about the benefits of globalization, little is known about its limitations and how antiglobalist sentiment can be strongly affected by high levels of immigration. Analyzing poll data from a group of EU countries affected by the recent migrant crisis, we find that over the last three years the percentage of right-wing (RW) populist voters in a given country depends on the prevalence of immigrants in this country’s population and the total immigration inflow into the entire EU. The latter is likely due to the perception that the EU functions as a supranational state in which a lack of inner borders means that “someone else’s problem” can easily become “my problem.” We find that the increase in the percentage of RW voters substantially surpasses the percentage of immigration inflow, implying that if this process continues, ongoing democratic processes will cause RW populism to prevail and globalization to rapidly decrease. We locate tipping points between the fraction of immigrants and the rise of RW populism, and we model our empirical findings using a complex network framework in which the success of globalization rests on a balance between immigration and immigrant integration.

The Rise of Right Wing Populism and Its Effect on HRM

This paper provides an overview of the human resource management implications associated with the rise of right-wing populism. Our perspective is based on a review of the managerial, policy, and academic literature. We highlight some of the potentially negative human resource management consequences for markets in the U.K., U.S., and around the world that result from declines in social protection, a rise in racism, a decline in diversity or acceptance of diversity, as well as barriers to the mobility of labour, immigration, and trade, among other problems.

The worldliness of Stuart Hall

This special issue addresses the worldliness of Stuart Hall, both in the naïve sense of the global scope of reception and influence of his work and in the more specific Saidian sense of the impact of his work in the formation of cultural studies generally and on specific praxis and intellectual projects. With articles addressing projects such as the Black arts movement in Britain; intellectual versus academic cultural studies in Australia; making meaning of the rise of right-wing populism in Finland; Hall’s reception in Latin America and influence on the formation of Latin American cultural studies; a specific media court case in South Africa; addressing the phenomenon of jihadi brides in Britain and reconceptualising continental African blackness, this collection represents Hall as both specific and global intellectual. It also takes us beyond the initial phase of grief to one in which we must go on doing cultural studies, without Stuart Hall’s leadership, without guarantees.

LIETUVOS POLITINĖ RAIDA: ANTROJO POKOMUNISTINIO DEŠIMTMEČIO LYGINAMOJI ANALIZĖ

The goal of paper is to put into focus and explain essential features of the political development in Lithuania during second post-communist decade by means of its comparison with the analoguos processes in other Baltic States (Latvia and Estonia) and in those Central European countries with political systems which resemble most closely Lithuanian case (Poland and Hungary). In all these countries, second post-communist decade witnessed the rise of the new successful populist parties. The author argues that this populist rise is the proper context for the understanding of Rolandas Paksas’ impeachment in Lithuania in 2003–2004. His Order and Justice party has to be classified together with the brothers Kaczynski’s Law and Justice party and its even more radical allies in Poland, Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz and Gábor Vona’s Jobbik in Hungary, Juhan Part’s Res Publica in Estonia and Einars Repše’s New Era in Latvia. They were all right-wing populist parties, proclaiming in their anti-establishment rhetoric the war on corruption of the (ex-communist) elite and the coming of “new politics”. While the rise of right-wing populism did not change the political system in the former bureaucratic authoritarian countries Estonia and Latvia, in Hungary and Poland the outcome was the breakup of the implicit ex-communist and anti-communist elite pact which was the foundation of the political stability in these former countries of national communism. The Kaczynski twins founded Rzecz Pospolita IV (4th Republic of Poland), grounded in the thorough and comprehensive lustration of the ex-communist cadres. Fidesz leader Victor Orban used the two thirds majority in the Hungarian parliament to promulgate a new constitution. Lithuania is unique in that the ex-communist and anti-communist elite pact was not abolished, but preserved and consolidated due to the collaboration of all, by this time, “established” and Left-of-centre populist parties during the impeachment proceedings. The impeachment of Paksas can be considered as the stress test of the young Lithuanian liberal democracy, just on the eve of the accession of Lithuania to the EU and NATO. An unhappy peculiarity of the stress tests is that they sometimes break or damage the items tested. As far as the success in impeaching R.Paksas prevented the transformation of liberal post-communism into populist post-communism in Lithuania, the test was a success. However, against the expectation of many observers of impeachment events, it did not enhance the quality of democracy of Lithuania. The legacy of impeachment are disequilibrium of the balance of power between government branches in favour of the Constitutional Court, strengthening of the Left-of-Centre populist political forces and the interference of secret services into Lithuanian politics with the self-assumed mission to safeguard Lithuanian democracy from the perils of populism.

The Cat and the Owl: Remembering Chris Marker

In October 2010, I emailed Chris to ask if he was interested in taking part in a special issue of E-flux Journal that art critic Sven Lütticken and I were editing. The issue focused on whether contemporary art had addressed the rise of right-wing populism in Europe, the US, and elsewhere, and how these largely nationalistic, homophobic, and xenophobic movements impacted culture and art. With the ascendance of the Tea Party, Sven and I wondered if it were possible to chart a genealogy of right-wing groups on both sides of the Atlantic and illuminate their familial relations.

Right-wing populism in Europe: politics and discourse

Acknowledgements Introduction List of Contributors List of Images and Figures Part I Theories and comparative approaches 1. Right-Wing Populism: concept and typology - Anton Pelinka 2. 'Anything goes!' - the Haiderization of Europe - Ruth Wodak. 3. Loud Values, Muffled Interests: third-way social democracy and right-wing populism - Magnus E. Maradal. 4. Breaking Taboos and 'Mainstreaming the Extreme': the debates on restricting Islamic symbols in contemporary Europe - Aristotle Kallis. 5. Mosques, Minarets, Burqas and Other Essential Threats: the populist right's campaign against Islam in Western Europe - Hans-Georg Betz 6. Hate Across the Waters: the role of American extremists in fostering an international White Consciousness - Heidi Beirich Part II Case Studies - Western Europe 7. Ploughing the Same Furrow? Continuity and change on Britain's extreme-right fringe - John E. Richardson 8. Contemporary Forms of Racist Movements and Mobilisation in Britain - John Solomos 9. From Anti-Immigration and Nationalist Revisionism to Islamophobia: continuities and shifts in recent discourses and patterns of political communication of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPOE) - Michal Krzyzanowski 10. Developments within the Radical Right in Germany: discourses, attitudes and actors - Britta Schellenberg. 11. Carlo Ruzza and Laura Balbo. Italian Populism and the Trajectories of Two Leaders: Silvio Berlusconi and Umberto Bossi - Carlo Ruzza and Laura Balbo 12. Explaining the Rise of the Front National to Electoral Prominence: multi-faceted or contradictory models? - Brigitte Beauzamy 13. Explaining the Swing to the Right: the Dutch debate on the rise of right-wing populism - Merijn Oudenampsen 14. The Stage as an Arena of Political Struggle. The struggle between Vlaams Blok/Belang and Flemish city theatres - Benjamin de Cleen Part III Case Studies - Central and Eastern Europe 15. The Post-Communist Extreme Right: the Jobbik party in Hungary - Andras Kovacs 16. Comparing Radical-Right Populism in Estonia and Latvia - Daunis Auers and Andres Kasekamp 17. From Para-Militarism to Radical Right-Wing Populism: the rise of the Ukrainian far-right party Svoboda - Anton Shekhovtsov Part IV Case Studies - Scandinavian context 18. Populism - Changes Over Time and Space: a comparative and retrospective analysis of populist parties in the Nordic countries from 1965 to 2012 - Bjoern Fryklund 19. The Sweden Democrats came In From The Cold: how the debate about allowing the Sweden Democrats into media arenas shifted between 1998 and 2010 - Simon Oja and Brigitte Mral 20. Kristina Boreus. Nationalism and Discursive Discrimination against Immigrants in Austria, Denmark and Sweden - Kristina Boreus 21. Mediatization as an Echo-Chamber for Xenophobic Discourses in the Threat Society: the Muhammad cartoons in Denmark and Sweden - Stig A. Nohrstedt 22. Dealing with the Extreme Right - Christoph Andersson

Interactive party effects on electoral performance

While the rise of right-wing populism in West European politics has received considerable attention in academic circles, the equivalent phenomenon in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) remains understudied. I address this gap by examining the factors contributing to right-wing populist party success in CEE. I argue that the success of such parties is best explained by the presence of salient ethnic minority parties. I propose that successful ethnic minority parties heighten the salience of ethno-nationalist divisions within a state, creating electoral demand for parties of the populist right. Political elites capitalize on the fear generated by the presence of strong minority parties and channel it into electoral support for the populist right. Performing statistical analysis on an original dataset of 108 CEE elections, I find evidence that the electoral performance of right-wing populist parties is influenced by the performance of ethnic minority parties and their participation in government.

Political Development of Lithuania: A Comparative Analysis of Second Post-communist Decade

AbstractThe goal of this paper is to put into focus and explain distinctive features of the political developments in Lithuania during second post-communist decade, comparing them with other Baltic States (Latvia and Estonia) and those Central European countries with political systems which resembled most closely Lithuania (Poland and Hungary) by the end of the first post-communist decade. In all these countries, second post-communist decade witnessed the rise of the new successful populist parties. The author argues that this populist rise is the proper context for understanding of Rolandas Paksas’ impeachment in Lithuania in 2003–2004. His Order and Justice Party has to be classified together with the Kaczynski twins Law and Justice Party and its even more radical allies in Poland, Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz and Gábor Vona’s Jobbik in Hungary, Juhan Part’s Res Publica in Estonia and Einars Repše’s New Era in Latvia. They all were right-wing populist parties, proclaiming in their anti-establishment rhetoric the war on corruption of the (ex-communist) elite and the coming of new politics. While the rise of right-wing populism did not change the political system in Estonia and Latvia, its outcome in Hungary and Poland was the breakup of the ex-communist and anti-communist elites pact which was the foundation of the political stability during first post-communist decade. The Kaczynski twins founded Rzecz Pospolita IV (4th Republic of Poland), grounded in the thorough and comprehensive lustration of the ex-communist cadres. Fidesz leader Orban used the two-thirds majority in the Hungarian parliament to promulgate a new constitution. Lithuania is unique in that the ex-communist and anti-communist elites pact was not abolished, but preserved and consolidated thanks to the collaboration of all, by this time, established and left-of-center populist parties during the impeachment proceedings. The impeachment of Paksas can be considered as the stress test of the young Lithuanian liberal democracy just on the eve of the accession of Lithuania to the European Union and NATO. An unhappy peculiarity of the stress tests is that they sometimes break or damage the items tested. Preventing the transformation of liberal post-communism into populist post-communism in Lithuania, the impeachment as stress test was a success. However, against the expectation of many observers, it did not enhance the quality of democracy of Lithuania. The legacy of impeachment are disequilibrium of the balance of power between government branches in favor of the Constitutional Court, strengthening of the left-of-centre populist political forces and the interference of secret services into Lithuanian politics with the self-assumed mission to safeguard Lithuanian democracy from the perils of populism.

The Survival of Politics

Politics, in an emphatic sense of the term, involves questioning, a sense of importance, rationality and a collective investment in political life. The essay discusses some of the threats against the political imaginary thus understood in contemporary Western societies. Depoliticizing trends are found in political and economic theory and echoed in discussions about political problems of global complexity. The responses to the experiences of political powerlessness include the rise of right wing populism and extremism. To analyse these currents, the essay discusses a notion of Cornelius Castoriadis that has been little developed in political theory: the distinction between validity de facto and validity de jure. It is argued that the category of validity de jure can put into philosophical relief the problems of depoliticization and the sliding scale from populism to terrorism. An increased awareness of the question of validity can further develop a reflexive understanding of distinctions between what is and what ought to be, and thus, to the importance of practicing politics.

Right-wing Populism and the European Union

Since its inception the European Union has transformed itself from a mere economic partnership to a regional cooperation, supposedly, embodying laws and values ‘universally’ accepted as ‘good’. This very character has encouraged the EU to pursue the role of a global actor that not only personifies this ‘value-system’ but also strives at disseminating them into the rest of the world. But, over the years the rise of right-wing populism throughout Europe has threatened to challenge some of the core orientating aspects of this ‘value-system’. While electoral victories have demonstrated their ability to impact the character of the EU within its boundaries, this study wonders what impact the rise of the right-wing populism could have on the European Union as a global actor. Key words: Far-right, Right wing populism, European Union, Global Actor, Foreign Policy