In this lecture, I lay out my approach to populism, which falls within the now dominant ‘ideational approach’ of populism, discuss the complex relationship between populism and politics, and identify some of the main causes of the ongoing ‘populist Zeitgeist’. My main arguments are: (1) while populism is related to (real and perceived) ‘crises’, these so-called ‘crises’ are often catalysts rather than prime causes of the rise of populism; (2) populism is essentially an illiberal democratic response to undemocratic liberalism; and (3) populism can only be overcome by more rather than less liberal democracy. I illustrate my arguments on the basis of the recent rise of populism in Europe, but believe they also largely hold true beyond that specific regional and temporal context.

The euro crisis brought back a widening gap in prosperity between the eurozone’s core and periphery members, but also revealed a divergence in the strength of its national democracies. This article examines the amplified tension between progressively uprooted national markets governed by a supranational technocracy and nationally organized democratic politics in the eurozone’s periphery. Building on Dani Rodrik’s globalization ‘trilemma’, this article explains the weakening of national democratic institutions in Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy since 2008. While the periphery states were forced to choose monetary integration at the expense of both democracy and sovereignty, this trade-off was mostly absent in the core. The eurozone’s policy solutions to the crisis did not allow for any democratic input, were implemented through opaque and often-undemocratic throughput processes, and resulted in deteriorating output. The article concludes that the EU crisis response made euro membership in the periphery less compatible with national democratic principles.

This article is one of a series commissioned by Government and Opposition exploring identity politics in several national and international contexts. Most discussions of ‘the Canadian identity’ focus on how ‘being Canadian’ relates to various sub-state group identities, such as Québécois, Aboriginal or immigrant identities. There is often said to be a distinctly Canadian model of reconciling national identity with sub-group identities. I argue that the Canadian model of accommodating identities is not unique, but rather reflects broader trends throughout the West. I also suggest that an equally important but neglected part of ‘being Canadian’ is the external dimension i.e., how Canadians relate to the wides world.

The article contests the view that the Blair government has presided over the demise of cabinet government in the UK, and the rise of a kind of British presidentialism. By examining changes made at the very heart of government, chiefly in the Prime Minister's and Cabinet Offices, it argues that change under Labour marks the latest stage in the evolution of Britain's still functioning system of cabinet government. Moreover, recent reforms, like so many before, have been partly prompted by deep-seated administrative factors that have helped to shape the core executive for close to a century. Nevertheless, the article concedes that the Blair reforms do reflect an acceleration of pre-existing trends, with the result that the executive arm of government has been substantially enhanced. This has led to some change in the balance of power both within the core executive and across central government more widely.

The paper explores the construction of both Muslim and Islamist identities and the ways in which they interact, converge and diverge. This exploration is set against the background of debates on the nature of Islamism and its positioning vis-à-vis modernity and post-modernity. The paper argues that processes of modernity and post-modernity may be at work in the production of Muslim identities, but highlights the need to examine how different dimensions of identity formation such as socio-economic position, gender, age and lifestyle enter into the formation of Muslim selves. This is made necessary if we accept the premise of the sociality and historicity of religion.

The focus on female MPs and leftist and feminist issues in traditional studies of women's substantive representation has supported the overall conclusion that women, feminists and left-wing parties promote women's interests in parliament. But our analysis of the ‘critical actors’ in women's substantive representation in 10 European countries confirms this finding only to a certain extent. Our inductive research design reveals an important group of less obvious actors: non-left, non-feminist and male MPs. That they speak out on behalf of women points to the necessity of revisiting our theories on women's substantive representation.

Across Western Europe, parties have emerged that are both right wing and in favour of restrictions on immigration. These parties are commonly referred to in terms of either ideology (e.g. ‘far right’) or policy (‘anti-immigration’). This article compares far right parties, selected on the basis of their ideologies, and anti-immigration parties, selected based on their immigration policies. I argue and empirically demonstrate that, contrary to what the extant literature suggests, these sets of parties are not identical. I point out similarities and differences, showing why it is useful to distinguish between these two types of party. The article concludes by discussing the relevance of these differences to the relevant literature.

This article investigates whether two different measures of democracy generate the same empirical results. The Freedom House and Polity IV measures are used as the dependent variables. The result shows that statistical significance and explanatory power for different independent variables differ greatly, depending on which democracy index is used as the dependent variable. The results also indicate that Freedom House and Polity IV rate many countries’ levels of democracy differently. It is worrying and problematic for comparative studies of democracy that empirical results differ so much according to which measure of democracy is used.

WHEN ONE COMES TO LOOK AT THE LITERATURE ON CIVIL-MILITARY relations one is struck by the enormous proliferation of ad hoc generalizations on the subject, particularly where the military in new nations is concerned. Many of these contradict each other. Often the theories are not adequate to the facts. And frequently they depend on so many other things being equal that by the time one has made all the necessary qualifications there is not much explanatory force left in the original hypothesis.

The colonial legacy has on the one hand been said to create political armies in the image of those of the colonial power, which are less likely to interfere in politics.

Polarization may be the most consistent effect of populism, as it is integral to the logic of constructing populist subjects. This article distinguishes between constitutive, spatial and institutional dimensions of polarization, adopting a cross-regional comparative perspective on different subtypes of populism in Europe, Latin America and the US. It explains why populism typically arises in contexts of low political polarization (the US being a major, if partial, outlier), but has the effect of sharply increasing polarization by constructing an anti-establishment political frontier, politicizing new policy or issue dimensions, and contesting democracy's institutional and procedural norms. Populism places new issues on the political agenda and realigns partisan and electoral competition along new programmatic divides or political cleavages. Its polarizing effects, however, raise the stakes of political competition and intensify conflict over the control of key institutional sites.

THERE HAS RECENTLY BEEN A SPATE OF WRITING ON THE CONCEPT OF corporatism as part of the interpretation of contemporary British politics, and a series of articles by J. T. Winkler has provided a comprehensive and detailed frameword for the analysis of certain features of political practice. One of the purposes of this writing is to rescue the term ‘corporatism’ from its Italian and fascist connotations to permit a dispassionate examination of the central features of corporatist thought and practice.

On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the concept of anti-system party it is time to ask whether it enjoys good health in addition to longevity. Reflecting on what constitutes an anti-system party appears to be of unprecedented relevance, particularly in the light of the electoral success of populist parties such as the French Front National, the Five Star Movement in Italy and Syriza in Greece. This article highlights two crucial questions that remain unsolved if we follow existing conceptualizations: What are the boundaries of the concept? When does a party cease to be anti-system and how can it be reclassified thereafter? In order to overcome such limitations, this article develops a revisited concept of anti-system party and provides a set of guidelines for its empirical application. Furthermore, a novel typology capable of investigating the evolution of anti-system parties and classifying political parties in general is presented.

During Recent Years, The Notion of The Democratic deficit has become, together with subsidiarity, or transparency, one of the most popdar subjects for conferences on European Union. While almost everyone seems to agree that a democratic deficit exists, it is far from certain that there is a general understanding of what is meant by it.

The most radical meaning would be that the European Union (EU) as such is undemocratic and that its decision-making does not correspond to democratic norms. Quite often when national governments have to explain unpopular decisions of the EU, responsibility for these uncomfortable situations is attributed to a faceless monster, the ‘Brussels bureaucracy’. The assumption is that a very strong central authority exists which embodies the power of decision-making and that democratic accountability of this central authority either does not exist or at least is not sufficiently guaranteed. In other words, the EU institutional system does not comply with democratic norms. This is by far the most extreme definition of a democratic deficit.

In the 2010 Swedish general elections the nationalist party Sverigedemokraterna (SD) crossed the threshold and entered parliament. The other parties in parliament reacted with strong antagonism; the mainstreaming of the ‘radical right’ had finally come to Sweden. This article analyses the media coverage of the SD following the 2006 elections, when it emerged as a high-profile party in the public arena. The presence of the SD in Swedish politics encourages both SD allies and opponents to emphasize their views on what constitutes social cohesion in Sweden. We see the public debate surrounding the SD as a rhetorical struggle between different nationalist claims.

GHIŢA IONESCU'S HOMELAND IS ONE OF THE MOST TROUBLED NATIONS in Europe. Its wounded national feeling has produced the strangest ideological combinations, mixing freely a fascist past with nostalgia for Ceausescu, as is the case with the Vatra Romaneasca (Romanian Homeland) movement, or the editors of the influential journal Romania Mare, adept at denouncing the ‘international Judaeo- Zionist-capitalist’ plot. One of the main theoreticians of corporatism, as is well known, was Mihail Manoilescu, while another Romanian intellectual, Ilie Badescu, created the ‘protocronist’ school of sociology, bent on documenting cultural and scientific findings in Romania which had anticipated later Western European developments. This approach was adopted officially during the Ceausescu regime, and now inspires some extreme right-wing groups which espouse a radical nationalist ideology. One of them, the Party of the National Right, admits to not being democratic, but compensates for this by proclaiming its ‘demophilia’, that is, its love for the people, a concept created by Petre Tutea, an admirer of the Iron Guard interwar fascist movement.

The effects of old and new media on governing and executive leadership have remained curiously under-studied. In the available literature, assessments prevail that consider the media to have developed a strongly power-enhancing effect on incumbent chief executives. A careful reconsideration of mass media effects on the conditions and manifestations of political leadership by presidents and prime ministers in different contemporary democracies suggests that the media more often function as effective constraints on leaders and leadership. Overall, the constraining effects of the traditional media have been more substantial than those generated by the new media. While there are obvious cross-national trends in the development of government–mass media relations, important differences between countries persist, which can be explained to some considerable extent by the different institutional features of contemporary democracies.

The aim of this article is to account for the differences in electoral support for social democratic parties in Scandinavia in recent years. The main argument put forward is that the relative success of the Swedish Social Democratic Party (SAP) in preserving voter support compared to the major decline for both the Danish and Norwegian social democrats should be understood by focusing on two factors, both related to the phenomenon of issue-voting. We argue that the relative success of the SAP must been seen in light of the way in which traditional political issues, like employment and social welfare, have continued to dominate Swedish political debates, whereas in Norway and Denmark, new political issues, particularly immigration, have sailed up the political agenda and paved the way for new right-wing parties which attract social democratic voters. Secondly, we believe that one issue in particular, that of the future of the welfare state, is important for preserving social democratic support. Therefore, it is also relevant that the Swedish Social Democratic Party appears to have been more successful than social democratic parties in the neighbouring countries in convincing voters that it is the party best suited to preserve the existing welfare system.

Why has the extreme right Greek Golden Dawn, a party with clear links to fascism, experienced a rise defying all theories that claim that such a party is unlikely to win in post-Second World War Europe? And, if we accept that economic crisis is an explanation for this, why has such a phenomenon not occurred in other countries that have similar conducive conditions, such as Portugal and Spain? This article addresses this puzzle by: (1) carrying out a controlled comparison of Greece, Portugal and Spain; and (2) showing that the rise of the extreme right is not a question of intensity of economic crisis. Rather it is the nature of the crisis – that is, economic versus overall crisis of democratic representation – that facilitates the rise of the extreme right. We argue that extreme right parties are more likely to experience an increase in their support when economic crisis culminates into an overall crisis of democratic representation. Economic crisis is likely to become a political crisis when severe issues of governability impact upon the ability of the state to fulfil its social contract obligations. This breach of the social contract is accompanied by declining levels of trust in state institutions, resulting in party system collapse.

Legitimate political opposition constitutes a key component of any form of liberal democracy, which has, however, received surprisingly scant attention in the more recent political science literature. In an attempt to revitalize the debate about the various forms of political opposition, this paper starts with distinguishing five different ways or models of institutionalizing political opposition in liberal democratic systems. It goes on to look at how these different models have worked in the constitutional practice of selected western democracies. In the second part of this article, the focus is on the possible lessons that constitution-makers in democratizing countries could draw from this experience. Whereas there is no best model of opposition in general, some models would seem to be better suited to meet the particular needs of new democracies than others.

The role of social structure as a determinant of electoral behaviour has been debated across Western countries, with one side in the debate arguing that the rise of the electoral conflict between authoritarian–libertarian values reflects the diminishing importance of socio-structural factors. In contrast, this article shows, using a unique representative sample from Denmark, how this conflict has its roots in an opposition between high- and low-education groups that divide over authoritarian–libertarian values, have developed education-based identities and group consciousness, and are influenced by these factors to vote for parties, each mobilizing their side in the conflict – that is, that the authoritarian–libertarian conflict is based on an education cleavage. Documenting for the first time the influence of education-based identity and group consciousness on voting, these findings demonstrate that socio-structural factors – partly through the voters’ social identities and consciousness – continue to play an important role for electoral behaviour in Western countries. Likewise, the findings suggest that the conflict over authoritarian–libertarian values will have lasting importance for politics in these countries. The logical next step, therefore, will be to extend the analyses to the comparative level.