Less researched than the second-order character of elections to the European Parliament (EP) is the ‘Europeanness’ of European elections and its implications for voter participation in these elections. This article aims to fill this gap by studying the Europeanness of the public debate in the run-up to the 2019 EP elections and the mobilizing power of European issues in these electoral contests. In

This article aims to highlight the contextual impact of proportional representation (PR) rules on the intersectional representation of gender and ethnic groups. We assert that the combination of the institutional and sociodemographic context generates barriers and opportunities for the inclusion of intersectional identity groups in politics. We analyse how the sociodemographic make up of the district

The concept of ‘young radicals’ is gaining ground in a context of generalized discontent – often, this is due to the fact that young people engage increasingly in unconventional forms of political activism. Much less is known about young people holding radical political attitudes. This article advances our understanding of those young people who place themselves on the extremes of the ideological scale

On the 25 March 2017, leaders of the EU27 and European Union (EU) institutions ratified the Rome Declaration. They committed to invite citizens to discuss Europe’s future and to provide recommendations that would facilitate their decision-makers in shaping their national positions on Europe. In response, citizens’ dialogues on the future of Europe were instituted across the Union to facilitate public

This article demonstrates the value of rhetorical audience studies for analysing constructions of ‘the nation’ and national identity. A key strength of this approach is its recognition of the interplay between the rhetorical situation, the text of the speech, and the audience’s responses to that rhetoric. Using the historical method for investigating rhetoric and its reception, the article examines

This article advances a ‘political ecology of racial capitalism’ approach to further our understanding of the underlying systemic relations and logics of power driving planetary ecological crises. The particular concern here is to demonstrate how race underwrites the distinctively exhaustive society/nature relation fuelling both the productive excess and ecological exhaustion of the capitalist world-system

Recent literature on the centre–periphery debate in European politics has produced a wide range of composite paradigms of regionalism, nationalism, and populism and nativism. A number of these definitions, however, tend to overemphasise the importance of populism by either framing it as a core ideology or by conflating it with the nationalism or regionalism of a specific party. This article makes three

This article analyses the political campaign of the rather under-researched Bancada Ativista, a prefigurative progressive experience comprised of nine co-candidates running for a single seat in the State Chamber of Sao Paulo during the 2018 Brazilian elections. The political experience brought about by the Bancada Ativista stands as a prolific effort in its aim to transform legislative action, responding

This article investigates whether engagement in school or university, such as being the speaker of class, a member of a student council, and so on, has an impact on political participation and political trust. Following interactionist socialization theory, engagement during adolescence should develop ideas of citizenship, democracy, and political participation. Schools and universities are arguably

Are European Parliament (EP) elections used to pass judgement on the legislative behaviour of parties serving in the EP? Do Europeans give a bonus in EP elections to political parties whose members were highly active during the legislative term? The article will focus on the role of legislative activities in the eighth EP term (2014–2019) in informing the 2019 vote choice. The analysis combines the

The current literature on populism considers the causal factors surrounding the emergence of populism to be materialist and often ignores the role of elites in the precipitation of populist movements. Consequently, populism is often conceptualised as an epiphenomenon. However, it is the scope of this article that the construction of events or processes as ‘beyond’ public control contributes to popular

This research draws on the CrowdLaw concept and the affordances framework to inquire how Senador Virtual, a technological innovation in the Chilean Senate, could contribute to creating more democratic processes and outcomes, and consequently, whether the platform promoted or enabled more equality in decision-making processes and better citizen engagement. Based on a mixed-methods approach of statistical

Are those who support the core values of liberal democracy also more likely to support the European Union? In this article, we study the relationship between EU support and support for the principles of liberal democracy among citizens in the 28 EU member states, using data from the European Election Studies 2019. Our findings demonstrate that supporters of liberal principles of democracy tend to be

The continued relevance of the second-order elections (SOE) theory is one of the most widely debated issues in the study of European Parliament (EP) elections. While the theory has been criticized from many angles, the recent success of populist, extremist, and Eurosceptic parties raises additional questions about the applicability of a model that depicts EP elections as a low-stakes affair revolving

How does political socialization in a highly fragmented political scene affect propensity to vote? This article focusses on the long-term relationship between the number of political parties and the propensity to turn out in 96 parliamentary elections between 1996 and 2016 of nearly 100,000 individuals in 31 countries. Although intuitively more options might be expected to translate into a greater

The vote NO (a defeat for the proponents) of the 2016 Italian referendum has been broadly attributed to a wave of protest politics sweeping Western democracies. Given that the government of Matteo Renzi proposed and supported the referendum, the resulting vote against government interests raises a crucial theoretical question: to what extent does the referendum vote reflect the characteristics of a

Despite the stark voter turnout increase in 2019, the participation level in European Parliament elections is still considerably lower than in national elections. How can we explain this persistent ‘Euro gap’? This article analyzes the motivations of citizens who participate in national but not in European electoral contests, so-called ‘EU-only abstainers’. The empirical analysis based on the EES 2019

The period of growing tensions between the United States and Russia (2013–2019) saw mutual accusations of digital interference, disinformation, fake news, and propaganda, particularly following the Ukraine crisis and the 2016 US presidential election. This article asks how the United States and Russia represent each other’s and their own propaganda, its threat, and power over audiences. We examine

Analysing Arab public opinion on the international community’s response to the Syrian crisis, we expand existing scholarship by injecting a non-Western perspective into the oftentimes Western-centric debates on intervention. We demonstrate that publics in two prominent Arab Spring countries were quite willing to embrace intervention in Syria in order to depose Bashar al-Assad. More specifically, our

This article examines changes in the determinants of support for Nicaragua’s Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), a party that has achieved dominant status during democratic backsliding. Using three waves of Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) surveys from 2006 to 2016, we present binary logit models to test four hypotheses on the evolution of support for the FSLN. Following the theory

Rhetoric is a way to explain policy problem framing by recognising the practical necessity to persuade audiences in contextual situations. Modern slavery and human trafficking is a complex and emotive problem, simplified through rhetorical demands to motivate an audience of supporters. This article analyses rhetoric by 212 UK anti-trafficking and anti-slavery non-government organisations (NGOs) to

In the last few years, research studies and opinion pieces have tried to account for the new polarisation and dealignment of US politics after Trump and the post-Brexit UK politics. It is now well-established both by academic research and by Facebook’s own research that Facebook leads to more polarisation in its users’ political views, but rhetorical analysis has not yet accounted for the role played

This article analyses the cultural traction and media visibility yielded by left-wing ideas and people during Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure as British Labour Party leader (2015–2019), while also offering some more general reflections on the relationship between left politics and popular culture. I begin by noting that the cultural and media aspects of Corbynism have largely been neglected in the scholarly

Recent calls to ‘decolonise the curriculum’ are especially pertinent to the teaching of political theory, which has traditionally been dominated by a canon made up overwhelmingly of White (and male...

Populism seems to define our current political age. The term is splashed across the headlines, brandished in political speeches and commentaries, and applied extensively in numerous academic public...

This article, focusing on Italy, aims to broaden our understanding of the recent striking electoral fortunes of (differing types of) populism in the country, by locating them within multiple crises...

This article explores how European Union (EU) peacebuilding is being reconfigured. Whereas the EU was once a bulwark of liberal peacebuilding, promoting a rule of law–based international order, it ...

Foreign policy role theorists have recently placed domestic role contestation central to their accounts of foreign policy continuity and change. Yet, contestation over national role conceptions is ...

While parties in established democracies have shown increasing reluctance to forge exclusive ties to organisational mediators, they have not discarded these connections. This article considers one ...

This article argues that electoral politics acts as an important constraint on presidential decision-making in war. Going beyond the existing literature’s focus on cases of conflict initiation, it ...

This article seeks to shine a light on the diversity of populist discourses about Europe and the European Union (EU). It is built upon the existing literature on populist Euroscepticism to elaborat...

Drawing on an original sample of 351 elections held in new and consolidated democracies from 1960 to 2013, this article examines the likelihood that new parties gain parliamentary representation as...

A variety of factors affect citizens’ satisfaction with democracy. Based on Turkey’s political and economic context, as well as the existing literature, this study investigates the effect of four f...

This article argues that rhetorical analysis is a method particularly well-suited for the study of political disputes and introduces commonplaces as a tool to conduct such analysis. Commonplaces fu...

This article conceptualises the production of foreign policy bullshit in electoral contexts as a result of contending incentives towards ambiguity and specificity. Candidates must speak to widely d...

This introduction presents the special issue’s conceptual and empirical starting points and situates the special issue’s intended contributions. It does so by reviewing extant scholarship on electo...

Trump’s stinging electoral rhetoric regarding Europe has profoundly challenged the foundations of the transatlantic relations. Exploring the link between electoral rhetoric and US foreign policy, t...

The presidential campaign of 1992 is remembered for its focus on the US economy, as George Bush, Ross Perot, and Bill Clinton proposed solutions for the state of the nation’s finances. A key challe...

Contributing to burgeoning studies of populism, this article conceptualises and contextualises Trump’s language as ‘Jacksonian populism’. We explore how this style of populist discourse influenced ...

South African politics are in a period of transition: the dominant African National Congress (ANC) is in decline, support for opposition parties has been rising, and voters have been disengaging ra...

Much like his candidacy, Donald Trump’s presidency has been described as populist par excellence and as fundamentally breaking with the liberal internationalist tradition of American foreign policy...

This special issue on elections, rhetoric, and American Foreign policy brings to light how and why ‘talk’ matters particularly in foreign policy. While not all of the articles examine President Tru...

This article asks how Donald Trump’s foreign policy rhetoric during his presidential campaign and presidency has affected US foreign policy in the area of overseas counterterrorism campaigns. Looki...

What insights and advantages do rhetorical approaches offer over other methods of exploring social and political discourse? This article aims to clarify the contribution of rhetorical analysis by reflecting on the distinctive, hermeneutic dimensions of public speech. Public speaking is, accordingly, viewed as a practice of assembling interpretations to offer argumentative stances for speakers and their

This essay offers a metaphoric analysis of Donald J. Trump’s announcement speech. We argue that by focusing on two of his metaphors, the presidency as a business and his promise to build a wall, we...

In the 2017 Czech parliamentary election, the Czech Pirate Party (Pirates) gained 10.79% of the votes – an unprecedented success, compared to most of the pirate parties across Europe. However, as their electoral gain varies widely across the Czech Republic’s territory, this article analyses all (more than 6000) Czech municipalities in the elections of 2010, 2013, and 2017 to explain this variation

Our study examines the influence of various candidate characteristics (sociodemographic profile, competence and experience, issue positions, and party affiliation) on voters’ preference for a candi...

In divided societies and new democracies, clientelism (in the form of pork barrel) and ethno-politics appear to go hand in hand. It is apparent that politicians are incentivized to compete for supp...

Expert surveys provide a standardized way to access and synthesize specialized knowledge, thereby, enabling the analysis of a diverse range of concepts and contexts that might otherwise be difficult to approach systematically. However, while studies of public opinion have long argued that cognitive biases represent potential problems when it comes to the general population, less attention has been

Deliberative exercises may reinvigorate civic life by building citizens’ capacity to engage in other types of civic activities. This study examines members of a citizens’ panel (n = 56) who participated in a 6-day deliberative event on climate change and energy transition in Edmonton, Alberta (Canada), in 2012. We compared panellists’ civic engagement, political interest, and political knowledge with

Are prime ministers held accountable for their government’s performance? The personalisation of parliamentary elections and subsequent voting behaviour based on the personality of party leaders questions the accountability of elected governments. In this article, I analyse the confounding of prime ministers’ leader effects by voters’ evaluation of government performance to examine whether prime ministers

In this article, we use an adapted version of Wayne Sandholtz’s cycle of normative change to examine the dynamics of contestation of norms against incapacitating chemical agents and riot control agents, often imprecisely grouped together under the term ‘non-lethal chemical weapons’. We draw on a concept-driven analysis of statements and in-depth interviews with individual stakeholders to track the

Turkey under the AKP governments constitutes an exemplary case for understanding how centralized religion, authoritarianism, and economic logic of neoliberalism interrelate. AKP uses state-guided religion to legitimize its neoliberal economic policies and create docile, economized citizens. This article specifically focuses on how pious Muslims resist AKP’s religious neoliberalism by focusing on actions

This study critically assesses the claim of the cartel party theory that the party in central office (PCO) has lost its powers to the party in public office (PPO) as parties have adapted to various changes in their operating ‘environment’. The study argues that a party’s tendency to adapt is conditioned by the party’s ‘genetic’ heritage: if the PCO assumed a prominent position during the party’s institutionalization

Domestic politics theories of international political economy and the recent disruptions in international cooperation and trade apparently induced by domestic discontent have shown the crucial role domestic forces play in influencing governmental preferences. This article contributes to this theoretical school, first, by assessing seminal works on the ideational, material, and institutional dimensions

It remains unclear what institutional characteristics determine the publication of press releases by constitutional courts. Research has revealed that courts use press releases to disseminate information; however, little is known about when exactly courts choose to publish a press release on a ruling. By focusing on institutional elements, this study argues that press releases form a part of judicial

In recent years, the fortunes of democracy have waned both in theory and practice. This has added impetus not only to the republican case for strengthening democratic institutions but also to new anti-democratic thought. This article examines the claim made by Jason Brennan that epistocracy, rule by the ‘knowledgeable’, is compatible with freedom from domination. It begins by briefly explaining epistocracy

What is the appropriate way to respond to actions that break basic norms of respectfulness, sincerity, and public-mindedness? At the same time as this question has become a central concern for democratic societies, a ‘systemic’ turn has unsettled established solutions for democratic theorists. From the systemic perspective, it is more important how actions contribute to public discourse than whether

As chancellor Angela Merkel is on course to tie with Helmut Kohl as the longest serving democratically elected German head of government, it is time to attempt an initial assessment of the first 12 years of her chancellorship from 2005 to 2017 which left its marks both on German politics and European affairs. Bulpitt’s statecraft model is applied to evaluate the chancellor’s performance and to judge

In 1959, UNESCO published a catalogue of Eastern films suitable for Western audiences, titled ‘Orient. A Survey of Films Produced in Countries of Arab and Asian Culture’. The aim of the catalogue was to familiarise Western audiences with Eastern cultures through cinema. The catalogue lists seven general characteristics of Eastern cinema to distinguish it from its Western counterpart and to provide