{"title":"They shall not pass? The role of supply-side factors in the electoral breakthrough of VOX and Chega","authors":"Luca Manucci","doi":"10.1080/23745118.2024.2303322","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23745118.2024.2303322","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":53479,"journal":{"name":"European Politics and Society","volume":"54 41","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139533145","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ideologies and narratives of Italian foreign fighters in the Russian-Ukrainian war","authors":"Nicola Guerra","doi":"10.1080/23745118.2023.2299827","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23745118.2023.2299827","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":53479,"journal":{"name":"European Politics and Society","volume":" 30","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139627059","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Russian-Ukrainian war has shattered the European far right. The opposing influences of Steve Bannon and Aleksandr Dugin","authors":"Nicola Guerra","doi":"10.1080/23745118.2023.2294842","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23745118.2023.2294842","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":53479,"journal":{"name":"European Politics and Society","volume":"97 24","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138954077","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The role of Azerbaijan as the EU’s energy supplier: a secondary alternative partner in natural gas","authors":"M. Dinçer","doi":"10.1080/23745118.2023.2288867","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23745118.2023.2288867","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":53479,"journal":{"name":"European Politics and Society","volume":"49 18","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138592327","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Shrinking space: the changing political opportunities of advocacy groups in illiberal governance","authors":"Zsolt Boda","doi":"10.1080/23745118.2023.2287245","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23745118.2023.2287245","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":53479,"journal":{"name":"European Politics and Society","volume":"66 11","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139238976","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rearticulating the Italian right’s perception of Russia: legitimacy and rupture in the post-invasion landscape","authors":"George Spencer Terry","doi":"10.1080/23745118.2023.2263175","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23745118.2023.2263175","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTRussia’s renewed aggression against Ukraine caught many by surprise. This is especially true among those on the centre and far-right of the political spectrum who had previously referred to Russia as a patron of social conservatism and a paradigm of strong leadership and independent actorship in the sphere of international relations. Such a view had been especially prevalent among the right-wing parties in Italy. This article seeks to elucidate how the Italian right has rearticulated its relationship with Russia in the first 100 days after the onset of full-scale war with Ukraine through a critical engagement with the concepts of discursive rupture, legitimacy, and empty signifiers in its logic. By arguing that Russia’s previous position as a referent sign of social conservatism and traditionalism has become unfixed in this post-war paradigm, this article posits that those electorally viable actors of the Italian right who were once amenable to Russia in the past will not employ it as a discursive reference for legitimacy in the future, while those on the fringes of the political spectrum will redouble their legitimation of Russia. These findings carry broader implications within the milieu of the European right, as other political actors grapple with analogous challenges of redefining their positions towards Russia.KEYWORDS: ItalyRusso-Ukrainian warRussiaright-wing political partiesdiscursive rupturelegitimacy Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).","PeriodicalId":53479,"journal":{"name":"European Politics and Society","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135883639","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Positioning candidate countries in the Euro-sphere: internet responses to European enlargement","authors":"Anna Franco","doi":"10.1080/23745118.2023.2244382","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23745118.2023.2244382","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTThe war in Ukraine has threatened our idea of peace and democracy. The European Union has been caught unprepared and, to show its opposition to Russia, has developed strict economic sanctions. A path to a possible candidacy of Ukraine to the EU is now open. However, the enlargement process has been silenced for a while and still, there are critiques due to ‘nasty’ member states that do not comply with the rule of law. Information online does not help in understanding the accession iter and the current situation. On the list of potential members, at pole position, we find the Western Balkans, which have been long pushed to join the EU and have already developed a huge network of international and European organizations. I will run a Social Network Analysis to outline the position of possible new member countries in the Eurozone according to the media.KEYWORDS: Social network analysisEuropean unionenlargementWestern Balkansmember statesEU-Balkan youth forum Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).","PeriodicalId":53479,"journal":{"name":"European Politics and Society","volume":"80 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135250713","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Judicial self-perceptions and the separation of powers in varied political regime contexts: the constitutional courts in Hungary and Slovakia","authors":"Max Steuer","doi":"10.1080/23745118.2023.2244390","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23745118.2023.2244390","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTThe study of constitutional courts (CCs) of post-communist Europe typically entailed the belief in CCs’ transformative potential for the consolidation of democracy. Recently, this belief has been questioned, albeit the knowledge of why at least some CCs in the region failed to prevent the rise of non-democratic regimes remains limited. This article addresses this gap via the cases of Hungary and Slovakia, which have taken a different trajectory post-2010: the Slovak CC (SCC) remains an independent institution, while the Hungarian CC (HCC) has been packed by the executive. By combining contextual case law analysis of judgments referring to democracy and semi-structured interviews, the article shows that, during critical moments, the HCC did not perceive itself as responsible for Hungarian democracy, which resulted in its self-marginalisation. The SCC was largely spared from similarly critical moments, which, however, facilitated particular self-perceptions of its responsibility (or lack thereof). These findings offer empirical support for institutionalist scholarship that emphasizes the impact of ideas in calibrating the self-perceptions of political institutions and their positioning in the political system. Constitutional courts remain inseparable from the political regimes they are located in.KEYWORDS: Constitutional courtsilliberalizationdemocracy protectionHungarySlovakiacontextual case law analysis Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 For example, in an article titled ‘Constitutional courts and parliamentary democracy’, Stone Sweet (Citation2002) mentions the term ‘democracy’ merely twice.2 Dworkin’s ‘conceptions’ are preferred over ‘meanings’ as the subjective articulations of ‘understandings’ of the concept. On ‘meanings’ versus ‘understandings’, see Osterberg-Kaufmann et al. (Citation2020).3 Since only one keyword is used, the difficulties associated with correct results based on the search of compound terms (Sebők et al., Citation2023, pp. 9–11) do not arise.4 The complete dataset covering cases referring to democracy in connection with other fundamentals (such as fundamental rights and political participation) and separate opinions (not analyzed here due to space restrictions) is part of a broader project (Steuer, Citation2019b, pp. 51–52 [Figures 5 and 6]). The total number of opinions included in the dataset (available upon request from the author) is 220 for Hungary and 231 for Slovakia, meaning that the opinions related to the separation of powers represent 17.7 per cent of all Hungarian and 13.4 per cent of all Slovak CC opinions from the dataset.5 Indeed, readers versed in the two CCs’ case law may be surprised by not seeing some of the well-known cases in the empirical analysis, for example, the SCC’s interpretation of the presidential appointment powers of the attorney general. This is because the keyword search did not flag them as referring to democracy.6 Not unlike","PeriodicalId":53479,"journal":{"name":"European Politics and Society","volume":"38 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135738658","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘Dialogue’ as strategic judicial resistance? The rise and fall of ‘preemptive dialogue’ by the Brazilian Supreme Court","authors":"Daniel Bogéa","doi":"10.1080/23745118.2023.2244392","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23745118.2023.2244392","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTHow can high courts resist elected leaders with antidemocratic agendas? In this article, I present the Brazilian case as an example of the multiple resources and strategies available in the judicial toolbox to drive interbranch relations in contexts of democratic erosion. While the autonomy of the Brazilian Supreme Court stands out in Latin America, it became a recurring target of right-wing radicals since the ascension of would-be authoritarian Jair Bolsonaro. In this article, I address a preemptive resistance strategy adopted by the court's leadership from the presidential elections of 2018 up to the middle of the pandemic. I establish the rise and fall of ‘preemptive dialogue’as a strategic move, drawing data on off-bench behaviour from a major Brazilian newspaper’s coverage, official statements, and court insertions in social media platforms. While this strategic move was consistent with the historical trajectory of the court’s ‘accommodation’ pattern in interbranch relations, its downfall signals a break with the past. Likewise, it advances the need of adaptive judicial tactics considering the diffusion of court-curbing within electoral democracies with dissimilar historical backgrounds. The conclusion emphasizes the relevance of the case to comparativists addressing judicial resistance in contexts of democratic backsliding.KEYWORDS: Judicial resistanceinstitutional dialogueoff-bench judicial strategiescourt-curbing AcknowledgmentsI am grateful to the anonymous reviewers and the editors of this symposium for their comments. Previous versions were presented in the ECPR 2023 Workshop on Judicial Resistance and the LASA 2023 Conference. I thank all the participants on those occasions, as well as Katarína Šipulová, Øyvind Stiansen, Benjamin Holgado, Eugenia Artabe, Campbell MacGillivray, Diana Kisakye, David Kosař, and Surbhi Karwa, for their comments and suggestions.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.Notes1 Even if politically constrained during the authoritarian regimes of 1930–1937 (see Gaspari, Citation2019) and 1964–1985 (see Vale, Citation1976; Recondo, Citation2018; Torres, Citation2021). Osiel (Citation1995) claims that, from a comparative perspective, even under the military dictatorship, the STF was able to be more consequential than its counterpart in Argentina.2 Moreover, one could expect that under such circumstances, a would-be authoritarian would ‘rely on informal means of interference such as harsh rhetoric, defamation of judges on social media, or joining demonstrations against these institutions’ (Llanos & Weber, Citation2022).3 Tomini et al. (Citation2023, p. 4) show indeed that judges and courts can perform the important role of active institutional resistors in contexts of democratic backsliding, as they ‘can overturn laws or decisions taken by the government and challenge an attempted abuse of power.’ Here, however, my focus is located in the strategies and actions of ju","PeriodicalId":53479,"journal":{"name":"European Politics and Society","volume":"77 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135696066","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A populist turn in the European left. What is new, and what is not?","authors":"Manuel Cevera-Marzal","doi":"10.1080/23745118.2023.2261189","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23745118.2023.2261189","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTWhat is left-wing populism? Is it just populist rhetoric grafted onto a left-wing ideology? How can we distinguish the populist left from the socialist left, the communist left and the radical left? Is the difference between the populist left and the non-populist left one of degree or of nature? How can we explain the populist turn taken by part of the European left in the mid-2010s? What was the breeding ground for these new political forces? And what links do these European left-wing populist movements have with the similar forces that emerged ten years earlier in Latin America? In order to answer these questions, this article draws on a broad review of left-wing populism studies literature and on five years of fieldwork within two prototypical contemporary left-wing populist forces (Podemos and La France Insoumise). The result is a thick conception of the phenomenon and a set of six differences between populist and non-populist lefts.KEYWORDS: Left-wing populismparty politicsEuropePodemosLa France Insoumise Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).","PeriodicalId":53479,"journal":{"name":"European Politics and Society","volume":"2014 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135695964","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}