New chapter in the Palgrave Handbook of Radical Left Parties in Europe co-edited by Fabien Escalona, Daniel Keith, Luke March.
A central premise in representative democracy is that people vote for the party or candidate offering the best fit with their policy preferences. While central in studies on general elections, ideological congruence is underexposed in studies on intraparty elections. Our research maps one-to-one congruence between individual party members and their preferred candidate in a party leadership contest, and investigates whether members with high political sophistication and strong party linkage are more likely to cast a congruent vote.
Euroscepticism has become a persistent phenomenon in European politics and particularly in the EP. It is therefore crucial to understand how Eurosceptic MEPs behave within an institution they criticise or even totally oppose and how the differences between Eurosceptics can be explained. This contribution aims to shed light on these questions by analysing the parliamentary behaviour of opposing voices in the 8th EP legislature (2014–2019).
Since the 2015 parliamentary elections in Poland, the government led by the Law and Justice party (PiS) has sought to win two interwoven battles: the restoration of ‘a strong state’ internally and ‘regaining sovereignty’ in the country’s relationship with the EU. By examining the 2015 constitutional crisis in Poland, this article seeks to understand how and why a domestic dispute over the nomination of constitutional judges has transformed into a conflict of sovereignty in the EU polity.
Scandals that hit political institutions and their actors are likely to contribute to lowering political trust. However, few studies examine the accuracy of such relationship at the local level. This article aims to contribute to the field by assessing the impact of local scandals on trust in local government and the mayor in the context of a federal state, Belgium.
Published in the framework of a research project funded by the Fondation Wiener Anspach.
Pressures have grown on European policy-makers to ensure that geo-economic interests do not come at the cost of the environment and workers’ rights. In light of increased public salience of EU trade deals with third countries, this chapter explores how the EU satisfies sustainability demands in trade agreements and how geopolitical considerations impact the design of specific clauses in recent trade deals with five Asian countries.
This chapter analyzes Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency in Brazil using two interpretations of the concept of populism: the ideational approach (thin-centered ideology) and the political style approach. The author is interested in the way in which the Brazilian president associates a populist rhetoric aimed at disrupting the political game (politics) and populist practices aimed at breaking the classical patterns of democratic representation and reorienting public action (policies).