Political Studies

Aid organizations spend considerable time lobbying for aid to be sent to refugees in poorer states, rather than campaigning for more refugees to be resettled to wealthy states. Lawmakers in wealthy countries similarly tend to focus on aiding refugees abroad, rather than resettling more refugees into their countries. One justification raised for focusing on aid rather than resettlement is that refugees prefer to remain in poorer neighboring countries so that they can quickly repatriate when the time is safe. Yet, few have established what refugees’ preferences are. Drawing upon an original data set of a representative sample of Syrian refugees in Lebanon, we find that most prefer remaining to resettling when the details of resettlement are not clarified, but roughly half prefer to resettle if offered certain types of resettlement. We further argue that organizations and states have reason to account for whether preferences are “adaptive.” Such preferences arise when refugees prefer remaining in neighboring countries to resettling only when resettling to other countries is not an option, but would prefer resettling if this option were available. We present a novel philosophical reason for not appealing to adaptive preferences as a justification for not resettling refugees. We further apply a novel experimental method for evaluating whether preferences are adaptive.

British attitudes to ‘Europe’ have been long characterised as ‘reluctant’. This article uses a range of qualitative and quantitative sources to describe and explain an anomalous period in which Britons were highly ‘enthusiastic Europeans’. This ‘Europhoria’ is interpreted using an expanded ‘calculation, cues, and community’ theoretical framework, including: (1) calculations driven mainly by anticipation of the ‘1992’ single market launch and ‘social chapter’ and trust engendered by unrealised negative predictions raised during the 1975 referendum; (2) proactive domestic European policy leading to harmonious, influential, insider status; (3) benchmarking of comparable, better performing European economies and (4) newfound belief that Europe was Britain’s most important international community. ‘Europhoria’ interplayed with a sense of European community and geopolitical possibilities stimulated by the fall of the Berlin Wall and unusually ‘European’ cultural trends in media, sports and arts. The reversal of these factors – in some cases at pan-European level – explains the British return to Euroscepticism thereafter. These findings have profound theoretical implications for public attitudes to Europe and historical understandings of Britain and Europe.

Liberal republican justice requires adequate, reasonably equal protection against domination while giving everybody a reasonably equal opportunity to live their lives as they see fit. This article investigates which central policy follows from it for workplace non-domination, under realistic assumptions about the nature of our working lives and some structural characteristics of advanced economies (especially the presence of large firms). It argues for a legal default of workplace democracy, understood as any arrangement that gives workers equal individual control rights over the management of their firm, and, as a body, more control rights than any other groups of enfranchised stakeholders, taken together. The argument has two steps. The first demonstrates where the most promising alternative liberal strategy – that of enhancing all individuals’ power to exit from their job through granting unconditional resources – fails. The second shows how this failure leads to the specific conception of default workplace democracy outlined.

Transgender people face high rates of discrimination and health problems yet supportive policy measures are often opposed, especially by religious organisations adhering to cis-normative theologies. Scholars exploring the links between religion and transgender issues have examined a number of themes, but the way religious actors discursively frame transgender issues remains under-researched. This article contributes to work in this area by using the concept of political opportunity structures to examine the discourse of religious groups on the 2022 Scottish Gender Recognition Reform Bill. The study shows that arguments were typically framed in secular terms, drawing on the epistemic authority of science and a language of individual rights. Supporting groups used arguments designed to highlight the difficulties that transgender people face. Oppositional groups used themes based on biological essentialism, concern for the well-being of trans people, the risks to cisgendered women and warnings about the negative impact on society and religious freedoms.

Do governments presiding over tax increases lose votes? One assumption is tax increases affect incumbent parties equally but we also expect asymmetric responses with differing penalties for left- and right-wing parties. Influential literature also assumes voters incapable of assigning responsibility to policymakers or holding them accountable. We find that tax increases are more costly to a left-of-centre party. Previous research assessing this is hampered by a lack of comparable cases; however, our tests are conducted with results from thousands of English local elections across decades. We find tax increases by labour-controlled councils corresponded with a significant vote swing against labour. There were no effects of rate increases on votes for conservative-controlled or Lib Dem-controlled councils. These results have implications for how democratic elections may produce responsive governments, and we discuss why there may be an asymmetry, where there is more electoral responsiveness to tax increases by governments of the left.

Do party or candidate campaigns boost momentum? Momentum in election campaigns is significant because it indicates a greater perception of the likelihood that a party or candidate will perform well, and also because that brings with it an improvement in credibility as a viable contender. Existing explanations of changes in the perception of popularity of candidates and parties over an election campaign relate largely to the impact of media coverage and opinion polls. What is frequently absent is any discussion of the impact of party and candidate campaigns. This is a curious omission since it effectively ignores the central actors in electoral contests – the parties and the candidates. This article seeks to address this lacuna by assessing whether campaign efforts deliver electoral momentum. Using data from three British general elections, we find strong evidence to indicate that campaign efforts at the constituency-level play a key role in delivering momentum.

In semi-presidential regimes presidents need to strike a balance between representing the nation and sharing power with prime ministers. The coexistence of the executives may pose challenges to the presidents, but it could also strengthen their public standing. Yet we lack information on how party-political shifts and clashes between the executives shape public opinion on presidents. Covering the period 2000–2020 and including presidents from the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Poland and Portugal, this article reveals that presidential popularity is influenced by the political weakness of the government, as both weak and strong presidents’ popularity ratings increased during minority governments, and by the constitutional strength of the presidency, as people seem to tolerate more confrontational involvement mostly from those presidents with stronger constitutional powers. The impact of cohabitation, in turn, appears to be more context-specific, sometimes benefitting the president’s public standing, while at other times harming it. The results thus suggest that being politically opposed to the government may boost the president’s political capital, but only under certain circumstances.

How concerned are workers about the impact of technological changes on employment, and what policies do they prefer to mitigate potential negative effects of these changes? We address these questions by presenting new analytical distinctions among different types of labour market concerns. We differentiate among the risk of job substitution, ‘technostress’ and general apprehension about the impact of technology in the workplace. In terms of policy responses, we distinguish between worker preferences for job loss compensation, retraining and distinct measures of ‘technological protectionism’. Using survey data from Spain and innovative measures of these concepts, our findings reveal that concern about job substitution is modestly correlated with support for some redistribution policies. By contrast, both technostress and general concerns about the impact of technology significantly increase support for protectionist policies but not redistribution. These results contribute to understanding how workers might respond to the labour market effects of new technologies such as artificial intelligence.

This article theorizes documentation in narratives – the process by which activists gather and write evidence of facts to build a coherent mobilization narrative. Focusing on narrating (the process) rather than narrative use, it argues that documentation in newspapers reflected the goal of ‘making sense’ in a context of uncertainty. To do so, it fledges the probative value of narratives, their capacity to convey stories not only with plots, characters and emotions but also through the logic of proof. Building on a sample analysis of Syrian revolutionary newspapers published after the 2011 Uprising, it shows how documentation helped build the opposition narrative with fact-finding and individual storytelling. When the regime denied the existence of protests and repression, revolutionary newspapers helped document the social movement (with photos and testimonies of protest) and the repression (with lists and testimonies of victims). In doing so, this article shows that documenting became an act of mobilization.

While existing research has considered how individual-level social mobility experiences affect a person’s political outlook, less attention has been paid to how historic levels of social mobility in local areas influence political attitudes and political behaviour. We link individual-level data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study to small area estimates of social class mobility derived from the decennial census. We find that living in a low absolute social mobility area was associated with a higher probability of voting ‘Leave’ in the 2016 UK European Union membership referendum. However, we find no evidence that historical social mobility rates in the local area predict abstention in general elections or attitudinal indicators of political alienation. Given declining rates of upwards mobility, and increasing levels of downwards mobility, our results have important implications for understanding geographies of political discontent.

There is a vast literature on the effect of inequality on trust, establishing that equality must be a pre-condition for the emergence of trust. However, most empirical research either focuses on case studies or uses measures of income inequality, such as the Gini index. In this article, we argue that a measure of inequality of opportunities is preferable to focusing on inequality of outcomes, as it taps into the psychological foundations of trust. In contexts where people feel effort is not adequately rewarded because individuals get ahead due to their family background or individual advantages based on luck, it is difficult to establish the conditions for trustful exchanges and long-lasting relationships. We use data from the European Social Survey to break down income into three different sources: equitable income, inherited social (dis-)advantage, and individual (dis-)advantage. Our measure of inequality of opportunities at the societal level is built on the aggregation of inherited social (dis-)advantage at the individual level. Multilevel models prove the negative effect of personal (dis-)advantages on trust. Panel data analysis indicates that living in societies in which inequality of opportunities is higher leads to lower levels of social trust.

Why did Australia border earlier than most other states in response to the outbreak of COVID-19? Between mid-January and March 2020, the Australian government adopted increasingly restrictive travel bans that led to the country closing its borders to all non-residents, adopting mandatory hotel quarantines for 14 days and a travel ban on Australians travelling overseas. These actions were in contravention of the World Health Organization advice to states on travel restrictions. Australia’s border closure was one of the strictest and, ultimately, longest in the world. In this article, we complement existing explanations on bordering that include critical border studies, securitization and bio/necropolitics with theoretical approaches from public policy literature to examine the domestic conditions that inform border closure policies and practices. We demonstrate that the decision to border, in this case, was not a rejection of World Health Organization advice but a turn towards the domestic pull factors – including domestic expert advice – to border.

What is the far-right’s foreign policy outlook? Although International Relations scholarship has provided important insights into the foreign policy preferences of far-right actors, it has predominantly analysed these political actors under the label of populism and focused on the effects of populism on foreign policy positions. Consequently, we lack a clear understanding of the impact of far-right ideology on foreign policy beliefs and preferences. This article provides a theorization of far-right foreign policy by deriving its key characteristics from far-right ideology. It tests this theoretical framework through a comparative analysis of the foreign policy preferences of the populist radical-right Alternative for Germany and the extreme-right, Neo-Nazi National Democratic Party of Germany. The comparative analysis of primary textual data reveals a shared far-right foreign policy outlook characterized by (1) ultra-nationalism, (2) group-based enmity, (3) authoritarianism, (4) revisionism and reactionism and (5) producerist-nationalistic economic positions, but also some important variations in the pursuit of these positions.

In recent years, increasing numbers of cities have begun addressing global threats to human rights. By cultivating a local version of citizenship (city-zenship), cities foster a collective ethos shaped around universal principles of freedom, equality, and dignity, declaring themselves human rights cities. However, despite its varied manifestations, this label remains broad, accommodating a range of interpretations. This study distinguishes between two primary models, which I conceptualize as thin and thick human rights cities, and two nested sub-models. The models encompass the efforts of city-zens and local political actors to assimilate the human rights ethos within the city through both declarative and practical approaches. Subsequently, the typology is applied to characterize the South Korean city of Gwangju, renowned as a pioneering human rights city. Drawing on documents and interviews conducted in the city, I illustrate how the specific mechanisms via which a city engages with human rights can be classified into a model, facilitating comparison with other cities.

This article explores how interest groups harness social media as a tool for either praising or pressuring their government. On one hand, social media provides an ideal platform for exerting external pressure on the government, enabling outreach to a wide range of citizens, journalists, and supporters. On the other hand, it offers interest groups the opportunity to support their allies and applaud government policies, fostering reciprocal trust and strengthening mutually beneficial long-term relationships with policymakers. The article argues that the positioning of interest groups on social media is driven by the political and policy opportunity structures in which they operate. Empirically, the article relies on an analysis of 3,897 hand-coded X-posts from prominent hospitality associations in nine Western democracies during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings demonstrate that interest groups tend to employ pressure tactics when real-world conditions are advantageous to their cause, while turning to praise when favorable government policies are adopted.

Political parties are used to adapt in the face of political challenges, but little is known about how party elites actually perceive crises and ultimately opt for certain types of reforms accordingly. To address this gap, we focus on the complete transformation process of the Belgian French-Speaking Christian Democratic Party (cdH) in 2022 as a case study. Interviews with party elites show how challenges shared by many West-European centre-right parties can create a dependence on the party leader to the point of marginalizing other traditional actors from the definition of a response strategy. We reveal the unprecedented strategy employed by the leader, who positioned an advisor as a surrogate, at the cost of creating major internal dissension. We argue that the likely multiplication of mainstream parties slipping into great distress in the near future could lead to a shift in managing party change, making it more technocratic than political.

The Economic and Monetary Union has fundamentally changed how fiscal and monetary powers are exercised over democratic publics which raise the question of whether a normative vision of macroeconomic sovereignty is compatible with membership within the Eurozone. After conceptualising sovereignty in republican terms as the balance between four ‘power-countering strategies’, this article conducts a normative analysis of the evolution of Economic and Monetary Union governance. This exercise shows how – by neglecting one of the four republican strategies, namely to increase citizens’ democratic participation at the European Union level – successive institutional innovations as well as recent proposals fail to make the exercise of public powers compatible with citizens’ status equality. In contrast, the argument suggests that if citizens’ influence is channelled through a ‘system of dual partisanship’, in which national and European parliamentarians coordinate their activities, national and Economic and Monetary Union’ executives’ discretion can be democratically controlled.

In this article, I develop a novel relational egalitarian theory of social exclusion that explains how society fails to treat socially excluded individuals – such as people experiencing homelessness, individuals with substance use disorders and mental illness and sex workers – as equals. I argue that society places and keeps excluded individuals at the very bottom of the social status hierarchy by treating them as socially invisible, or by rendering them physically invisible, or both. The upshot, then, is that part of what is wrong with social exclusion is that it creates the invisible social class.

Candidate selection shapes descriptive representation in important ways; you cannot be elected without first being selected. Unravelling opaque candidate selection processes is therefore critical to understanding descriptive representation and political parties’ electoral strategies. Drawing on a new dataset of New Zealand candidacies from 1996 to 2020, we demonstrate variation in candidacy patterns across parties, ethnic groups, and time. We show that both the centre-left (Labour) and centre-right (National) have increased the ethnic diversity of their candidate slates over time, although Labour’s overall share of non-majority candidates is higher than National’s. Both parties have primarily used the party list, not district candidacies, to achieve diversification. This approach leads to some volatility in representative diversity, in part due to list composition practices that prioritise incumbents and cluster ‘ethnic’ candidates. Thus, while New Zealand candidate slates show notably high diversity by international comparison, non-majority candidates can nonetheless find themselves in electorally vulnerable positions.