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Urbi et Orbi:Local Power and National Aspiration in Peru's Populist Radical Right
No full textHow does the populist radical right (PRR) use local office to pursue national political ambitions? This article analyzes the case of Rafael López Aliaga, mayor of Lima and leader of Peru’s PRR party Popular Renewal. Drawing on a qualitative analysis of 21 televised interviews from his first two years in office, we argue that López Aliaga employs PRR rhetoric—combining populist and ultra-conservative themes—to project national ambitions while establishing local credibility through mano dura policy claims. We show that such rhetoric enables a dual strategy: speaking to national-level grievances while building a local record. This confirms that Popular Renewal is best classified as a PRR actor, not merely an authoritarian-conservative force. In fragmented party systems, this rhetorical approach may offer PRR politicians an effective path to national prominence. We support this analysis with additional evidence from elite interviews with party members
Decision tree insights into spatial and temporal patterns of convergence in EU labour markets
No full textThis study aims to enhance our understanding of convergence patterns within the European Union by analyzing labour market efficiency (LME) indicators across 258 NUTS2 level regions from 25 EU countries. Utilizing advanced statistical methods based on decision trees, we investigate whether the data reveal groups of NUTS2 regions that exhibit shared patterns of convergence, divergence or structural similarities. Our methodological innovation lies in the application of a decision tree model to create detailed maps of European regions. This innovative approach allows us to assess the performance of regions based on multiple labour market indicators, identifying nodes that we translate into regional clusters. This novel method provides a more salient and empirically driven evaluation of convergence patterns in European labour markets and enables us to assess changes in these patterns over time. Our findings highlight the persistence of certain labour market characteristics and uncover regions that deviate from expected trends, revealing a heterogeneous and dynamic labour market landscape across Europe. These findings have the potential to inform more nuanced and region-specific economic policies that cater to the distinct labour market conditions across Europe, fostering more tailored approaches to regional development and convergence
Risk-Filled Energy Trade and the EU's Geopolitical Shift
No full textThe war in Ukraine is also a geopolitical conflict between the West and Putin's Russia. When Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, the relationship between the EU and Russia changed from peace to a hybrid conflict. Between 2014 and Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, both sides stepped up the conflict, particularly with economic instruments. In 2022, Vladimir Putin deployed the "energy weapon", hoping to split the EU and weaken its ability to act decisively. This article deals with the development of the EU's relationship with Russia and the EU's strategy to link Russia more closely to the liberal international world order through energy trade up to 2014, the transition to a more geopolitical strategy in the following years, and open economic conflict today. The EU has long seen gas as a strategic commodity. The debates in the EU about how to deal with dependence on Russia meant that the organization was well prepared in 2022, even if this was under-communicated to Moscow. The EU's, and especially Germany's, forceful response to Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine created far higher tension than Putin probably expected. Strongly reduced gas trade is an important part of this picture, although it has been overshadowed somewhat by Western economic and military support for Ukraine. The EU's liberal strategy may have failed to prevent war between Russia and Ukraine, but the EU's regulatory toolbox quickly proved to play a central role in dealing with Putin's use of gas as a weapon
