19 research outputs found
sj-docx-1-psx-10.1177_00323217241234527 – Supplemental material for Deterrent or Stimulus? How Perceived Societal Stigma Affects Participation in Populist Radical Right Parties
No full textSupplemental material, sj-docx-1-psx-10.1177_00323217241234527 for Deterrent or Stimulus? How Perceived Societal Stigma Affects Participation in Populist Radical Right Parties by Sofia Ammassari in Political Studies</p
It depends on personal networks: Feelings of stigmatisation among populist radical right party members
No full textStigmatisation has been recognised as a major factor influencing the fortunes of populist radical right (PRR) parties. While scholars have examined it by taking parties as units of analysis, this study focuses on the individual level by asking Which PRR party members are more likely to feel stigmatised? After offering a novel theoretical explanation for feelings of stigmatisation based on the personal networks in which PRR grassroots members are embedded, it then investigates stigma using an original membership survey of about 7,000 members of the Sweden Democrats (SD) and interviews with 30 of them. The survey results show that the higher the educational qualification PRR grassroots members have achieved, the more likely they will feel stigmatised. In addition, those who have never had any relatives and/or friends in the SD, and those who are employed in the public sector, are more likely to consider membership discrediting. The interview data shed light on the survey results, by illustrating how public employees and university students find it hard to be open about their membership as they are surrounded by people with left-wing views. By contrast, having relatives and/or friends who are members of the party reduces the stigma of joining PRR parties, becoming active in them, and talking about politics in public. Along with countering some of the prevailing wisdom about stigmatisation in PRR parties, the findings contribute to our understanding of PRR grassroots membership, which has long been an overlooked topic in the literature.Full Tex
Disaffected but Efficacious: Why People Join Populist Radical Right Parties
No full textAbstractThe number of grassroots members of populist radical right (PRR) parties is on the rise, in contrast to the trend of membership decline in mainstream parties. While scholars have explained this by studying PRR parties' organizational strategies, I focus on party members and ask: Why do people join PRR parties? To answer this, I look not only at motivations, which is the dominant framework in party membership studies, but also at triggers – factors activating those motivations. Drawing on collective action scholarship, I argue that grievances and efficacy can work as triggers for joining PRR parties. Using interviews with 82 members of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the League in Italy and the Sweden Democrats, I uncover three elements in the path to PRR party membership: disaffection, affiliation and action. As well as questioning established narratives on why citizens join parties, my findings provide a novel theoretical framework to investigate this form of political participation.Full Tex
Supporters of India's BJP: Distinctly Populist and Nativist
No full textWhile India's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has become recognized as a populist radical right (PRR) party under the leadership of Narendra Modi, we do not know whether this PRR supply is matched yet by PRR attitudes among its supporters. Using an original survey, we therefore investigate: Do BJP supporters display PRR attitudes? We find that those who feel close to the BJP have stronger populist and nativist attitudes than other Indian citizens. However, authoritarianism is not a distinguishing feature of BJP supporters. We argue that the similarities between the drivers of support for European PRR parties and for the BJP reinforce the idea that radical right populism is a coherent global phenomenon both in terms of supply and demand. Finally, we discuss how our study shows that party support in India is more ideologically rooted than has previously been thought.No Full Tex
Young radicals, moderates and aligned: Ideological congruence and incongruence in party youth wings
No full textThe ideological fit between party grassroots and leaderships has long been a concern for political science, with members in general, and young members in particular, thought to be more radical. However, we do not know, first, whether this is still the case and, if it is, what drives members in different ideological directions. To investigate, we propose a new typology of members as radicals, moderates and aligned, and develop a theoretical framework that accounts for how political socialization and party contexts drive congruence and incongruence. We test this using YOUMEM survey data from over 4,000 members of 12 youth wings in six countries. Our results show that while radicals are the largest group in most youth wings, they are more common on the centre-left than the centre-right. They tend to have been in the youth wing for longer than aligned members, but are under-represented among politically ambitious members. Our findings thus shed light on opinion structures within political parties and provide a typology for future research on intra-party cohesion
Inside party youth wings: the YOUMEM project
No full textYouth wings fulfil vital democratic functions. They connect parties with young people, socialise them into political life, and train future candidates and officials. Yet, youth wings have been largely overlooked by party scholars. In this article, we present the Youth Wing Membership Survey (YOUMEM) dataset. With responses from over 5000 members of 12 centre-left and centre-right youth wings in Australia, Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Sweden, YOUMEM is the largest comparative study of youth wing members ever conducted. Using the dataset, we examine some basic questions about youth wing members: who they are, when and why they join. We find that youth wing members are primarily men and highly educated. Many have relatives who were party members, and most are extremely ambitious compared to senior party members. Beyond these commonalities, we also uncover differences across party families and countries. Our project provides a unique window on the young people in contemporary youth wings
It's about the type of career: The political ambition gender gap among youth wing members
No full textOne of the main supply-side explanations for women's underrepresentation in politics is the gender gap in nascent political ambition. While this has been examined in terms of electoral ambition, the aspiration to pursue non-electoral careers within parties has been overlooked. In our study, we therefore investigate whether both types of ambition – electoral and non-electoral – vary among young women and men participating in a key entry point for political careers in Western democracies: party youth wings. To do so, we surveyed almost 2,000 members of six centre-left and centre-right youth wings in Australia, Italy and Spain. We find that while, as expected, women in youth wings display lower levels of electoral ambition, they are almost as likely as men to express non-electoral ambition. Furthermore, and contrary to our expectations, we show that women in centre-right youth wings are no less interested in pursuing electoral and non-electoral political careers than women in centre-left ones. Our study thus provides new insights into the gendered nature of political ambition, highlighting that women's lower interest in electoral office does not necessarily reflect reduced interest in a political career.Full Tex
Young Voters, Abstainers and Unregistered: Generation Z Turnout in a Compulsory System
No full textWhile young people’s electoral behaviour in voluntary voting systems has been extensively studied, we know little about this in compulsory systems. To investigate, we examine the drivers of voting, not voting and not registering of Generation Z youths in Australia, which has long had compulsory registration and voting. We argue that Gen-Z voters, abstainers (registered, but who do not vote) and unregistered will differ according to their socio-demographics, socio-political engagement and political attitudes, following a ‘hierarchy of disengagement’. Drawing on original survey data from around 1500 Gen-Z Australians, we find that non-voters are distinguished by their unemployment status, lower political interest and weaker faith in democracy. Among non-voters, the differences between abstainers and unregistered mostly relate to their socio-economic backgrounds. Finally, we show that the most common reason for voting is not to get fined, while almost a third of unregistered Gen-Z citizens attribute their behaviour to lack of knowledge.Full Tex
Similar motivations, different participation: Women and men at the grassroots of populist radical right parties
No full textPopulist radical right parties (PRRPs) have long been characterised as ‘men’s parties’ due to the marked gender gap among their voters, grassroots members, and leaders. However, as they become mainstreamed and normalised, their numbers of women voters and elected representatives are on the rise. While scholars have examined the mechanisms behind these trends, much less is known about the role that gender plays at the grassroots. My thesis investigates this by asking: Do the motivations and participation of PRR grassroots members vary between women and men? I address the question by looking both at the ‘supply-side’ of PRR party membership, assessing whether women and men can be distinguished by their motivations for joining, motivations for staying, and participation in party activities; and the ‘demand-side’, exploring if PRRPs adopt distinct recruitment and retention strategies depending on whether these target women or men. Specifically, I argue that women and men will vary in some aspects of their membership due to long-standing patterns of gendered political socialisation, and that these differences will be larger in more stigmatised PRRPs. To test this argument, I focus on three PRRPs which differ considerably according to the stigmatisation they are subject to: the Bharatiya Janata Party in India, the League in Italy, and the Sweden Democrats. Specifically, I draw on interviews with 82 grassroots members, original survey data from over 10,000 grassroots members, and elite interviews with 28 party officials. I find that women and men join the three PRRPs largely for the same reasons: they want to support the political agenda and ideology of their party, express their partisan loyalty, and make a difference in their society. They also stay in these parties for similar motivations: personal satisfaction, friendships, and career aspirations. Where women and men differ most, however, is in terms of their participation: in fact, women tend to participate more than men in party activities such as meetings and posting online content. Finally, as regards the demand-side of PRR party membership, I show that while recruitment is a gendered process, retention is not. These findings shed new light on an overlooked actor in research on PRRPs,
namely their grassroots members; moreover, they counter some of the prevailing wisdom about women’s participation in politics.Thesis (PhD Doctorate)Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)School of Govt & Int RelationsGriffith Business SchoolFull Tex
Spine growth in the anterior cingulate cortex is necessary for the consolidation of contextual fear memory
No full textRemodeling of cortical connectivity is thought to allow initially hippocampus-dependent memories to be expressed independently of the hippocampus at remote time points. Consistent with this, consolidation of a contextual fear memory is associated with dendritic spine growth in neurons of the anterior cingulate cortex (aCC). To directly test whether such cortical structural remodeling is necessary for memory consolidation, we disrupted spine growth in the aCC at different times following contextual fear conditioning in mice. We took advantage of previous studies showing that the transcription factor myocyte enhancer factor 2 (MEF2) negatively regulates spinogenesis both in vitro and in vivo. We found that increasing MEF2-dependent transcription in the aCC during a critical posttraining window (but not at later time points) blocked both the consolidation-associated dendritic spine growth and subsequent memory expression. Together, these data strengthen the causal link between cortical structural remodeling and memory consolidation and, further, identify MEF2 as a key regulator of these processes.</jats:p
