Category: Interviews

PSR Interviews #18: Far-Right Local Governments and Civil Society: Findings from France and Italy – Seongcheol Kim

“The rise of far-right parties across Europe and their entrance into government at the local, if not regional or national, levels pose challenges for established civil society actors”, – writes Dr Seongcheol Kim ( Far-Right Local Governments and Civil Society: Findings from France and Italy – Seongcheol Kim, 2023 (sagepub.com). He analyses early findings from an ongoing research project based on two case studies of far-right local governments in small industrial towns in France and Italy: Hayange and Sant’Agata Bolognese. In this interview, Dr Kim provides insights into his research design and on how far-right parties influence civil society.

PSR: You suggest that a trend of “far-right parties making increasingly visible attempts to appeal to the world of labour and trade unions” is quite a new phenomenon. What are the roots of this process?

Dr Seongcheol Kim: As I write at the beginning of the introduction, this is hardly a new phenomenon. Parties like Vlaams Blok in Belgium and Front National in France openly courted organised labour with their May Day events in the mid-1990s. In Italy, the history of this courting goes much longer, not only with the experience of fascist corporatism but also the fact that the postwar Movimiento Sociale Italiano had its own trade union front, the CISNAL. When the MSI became Alleanza Nazionale, CISNAL turned into UGL, which is still the fourth largest trade union centre in Italy and has closely cooperated with Matteo Salvini’s Lega in recent years. In France, too, one could draw a longer arc with the long history of yellow unionism, which also fed into the pro-Pétain “Chartist” tendencies during the Second World War and provided a basis for the right-wing to far-right “independent unions” that developed a significant presence in parts of the automotive sector in postwar France.

In the context of Le Pen’s Rassemblement National and Salvini’s Lega, you discussed mainstreaming far-right politics. Could you clarify the meaning of this concept?

There is a sizable literature around the mainstreaming thesis, which I refer to in the paper. Scholars like Aurélien Mondon have shown how the FN (later RN) has come to take on an agenda-setting function in French politics, with governments of the centre-left and centre-right vying to outbid each other on issues like law and order and immigration. Sarkozy’s 2007 election campaign and numerous measures taken by the Valls government were cases in point. But while the FN/RN has been consistently excluded from coalitions by other parties, the far right in Italy has been much more integrated into centre-right alliances since the mid-1990s, ever since Silvio Berlusconi formed an electoral bloc with Alleanza Nazionale for the 1994 elections. Notably, the Lega under Umberto Bossi eschewed a radical right image at the time but ultimately joined Forza Italia and AN in government (contrary to Bossi’s pre-election promise of “never with the fascists”). Even though that first coalition government was short-lived, the three-party setup has lasted with shifting accents up to the present, with Fratelli d’Italia taking up the post-fascist mantle in recent years and the Lega under Salvini having turned into an overtly radical right party.

In both cases, it seems clear that far-right local administrations are not interested in wooing established local trade unions with their deep roots in the industrial history of each region.

You analyse interviews conducted in Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, and Poland, focusing on two towns in France and Italy. What was the rationale behind that selection and your research design?

The six-country study was on far-right actors in the workplace with a focus on the automotive industry, featuring a case study of a factory in each country. The exploratory research design was based on a diverse-case selection geared toward examining a wide-ranging universe of national contexts to allow for an initial mapping out of far-right strategies at the workplace level, which was a novel contribution to the literature beyond the single-country studies that have been done previously. Within this wider research project, which was published as a book titled The Far Right in the Workplace (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), the Early Results article focuses on two towns in (or near) which the factory case studies for France and Italy were located, which were also selected due to the local context of far-right mayors who have been re-elected with overwhelming shares of the vote: Fabien Engelmann (FN/RN) in Hayange and Giuseppe Vicinelli (independent, later Lega) in Sant’Agata. 

Political rally in Rome, source: Flickr, FRANCO600D

How have European far-right parties generally affected trade unions and civil society actors at the local level in the countries you analysed?

This varies a lot across countries and localities, and it goes beyond the scope of this research. In the book, too, we examined the local level only in certain factory case studies where far-right actors of various stripes held the mayoralty, most notably in France, Hungary, and Italy. In France and Italy, the local contexts in Hayange and Sant’Agata Bolognese had some similarities as small industrial towns governed by the far-right after decades of left-wing rule (more so in Sant’Agata, with the Bologna area being the historical stronghold par excellence of the Italian Communist Party, whereas the Moselle region in which Hayange is located has always been more mixed). In Hungary, the situation is different altogether because Jobbik came to power in Dunaújváros and Eger (the two towns we examined) in alliance with centre-left parties as part of anti-Fidesz coalitions. Notably, trade unions and civil society practitioners in Hayange and Sant’Agata observed in the interviews a deterioration in relations with the local administration after the far right won the mayoralty, which I discuss in the article.

What were the more specific patterns you have uncovered in the case of small industrial towns in France and Italy, such as Hayange and Sant’Agata Bolognese?

A striking similarity between Hayange and Sant’Agata is the coexistence of two faces: on the one hand, the far-right-led town hall cultivates a caring image with highly visible measures for improving or prettifying the local infrastructure; on the other hand, there is a far-right politics of suppressing by various means (including financial pressure) civil society initiatives deemed unpalatable, such as left-wing cultural or charity associations. This latter aspect is even more pronounced in Hayange, which has gained notoriety for the town hall’s union-busting and the annual pork festival as a form of cultural exclusion of the town’s Muslim minority. It should be noted, however, that these experiences are hard to generalize even within these countries. Engelmann has always been something of a special case due to his left-wing past and the vindictive anti-trade unionism that he has become known for in office. With the RN winning mayoralties in larger towns like Perpignan in the south, more systematic analyses will be needed across localities and regions. The same goes for the Lega, with its wider reach in terms of holding executive office at the local and regional levels, including in cities such as Ferrara (where, anecdotally speaking, there are similar accounts as those encountered in Sant’Agata).

A striking similarity between Hayange and Sant’Agata is the coexistence of two faces: on the one hand, the far-right-led town hall cultivates a caring image with highly visible measures for improving or prettifying the local infrastructure; on the other hand, there is a far-right politics of suppressing by various means (including financial pressure) civil society initiatives deemed unpalatable, such as left-wing cultural or charity associations

What are the most significant strategies used by far-right politicians to approach trade unions at the local level?  

When it comes to trade unions specifically, the strategy in Sant’Agata seems to be more about bypassing or ignoring the trade unions to the extent possible, whereas Hayange has gotten considerable notoriety with reports in national-level media about widespread harassment of trade unionists in the public sector. In both cases, it seems clear that far-right local administrations are not interested in wooing established local trade unions with their deep roots in the industrial history of each region. Another question is to what extent far-right local governments try to form alternative (yellow) unions or analogous administration-friendly initiatives in civil society from their positions of power. While there are not so many clear-cut indications of this in the two cases examined, this is a question that deserves more systematic investigation across contexts.

What are the key contributions your paper brings to the field?

It bears emphasizing that this is an Early Results article, but even so, I think it provides numerous insights into how far-right parties govern in these two industrial towns and their relations to civil society. The interplay of a performatively enacted claim to serve the entire community with public goods on the one hand and the exclusion of undesirable elements of civil society on the other is a notable finding and may help us to understand the success of these far-right local administrations in getting re-elected on overwhelming majorities after their initially surprising victories with razor-thin margins in 2014. There is certainly a lot of potentials here for more wide-ranging comparative research on the basis of these results, both within the two countries in question and beyond.

ABOUT

Dr Seongcheol Kim is a postdoctoral researcher in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Kassel and a visiting researcher in the Center for Civil Society Research at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. His research is centred on the application of post-foundational discourse theory for the study of party politics from a comparative European perspective, especially concerning nationalism, populism, and radical democracy.

MORE

Kim, S. (2023). Far-Right Local Governments and Civil Society: Findings from France and Italy. Political Studies Review, 21(1), 183–189. https://doi.org/10.1177/14789299221079990

Questions and production

Dr Eliza Kania, Brunel University London

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PSR Interviews #17: Two and a Half Crises: Serbian Institutional Design as the Cause of Democratic Declines – Dušan Spasojević

As Dr Dušan Spasojević writes in his PSR Article  Two and a Half Crises: Serbian Institutional Design as the Cause of Democratic Declines: “On 5 October 2000, hundreds of thousands gathered in front of the Serbian parliament to pressure President Slobodan Milošević to accept the victory of the opposition candidate Vojislav Koštunica. Serbia was about to start its democratic transition after 10 years of Milošević’s authoritarian rule. Exactly 20 years later, Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić announced that his Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) would form the government after successful negotiation with coalition partners. The SNS won 188 of 250 MPs. Future coalition partners added an additional 56 MPs to the majority, leaving only six MPs in the opposition. There are no other opposition representatives in the parliament because they boycotted the elections due to a lack of conditions for a free and fair process. It seems like a wasted 20 years.” In this interview, Dr Spasojević describes major challenges to the political system in Serbia.  

PSR: How would you characterise the current political regime in Serbia?

Dr Dušan Spasojević: The current regime in Serbia can be described as semi-presidentialism or premier-presidentialism; however, due to strong authoritarian tendencies in the last years (after 2016) and the general decline of democratic standards, the regime has become more personalised and presidentialized. This change’s fundamental mechanism is based on the fact that Aleksandar Vučić simultaneously occupies the position of the state and party president position. Furthermore, his party, the SNS, is a predominant party with divided, atomised, and marginalised opposition. On top of that, weak institutions, especially those that should produce checks and balances and executive oversight, cannot contain the power of the most popular leader. Therefore, the actual power is not in the hands of Prime Minister Ana Brnabic, who should be the key figure according to the constitution, but in Vučić hands, and they are not even trying to hide it. Vučić is perceived and presented as the decision maker, and he often directly orders ministries what to do and provides solutions.

What unique features does this version of semi-presidentialism have?

Serbia had a long tradition of semi-presidentialism, at least for post-communist state standards, as it was introduced at the beginning of the transition and party pluralism. The key features were not changed over time, although the president’s position is slightly weaker in the new constitution (2006), compared to the first one (1990). The interesting dynamic comes from the intersection between political and electoral systems – Serbia uses proportional representation with only one electoral district and no preferential voting (closed lists system), potentially leading to the centralization of parties and the dominance of party oligarchies. Therefore, the political system outcome depends on the balance between the parties and can have three different outcomes: presidential, prime-ministerial, and cohabitation. In the period after the fall of Milošević, the balance of power between leading parties (Democratic Party- DS and Democratic party of Serbia – DSS) fulfilled the potential of both the political and electoral systems. However, once the balance was lost, it created incentives for presidentialization, which in the Serbian case also meant autocratization. Of course, an important part of every new democracy is informal rules, filling the voids left by unfinished institutions and enabling the political elite to bend the rules in their favour.

The concentration of power in the hands of the state president led to a democratic backslide. It resulted from several years of decline and pressure on democratic institutions.

You claim that “Serbia had two major democratic crises (1990–2000 and 2016–2020) and one shorter but notable decline (2010–2012)”. Can you think about any general drivers that caused these breakdowns?

The two main crises are different by their cause – the first one, in the nineties, is mostly a consequence of an unfinished transition – Milošević used preemptive reform to usurp the power and then shaped institutions, including the political and electoral system, to maximize his gains. For Milošević, the institutional framework was endogen, but he shaped his opposition to some extent by these rules. The second crisis is the result of autocratization under Aleksandar Vučić, and we can compare this to a decline (2010-2012) under Boris Tadić. In both cases, a single party has key positions – the prime minister and president; in both cases, the party president becomes the key political figure and starts to centralize power. In the case of Boris Tadić, his Democratic party never reached predominant status and the opposition and coalition partners were strong enough to counterbalance. Regardless, there were significant elements of democratic backslide during that period, although the elections remained competitive, free and fair. In the case of Vučić and the SNS, as soon as the party started to win half of the votes (since 2014), it became the predominant actor, without a proper challenger. Another difference between Tadić and Vučić is that Tadić was also challenged by his own – especially from civil society, elite and academic circles that were perceived as his strongholds, which was enough to damage his electoral success.  

Protests against former premier & new president Vučić in Serbia, April 2017, source: Flickr, stefan.T

Let’s discuss the second crisis (2016–2020) and the current political situation under President Aleksandar Vučić. You claim that Serbia is endangered by a shift to competitive authoritarianism. What sparked this breakdown, what influenced its development and how’s the situation after 2020?

This shift seems to have been completed – Levitsky and Way classified Serbia as competitive authoritarianism again, the same as during the Milošević regime. Freedom house and V Dem also see Serbia as a flawed, hybrid democracy. The concentration of power in the hands of the state president led to a democratic backslide. It resulted from several years of decline and pressure on democratic institutions. Even weak and new democracies can not be defeated easily; in Serbia, it took five years, until the presidential elections in 2017, to gain control over key institutions, including oversight and regulatory bodies. This means that power under the control of an autocrat is not only in formal institutions but also in those of ‘secondary’ importance. In other words, the space for the opposition or civil society is constantly shrinking. Post-2020 did not change much as Covid19 outbreak enhanced authoritarian tendencies, but also provided some space for the opposition.  

Of course, Vučić is not Milošević and the old regime has not return in full power. Levitsky and Way called this new competitive authoritarianism – the regime that has been adapted to a new time, with nuanced and more careful autocratization. For example, there is no censorship or police harassment of the journalists and media; a new competitive authoritarian regime will buy problematic outlets or invest funds in others and made it unfair competition for market income. Alternatively, they will make some other indirect pressure. The international landscape has also been changed – in contrast to the conflictual relations of an international community with Milošević, current Serbian leadership remains formally pro-EU and receives support for their cooperation during the Kosovo talks or migrant crisis. The Russian aggression on Ukraine changed the situation to some extent and opened some options for the entire western Balkans – the pressure from the outside is growing, but the carrot is also getting more significant. However, it is yet unclear if there can be a balance between a realistic approach in foreign relations and a necessity for the democratization of  Serbia and other regional countries.   

What were the societal responses to these crises? What are the major manifestations o social discontent?

Serbia has a proud history of democratic struggle – it lasted a decade, but people never give up, even when faced with an increasingly repressive regime. However, we now live in a different world. It seems that autocratization does not produce discontent that can be easily politically articulated. In the last ten years, there were five protests waves, none of which had crucial results. Those were protests against regime violence, students and environmental protest, covid19 protests, and protests against Belgarde Waterfront Project. All of them lasted for a few weeks, but had so significant consequences. Of course, the ruling Serbian Progressive Party significantly influences the media system. It reduces the time available for the opposition and protests, but still there are enough media outlets available for alternative voices.

Environmental issues drove the last large protests, but the regime efficiently accepted the demands and reduced the damage. Some green parties used the opportunity and entered the parliament in 2022, but it can not be a key issue against the SNS. Also, many environmental activists perceive themselves as non-political and create distance between the movement and formal political parties. This is a common characteristic of protest politics in Serbia, and it reflects a lack of trust in parties and politicians.      

Serbia has a proud history of democratic struggle – it lasted a decade, but people never give up, even when faced with an increasingly repressive regime.

On the other hand: what is the reasoning of  Vučić’s supporters?

Vučić supporters are more conservative and authoritarian part of Serbian society and, therefore, less interested in the rule of law or democracy between the elections. They see European Union as a community of wealthy nations, not a community gathered around values. Recent events, such as Brexit or the success of euro-sceptic leaders like Orban or Meloni, fortified these beliefs. So, as long as Vučić performs decently in economic terms and does not lead the country into conflicts with the west, they are satisfied. Also, the important part is related to national issues, like Kosovo or the Republic of Srpska, which trump the rule of law or media freedom for most SNS voters. Of course, the SNS domination in the media sphere prevents these views from being challenged, and most voters are subject to strong one-way propaganda.

Are there, in your opinion, any reforms or safety mechanisms that would prevent authoritarian shifts in the future?

No, I don’t believe that there can be mechanisms that can protect democracy under intense illiberal pressure if the citizens are not willing to defend it or punish the autocratic leaders in elections.

Of course, more vital institutions and a more rooted political system could resist longer than Serbian democracy. However, I would argue that no rules can prevent the Hungarian or Polish scenario if there is a robust and popular leader and predominant party. Protests currently going on in Israel are examples of this illiberal tendency that can have long-term consequences, but we see a strong reaction from the opposition and civil society.

What are the key contributions your paper brings to the field?

It represents a comprehensive overview of the democratization process from the institutional perspective, which balances between being too narrow and specific (aimed at an audience interested in institutional rules only) and being over-flexible due to changes in circumstances or volatility of the party system. Additionally, it provides an analytical framework that merges the political and electoral system with dynamic elements of the party system and cleavage structures. It also sheds some light on Serbia, an under-researched state, together with most post-Yugoslav and western Balkans countries, especially when compared to central-European and Baltic states.  

ABOUT

Dušan Spasojević is an associate professor at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Belgrade. His main fields of interest are political parties, civil society and the post-communist democratization process.

MORE

Two and a Half Crises: Serbian Institutional Design as the Cause of Democratic Declines – Dušan Spasojević, 2022 (sagepub.com)

Questions and production

Dr Eliza Kania, Brunel University London

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PSR Interviews #16: Partisanship Versus Democracy: Voting in Turkey’s Competitive Authoritarian Elections – Professor Tijen Demirel-Pegg, Professor Aaron Dusso

“The annulment of the 31 March 2019 elections in Istanbul and the subsequently re-run 23 June 2019 elections is a blatant example of undemocratic behaviour by political leaders” – claim Professor Tijen Demirel-Pegg and Professor Aaron Dusso. Learn more about whether votes care about the anti-democratic behaviours of their political leaders, and read our interview below. It contains an analysis of the political situation in Turkey and is based on the PSR original research article: Partisanship Versus Democracy: Voting in Turkey’s Competitive Authoritarian Elections – Tijen Demirel-Pegg, Aaron Dusso, 2022.

Political Studies Review: To give us a bit more context, how would you characterise the current political landscape and regime in Turkey?

Professor Tijen Demirel-Pegg and Professor Aaron Dusso: Although an ostensibly multi-party regime, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) has held power since 2002. AKP’s leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, served as the Prime Minister of Turkey from 2003 to 2014 and has held the presidency since then. In 2017, President Erdoğan tightened his grip on power as a result of a constitutional referendum that changed the political system from a parliamentary to an executive presidential system with weak checks and balances

Your paper focused on the local elections of 23 June 2019. Why were these elections particularly relevant?

The annulment of the 31 March 2019 elections in Istanbul and the subsequently re-run 23 June 2019 elections is a blatant example of undemocratic behaviour by political leaders. We wanted to understand if voters cared about such a clear violation of democratic norms when casting their votes. When AKP’s incumbent for the mayor of Istanbul, Binali Yıldırım, lost the March elections to the opposition candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu, AKP refused to concede its defeat. Under the leadership of President Erdoğan, AKP challenged İmamoğlu’s narrow victory and pressured Turkey’s electoral authority to overturn the Istanbul elections, citing the inclusion of non-civil servants in supervisory committees at the polling booths. The electoral authority sided with AKP and called for a re-run of the Istanbul elections on 23 June 2019.

In 2017, President Erdoğan tightened his grip on power as a result of a constitutional referendum that changed the political system from a parliamentary to an executive presidential system with weak checks and balances.

You claim that the authoritarian shift in Turkey has been progressing for more than a decade. What is the timeframe of this shift and what were the major backslides from good democratic practices?

The first signs of democratic backsliding date back to the mid-2000s when the AKP government began to limit the freedom of the press. Over time, curtailments of civil liberties, further censorship of media outlets and tilting the playing field in favour of AKP candidates throughout election campaigns took a toll on the democratic system. Following a failed coup attempt in 2016, President Erdoğan declared an emergency law and purged thousands of military and administrative personnel from governmental bodies. After the referendum that changed Turkey’s political system to a presidential system, power has become almost exclusively concentrated in President Erdoğan’s hands. Media censorship, curtailment of civil liberties, and interference with judicial processes are ongoing, if not intensifying, and have tainted Turkish democracy significantly during AKP rule.

Solidarity Demonstration for Gezi Park – Taksim Square, Istanbul, Turkey, 2013. Source: Rasande Tyskar, Flickr

Could you tell us more about your research methodology?

A week after the 23 June elections, we administered an online survey of eligible voters in Istanbul. We used questions from the American National Elections Survey and European Social Survey and translated them into Turkish while also modifying them to the Turkish context. We analyzed the survey responses by using categorical data analysis (binomial and multinomial logit analyses.

How strongly have concerns for democracy been reflected in voting preferences in Turkey? Do these differ from the standard scholarly understanding of that topic?

Scholars have long established that partisanship, idealogy, and the economic context are the most reliable predictors of voting behaviour. Turkey is no exception to these findings. Scholars examining voting preferences in Turkey have also found that Turkish voters behave in a similar way to voters in other electoral contexts. Alternatively, democracy scholars have suggested that elections are one of the most important bulwarks of democracy, keeping leaders with authoritarian tendencies in check. Several scholars, such as Milan Svolik (2020) have shown that in a sharply polarized political context, voters are willing to turn a blind eye to democratic concerns and vote based on partisanship or personal interests. Given that AKP has won numerous elections since they came to power in 2002 while leading the country into a gradual democratic backsliding, concerns for democracy have not been a driving force for the majority of Turkish voters.

The popular narrative was perhaps too optimistic. Our analysis shows that partisanship, and not concerns for democracy, was the primary driving force behind İmamoğlu’s victory in the second round of Istanbul elections in June.

You write: “The popular narrative within and outside of Turkey often portrayed these elections as motivated by concerns about democratic backsliding after the nullification of the first election in March.” Were these narratives correct? What drives voters to challenge the AKP?

The popular narrative was perhaps too optimistic. Our analysis shows that partisanship, and not concerns for democracy, was the primary driving force behind İmamoğlu’s victory in the second round of Istanbul elections in June. Our study aligns with several scholars, such as Milan Svolik (2020), who have also suggested that elections are one of the major bulwarks of democracy, keeping authoritarian leaders in check. Our analysis shows that even in the context of a clear violation of democratic norms, voters cast their ballots based on their partisanship and not democratic concerns.

What are the key contributions your paper brings to the field?

Our study is one of the few individual-level analyses of the concern for democracy in a polarized, competitive authoritarian context. Our study shows that the assumption that elections are a reliable check against leaders who are willing to violate democratic norms may not necessarily hold. We also found that economic dissatisfaction was not an important driving factor in the June 2019 elections, even though Turkish citizens had already been feeling the negative effects of an economic recession at the time of the elections. The effects of economic dissatisfaction on voting behaviour require further research in polarized and semi-authoritarian countries.

ABOUT

Tijen Demirel-Pegg is an Associate Professor of Political Science at IUPUI. Her research interests focus on contentious politics, political violence, human rights, and authoritarian regimes, with an emphasis on dissident-state interactions.

Aaron Dusso is an Associate Professor and Department Chair of Political Science at IUPUI. His work focuses primarily on the political psychology of electoral behaviour, with an emphasis on the Big Five personality traits, authoritarianism, civic aptitude, and correct voting.

MORE

Demirel-Pegg, T., & Dusso, A. (2022). Partisanship Versus Democracy: Voting in Turkey’s Competitive Authoritarian Elections. Political Studies Review, 20(4), 648–666. https://doi.org/10.1177/14789299211030446

Questions and production

Dr Eliza Kania, Brunel University London

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PSR Interviews #15: Mathis Ebbinghaus,  Institutional Consequences of the Black Lives Matter Movement: Towards Diversity in Elite Education

Has the Black Lives Matter movement influenced not only public opinion but also HE institutions? Mathis Ebbinghaus and Sihao Huang suggest that there is a temporal association between these time series: the enrolment of Black students and the salience of BLM. Despite some concerns, it did not affect broader trends towards greater representation of other minority students. Learn more in our interview below and read the PSR article: Institutional Consequences of the Black Lives Matter Movement: Towards Diversity in Elite Education.

Political Studies Review: You claim that “universities expressed their commitment to racial diversity, but university policies aimed at rectifying historic disadvantages were also met with criticism.” What is the situation of universities in the US in terms of racial diversity?

Mathis Ebbinghaus: Yes, that’s right. Racial diversity is one of the big contentious topics in university politics – perhaps because it relates to the meritocratic promise of the American dream. Proponents argue that greater racial diversity reflects fairer conditions that enable historically disadvantaged groups to compete. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, hundreds of universities expressed their commitment to campus equity efforts. Critics are concerned that greater racial diversity comes at the cost of new racial discrimination against academically successful students. In 2020, the enrolment-to-population ratios of Asian students are 4.3 and 3.68 in elite universities and medical schools respectively. Hispanic and Black students are underrepresented compared to their representation in the general population whereas enrolment rates for White students reflect their representation in the US population. In our article, we examine how Black and Asian student representation has changed over time. Contrary to concerns that Asian student representation has declined as a result of growing enrolment rates of Black students, we observe a steady increase in the representation of Asian students alongside increases in the representation of Hispanic students over the past decade. BLM coincided with increased Black enrolment in highly selective universities. It did not affect broader trends towards greater representation of other minority students.

What are the major challenges for policies to efficiently enhance racial diversity in the HE sector?

There certainly are numerous challenges to enhancing racial diversity. As far as our research is concerned, the positive association between racial diversity and Black Lives Matter activism suggests that it will be an important challenge for social justice activists to continuously convince university staff of the worthiness of their claims and to channel the momentum of 2020 into institutional politics that fall to some extent outside the purview of legal obligations.

BLM coincided with increased Black enrolment in highly selective universities. It did not affect broader trends towards greater representation of other minority students.

Based on your research, has the Black Lives Matter protest movement influenced the HE sector in the US at the macro level?

Yes, the data that we analyzed lend credence to this interpretation. In elite education, the shares of Black students in elite undergraduate and medical schools have coincided with the growing influence of the BLM movement. Future research should investigate the same question with methods that allow for more causal interpretations.

Black Lives Matter protest, London, June 2020, phot. E. Kania

You aim at identifying the measurable impacts the BLM movement has had on elite educational institutions. Would you elaborate on your data and methods?

Certainly. But let me just stress again that it would be premature to interpret our findings causally. What we do show is that there is a temporal association between two time series: the enrolment of Black students and the salience of BLM. To measure the salience of the BLM movement we use the GDELT database that has data on TV coverage of 109 local and national television channels. Our university enrolment data span the years from 2011 to 2020. Data on medical school enrolments by race cover twelve years from 2009 to 2020. Both applicant and enrolment numbers were obtained directly from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).

One of the effects that you describe is the increase in the enrolment of Black students. How can you explain that?

There are many compelling explanations that could account for this trend. We suggest that the Black Lives Matter movement may have contributed to increases in the enrolment of Black students both directly through interactions between activists and members of admission committees and indirectly through affecting the universities’ broader outlook. Awareness of the university’s values and the presence of passionate students who measure the university by their actions may create conformity pressures among admission board members. In future research, we hope to test these social mechanisms more directly.

We suggest that the Black Lives Matter movement may have contributed to increases in the enrolment of Black student both directly through interactions between acticsts and members of admission committees and indirectly through affecting the universities’ broader outlook.

Have any inter-sectional diversity challenges appeared? Were there any critical voices raised and what would be your response to them?

Yes, there were. Some critics feared that increasing Black student representation would disadvantage other racial groups. Our analysis shows that the representation of Asian students grew steadily for both types of elite education ­– the opposite of what critics feared. The representation of Hispanic students increased as well, which leaves us with a clear picture: The spikes in Black student representation following spikes in the salience of the BLM movement did not affect broader trends towards greater representation among other minority groups. While enrolment rates for the three largest minority groups in the US have increased over the past decade, enrolment rates for White students continuously decreased.

What are the key contributions your paper brings to the field?

There is more and more evidence that the Black Lives Matter movement shaped public opinion and policy. But movements can also have institutional consequences. Although studied less often, they are no less important. By focusing on the relationship between the Black Lives Matter movement and racial admission practices in elite educational institutions, we contribute to scholarship on the institutional consequences of social movements.

Black Lives Matter protest, source: Pixabay

ABOUT

Mathis Ebbinghaus is a DPhil candidate in sociology at Nuffield College, University of Oxford. His research is in political sociology and he investigates social movements and extraordinary social action. 

MORE

Institutional Consequences of the Black Lives Matter Movement: Towards Diversity in Elite Education – Mathis Ebbinghaus, Sihao Huang, 2022 (sagepub.com)

Questions and production

Dr Eliza Kania, Brunel University London

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PSR INTERVIEWS #14: Democratic Innovations: A Look through the Kaleidoscope of Democratic Theory – Hans Asenbaum (PART 2)

“Democratic innovations always struggle with their neoliberal and capitalist context. Capitalism has produced a particular kind of democracy. We refer to it as liberal or representative democracy. Calling it capitalist democracy would actually be more fitting. What we call democracy today is a hybrid between the democratic logic of the self-rule of the people and the capitalist logic of competition and hierarchy” – says Dr Hans Asenbaum. This interview is the second and final part of our conversation with this researcher and a PSR author, who covers new forms of democratic engagement and radical democratic politics. You can learn more about democratic innovations in his PSR article: Rethinking Democratic Innovations: A Look through the Kaleidoscope of Democratic Theory – Hans Asenbaum, 2021 (sagepub.com).

Political Studies Review: You discuss a participatory approach, in which the major axis of the critique comes from the dehumanising properties of institutions. What are the most effective ways to apply participatory innovations to public institutions? Have any experiments been done in this area?

Dr Hans Asenbaum: The dehumanising effect of institutions stems from their functions to govern us. They structure interactions and decision-making procedures, leaving little leeway for creativity, playfulness, or serendipity. What is surprising, however, is that participatory democracy happens within such institutions despite their rigidity. The participatory spirit creeps in and claims space when teachers decide their curriculum in a participatory and inclusive manner together with students or when a community reparation board invites victims and perpetrators into a dialogue.

Of course, state institutions are not always open to this participatory spirit, and its realisation to a large extent depends on the goodwill of individuals in power positions. This is why social movements are crucial in challenging these institutions. The Black Lives Matter movement is a case in point. Their actions constitute democratic innovation by interrupting the racist structures that govern societies around the world. This interruption is not only realised through a negative moment of protest but also through a positive moment of building a peer-help network.

Political Studies Review: In terms of the agonistic approach, you write that it’…has long remained vague about institutional manifestations of its ideal and has mostly referred to the contentious politics of social movement.’ The transformative perspective is also linked with social movements in your article. Have you been able to spot any of the features of these approaches in any of the significant social movements in recent years, such as Occupy Wall Street, Indignados, Black Lives Matter, Extinction Rebellion, or any others?

Dr Hans Asenbaum: Movements such as Extinction Rebellion (XR), Black Lives Matter (BLM) and their predecessors have played a crucial role in inspiring theories of agonistic and transformative democracy. Hence, these theories are not only useful for analysing these movements but the movements also serve as the theories’ empirical sources. Now, this is the wonderful thing about democratic theories – and normative political theories more generally –; they each shed new and different light on the same phenomenon. This means we do not have to choose whether XR or BLM are either agonistic or transformative movements; they both harbour aspects of agonistic and transformative democracy.

State institutions are not always open to this participatory spirit, and its realisation to a large extent depends on the goodwill of individuals in power positions. This is why social movements are crucial in challenging these institutions.

The profound revolution XR calls for in the face of the dramatic climate crisis and the shattering of racist ideology and practice BLM advocates resonate with the transformative democratic perspective. Far beyond reform, it needs profound cultural and economic change to tackle the climate crisis and racism. Despite this revolutionary outlook, from an agonistic angle, we can see how both movements do not understand their opponents as enemies to be destroyed but as adversaries who are receptive to dialogue. Their views need to be challenged, and their practices disrupted. Such agonistic approaches are reflected in street protest and social media contestation of the respective movements.  

Black Lives Matter protest, London, June 2020, phot. E. Kania

Which of the developed solutions can be utilised in modern, democratic institutions most effectively?

The focus on social movements in the agonistic and transformative accounts doesn’t mean that the type of democratic innovations I’m suggesting cannot be realised within state institutions. Indeed, state actors are enablers of democratic bottom-up participation. This is what the participatory perspective highlights in particular. Participatory budgeting is a great example of how democratic innovations can be realised from a participatory democratic (rather than a deliberative) angel. The history of participatory budgeting also illustrates that whether democratic innovations emerge bottom-up or top-down is not necessarily a mutually exclusive question but that there actually can be a fruitful interface between the state and social movements.

The agonistic perspective further adds insights into how the state can facilitate democratic innovations beyond the deliberative paradigm. Mary Paxton suggests a Contestation Day, which is modelled after Ackerman and Fishkin’s Deliberation Day. Before general elections, citizens would meet for small group debates in the agonistic manner Paxton suggests. The new understanding of democratic innovations, I suggest, allows us to think even further. What if the state would provide social movements and civic initiatives the funds to set up their own democratic innovations? Democratic innovations, then, could be state-sponsored but social movement-run. I have made this suggestion together with Frederic Hanusch. We argue that instead of focusing on reasoned deliberation through the verbal expression of arguments, new democratic spaces could focus on non-verbal deliberation through artistic expression and play. This could be realised in democratic playgrounds and democratic ateliers as new democratic innovations that allow participants to prototype solutions to political problems.

What major challenges for applying democratic innovations would you highlight?

Democratic innovations always struggle with their neoliberal and capitalist context. Capitalism has produced a particular kind of democracy. We refer to it as liberal or representative democracy. Calling it capitalist democracy would actually be more fitting. What we call democracy today is a hybrid between the democratic logic of the self-rule of the people and the capitalist logic of competition and hierarchy. Capitalist democracy translates self-rule to the representation of the people by the elite. The power the people hold in this process is reduced to choosing among elite actors in staged party competition. Election campaigns follow market principles of product promotion and profit maximisation. The Schumpeterian ideal has become reality. This has been convincingly argued by Ellen Meiksins Wood.

Capitalism has produced a particular kind of democracy. We refer to it as liberal or representative democracy. Calling it capitalist democracy would actually be more fitting.

Democratic innovations, as I understand them, break with this capitalist logic and in doing so recapture democracy’s egalitarian spirit. Instead of delegating decision-making power to the elite, people deliberate and decide for themselves. Instead of competing with one another, they aim at mutual understanding – here the deliberative perspective is helpful. Democratic innovations interrupt capitalist hierarchy by demonstrating that self-rule is possible. Of course, there are convincing arguments that democratic innovations themselves are co-opted by neoliberal logic. They may only pretend to realise democracy while actually functioning as a governing tool of the powerful. We have to be aware and mindful of this problem. This is why bottom-up co-creation of democratic innovations is so important.

What are the key contributions your paper brings to the field?

The kaleidoscope of democratic theory my paper introduces reaffirms the value of theory triangulation. Triangulation is highly valued in empirical research, but it is hardly used in the field of theory and, in particular, in normative theory. Normative theories are commonly seen as mutually exclusive because each theory proposes its own ontology and its own complete worldview. By employing the kaleidoscope of democratic theory, we don’t compromise the internal integrity of each perspective. But we are still able to draw on a diversity of theories. I think this approach is particularly fitting for democratic theory because the value of pluralism is at the very heart of democracy.

The kaleidoscope approach also prioritises deep normative commitments. Discussions in democratic theory lately have moved away from normativity. Instead of focusing on normative models such as deliberative, participatory, agonistic or transformative democracy, democratic theorists suggest pragmatist approaches that are more problem-oriented. While I acknowledge the value of this argument, I worry about losing democratic theory’s firm normative grounding. Instead, I encourage exploring new ways of diversifying and creatively engaging with normative models.

In which direction normative democratic theory will develop is an intriguing question. How will deliberative democracy develop, and what may come after deliberative democracy? We are all part of this debate, and I’m looking forward to participating in it.

ABOUT

Hans Asenbaum is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the University of Canberra. His work focuses on new forms of democratic engagement and radical democratic politics.

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Dr Eliza Kania, Brunel University London

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PSR INTERVIEWS #14: Democratic Innovations: A Look through the Kaleidoscope of Democratic Theory – Hans Asenbaum (PART 1)

“The wealth and diversity of democratic theory are incredible. What is fascinating about the participatory, agnostic, and transformative perspectives is that each of them offers an entire world we can dive into, immerse ourselves in, and relish in the democratic vision it generates” – says Dr Hans Asenbaum. This interview is the first part of our conversation with this researcher and a PSR author, who covers new forms of democratic engagement and radical democratic politics. You can learn more about democratic innovations in his PSR article: Rethinking Democratic Innovations: A Look through the Kaleidoscope of Democratic Theory – Hans Asenbaum, 2021 (sagepub.com).

Political Studies Review: You suggest that we need to rethink democratic innovations. Why is such a “re-innovation of democratic innovations” needed, and how do we best go about this?

Dr Hans Asenbaum: Democratic innovations are commonly understood as participatory institutions created by governments. Examples are the now very popular citizens’ assemblies which flourish across the UK and Ireland and participatory budgets which emerged in Brazil. The way the scholarly community conceptualises these instantiations of lived democracy is limiting. This established understanding draws our attention to top-down initiated governmental institutions that are meticulously designed. Design pre-structures what participants in these settings can do and what they can express. Problems range from time constraints to a too narrow focus on rational arguments and go on to include co-option by the organisers. In other words, democratic innovations often produce the decision their organisers intended them to produce, which, of course, defeats their democratic purpose.

What can we do to challenge or at least mitigate these problems? One reason why we perceive and conceptualise democratic innovations in such a narrow manner is because of the incredible success of theories of deliberative democracy, which have dominated the field in the last few decades. This success is due to the persuasiveness and the merits of deliberative democratic theory. Indeed, the scholarly and practitioner community that aims to study and realise public engagement has benefitted immensely from the vibrant field of deliberative democracy research. Deliberative democracy in theory and practice has taught us about the values of inclusion, listening, empathy, humility, learning and respect. These are values I personally cherish.

Indeed, the scholarly and practitioner community that aims to study and realise public engagement has benefitted immensely from the vibrant field of deliberative democracy research.

The problem, then, is not with the deliberative ideal – it is with the exclusivity of one ideal only, whatever it may be. There are evident problems with dogmatism that prevent learning and development. So what I’m suggesting is not to replace the deliberative ideal with another, which would entail the same exclusivity. Rather, I suggest complimenting the deliberative ideal with compatible yet diverse other ideals. Rather than understanding democratic innovations exclusively as deliberative spaces, I propose looking through the kaleidoscope of democratic theory and making use of the wide variety of existing democratic theories. In this way, we can rethink democratic innovations from agonistic, participatory, and transformative angles. This lets us see democratic innovation in a new light. It helps us both to identify aspects of existing democratic processes we haven’t been able to see before, and it also helps us to identify instantiations of democracy that we previously hadn’t identified as democratic innovations.

What, then, is the result of applying the kaleidoscope of democratic theory? What does a novel understanding of democratic innovations look like?

So far, we know what democratic innovations look like from a deliberative angle. Following their Habermasian roots, deliberative democratic innovations have been particularly concerned with creating the “ideal speech situation” – they are staged as egalitarian islands amidst a world dominated by hierarchies and exclusions. This has led to an extreme focus, if not an obsession, with design. The idea here is that we can structure participants’ interactions – not the contents they express but the way they express these contents. This has had beneficial effects, particularly for marginalised groups in society participating in democratic innovations. Nevertheless, the undemocratic aspects of this approach are evident. Design means limiting and pre-determining participants’ behaviour.

If we supplement the deliberative with agonistic, participatory, and transformative lenses,  democratic innovations take on a new meaning. Rather than top-down initiated design, democratic innovation may emerge organically from grassroots mobilising and everyday interaction. Agonistic, participatory, and transformative democratic theory teaches us that democracy may occur anywhere – not just in official democratic processes such as election campaigns, referendums, or citizens’ assemblies, but wherever people meet and exchange ideas and opinions about how society should be governed. Rather than formal, state-run institutions, in the reading I propose, democratic innovation may include informal institutions such as social movement spaces, everyday conversations, societal conventions, and even language and thinking patterns.

Could you give us a concrete example?

Take language as an informal institutional arrangement as an example. Here, let’s zoom in on the debate about personal pronouns. Many advocate explicitly identifying oneself with pronouns including she/her, he/him, or they/them. The mere act of such a declaration constitutes a democratic innovation. Previously it was assumed that we could visually deduce each other’s gender. Making a conscious gender declaration breaks with these established patterns. It democratises gendering as now the control over gender identification lies with the individual democratic subject. The option of self-identifying as they/them allows for a rejection of the established gender binary and identifying otherwise. Democratic innovation, then, can happen in every type of institutional setting that governs us – be it formal or informal.

This does not mean that formal institutions such as deliberative mini-publics are excluded from this understanding of democratic innovation. But the novel understanding presents them in a new light. It draws attention to the inherently interruptive nature of democratic innovations. Where formerly decisions were made by the political elite, mini-publics and other formal democratic innovations interrupt this mode of governance and demonstrate that democracy can be practised otherwise.

What are the major differences between participatory, agnostic and transformative perspectives?

The wealth and diversity of democratic theory are incredible. What is fascinating about the participatory, agnostic, and transformative perspectives is that each of them offers an entire world we can dive into, immerse ourselves in, and relish in the democratic vision it generates. The participatory perspective draws attention to bottom-up participation in unlikely places like workplaces, schools, public administration, and even prisons. Albert Dzur’s Democracy Inside is truly insightful. He sheds light on democratic innovations such as Inside-Out courses, in which free college students and inmates meet weekly to learn about criminal justice or community conferences in which perpetrators, victims, and witnesses meet and reflect on incidents of perceived wrongdoing from different angles. Participatory democratic innovations appear not as top-down designed political institutions but as organically emerging democratic spaces that are organised by civil society actors or public servants.

The agonistic view adds new insight to this approach. Agonistic democracy does not focus on formal political institutions but on language as an informal institutional arrangement that affords and governs how we express ourselves and what we think. In addition to the focus on language, agonistic democracy is concerned with emotion, passion, and affect. At its core, agonistic democracy is about venting suppressed conflict but at the same time preventing conflict from becoming destructive. Hence, creating a safe space is important. Mary Paxton’s Agonistic Democracy opens our eyes to a range of democratic innovations that are mostly outside the realm of the deliberative view. She suggests various seating arrangements, speech tokens, personal testimony instead of expert facts, and controversial topics for debate. More than anything, agonistic democracy does not prescribe one ideal setting but opens our view to the many forms democratic innovations can take on.

I suggest maintaining the internal integrity of each of these perspectives, including the deliberative one, and allowing ourselves to switch between them. It’s like cycling through various different landscapes, immersing ourselves, and learning something new in each of them.

While the agonistic and participatory perspectives suggest reform of a flawed democratic system, the transformative perspective proposes a profound systemic change that breaks with capitalist logic. Such deep transformation has been advocated in the work of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. But what transformative democracy means for democratic innovations has hardly been explored. Alexandros Kioupkioulis’ The Common and Counter-Hegemonic Politics does a magnificent job at breaking things down by focusing on one concept: the commons. Common-pool resources such as land, water, and knowledge are not simply property that is collectively owned. They constitute a democratic practice – a radical democratic innovation. Wikipedia, the Ancient Greek polis, and occupied public squares all illustrate that transparent and open collective decision-making is possible.

We can see how diverse these three perspectives are. My suggestion is not to combine and hybridise them in some sort. Rather, I suggest maintaining the internal integrity of each of these perspectives, including the deliberative one, and allowing ourselves to switch between them. It’s like cycling through various different landscapes, immersing ourselves, and learning something new in each of them.

ABOUT

Hans Asenbaum is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the University of Canberra. His work focuses on new forms of democratic engagement and radical democratic politics.

Questions and production

Dr Eliza Kania, Brunel University London

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PSR INTERVIEWS #13: Normativity in Realist Legitimacy – Ben Cross

“ Ostensibly ambitious moral values may have regressive ideological functions.  It is not hard to see how moralist legitimation narratives about freedom, equality, and human rights have provided ideological support for Western interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere” – says Ben Cross in this interview. You can learn more about normativity, moralism and realism in his PSR article, Normativity in Realist Legitimacy.

PSR: What are the key distinctions between moralist and realist views on normativity and legitimacy that you identify?

I think the fundamental difference stems from views about the epistemic merits of morality. 

Realists seem to be committed to the view that:

  1. some or all of what is usually called ‘morality’ – call it “S-morality” – rests on epistemically dubious assumptions. 
  2. at a minimum, S-morality includes what Bernard Williams calls “the morality system” (which is especially concerned with the notion of moral obligation and the assignment of responsibility and blame), as well as most of the moral principles that moralist theories of legitimacy typically appeal to. 

Moralists will at least reject ii), and possibly also i). 

In light of i) and ii), realists take themselves to have reason to ensure that their normative claims – including their normative claims about legitimacy – do not appeal to S-morality. 

How do realists set their standards of politics, while not appealing to a “morality that is prior to politics”?

Realists typically make one of two non-mutually exclusive moves here.  First, they claim that politics is conceptually distinct from certain other kinds of human interaction such as war or terror.  Second, they claim that the practice of political institutions seems somewhat teleologically geared towards certain purposes, notably providing stability and facilitating collective decision-making. 

Each of these two moves can be used to identify standards of “good politics”.  For example, if politics is teleologically geared towards providing stability, then it might be claimed that one important standard for assessing the goodness of political order is its stability. 

Neither of these two moves appeals to any kind of morality.  But note also that, by themselves, they are not obviously normative at all.  They might help us identify what counts as “good politics”, but they don’t clearly explain why we have a reason to pursue “good politics”. 


What are the pillars of a moralist critique of a realist critique of the morality system? Is there any universal model of morality that it refers to?

Perhaps the most common moralist objection to realism is that the various theories of “good politics” that realists propose can only have normative force if they appeal to morality.  By itself, this objection does not fault realists for failing to embrace any particular universal model of morality.  Rather, it faults them for being inconsistent.  If the objection is correct, realists can make normative judgments or avoid appealing to morality, but they can’t do both. 

I think realists can respond to this objection in one of two ways.  First, they can argue that there are certain forms of morality that are not S-morality, and hold that the normative force of their ideas of “good politics” can be explained in terms of these forms of morality.  Second, they can argue that their normative force can be explained without reference to any kind of morality at all.  For example, perhaps “good politics” is instrumentally valuable: it helps us get what we want. 

Williams-premise holds that there is a conceptual distinction between politics and war, and that this conceptual distinction can only be maintained if we suppose that politics takes the form of legitimate politics.  It thus identifies “good politics” with political legitimacy

What’s the idea behind of a so-called “Williams-premise”?

What I call the Williams-premise emphasises the first of the two moves I referred to in my answer to the second question.  It holds that there is a conceptual distinction between politics and war and that this conceptual distinction can only be maintained if we suppose that politics takes the form of legitimate politics.  It thus identifies “good politics” with political legitimacy. 

A challenge for realists who accept the Williams-premise is to then explain why political legitimacy is something that is desirable.  Without such an explanation, it is unclear that these realists can articulate a theory of legitimacy that is normative. 

You mention ‘concessive realism’ as well as ‘naturalist realism’ – would you elaborate on the differences between these two approaches?

Concessive realism responds to the above challenge by narrowing its aims.  It holds that realism only aims to establish the truth of the Williams-premise without appealing to morality.  It is content to delegate the task of explaining the desirability of political legitimacy to morality. 

Naturalist realism, unlike concessive realism, seeks to show that political legitimacy is desirable without thereby appealing to S-morality.  It tries to do this by asserting what I call the “naturalist premise”: avoiding politics is not a real option for human being because politics is necessary to secure certain basic goods that we all desire for ourselves. 

Ostensibly ambitious moral values may have regressive ideological functions.  It is not hard to see how moralist legitimation narratives about freedom, equality, and human rights have provided ideological support for Western interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. 

How would you define the realist approaches to legitimacy with, for instance, the current situation in Afghanistan? How would it differ from a moralist approach?

Here is a crude but potentially helpful way of illustrating things. 

I think moralists, most of whom are liberals, would likely view the recently collapsed Islamic Republic of Afghanistan as legitimate because it embodied certain important liberal democratic moral norms (albeit imperfectly).  For example, it had a broadly liberal constitution, and it gave citizens the right to vote.  Realists, however, would likely be more inclined to regard it as suffering from a severe legitimation deficit, simply because it never fully succeeded in creating stable political order or obtaining sufficient support from its citizens. 

By contrast, I expect most moralists would regard the recently re-established Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (i.e. the Taliban government) as necessarily illegitimate because it does not, by and large, embody liberal moral values.  Realists, however, would hold that it could conceivably become legitimate, even though it rejects liberal moral values if it were to implement stable political order and provide citizens with a justification for its power that generally makes sense to them.  Admittedly, this “if” appears likely to be counterfactual. 

Are there any other practical examples that would help us to understand a major difference between the two approaches?

The above example may create the impression that realists are more pessimistic than moralists about what is politically possible and are thus willing to settle for less ambitious political goods.  There is a sense in which this might be true.  Stable political order is a necessary condition for people to have access to basic goods, services and protections.  Its existence is clearly very important to citizens’ interests.  Risking political stability in order to pursue liberal reforms may endanger these interests. 

However, there are at least two points to bear in mind which may complicate this impression.  First, stable political order is often a very demanding goal.  Marxists, for example, may claim that capitalism is inherently unstable and that the only route to lasting political stability goes through proletarian revolution.  Second, ostensibly ambitious moral values may have regressive ideological functions.  It is not hard to see how moralist legitimation narratives about freedom, equality, and human rights have provided ideological support for Western interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. 

What are the key contributions your article brings to the field?

My article has more mundane and modest goals than my answer to the previous question would suggest.  It takes a step towards showing how realist theories of legitimacy can be internally consistent – that is, they can be normative without relying on S-morality.  It may also help us better understand what the underlying motivating concern of realist theories of legitimacy is.  Why should we care about political legitimacy?  What needs, interests, or desires are served by having political institutions that are legitimate, rather than illegitimate?  Answers to these questions may further enable us to see what place the concept of political legitimacy might have in political philosophy and the extent to which it is a concept worthy of continuing analysis and application. 

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Article: Cross, Ben (2020), Normativity in Realist Legitimacy, Political Studies Review.

ABOUT

Ben Cross is a postdoctoral research fellow in the School of Philosophy at Wuhan University. His research interests include political realism, legitimacy, and critical theory.

Questions and production

Dr Eliza Kania, Brunel University London

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PSR INTERVIEWS #12: The Electoral Connection Revisited – Corentin Poyet and Mihail Chiru

“Personalization, usually defined as an increased relevance of individual politicians at the expense of parties over time, manifests itself at institutional, media and behavioural levels” – claim Corentin Poyet and Michail Chiru in their PSR Article. Learn about this intriguing political phenomenon and its influence on electoral systems, candidate selection and party leadership selection processes, behavioural as well as media personalization. A fuller analysis of these topics can be found in the PSR article: The Electoral Connection Revisited: Introduction to the Special Issue

PSR: How would you define the personalization of politics?

Mihail Chiru, Corentin Poyet: The literature has given various definitions of the personalization of politics, depending also on the level at which this phenomenon has been theorized. We adhere to an understanding of personalization as an increased relevance of individual politicians at the expense of parties over time, acknowledging that this can manifest itself in behavioural patterns of politicians and voters, through reforms of political institutions or at the level of the media. This phenomenon goes hand in hand with the crisis of collective representation and the decline of trust in parties, being also enabled by technological changes. In the special issue, we concentrate on understanding better one dimension of decentralized personalization, that is personalization focused on regular politicians, not party leaders. We do so by examining the institutional and contextual correlates of Members of Parliament (MPs) engagement in cultivating a personal vote, and by assessing whether such efforts are rewarded by voters in very diverse settings.

You focused on five European countries: Finland, France, Romania, Italy and Hungary. What has determined your selection?

The literature on the topic is mainly country-specific, and the few comparative works rarely include cases from Central and Eastern Europe. With our selection, we wanted to assess the correlates and electoral consequences of behavioural personalization in countries that have very different institutional designs and party systems, have achieved different levels of democratic consolidation and in which electoral system reforms went in opposite directions regarding the levels of personalization (e.g. Italy and Romania). The case selection also enabled us to show that legislators’ efforts aimed at personal vote-seeking happen sometimes even in the absence of electoral system incentives (the case of Italy), or in the context of legislatures highly controlled by parties (the case of France).

What are the key factors in the three major strategies for cultivating a personal vote: position-taking, credit claiming and advertising?

The three major strategies are not mutually exclusive but complementary. Position-taking refers to the use of parliamentary instruments (speeches, questions, legislative motions, roll-call votes etc.) by MPs to express a personal position that usually mirrors the perceived preferences of the constituents. The critical element here is that these positions can be different from or even contradict the positions of the legislator’s party and thus jeopardize the unity and goals of the party.

Credit claiming has the aim of making constituents believe that the MP is responsible for a positive outcome, i.e. an increase in the welfare of the district or the adoption of a popular policy. This can be achieved in various ways and it does not necessarily imply the presence of tangible benefits. For example, parliamentary questions – that are studied in four papers of the special issue, rarely result in immediate policy changes or allocation of funds towards districts but MPs can still claim credit for having put the issue on the agenda and contributed towards solving the problem.

Finally, advertising is about actions that MPs take to increase their name recognition and create a favourable image. Here, the content of the message is less critical, but it usually has to do with the personal characteristics of the MPs that are appealing to the constituents and facilitate name recall such as their experience, their ties with the district or their socio-economic background.  

The articles in the special issue show that the adoption of these strategies depends both on the characteristics of the legislators and their districts and on features of their parties (e.g. government-opposition status, type of candidate selection).

In the special issue, we concentrate on understanding better one dimension of decentralized personalization, that is personalization focused on regular politicians, not party leaders.

You asked whether personal vote-seeking efforts get noticed and rewarded by voters? What do your findings show?

This is a question widely discussed in the literature, but evidence for a personal vote is rare. Two of the articles in the Special Issue are relevant for this discussion. Zsofia Papp shows that Hungarian voters from rural districts reward interpellations that deal with agriculture, when this policy area has great salience, and during times of high governmental unpopularity. Conversely, she finds that MPs can lose a significant number of votes by asking agricultural interpellations when they represent an urban area. David Arter draws on the case of Finland to show that even in institutional contexts generally perceived as conducive to intra-party competition (open list PR under a high party magnitude), candidates gain most of their votes from their home municipality, a finding which can be interpreted as evidence for voters rewarding local ties.

Have you spotted any particularly interesting country-specific trends of party decline and political personalization?

Declining rates of party membership, growing dissatisfaction with democracy and electoral volatility have become distinctive features of European political systems in the past decades, and in this respect, we see an unwelcome convergence of Western and Central and Eastern European democracies. One route politicians have followed to try to address these issues was to give voters and rank and file party members a stronger say in who gets nominated or elected for public or party office. This was done via institutional personalization reforms that have adopted more candidate-centred electoral systems or have made candidate selection and/or party leadership selection processes more inclusive through the introduction of primaries.

Interestingly, the special issue shows not only that behavioural personalization can be facilitated by institutional personalization reforms, but also that personal vote-seeking behaviours survive even when the electoral incentives for them vanish. The cases studies analyzing the determinants of constituency service in Romania and Italy following electoral reforms that have gone in opposite directions are revealing in this respect.

In Romania, the personalization of the electoral system has increased the incentives for MPs to cater to territorial interests and engage more in constituency service. Mihail Chiru’s analyses show that the 2008 electoral reform has led to a substantial increase in the share of parliamentary questions inspired by allocation responsiveness. On the other hand, in Italy, the 2005 electoral reform abolished single-member districts and introduced the most party-centred electoral system possible: closed list Proportional Representation. In his article, Federico Russo is able to illustrate that despite the absence of electoral system incentives, Italian MPs still devote considerable time to constituency service and this is driven mostly by personal motivations rooted in past local political experience and biographical ties with the constituency.

Interestingly, the special issue shows not only that behavioural personalization can be facilitated by institutional personalization reforms, but also that personal vote-seeking behaviours survive even when the electoral incentives for them vanish

What are the key contributions your article brings to the field?

A critical contribution of the special issue is its ability to illustrate that personal vote seeking behaviors are not an exception in European legislatures but a rather common feature, regardless of the institutional settings in which the legislators operate and of the levels of democratic experience of their polities. In doing so, the articles in the collection also empahsize the relevance of factors which have been largerly disregarded by the continental legislative studies literature, such as the role of district features.

A second key contribution of the special issue is to show that, although behavioural personalization is frequently perceived as a potentially disruptive and destabilizing factor, in all the five cases analyzed, parties managed to maintain a key role in the way individual responsiveness works and in how individual voter-politician linkages are concretely established. David Arter’s article illustrates that in the Finish case, parties not only organize how personal vote-seeking and personalized campaigning is conducted, but they deliberately select local candidates to ensure proper geographical coverage and maximize personal votes. Moreover, as Corentin Poyet’s article shows, the salience parties assign to issues that matter locally can reinforce the MPs’ district responsiveness.

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Article: Chiru, Michail, Corentin Poyet (2021), The Electoral Connection Revisited: Introduction to the Special Issue, Political Studies Review 19(3) 327–333.

ABOUT

Corentin Poyet is an Academy of Finland postdoctoral researcher at Tampere University. His research interests include parliamentary studies, electoral systems and public policy. His work has been published in The Journal of Legislative Studies, Legislative Studies Quarterly and Parliamentary Affairs, among others.

Mihail Chiru

is a Lecturer at the Russian and East European Studies Department, Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, University of Oxford. His main academic interests include legislative behavior and legislative organization, party politics, and electoral studies. His recent work was published in Journal of European Integration, Journal of European Public Policy and Journal of Common Market Studies.

Questions and production

Dr Eliza Kania, Brunel University London

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PSR Interviews #11: Rethinking Identity in Political Science – an interview with Scott Weiner and Dillon Stone Tatum

“We can’t even say what identity is, we can’t truly understand why it’s having an effect on the mediation of power. We often want to make causal arguments in political science, so this gap is a real problem. Having a better framework for talking about identity would help us have smarter discussions about it as political scientists” – say Scott Weiner and Dillon Stone Tatum. Learn about identity, identity politics and its meaning for political science. A fuller analysis of these topics can be found in the PSR article: Rethinking Identity in Political Science.

PSR: What is the most precise definition of identity? And what are its specifics in the field of political science?

Scott Weiner, Dillon Stone Tatum: Identity is essentially our “address” in the social and political world. That’s not a bad definition but it’s vague. In fact, it’s really hard to say exactly what identity is, and that’s why we wrote this piece. This paper found ten different definitions of identity in major political science scholarship over just a 25 year period. And that’s only in political science, not the rest of social science. Different kinds of political science each have great scholarship on identity (we discuss three in the piece), but each kind of identity works totally differently. We can explain precisely why a Prius, a Porsche, and a Model T are all cars, but we can’t say precisely why these three frameworks are all identities. Given how central identity is to political science, that’s a big problem. We’re trying to understand how identity mediates power without knowing what identity is.

You claim that “political scientists lack a common framework for addressing questions about what identity is, how it relates agents with social and political structures, and how it changes over time”. Would a common framework or toolbox benefit social and political science?

Yes, because identity is a central concept of political science. For the most part, our discipline studies why, when, and how some entities get power while others don’t. One way to do that is to look at identities like ethnicity, gender, or nation and see whether being part of one group is a good prediction of getting power or not. But if we can’t even say what identity is, we can’t truly understand why it’s having an effect on the mediation of power. We often want to make causal arguments in political science, so this gap is a real problem. Having a better framework for talking about identity would help us have smarter discussions about it as political scientists. It would also help us create better and more respectful ways of having discussions with and about members of society whose identity is outside of the norm in some way.

In your article, you focused on three dimensions of identity: ethnicity, gender and national identity. Do you consider these three to be the most important dimensions of identity? If so, why?

Ethnicity, gender, and nation are three highly developed subfields of political science with which readers are likely to have familiarity. We picked these three so it would be easier to make our key point that they all work differently, using examples that readers know and to which they can relate. We also are both really fascinated by these particular identities. This paper actually started out as a series of online chat messages about our research, and we realized that our conversations spoke to a larger issue in political science. Our paper is based off a discussion of these three identities but we don’t claim that they’re necessarily the most important. They are, however, very different in how they conceptualize identity, so they happen to be excellent examples of the point we’re making in this paper.

Having a better framework for talking about identity would help us have smarter discussions about it as political scientists

Could you briefly elaborate on your model of elements of identity? How can studying changes and shifts within recognition, visibility and conceptualisation benefit political science?

In considering identity as a political phenomenon, we focused on three elements of identity. First, we focused on recognition—to what degree are one’s identity claims recognized as legitimate by a political community? Second, we looked at visibility—to what degree are attributes associated with one’s identity (i.e., markers of race, gender, ethnicity, etc.) visible and recognizable to others? Third, we considered the issue of conceptualization—to what extent is the identity conceptualized(able) by a socio-political group. The ability to even have debate about terms like “transracialism” are limited, in a sense, by the way we can express identity frames in language in the first place.

Studying shifts is important for understanding the ways that political movements are able to change (or not) social attitudes. The internet’s role, for example, in allowing asexual people to gain more recognition and stronger conceptualization of their identity has implications for LGBTQ+ politics.

You claim that identity is the way we orient ourselves in a given community on the basis of recognizable attributes. What about the identities with dark visibility or low recognition such as in the case of Rachel Dolezal you highlight? Where is the boundary of this debate?

Identity is inherently social and relational—in other words, identity is not just something we can claim about ourselves, it’s something that depends on recognition and visibility. There are two things that the unrecognizable or invisible forms of identity highlight for us: (1) The continuing struggle that some groups and individuals experience in having their lives affirmed by society. It has only been since the 1970s, for instance, that homosexuality was de-pathologized as a psychological diagnosis. Recognition is not a given—it is a site of contentious politics; (2) It allows us to interrogate the why question in regards to non-recognition—in thinking about cases like Rachel Dolezal’s, we were less interested in commenting on the claims she was making than by the conflict that ensued as her identity claims were rejected.

Identity is inherently social and relational—in other words, identity is not just something we can claim about ourselves, it’s something that depends on recognition and visibility.

What are the key contributions your article brings to the field?

The biggest contribution we hope to bring to the field is to create a common frame of reference for diverse research agendas to talk about identity. While identity is a central feature of political research, we found that there were deep sub-disciplinary boundaries that foreclosed dialogue. We want to poke holes in those boundaries, and expand the frontiers of what we can do with a more comprehensive framework.

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Article: Weiner S, Dillon S T (2020), Rethinking Identity in Political Science, Political Studies Review 2021, Vol. 19(3), 464–481.

ABOUT

Scott Weiner is a professorial lecturer in political science at George Washington University. His research focuses on identity politics in the Middle East with a focus on state building, kinship, and gender politics on the Arabian Peninsula. From 2013-2014, he was a Visiting Research Fellow at the American University of Kuwait.

Dillon Stone Tatum is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Francis Marion University. His research focuses on liberalism and world politics, critical security studies, and international political theory.

Questions and production

Dr Eliza Kania, Brunel University London

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PSR Interviews #10: Houston, We Have a Problem: Enhancing Academic Freedom and Transparency in Publishing Through Post-Publication Debate – an interview with Kristian Skrede Gleditsch

“I think it is entirely legitimate for scientists to engage in public and political life, and scientists have much to contribute to policy debates. But scientists should be careful to claim privileges because of their position” – says Professor Kristian Skrede Gleditsch. The issues of “problematic articles”, imperfections of the system of academic publishing and political engagement of scientists in the context of academic freedom discussed in a brilliant and compact analysis by Professor Gleditsch. A fuller analysis of these topics can be found in his PSR article: Houston, We Have a Problem: Enhancing Academic Freedom and Transparency in Publishing Through Post-Publication Debate.

PSR: You discuss coping with problematic articles published within academia. How do you define a “problematic article” and how is that related to academic freedom?

Kristian Skrede Gleditsch: The article mainly discusses articles that people generate controversy, where people flag specific issues as problematic. This could range from the topic itself, the data used, the analysis, or the inferences drawn from data or analysis. There can obviously be main problems in articles or research that are ignored, but my focus here was on how to best deal with controversies, inspired by the debate on the article on “The Case for Colonialism”. Academic freedom is normally defined as the freedom of researchers to pursue research without interference. Research that generates controversy can face additional barriers to publication or open discussion.

What are major myths or misperceptions about common ways of managing controversial publications you’d highlight? How can one avoid political biases during the evaluation process?

Science is always to some degree uncertain, incremental and gradually revised, and should be open to debate. However, in practice, it is often difficult to publish comments on articles, as many journals are reluctant to consider comments on published work. Dialogues are often more informative than monologues, but journals are skewed towards the latter. There is a strong status quo bias, where published work is often left uncontested, and important questions or qualifications often become sidelined. There are many biases that could affect the evaluation process, and I am not convinced that if political biases are more problematic than other biases, even if they are likely to generate more heat. Ultimately, we can only call for all of us as reviewers and editors to try to consider not just whether they agree with or are convinced by something, but whether it is a debate that is worth making public.

Allowing for more debate post-publication would help clarify the sources of disagreement and allow for others to make up their minds about the merits of a contending argument

You argue that “calling for retraction for articles that one disagrees with is clearly problematic on grounds of academic freedom, commonly understood as the right of researchers to have freedom in conducting their research and seeking to publish the results”. What are better approaches to such questions?

Retraction may be appropriate for clear cases of misconduct or fabrication, but it is not an appropriate response to resolving disagreements and risk suppression of research. Allowing for more debate post-publication would help clarify the sources of disagreement and allow for others to make up their minds about the merits of a contending argument. Ultimately post-publication debate can also allow for better science and advancing knowledge.

Are traditional control mechanisms such as peer-review and editorial judgment a sufficient safeguard for academic publishing?

Peer review is a valuable way to evaluate scientific research, but it is not an infallible guide to “truth” or scientific insights. Peer review can both fail to detect important problems, and it may recommend against important contributions that deviate from conventional approaches. For example, Akerlof’s article on the “Markets for Lemons” on the problems in markets with incomplete information was rejected three times before it was published, and Ioannidis in an important article argues that most published findings in medicine are more likely to be wrong. I think it is a mistake to focus too much on keeping out material that we may later find to be incorrect. Sometimes we are unlikely to find out unless something was published, and learning from the past is a key part of scientific progress.

You say, that it is not possible to divorce one’s own political views when conducting research. What is your view on a more complex level of this issue: scientists’ engagement in public/political life?

I think it is entirely legitimate for scientists to engage in public and political life, and scientists have much to contribute to policy debates. But scientists should be careful to claim privileges because of their position. The policy is ultimately a question of objectives, and determining what our objectives ought to often lie outside scientific knowledge per se. For example, science may tell us passive investment on average will provide a higher return than active management, but we may wish for public investment to support other objectives than just maximizing return (i.e., “ethical investments”). Scientists should separate value judgements from claims about means-end relationships.

Science is always to some degree uncertain, incremental and gradually revised, and should be open to debate

You emphasise the significance of a post-publication debate. The other pole of a post-publication article’s trajectory can be a post-publication lawsuit. As, for instance, in this case, where two leading Holocaust historians were accused of defamation. Should courts be places for validating scientific evidence?

I do not think courts are a suitable place for making decisions on scientific debates. It is hard to think of examples where such lawsuits have been helpful, and they appear to most often been dismissed or withdrawn. In 2017, for example, an academic sued the US National Academy of Sciences over a study the criticized his claims over green energy, demanding more than $10 million in damages and retraction, but he ultimately withdrew the lawsuit and may be liable to pay legal costs.

MORE

Article: Skrede Gleditsch K. (2021), Houston, We Have a Problem: Enhancing Academic Freedom and Transparency in Publishing Through Post-Publication Debate, Political Studies Review 2021, Vol. 19(3) 428–434

ABOUT

Kristian Skrede Gleditsch is the Regius Professor of Political Science in the Department of Government at the University of Essex and a research associate at the International Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO). His research focuses on conflict, democratization, mobilization, and data development in conflict research. More information about his research can be found at http://ksgleditsch.com/. He has been the chair of the Academic Freedom Committee of the International Studies Association, 2018–2020

Questions and production

Dr Eliza Kania, Brunel University London

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