Michelle Hale Williams

Can Leopards Change Their Spots? Between Xenophobia and Trans-ethnic Populism among West European Far Right Parties

Racism and xenophobia have fueled radical right-wing party electoral success across Western Europe. This article investigates whether key changes have occurred in radical right-wing xenophobia in recent years, mainly a moderating trend and a shifting out-group focus. The analysis in this article suggests such a 21st-century transformation. Radical right-wing party programmatic orientations have moderated and their appeals have broadened. The out-groups and immigrant enemies of the postwar era have been superseded, especially as anti-Semitism has been traded for anti-Muslim Islamophobia. Populism is explored in its potential causal logic for observed changes.

Weighing the Research Paper Option: The Difference that Information Literacy Skills Can Make

Requiring a short research paper in introductory political science courses can prove challenging for instructors, in part because of the diversity of student grade levels and majors in such courses. This is particularly the case with Introduction to Comparative Politics, as, at most universities, this course is not only required for the political science major, but often also fulfills multicultural requirements and can be used to complete lower division social science requirements. In deciding whether to include a research paper assignment in this course, one must weigh the benefit of catching majors early in order to begin building strong research skills, as well as the benefit of immersing students in key issues affecting the larger world, against the challenge of underdeveloped writing and research skills among the typical student in such a course. Another factor to consider is the grading load of reading large numbers of papers, given that most introductory courses have high enrollments. When choosing to require a research paper under these circumstances, then, one must also commit to working with students to hone their research and writing skills. In a collaborative, mutually beneficial partnership, college and library faculty can work together to identify ways to integrate information literacy concepts into course content and to design effective learning assignments addressing these important skills. This approach was undertaken by the authors, who revised a significant portion of the Introduction to Comparative Politics course at the University of West Florida to integrate information literacy activities in support of a semester-long, content-based research and writing assignment. This article explores using information literacy exercises as a tool to produce higher quality research papers in lower division political science courses.

Factors in Information Literacy Education

Information literacy has long been discussed in the field of library science but is only recently becoming applied in specific academic disciplines. This article assesses student learning of information literacy skills analyzing data collected from three semesters of the Introduction to Comparative Politics course. Variables such as major discipline, gender, class year, and grades on several performance indicators are used to identify key patterns in successful information literacy learning among students. Questions that drive this research include: How do major disciplines approach information literacy differently. Is information literacy discipline specific? Does gender affect information literacy aptitude? Do upper-division students still need information literacy education? Which students are most deficient in their pretest knowledge of information literacy? What types of exercises are effective in teaching information literacy? Through analysis of our data, we address these questions and isolate the most significant factors in student learning of information literacy skills. Our data suggest that information literacy knowledge is content sensitive. Not only is information literacy significantly associated with several performance indicators, information literacy appears to be discipline specific.

Using Simulations in Linked Courses to Foster Student Understanding of Complex Political Institutions.

Political institutions provide basic building blocks for understanding and comparing political systems. Yet, students often struggle to understand the implications of institutional choice, such as electoral system rules, especially when the formulas and calculations used to determine seat allocation can be multilevel and complex. This study brings together an upper level Political Parties and Interest Groups course with an introductory Comparative Politics course through two-types of interaction: discussion board and a face-to-face election simulation. We administer a pretest and posttest to gauge student learning as a result of the simulation. We hypothesize that, by bringing together two courses with different levels (upper division and lower division) and emphases in bases of knowledge, we are able to enhance the experience of the election simulation to stimulate higher degrees of learning across both courses.

Tipping the Balance Scale? Rightward Momentum, Party Agency and Austrian Party Politics

Austrian mainstream parties perpetuated one of the longest standing grand coalition governments across Western Europe. Over at least two decades, the balance of power had shifted firmly toward the ideological right. The post-war Austrian party system has lacked viable centre parties and has failed to produce a green party on the scale of importance of those of many of its West European neighbours. It does not have workers parties apart from the mainstream Social Democratic Party of Austria (Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs, SPÖ). The lack of depth or options for coalition-building on the political left in the Austrian party system has produced unique opportunities for coalition governments on the right in the early twenty-first century. Yet, Austrian parties on the right proved seemingly unable to capitalize upon such opportunities in order to entrench a right of centre bloc of power. Despite the break with grand coalition government in 1999 to form the coalition government between the Austrian Peoples Party (Österreichische Volkspartei, ÖVP) and the Freedom Party of Austria (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, FPÖ), the ÖVP–SPÖ government made a rather non-triumphant return in 2006 and again through snap elections of 2008. This article explores the difficulties encountered by parties in their attempts to capitalize upon the potential for sustaining a right power bloc by examining the strategic alignments and interaction between Austrias parties from1990–2012. It considers the trajectory of the parties electorally and in public office or opposition, examining the context and strategies employed at various points and especially as fortunes change. It argues that the Austrian far right traded the goal of policy for that of votes and later office, all the while becoming more domesticated and vulnerable to co-optation when in office. This led to party splits and some measure of party decline. Meanwhile, other parties including the ÖVP have suffered from an identity crisis adapting slowly to the rise of the FPÖ through the 1990s making strategic changes in the most recent decade to try and confront the FPÖ more directly.