Raul Gomez

Radical Left Populism during the Great Recession : Podemos and its Competition with the Established Radical Left

The 2008 Great Recession has altered party allegiances in many countries. This has been very visible in some of the countries hardest hit by the crisis, such as Spain. The Spanish case stands out as the only one in which a fully newly created radical-left populist party, Podemos, has attracted sizeable support. Its success is more intriguing given its capacity to attract many former supporters of the established radical left, Izquierda Unida. This article analyses what factors explain the support for the new radical-left populist party Podemos, identifying the individual-level features that lead voters to support it rather than an already established anti-austerity radical-left party. As the results show, Podemos supporters do not correspond to the conventional descriptions of populist voters, the losers of ‘globalisation’ and the economic crisis. Instead, a combination of elements – protest, anti-mainstream sentiment and unfulfilled expectations – distinguishes Podemos supporters from the established radical-left electorate.

Varieties of Radicalism: Examining the Diversity of Radical Left Parties and Voters in Western Europe

Radical left parties (RLPs) are diverse and several RLP subtypes have been distinguished in the literature. However, the degree to which these subtypes are linked to significantly different policy proposals has not been analysed, and little is known about whether subtypes are associated with differences in their respective voters’ characteristics. This article analyses the policy positions of RLPs across a number of issues, using manifesto and expert survey data, allowing insights into the differentiation between types of RLPs. RLPs differ in the extent to which they adopt New Politics issues, and the article proposes a classification of Traditional and New Left RLPs. Using cross-national survey data from the European Election Studies series and multilevel multinomial models, the article examines the ideological, policy and social differences in the electorates of the various types of RLPs. It finds socio-demographic and attitudinal differences between the voters of Traditional and New Left RLPs that are consistent with the programmatic differences of the parties.

Shared Identity and the End of Conflict? How Far Has a Common Sense of ‘Northern Irishness’ Replaced British or Irish Allegiances since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement?

Abstract Despite political progress in Northern Ireland, the polity may arguably only fully stabilise when its population regards themselves as ‘Northern Irish’ rather than merely as subsets of British and Irish parent nations. Power-sharing and relative peace since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement may have offered the possibility of the development of a common Northern Irish identity, to allow consolidation of a political entity challenged by sections of the nationalist minority since its formation in 1921. Alternatively, the consociational nature of the Agreement may have legitimised ‘separate but equal’ identity politics constructed on the British versus Irish faultline. This articles tests whether there has been a significant growth of cross-community Northern Irishness since the Agreement, capable of eroding inter-communal rivalry.

Why Does Alejandro Know More about Politics than Catalina? Explaining the Latin American Gender Gap in Political Knowledge

This article tests contextual and individual-level explanations of the gender gap in political knowledge in Latin American countries. It suggests that this gap is impacted by political and economic settings through two interrelated mechanisms: gender accessibility (that is, the extent of available opportunities for women to influence the political agenda) and gender-bias signaling (that is, the extent to which women play important roles in the public sphere). Analyzing data from the 2008 Americas Barometer survey, this study shows that the gender gap in political knowledge is smaller among highly educated citizens, in rural areas (where both men and women know little about politics) and in bigger cities (where women’s levels of political knowledge are higher). More importantly, the magnitude of the gap varies greatly across countries. Gender differences in income, party system institutionalization and the representation of women in national parliaments are all found to play a particularly important role in explaining the magnitude of the gender gap in political knowledge across Latin America.

The Economy Strikes Back: Support for the EU during the Great Recession

This article looks at the role of economic conditions in shaping peoples attitudes to the EU during the Great Recession. In contrast with previous research, findings suggest that in this particular instance support for the EU across Member States was affected by economic factors. In particular, both higher unemployment and higher interest rates were strongly associated with lower levels of support. Findings also suggest that young Europeans responded more strongly to adverse economic conditions during the crisis. Even though young citizens tend to have more positive attitudes towards the EU than older people, this difference has been significantly reduced in contexts of higher interest rates.

Factionalism in multi-level contexts When party organization becomes a device

This article provides a dynamic framework through which factionalism can be examined and the circumstances of individual parties compared in multi-level contexts. We discuss the interaction between factionalism and party structure by setting out a model of factional organization dependent on the tolerance of host parties to dissent and their degree of vertical integration, their combination yielding four possible strategies for opposition factions: centralized, inter-layered, multi-layered and decentralized. We also consider what implications there are for the party’s dominant coalition in episodes of high factionalism. These act as a catalyst for the modification of party rules that regulate dissent and vertical distribution of power. The hypotheses developed are tested on four Spanish political parties that differ on the autonomy of regional branches and factions, the competitive position in the party system and factionalism type – more policy or more patronage-oriented.

All That You Can(not) Leave Behind: Habituation and Vote Loyalty in the Netherlands

Scholarly work has pointed out that party loyalty develops with age. However, most of the literature has focused on two-party systems and employed party identification as the dependent variable in order to investigate this phenomenon. This article sheds more light on how this process takes place, employing a measure of party utility that is available for all the parties, and not only for the one that voters feel identified with (if they do at all). Findings suggest that preferences become more skewed toward the chosen party as choices are repeated, supporting the presence of some kind of habituation process in voting behavior even in contexts where the existence of multiple parties should in principle work against party loyalty. Moreover, repeated voting for a party is shown to partly explain the effect of age on loyalty. Habituation is, thus, argued to be essential in order to understand why volatility is strongly and significantly higher among young voters.

Bridging the enduring gender gap in political interest in Europe: The relevance of promoting gender equality

Notwithstanding the improvement in gender equality in political power and resources in European democracies, this study shows that, on average, declared interest in politics is 16 per cent lower for women than for men in Europe. This gap remains even after controlling for differences in mens and womens educational attainment, material and cognitive resources. Drawing on the newly developed European Institute for Gender Equalitys (EIGE) Gender Equality Index (GEI) and on the European Social Survey (ESS) fifth wave, we show that promoting gender equality contributes towards narrowing the magnitude of the differences in political interest between men and women. However, this effect appears to be conditioned by the age of citizens. More specifically, findings show that in Europe gender-friendly policies contribute to bridging the gender gap in political engagement only during adulthood, suggesting that childhood socialisation is more strongly affected by traditional family values than by policies promoting gender equality. In contrast, feminising social citizenship does make a difference by reducing the situational disadvantages traditionally faced by women within the family and in society for middle-aged people and older.

Red Europe versus no Europe? The impact of attitudes towards the EU and the economic crisis on radical-left voting

Abstract The 2014 European Parliament election saw a relatively large increase in the size of radical-left parties (RLPs), particularly in Western Europe. This article aims to provide new ways of thinking about the dynamics of radical-left voting by analysing the changing role of attitudes towards the European Union in explaining support for RLPs at European Parliament elections during the Great Recession. It is argued that the Europeanisation of economic issues during the financial crisis, together with the particular kind of Euroscepticism advocated by these parties, have enabled them to successfully attract a heterogeneous pool of voters. Using the 2009 and 2014 European Election Studies, it is shown that the effect of negative opinions about the EU on support for RLPs increased significantly during the crisis. In addition, support for RLPs also increased among voters with positive views of the EU who were nevertheless highly dissatisfied with the economic situation.

The limits of organizational innovation and multi-speed membership

The increasing introduction of organizational innovations has changed the notion of party membership. Some political parties now offer multiple kinds of formal affiliation, whereas others offer a varied repertoire of modes of engagement in party activities without formal membership distinctions. However, little is still known about the consequences of these changes. This article studies the case of Podemos, a party that has adopted a considerably innovative approach to membership. Through an analysis of Podemos voters and affiliates, we find that the gap in resources between members and voters recurrently found in the literature remains relevant despite organizational innovation. Moreover, we investigate how members make use of the expanded options of involvement offered by the party. Findings suggest that even in extreme cases of organizational innovation members can still be grouped into concentric categories based on the intensity of their involvement. These categories, which are consistent with the patterns found in traditional party organizations, seem to be explained by members’ ideological commitment rather than resources.