Month: August 2024

Abstract

In an audit experiment including all German Bundestag and Länder parliamentarians, the article presents an analysis of the question how political communication differs between parties when being addressed ‘privately’ in line or in opposition to their positioning in core issues such as climate change, migration, or the labour market. A content analysis reveals that the populist radical right and left create differing negative narratives about the actual economic situation. While the radical right AfD focuses on blaming government policies with drastic metaphors and insinuating malign ambitions of political elites, the radical left Die Linke criticises the economic elite to profit from economic crises as well as the political elite to play down economic distress. Differences in blame attribution can also be identified in the way both parties criticise official statistics: The AfD accuses the political elites of deliberately manipulating these figures while Die Linke brings forward a more constructive criticism. A quantitative analysis shows that the answers’ tonality as well as the effort put into writing a response does not mirror the parties’ issue positionings. Parliamentarians do not generally take the chance to exploit misinformation that match their positioning in a core issue. Contrary, it is shown that negative tonality and the spread of uncertainty is generally attributed to political communication at the political fringes.

Abstract

Agrifood scholars have long called for changes to the dominant food system, with the goal of making food systems more sustainable and just. This paper focuses on the ways in which recent and future food system shocks provide an opportunity for sustainable transitions in the food system. However, this requires strategic engagement on the part of alternative agrifood initiatives—agrifood niches—otherwise food systems are likely to return to business as usual. Drawing on the multi-level perspective (MLP) within the sustainability transitions framework, core themes that emerge from social science studies of disasters in agrifood systems are identified. These are summarized as resources, polices, and practices that can assist niches in transforming agrifood regimes in response to disasters. The results highlight that while niches are generally independent of governments, niches would be better positioned to engage in post disaster agrifood change if they have some pre-existing connections with local or regional governments.

Abstract

While populism has recently garnered much scholarly attention and media scrutiny, we know little about what citizens think of this phenomenon. We conducted surveys in Canada, the United States, France, and Italy to probe how citizens perceive populism and whether they self-identify as populists or anti-populists. Surprisingly, many respondents do not comprehend the term, equating populism with “being popular” or the “population.” Only a small proportion put forth definitions of populism advanced by academics and associate the term with people-centrism or anti-elitism. The ideational approach and populism’s “thin-centered” nature is lost on the average citizen. Both supporters and critics of populism frequently link it to charismatic leaders, suggesting that defining populism with a focus on leadership resonates more with the public’s perception. Those that self-identify as populists typically equate it with community, democracy, equality, hope, leadership, and giving a voice to the people. However, anti-populists are more critical, likening populism to demagoguery and extremism, and describing populist supporters in derisive terms.

Abstract

There is an appreciable divergence in views on racism among Jewish Americans based on their political affiliations, with Jewish Democrats being almost four times as likely as Jewish Republicans to perceive substantial discrimination against Black people. Through qualitative interviews with 30 Jewish adults across the political spectrum in the Philadelphia area, we analyze narratives surrounding George Floyd’s murder, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, and the ensuing 2020 racial justice protests. The findings reveal pronounced polarization: Politically conservative Jews, predominantly Orthodox, largely opposed the BLM movement, often employing “color-blind racism” to justify their stance. In contrast, politically liberal Jews supported the BLM movement, emphasizing its importance in addressing racial injustice. This study contributes to the literature on Black–Jewish relations by providing insights into the complex relationship between American Jews and race, highlighting the impact of both religious and political polarization within the Jewish community on matters of racial justice.

Abstract

Utilizing the theoretical lens of securitization and the Taiwan Democracy Ideology Securitisation conceptual framework (the TDIS), this article explains how the Tsai administration (Republic of China) transforms Taiwan democracy into the issue of security by conceptualizing Taiwan’s ideological security. In this study, I employ Tsai’s administration’s governmental discourses concerning the issues of democracy and national security to understand how political language and words support an interpretation of the social realities in which Taiwan democracy could be treated as a national security object.

The findings show that the Tsai administration conceptualized ‘ideological security’ to bring the issue of democracy security to the public. The conceptualization was handled in three main ways: forming Taiwan democracy as a dominant political ideology; spiritualizing Taiwan democracy as a political asset and revolutionarily ‘hard-earned’ achievement; and shaping Taiwan’s ideological security. Furthermore, the paper quantitatively demonstrated that the majority of the Taiwanese public agreed with the government’s transforming Taiwan democracy into ideological security.