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The organisation of populist radical right parties significantly shapes their long-term electoral success. Within this party family, great organisational variation can be found, with the "Alternative for Germany" (AfD) representing a least-likely case: in terms of candidate selection (CS), it ranks much higher on democracy scales than the other Bundestag parties. This paper explores the reasons for this high level of intra-party democracy (IPD) by focusing on three explanatory dimensions: ideology, institutionalisation, and party unity. Methodologically, we apply multivariate analyses of representative quantitative data collected among AfD members in CS prior to the 2017 federal election. The results show that high political dissatisfaction and low levels of institutionalisation are important drivers of inclusive CS procedures. Overall, the article provides a deeper understanding of the underlying attitudes for the AfD's inclusive IPD, and offers substantial theoretical and empirical implications for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political group formation in the European Parliament (EP) after European elections is a core feature of supranational party politics. The research objective of this article is to scrutinise democratic practices and the role of values, more specifically gender equality, in this political group formation. Complementing extant literature, this article engages with gendered political group formation as a dynamic process consisting of three intertwined layers, which are assessed by analysing formal and informal institutions around democracy and gender. The article draws on a unique data set of 130 interviews with MEPs, political group and parliamentary staff conducted in 2018–2020. The key findings of the article show that gender plays a role in each layer of political group formation, yet there are clear differences between political groups. By deciphering the reasons behind these differences, the article enhances the understanding of the political dynamics and struggles within the political groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study tests the explanatory strength of the party-centered theory of electoral campaign professionalism. The theory was previously subject to testing in various types of elections during the first decade of the new millennium, covering Germany, Austria, Sweden, and Finland. Nevertheless, empirical research in this field has been on hold for almost a decade, obstructing the development of the theory during a time when politics and political campaigns have taken new paths. In this article, the theory is revisited, presenting results from a unique time series study covering 48 party campaigns between 2009 and 2019 in three consecutive European parliamentary elections in two multiparty democracies, Sweden and Finland. Our results provide weak support for the party-centered theory of campaign professionalism in the form it was originally operationalized. Only a centralized party organization and a large support base with a catch-all strategy were found to be statistically significant predictors of campaign professionalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What happens to the anti-establishment sentiments of pro-incumbent voters for a populist force that is in government and thus controls the political system? This article examines this question utilizing the case of Turkey, a country in which a populist force has been in power for more than a decade. By analyzing populist attitudes among a nationally representative sample, we demonstrate that while the voters of the incumbent populist party (AKP) are less likely, compared to everyone else, to hold populist sentiments, the same voters are also substantially more likely to endorse conspiracy theories that center on malign foreign powers. This finding is relevant beyond Turkey, because it demonstrates that populist forces might be able to maintain popular support and thus stay in power for a long stretch of time by employing government propaganda to fuel an antagonism against conspiratorial foreign and global forces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European democracies have experienced drastic changes in electoral competition. Voter support for insider parties that have traditionally governed has declined while support for radical and populist parties has increased. Simultaneously, citizens' declining political trust has become a concern, as confidence in political institutions and actors is low across numerous countries. Interestingly, the linkage between political trust and support for insider parties has not been empirically established but deduced from the fact that outsider parties are often supported by dissatisfied citizens. We address this gap adopting both an institutional- and an actor-centered approach by investigating whether trust in parliaments and in parties is associated with the electoral performance of insider parties on the aggregate level. Combining different data sources in a novel way, we apply time-series cross-section models to a dataset containing 30 countries and 137 elections from 1998 to 2018. Our results show that when political trust is low, particularly institutional trust, insider parties receive less electoral support. Hence, we provide empirical evidence that decreasing levels of political trust are the downfall of insider parties, thereby opening a window of opportunity for challenging outsider parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By considering the Facebook activity of 52 party leaders during national election campaigns held in 18 Western democracies that went to the polls between 2013 and 2017, we study users' engagement with popularization and with populist leaders. Applying negative binomial hierarchical models on original data of party leaders' Facebook pages, we find that elements of popularization in leaders' posts are associated with an increase in users' acknowledgement (number of likes), decreases in redistribution (number of shares), while they do not affect discursive interactions (number of comments). Our research also shows that, irrespective of their content, messages published by populist leaders are more capable of increasing both acknowledgement and redistribution, while they do not generate more comments than those published by non-populists. Finally, we find that when populist leaders adopt popularization as a communicative style, they do not achieve any extra gain vis-a-vis non-populist actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aiming to critically review key research on populism, extremism and media, this article examines some definition aspects of populism as a concept, its relation to ‘the people’ and points to future directions for research in mainstream – and social media – the terrain where so much of the political is played out. An individualisation of civic cultures has emerged in tandem with the growth of mediated populism through the use of new technologies, with a tendency towards personalisation in the public domain. While the new technological affordances exemplified by Web 2.0 may have contributed to intensified forms of popular engagement, they have been less successful in promoting democratic values, as shown by the results of the May 2014 European Parliamentary elections. Thus, the question as to the type of publics that are ‘possible and desirable in present circumstances’ (Nolan, 2008: 747) remains valid, for publics can espouse anti-democratic values while nevertheless remaining ‘publics’. The fact that the link between the new media and right-wing extremism has been comparatively explored at greater length than that of a religious bend indicates the need to invest in the latter, especially due to home-bred Islamic terrorism increasingly seen as threatening the multiculturalism of various European societies. Several avenues for research are presented to this effect, with a final reflection on the challenge posed by new media to the concept of media populism, both in terms of the Net’s market logics and the specificity of its architecture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]