Research focused on digital tools and the Global South has enhanced our understanding of electoral campaigning. Although big data and social media seem to be game-changers in contemporary politics, studies of data-driven campaigns highlight that the reality does not always match the potential. Moreover, research into campaigns in Africa, East Asia and Latin America has enriched our knowledge, underlining that digital campaign tools are at their most effective when combined with more traditional means of campaigning, when clicks are combined with mortar. Rallies, in particular, remain an important mode of campaigning given both the information conveyed by their physical location, and the popularity of the candidate or party indicated by the size of the crowd. Reviewing the advances in scholarship, however, highlights that despite changes in the modes of campaigning, the key ingredient of a campaign remains a clear and compelling message to mobilize and persuade the electorate.

The recent rise of authoritarian populist and far-right parties in Western democracies has raised concerns about democratic stability in these countries. While existing research often focuses on electoral outcomes, we argue this approach inadequately captures citizens’ regime preferences due to the complexities of electoral processes and national politics. To address this limitation, we examine the relationship between immigration and regime preferences through a democratization framework using structural equation modelling across 17 established Western democracies between 2008 and 2020. Our findings reveal a positive association between immigrant population rates, individuals’ authoritarian predisposition and anti-immigrant sentiments, with stronger anti-immigrant attitudes correlating with increased support for authoritarian governance models such as dictatorship and army rule. This relationship appears particularly pronounced among individuals with low authoritarian predispositions, underscoring the mobilizing effect of immigration. This research offers insights into the recent political landscape in Western democracies, contributing to debates on democratic resilience and challenges posed by changing demographics.

The radical right is now able to impose its personnel and its agenda as the ‘new normal’ for a different European Union (EU). Nevertheless, there is still a lack of research into how this normalization is circulated by radical-right members of the European Parliament (MEPs), eager to be part of the social world of the liberal democratic European parliamentarians. This process of normalization is investigated in this article by carrying out a critical discourse analysis of the argumentation used by radical-right MEPs to reject an EU regulation supposed to preserve press freedom, currently threatened by the radical right in many EU member states: the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA). The analysis shows that these MEPs have been keen to use a series of topoi to claim their embeddedness in liberal democracies, while mobilizing symbols and meanings revealing their autocratic roots and their willingness to redefine media freedom.

Democracy requires responsiveness. While empirical responsiveness research tends to focus on opinion polls, there are other ways elites listen to public opinion. Therefore, we need to examine those forms of public opinion that elites see and hear. This is explored through a dataset of letters to Australian Prime Minister John Howard, coded consistent with the Comparative Agendas Project. I find evidence of deliberate, systemic non-responsiveness in the political agenda (measured by the topics of Mr Howard’s speeches) to the volume of letters. Mr Howard knowingly, deliberately ignored this public opinion. There are, however, indications that the topics of the letters are responding to government announcements. The findings highlight the selective nature of elite engagement with public opinion. The study contributes to understanding political agenda-setting, representation and the institutional conditions under which public input is ignored. These results have implications for theories of representation and responsiveness in policymaking.

Do populist politicians use simpler language to get closer to ‘ordinary’ citizens? Current studies – both qualitative and quantitative – are divided on whether populist actors actually use simpler language. Analysing a large corpus of text of German parliamentary debates from January 1991 to September 2021, this article aims to resolve this controversy by measuring language complexity in parliamentary discourse. The article hypothesizes that populist actors use simpler language, following their ideal of a simplified world between ‘good’ and ‘evil’. The analysis, however, positively refutes that, and instead shows that right-wing populist actors use the most complex language. Left-wing populists seem to use somewhat average language complexity. At the same time, the study finds that language complexity decreased significantly in the German parliament over time. Additionally, this article shows that language complexity is context-specific and people-dependent. As such, this article also discusses simple language as a tool for substantive and surrogate representation.

Social democratic parties have contributed to the development of welfare state retrenchment in many European countries. While numerous studies have attempted to explain this, few have focused on how parties legitimize cuts, given that they are often unpopular with social democratic voters. Examining Sweden, we argue that the Swedish Social Democratic Party has developed a legitimation model that presents welfare cuts as a way of safeguarding the welfare state. This model has been persistently used since the early 1990s and is now central to the party's rhetoric. This has implications for how we should understand the ideological development of Swedish social democracy and suggests that it may be fruitful to study how welfare cuts are justified in other empirical contexts.

This article analyses the political speeches of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán between 2014 and 2023 by applying the ‘ideational approach’. Questioning the description of Orbán as a politician whose career represents nothing but opportunism and kleptocracy, the article argues that his politics are driven and underpinned by an illiberal political ideology. Examining how Orbán conceptualizes illiberalism in the realms of (1) Hungarian domestic politics; (2) foreign and global politics; and (3) cultural politics (understood in the Gramscian sense as a battle for fundamental values), this article offers a systematic analysis of Hungarian illiberalism and of the interrelations of its main ideological components. The article also examines how and why Orbán portrays himself not only as the authentic voice of the Hungarian people, but also simultaneously as the genuine representative of original Europeanness.

Political parties vary in their responses to electoral challenges, including the rise of populist competitors. To address these challenges, they sometimes engage with peripheral issues located outside their ideological comfort zones, and at other times they adhere more closely to their core policies. Although these patterns are well-documented, voters' perceptions thereof remain under-examined. This article argues that voters evaluate parties' claims not just based on the direction of their policy engagement – positive or negative – but also based on the commitment behind these actions, distinguishing ideological commitment from strategic manoeuvres. Employing a pre-registered vignette experiment, the article shows that voters differentiate responses to core versus peripheral issues, regardless of their personal agreement with the policies. Populist attitudes further moderate these perceptions, as voters with such views are typically more sceptical of parties' motives, limiting the impact of party behaviour on perceived commitment primarily to non-populist individuals. This highlights the importance of perceived commitment in elections and the constraints parties face in responding to competition.

The ‘inclusion–moderation thesis’ suggests that populist parties will be tamed by government inclusion. However, empirical evidence is mixed. We argue that this may be explained by different strategic contexts. We hypothesize that populist parties that rely on coalition partners will reduce their populist communication when they have credible government prospects. We analyse multiple years of political communication by two radical-right populist parties, the Swiss People's Party (SVP) and the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ). Although the two parties are rather similar ideologically, this is a most different systems design (MDSD). While the SVP is a typical governing party that was only in opposition once (2007/2008), the FPÖ is typically in opposition, with recent government experience (2017–2019). This empirical analysis focuses on these crucial periods. We find evidence of moderation before joining government for both parties in our pooled analysis. However, individual analyses suggest that this was much clearer for the SVP.

What determines why some protest events last only a single day while others can stretch over multiple days? This study presents the first cross-national quantitative analysis of the factors that shape protest event duration. This study argues that protest event duration is the function of factors that increase momentum (e.g. protest size, location and participants) while also examining whether repression attenuates such momentum. Using the Armed Conflict Location Event Data, this study employs two multilevel statistical methods to examine the factors that matter. First, the study examines the day-by-day factors that shape whether a protest will continue the next day. Second, the study examines the overall duration of events. The analyses find strong support that protests in capitals and urban areas, as well as protests featuring students, labour unions and professional organizations, last longer, while repression does truncate events.

How did the new Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) obtain 9% of the vote in the 2020 Romanian general elections? This article explores the fast rise of populist radical right (PRR) parties by examining the support for the AUR at the locality level in Romania during the coronavirus crisis. The AUR's discourse combined populism, nationalism and anti-masking rhetoric. The findings show great variation across the 3,181 localities, from 0% to 50% support for the AUR, and highlight the significant influence of local cultural and political factors, while economic explanations were not confirmed. The vote for the AUR was high in localities with low ethnic diversity and low voter turnout. This research underscores that national-level explanations obscure important dynamics of PRR support that take place at the subnational level. The rise of the AUR is important beyond the Romanian and European contexts and emphasizes the significance of local responses to global crises.

This study examines how formal institutions in hybrid regimes, particularly presidentialism, party organization and electoral rules, actively foster and sustain clientelistic networks, leading to particularistic outcomes. While existing literature highlights the weakening of formal institutions and pervasive clientelism as drivers of democratic breakdown, this study uses the concept of neopatrimonialism to analyse how formal institutions themselves consolidate patron–client relationships to maintain power and stability. Focusing on Turkey, the analysis demonstrates that the institutional incentive structure consolidates the president's role as the central ‘patron’, controlling resources and offices, and encourages clientelistic networks to coalesce around the presidency. The discretionary allocation of resources through patron–client relationships sustains neopatrimonial authority as long as clients' loyalty is rewarded. However, this governance increases clients' dependence on the patron, binding them at the expense of representation and responsiveness. The analysis offers insights into how such institutional configurations contribute to authoritarianism and particularistic governance in hybrid regimes.

This article elaborates the notion of hybrid repression, understanding by this modalities of dissidence suppression that involve state and non-state actors interacting in various ways, from fully autonomous to close cooperation. It does so by proposing a framework to scrutinize repressive configurations on the basis of three analytical dimensions – the perpetrator of repression, the tactics used and the threats perpetrators respond to – and using this framework to perform a systematic qualitative analysis of 160 in-depth interviews with human rights activists in four different countries (Colombia, Egypt, Mexico and Kenya). On this basis, the article analytically distinguishes and empirically elaborates four different patterns of hybrid repression, namely: state rogue, corporate, communitarian and non-state armed repression. Our argument challenges the state-centric approach to political repression that still dominates much of the literature on contentious politics and comparative regime analysis, and it invites further research on how hybrid forms of repression manifest and operate in different types of social and political contexts, and in relation to different areas of activism.

The purchase of commercial spyware by at least 43 authoritarian states has drawn attention to the links between the international private technology trade and autocrats. This article sits at the intersection of the literatures on the international relations of authoritarian regimes, digital authoritarianism and the political economy of authoritarianism, asking, what impacts, if any, do the foreign technology trade relations of authoritarian regimes have on authoritarian resilience? Building a four-mechanism model to explain the interaction between the private technology trade and digital authoritarianism, the article then tests the model on a case study of Iran. It argues that while global technology companies lack the ideological or geopolitical interests that drive the engagement between authoritarian regimes and foreign states, an intense overlap in interests still exists between profit-hungry private technology companies and technology-hungry regimes. This facilitates the establishment of mutually beneficial relationships that contribute to authoritarian resilience and survival, however inadvertently.

This study examines the intra-party mechanism that links right-wing populist parties' electoral performance in European elections and their persistence on the national political stage. Nationally marginalized right-wing populist parties have benefited from the second-order character of European elections since the introduction of the direct election in 1979. However, not every right-wing populist party has been able to turn its European victory into a national success. The most similar system comparison of right-wing populist parties in France and the UK shows that only parties that have strategically utilized the resources provided by the European Parliament have persisted in the national political arena.

This article investigates the relationship between intra-party leadership contestations on levels of satisfaction with democracy among party voters, trying to identify the impact of the former on the latter. The article draws on empirical data for a cross-sectional analysis from three different data sets that cover 11 countries, including a more case-specific analysis that utilizes panel data from Germany. Overall, the study aims to capture the dynamics of intra-party politics and the magnitude of its effect on perceptions of democracy among parties' voters. We find that intra-party politics at its probably most competitive version, that is elections for the head of the party, does not seem to exercise any significant influence on voters' satisfaction with democracy.

In contemporary Europe, far-right parties threaten liberal democratic principles such as pluralism, media freedom and minority rights. Despite the stigma they normally face, far-right parties have experienced electoral breakthroughs even in countries where they remained electorally marginal such as Germany, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. We advance the idea that this happened because the level of stigmatization faced by these parties decreased before their electoral breakthrough. Therefore, we form a theoretical framework based on a threefold mechanism: far-right parties manage to reduce the stigma they face because of a reputational shield or by moderating their message; the media help the far right gain visibility and legitimacy by accommodating its views; established parties accommodate far-right parties without ostracizing them. Then, we test the framework by looking at the electoral breakthroughs of four parties: the results confirm the expectations except for the role of established parties, which is inconclusive.

Many studies have analysed what could motivate centre-right governments to develop progressive family policies, given their historically traditionalist ideology. Updating classic institutionalist accounts, this article expands the focus beyond centre-right parties formally in charge. It argues that in coalition and minority governments, partisan veto players may act as agenda-setters, design policy reforms and successfully exert pressure to approve them through three mechanisms: agreements for government formation, conditions for government survival and bureaucratic continuity. Drawing on novel empirical data from interviews and document analysis, this article applies deductive process tracing to analyse the German parental allowance reform of 2006 and the Spanish 2017 paternity leave extension. The findings complement existing studies that focus on the agency of centre-right parties as ‘protagonists’ of these reforms, arguing that in some cases they have instead ‘consented’ to reforms proposed and supported by other parties.

This study investigates the link between non-liberal attitudes and adverse exposure to market disturbances during the 2008 global financial crisis, drawing from the premise that anti-liberal sentiments among Western voters stem from economic distress. We delve into three facets of liberal ideology in a Swedish sample: economic liberalism, liberal multiculturalism and liberal internationalism. Using variation in crisis exposure within identical twin pairs, comprehensive longitudinal economic data and detailed survey responses, we find no significant shift in economic or multicultural liberal attitudes with different crisis exposures. However, exposure to increased unemployment risk significantly lowered support for liberal internationalism, increasing scepticism towards global governance and multilateral cooperation.

How does the public support a coalition in which pro-democracy advocates and policy-based protesters join forces in street protests? When policy-based and pro-democracy groups protest together, they create a collective action frame that includes a policy component and a democracy component. In this article, I develop the frame salience theory, arguing that support for a policy–democracy protest coalition depends on which component of the joint frame is perceived to be more dominant. I argue that in authoritarian regimes, the policy component typically dominates the coalition because it is more accessible and available to the public. This perception shifts public support for the alliance towards the baseline level of support for the policy movement. In other words, public support for the alliance defaults to the baseline level of support for the policy movement. I find evidence for my argument using a survey experiment administered to 1,209 Vietnamese respondents. This article highlights a dilemma pro-democracy groups face: joining policy-based movements may boost support, but sustaining democracy after the protest becomes challenging.