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Item When Do Authoritarian Regimes Use Digital Technologies for Covert Repression? A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of Politico-Economic Conditions(2024-06-24) Daminov, Ildar; Department of Political ScienceAlthough autocracies increasingly learn how to integrate digital technologies into their covert repression toolbox, it remains unclear under which conditions they succeed in doing so. While some technologically developed autocracies seldom use covert repression, other technologically underdeveloped autocracies apply significantly more covert repression. This begs the question: what are the necessary and sufficient conditions involving strong digital uptake leading to high levels of covert repression? The paper uses Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) to 83 non-democratic regimes and leverages the 2021 digital repression dataset to answer this question. The findings show that digital uptake interacts with a pre-existing history of overt repression. In-depth case illustrations of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan elucidate this argument. The findings also show two other “non-digital” pathways to high levels of covert repression, providing foundations for future evidence-based case selection investigating covert repression patterns in autocracies.Item Relationship between the type of media consumption and political trust in the European Union: Evidence from the 94th Eurobarometer 2020/2021 Survey(2024-06-10) Daminov, Ildar; Department of Political ScienceThis article analyzes the relationship between the consumption of different types of media and political trust, while also additionally contributing to discussions in several sub-branches of agenda-setting theories. To test the hypotheses, this article runs several linear regression models at the European Union, regional, and national levels. The European Union–level analysis is based on the 94th Eurobarometer survey data of 2020/2021. It is then further complemented with some country-level comparisons. The regression models account for various socio-economic and socio-political confounding factors. The results of the analysis demonstrate that there is a significant positive relationship between press consumption and political trust. As for social media, their negative effect is visible and consistent only when they are designated as the respondent’s main source of information. Other media types do not demonstrate a visible and statistically significant effect. This article’s findings, also through the country-level comparisons, provide new research avenues not only for quantitative research as well as for comparative case studies of individual European Union Member States.Publication Rolling Transition and the Role of Intellectuals: The Case of Hungary, 1977-1994(CEU Press, 2021) Bozóki, András; Department of Political ScienceUtilizing a new and original framework for examining the role of intellectuals in countries transitioning to democracy, Bozóki analyses the rise and fall of dissident intellectuals in Hungary in the late 20th century. He shows how that framework is applicable to other countries too as he forensically examines their activities. Bozóki argues that the Hungarian intellectuals did not become a ‘New Class’. By rolling transition, he means an incremental, non-violent, elite driven political transformation which is based on the rotation of agency, and it results in a new regime. This is led mainly by different groups of intellectuals who do not construct a vanguard movement but create an open network which might transform itself into different political parties. Their roles changed from dissidents to reformers, to movement organizers and negotiators through the periods of dissidence, open network building, roundtable negotiations, parliamentary activities, and new movement politics. Through the prism of political sociology, the author focuses on the following questions: Who were the dissident intellectuals and what did they want? Under what conditions do intellectuals rebel and what are the patterns of their protest? This book will be of interest to students, researchers, and public intellectuals around the world aiming to promote human rights and democracy.Publication Performing crisis to create your enemy: Europe vs. the EU in Hungarian populist discourse(2023) Sata, Róbert; Department of Political ScienceHungary has become the leader of democratic backsliding within Europe, with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán turning into the staunchest critic of the EU, despite a consistent support for the European project among the wider public and Hungary being a net benefiter of EU membership. Using a systematic analysis of all speeches, statements and interviews of the PM for his three consecutive governments 2010–2022, I claim the radicalization of this Eurosceptic discourse is a direct consequence of a continuous populist performance of crisis that demands the creation of images of friends and foes to unite and mobilize people. Orbán relies on discursive processes of othering to construct to his liking both “the good people” and its enemies, who are to be blamed for the crises. Anybody can become an enemy in the various crises that follow each other. At the same time, discursive conceptions of Europe vs. the EU remain in the center of the discourse to establish Hungary's European belonging as well as opposition to EU for policies that allegedly people reject. While the economic crisis pits an economic “us” against the former socialist political elite, foreign capital, and the EU and IMF that are all blamed for Hungary's near-bankruptcy situation. The refugee crisis redefines both “us” and “others”, the “self” is distinguished using ethno-linguistic criteria and identitarian Christianity to signal the cultural distance from the Muslim migrant “other” as well as multicultural EU. The pandemic crisis is performed only to further exacerbate the conflict between the illiberal “self” and the liberal “others”, where supranational EU, promoting multiculturalism, gender ideology or neoliberal policies not only threatens the very existence of traditional-national lifestyles but endangers the people themselves. With each crisis performed, newer and newer conflict lines between various “European self's” and “threatening EU” are identified, each adding to the radicalization of Orbán's discourse. The demonization of the EU and the pretext of saving Europe using these false discursive constructs enables Orbán strengthen his grip of power and drift to authoritarianism.Publication SetMethods: An add-on R package for advanced QCA(The R Foundation, 2018) Oana, Ioana-Elena; Schneider, Carsten Q.; Department of Political SciencePublication Does set-relational causation fit into a potential outcomes framework? An assessment of Gerring's proposal(American Political Science Association, 2012) Schneider, Carsten Q.; Rohlfing, Ingo; Department of Political SciencePublication Improving research on necessary conditions: Formalized case selection for process tracing after QCA(Sage Publications, Inc., 2013) Rohlfing, Ingo; Schneider, Carsten Q.; Department of Political SciencePublication Transparency in qualitative research: An overview of key findings and recommendations(American Political Science Association, 2020) Jacobs, Alan M.; Buthe, Tim; Arjona, Ana M.; Arriola, Leonardo R.; Bellin, Eva; Bennett, Andrew; Björkman, Lisa; Bleich, Erik; Elkins, Zachary; Fairfield, Tasha; Gaikwad, Nikhar; Chestnut Greitens, Sheena; Hawkesworth, Mary; Herrera, Veronica; Herrera, Yoshiko M.; Johnson, Kimberley S.; Karakoç, Ekrem; Koivu, Kendra; Kreuzer, Marcus; Lake, Milli; Luke, Timothy W.; Morris MacLean, Lauren; Majic, Samantha; Maxwell, Rahsaan; Mampilly, Zachariah; Mickey, Robert W.; Morgan, Kimberly J.; Parkinson, Sarah; Parsons, Craig; Pearlman, Wendy; Pollack, Mark A.; Posner, Elliot; Riedl, Rachel Beatty; Schatz, Edward; Schneider, Carsten Q.; Schwedler, Jillian M.; Shesterinina, Anastasia; Simmons, Erica; Singerman, Diane; Soifer, Hillel David; Smith, Nicholas; Spitzer, Scott; Tallberg, Jonas; Thomson, Susan; Vázquez-Arroyo, Antonio; Vis, Barbara; Wedeen, Lisa; Williams, Juliet; Wood, Elisabeth Jean; Yashar, Deborah; Department of Political SciencePublication Set-analytic approaches, especially qualitative comparative analysis (QCA): Summary of the final report of QTD working group III.4(American Political Science Association, 2019) Schneider, Carsten Q.; Vis, Barbara; Koivu, Kendra; Department of Political SciencePublication Macro-Qualitative Approaches(Oxford University Press, 2019) Schneider, Carsten Q.; Department of Political SciencePublication Set-analytic approaches, especially qualitative comparative analysis (QCA): Final report of QTD working group III.4(American Political Science Association, 2019) Schneider, Carsten Q.; Vis, Barbara; Koivu, Kendra; Department of Political SciencePublication Introducing the comparative study of electoral systems in Tunisia: Populist attitudes, political preferences, and voting behavior(Taylor & Francis, 2023) Mehrez, Ameni; Littvay, Levente; Meddeb, Youssef; Todosijevic, Bojan; Schneider, Carsten Q.; Department of Political SciencePublication Public discourse and autocratization: Infringing on autonomy, sabotaging accountability(Varieties of Democracy Institute, University of Gothenburg, 2021) Maerz, Seraphine F.; Schneider, Carsten Q.; Department of Political SciencePublication Welfare states matter for democracy: Income-based participatory inequality in post-WW 2 western democracies(OSF Preprints, 2021) Bosancianu, Constantin Manuel; Schneider, Carsten Q.; Department of Political SciencePublication What are the boundaries of this potential revolution? Exploring the shape of Mahoney's scientific-constructivist social science(American Political Science Association, 2022) Schneider, Carsten Q.; Department of Political SciencePublication The reverse impact of politics on the COVID-19 response(Routledge, 2022) AbiGhanem, Nassim; Hobaika, Zeina; Möller, Lena-Maria; Völkel, Jan Claudius; Department of Political ScienceWhile most intersecting analysis on the spread of COVID-19 and politics so far has attempted to unpack the impact of the pandemic on national, regional and international politics, this chapter argues that there is a reverse influence where regional politics has also shaped the responses of some governments to the pandemic, ultimately affecting the status of their healthcare system. Lebanon serves as a case study. This chapter draws on the regional political settings that affected Lebanon’s policy for battling COVID-19. Although Lebanon was initially lauded for responding effectively to the first wave of the pandemic compared to other countries in the region, its punctured sovereignty through Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah, caused more damage than publicly admitted. For instance, Hezbollah twisted the government’s arm into continuing flights to and from Iran despite Iran’s record number of infections. This allowed the virus to spread at a much higher rate. This chapter demonstrates how a regional hegemon burdened the host state of their proxies for the hegemon’s benefit.Publication An Economic Understanding of Populism: A Conceptual Framework of the Demand and the Supply Side of Populism(SAGE, 2022) Benczes, István; Szabó, Krisztina; Department of Political ScienceThis article assesses progress in the economics-centred literature on populism along three key themes and develops a conceptual framework to better understand the phenomenon. On the demand side (t − 1), economics research identifies the effect of an exogenous economic shock on a marginalised segment of society and works with the economic voting hypothesis. On the supply side of populists in power (t), in the literature, populist rule is typically associated with unsustainable expansionary fiscal and monetary policies and with trade protectionism. At t + 1, by using rational and biased belief assumptions, economists provide implicit inputs for a seemingly paradoxical question: why is a populist re-elected even if most populist policies assumably end up in Pareto inferior outcomes? This article summarises and criticises the relevant economic literature and shows that not only political science, but economics scholarship is instrumental for studying populism at all three stages.Publication The Role of Institutions: A Cross-country Analysis of Renminbi Trading in Foreign Exchange Markets(Wiley, 2022) Zucker-Marques, Marina; Da Silva, Pedro Perfeito; Department of Political ScienceWe explore how China's geographically targeted policies impact RMB overseas use individually or in combination. The policies include swap agreements, clearing banks, investment quotas, and direct trading between Chinese renminbi (RMB) and non-USD currencies. Adopting a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis and using Bank of International Settlements cross-country data on foreign exchange markets, we find that institution building has lowered the barriers to international adoption of the RMB. Specifically, for countries economically close to China, high RMB trading is explained by either (i) having a clearing bank in the host market and direct quotations between the RMB and the local currency, or (ii) being a financial center and having access to the Chinese capital market. This combination of policies is explained by the creation of (i) “trading posts” that provide RMB liquidity abroad, and (ii) channels that allow actors to “recycle” offshore RMB funds. We triangulate our results with interviews conducted with senior People's Bank of China officials.Publication Voters, issues, and party loyalty: The 2022 Italian election under the magnifying glass(Firenze University Press, 2022) Improta, Marco; Mannoni, Elisabetta; Marcellino, Costanza; Trastulli, Federico; Department of Political ScienceThe 2022 Italian election marked a historic victory for the centre-right coalition. This camp was spearheaded by Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy (FDI), with a solid performance of this radical right party across the country. However, considerable nuance emerges by looking at different aspects of the vote, which we do by leveraging original data from the pre-electoral wave of the 2022 CISE/ICCP survey. After recapping both the build-up to and results of the election, we employ this data on these specific fronts. First, we analyse vote flows between the 2018 and 2022 elections in three big cities in Northern, Central, and Southern Italy: Turin, Florence, and Naples. This analysis shows that FDI becomes more competitive in these traditionally unfavourable contexts, although less so in Naples. Second, we analyse data on the configuration of Italian voters’ preferences, which reveals an increasingly progressive electorate in an apparent contradiction with the election results. Third and final, we go deeper into the demand-side picture by assessing the role of sociodemographic characteristics over vote choice, presenting the voter profile of the five largest parties: the three main centre-right parties, the Democratic Party, and the Five Star Movement. Overall, the findings that emerge from our article enhance a more fine-grained understanding of this crucial election in Italy.Publication Fit for parliament: A new index of electability, assessing the electoral success of group-based parties(Taylor & Francis, 2023-05-23) Bochsler, Daniel; Grofman, Bernard; Hänni, MiriamThe openness of the political system for the representation of social or economic groups through their parties is mired in complexities. Extant scholarship has identified multiple electoral system hurdles that jointly determine the institutional opportunities for group representation: This article offers a simple metric to the institutional parts of the political opportunity structure for the electoral representation of social groups. A single variable summarizes the institutional opportunities for group representation, as determined jointly by electoral rules, the demographic structure of ethnic minority groups and their electoral geography. This new Index of Electability considers recent innovations in electoral rules, such as mixed electoral systems, legal thresholds or quotas, which occur in most contemporary democracies. Empirically, the index is applied to ethnic minority parties in 57 plural democracies worldwide. It shows that our index highlights the necessary conditions for parliamentary representation of minorities through their own parties. Contrary to widespread belief that many minority groups form ethnic parties, only one out of three ethnic minority groups worldwide which could, in principle, do so, actually form such a party.