Bartek Pytlas Profile picture
Jun 14 11 tweets 7 min read
🌟New paper & data #openaccess #PartyPolitics. Mapping party campaigns 2010-19 I show that to understand how thin ideas play into electoral gains of anti-establishment parties, we need to look beyond just populism @GSI_Muenchen @ExtremandDem @PopulismTeam journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13…
Populism has become a popular buzzword. Some approaches thus argued that we should drop the term altogether. I instead suggest that we should rather be mindful when applying it. So I don't argue that populism is irrelevant. I nonetheless show that it is not the whole story. 2/
We know we should not confuse populism with thick ideas, e.g. nativism. Thick ideas continue to be primary drivers of political contestation. I at the same time argue that parties can use more diverse *thin* ideas as an important auxiliary mobilizing tool in party competition. 3/
In the paper I thus look beyond just populism and analyse two further thin claims parties can use to contest how ‘true Elites’ and ‘good representative politics’ should be and work: technocratic expertise and a third, more prosaic appeal to extraordinary political vocation. 4/
Parties can use political vocation rhetoric to contest current politics by appealing not to the will of ordinary People, nor to extra-political expertise, but to extraordinary *political* will, skills and virtues seen as vital to revive formal-representative politics itself. 5/
The associated open-access dataset measures the salience of diverse thin messages in 142 social media campaigns by radical right, left and centrist anti-establishment parties (AEPs) + conventional ones during 23 elections (🇦🇹🇨🇿🇫🇷🇩🇪🇮🇹🇵🇱🇸🇰🇪🇸) 2010-2019. 6/
I find: while some AEPs were strongly populist, electoral appeals to specifically populist general will were in trend quite rare. On average, in the past turbulent decade AEPs prominently and increasingly linked the ‘People vs. Elite’ conflict with political vocation messages. 7/
AEPs which emphasized political vocation performed better electorally than those which used them less, ceteris paribus. Although conventional parties used political vocation to a comparable extent, they were less able to use this rhetoric to foster their distinctive reputation 8/
Anti-establishment or populist rhetoric played a role within specific AEP groups. Yet, the common denominator behind higher electoral performance of AEPs across the political board was not populism, but claims to revive a ‘true’ way of doing conventional politics itself. 9/
Naturally, thin supply isn't the only nor automatic explanation of AEP rise. But I show it is important to account for diverse and more prosaic auxiliary strategies parties use to contest politics, such as enacting to be the only ‘truly conventional’ party left standing. 10/
Very happy that the paper found such a great home #PartyPolitics @PaulDWebb1. Thankful to the Reviewers, to @Aaron_R_Martin, and to further colleagues at many conferences for their very helpful feedback. Especially grateful to my coding team in the @dfg_public project. 11/ #End

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More from @bartekpytlas

Apr 27
🌟New paper #openaccess. I map two-dimensional normalisation strategies of anti-establishment parties 2010-2019 and show how this rhetoric played into their broader electoral appeal @JournalPolitics @GSI_Muenchen @ExtremandDem @PopulismTeam journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11… 1/🧵
I argue and show that anti-establishment parties (AEPs) can actively navigate an image of both distinctiveness and ‘normality’ behind their substantive positions, and profit from their rhetorical strategies in terms of increased electoral performance, ceteris paribus 2/
I map rhetorical normalisation on 2 dimensions: mainstreaming and streamlining. Mainstreaming is used to enact broader AEP legitimacy as a ‘corrective’ to the practice of mainstream principles. AEPs use streamlining to enact broader credibility as respectable ‘counter elites’ 3/
Read 13 tweets
Mar 31
Today I release my new dataset on diverse thin ideas between populism, technocracy and political vocation in party electoral campaigns 2010-2019. The Thin Anti-Establishment Supply Dataset (TAESD) accompanies my forthcoming article in Party Politics.🧵1/9 osf.io/f23hm/
TAESD measures the salience of diverse thin messages beyond just populism in 142 social media campaigns by radical right, left and ‘centrist’ anti-establishment parties + conventional competitors during 23 elections across Europe (🇦🇹🇨🇿🇫🇷🇩🇪🇮🇹🇵🇱🇸🇰🇪🇸) 2010-2019. 2/9
TAESD captures anti-establishment rhetoric, people-centrism, populist general will, extra-political technocratic expertise; and what I term political vocation: appeals to intra-political will, skills and virtues seen as vital to revive formal-representative politics itself. 3/9 Image
Read 10 tweets
Nov 24, 2021
🎉New paper on organisation of PiS in Poland. I show it's vital to contrast what parties say and what they do about their organisational traits. I suggest we need more work on how (populist radical right) parties communicate about and perform organisation🧵doi.org/10.17645/pag.v…
During its succesful electoral campaign of 2015, PiS strategically toned down its radicalism. The mask fell down immediately after the election. Since then, the party aggrandised political power to the detriment of democratic principles and constitutional norms. 2/10
Interestingly, PiS enacted not only programmatic, but also organisational reinvigoration. It made overtures to some aspects of mass‐party‐like organisation and simulated a dispersal of power away from its Chair, Jarosław Kaczyński. Yet, in practice, little has changed. 3/10
Read 10 tweets
Feb 14, 2019
My article on mainstream accommodation of radical right politics by conventional gov. parties Fidesz and Smer, as well as counter-strategies of far-right ‘originals’ after 2015 is out (in German). Here a #thread with an English summary. link.springer.com/article/10.100…
I show that Fidesz and Smer did not ‘just’ adopt restrictive asylum positions but justified them with nativist narratives of defense/threat to ‘Nation’ from constructed 'Others' and ideas. RR originals, even in HU, were however able to react by ‘repackaging’ their nativist supply
The essay builds and expands on insights developed in my book which has received the Gero Erdmann Comparative Area Studies Award 2018 from the Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft @DVPW_Vergleich routledge.com/Radical-Right-…
Read 21 tweets
Feb 11, 2019
1. There are two issues with the approach: as others already mentioned, the way the items were combined causes problems with contextual/empirical validity. Second, the scale doesn't reflect the authors' own definition, resulting in issues of conceptual validity as well
#thread
2. As authors themselves note in Ch.7, the populism scale (anti-elitism and salience of corruption) doesn't reflect their definition (anti-elitism and invocations of vox populi). Why "populism" scale then? Especially as the operationalisation visibly impacts empirical validity?
3. CHES anti-corr item measures the salience of corruption as an issue, not broad rhetoric of "corrupt" ("distorted") vs "pure" ("genuine") politics. Thus, the way items were combined results in values cancelling each other out in some contexts. Not the fault of @ches_data
Read 7 tweets

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