Matthew E Bergman
What motivates people in referendum voting? Advocates argue that they allow voters to express their sincere preferences on issues. Matthew Bergman and Gianluca Passarelli look at the Italian case. They argue that voting in referenda can be just as party-focused as other forms of elections Read more
Luca Versteegen
Luca Versteegen argues that specific emotions like nostalgia are not limited to populist radical right voters. We should therefore be more careful in ascribing emotions to this group, differentiating emotions and refraining from broad ascriptions like the so-called ‘left behind’ Read more
Kathryn Hicks
Kathryn Hicks and Sharon Stanley argue that the contemporary moral panic around obesity emerges from and exacerbates neoliberal tendencies that diminish democratic institutions and imaginaries. Given historical associations between race, gender and fatness, the ostensibly neutral language of health deepens existing lines of democratic exclusion Read more
Nick Vlahos
Nick Vlahos argues that to fully animate the data mountain that Jean-Paul Gagnon has amassed about the plurality and interrelation of democratic adjectives and forms, we must capture the way in which these variegated types of democracy enclose and open how the public can collectively govern Read more
Daniela Donno
Gender-washing regimes pay lip service to liberal norms, but reforms tend to be top-down and symbolic. To advance women’s rights, we need to pay attention to the question of how de jure legal rights can be effectively claimed and experienced by women, according to Daniela Donno Read more
Michael Hameleers
When facts are disputed and experts delegitimised, the term 'populism' may apply to truths and to untruths. Michael Hameleers argues that populist ideas are often strategically communicated to emphasise a divide between congruent truths and incongruent lies. This only serves to emphasise the idea of a divide between ordinary people and corrupt political elites Read more
Miroslav Nemčok
Postal voting is praised for its ability to lower the costs of electoral participation. However, Miroslav Nemčok and Johanna Peltoniemi argue that postal voting has its limits. If voters doubt their ballots will make it to the ballot box uncompromised, they are unlikely to exercise their democratic right Read more
Laura Jacobs
Social media play a key role in amplifying populist messages. The resulting misinformation, political polarisation, and the proliferation of hate speech, pose challenges for democracy. Laura Jacobs steps into the populist echo chamber Read more