After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the newly gained dominance of liberal democracy as a political regime was accompanied by a new dominance of liberal democracy as a descriptive language. Concepts of political science, sociology, and economics which had been developed for the analysis of Western-type polities were applied to the various phenomena in the newly liberated countries. Bálint Magyar and Bálint Madlovics from Central European University (CEU DI) argue that the language of liberal democracies blurs the understanding of the current state of post-communism as it leads to conceptual stretching and brings in a host of hidden presumptions.

Magyar and Madlovics present at Stanford their most recent book, The Anatomy of Post-Communist Regimes (CEU Press, 2020). It is a comprehensive attempt to break with the traditional analysis, proposing a systematic renewal of our descriptive vocabulary. The authors have created categories as well as a whole new grammar for the region’s political, economic, and social phenomena. Focusing on Central Europe, the post-Soviet countries, and China, their study provides concepts and theories to analyze the actors, institutions, and dynamics of post-communist democracies, autocracies, and dictatorships.

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During the past decade, many parliamentary democracies have experienced bargaining delays when forming governments. For example, after the Swedish parliamentary election in 2018, it took 134 days to install a new government, which is especially surprising since all previous Swedish governments since the 1930s have formed within four weeks. The previous literature has attributed protracted government formation processes to a high degree of preference uncertainty among the political parties and a high level of bargaining complexity (resulting, for example, from a high degree of party-system fragmentation). We draw on such theories, but we also highlight a feature that hasn’t received much attention in the previous literature on bargaining duration: “pre-electoral commitments.” We consider such commitments both in terms of positive statements made by parties about alliances with other parties and in terms of negative statements about parties that are considered “pariahs.” Pre-electoral commitments can reduce complexity in a bargaining situation by ruling out certain potential governments as viable alternatives, but they can also increase complexity in cases where the outcome of the election is different from what the parties expected: parties then have to worry about the electoral and intra-party costs that are associated with breaking commitments made before the election. We evaluate our hypotheses using a nested research design, combining a large-n study of approximately 400 government-formation processes in 17 West European parliamentary democracies (1945-2018) with an in-depth case study that is based on 37 interviews with leading Swedish politicians concerning the government-formation process in 2018–2019. This allows us to analyze the effects of pre-electoral commitments on bargaining duration and the causal mechanisms that explain these effects.

Jan Teorell, Professor of Political Science and holder of the Lars Johan Hierta professorial chair, received his PhD in 1998 from the Department of Government, Uppsala University, on a dissertation on intra-party democracy. In 2004-2006, he served as Project Coordinator at the Quality of Government Institute, Göteborg University, responsible for creating the Quality of Government Dataset (www.qog.pol.gu.se), which won the Lijphart, Przeworski, Verba Award for Best Dataset by the APSA Comparative Politics Section at the 2009 Annual Meetings (together with Bo Rothstein and Sören Holmberg), and the Varieties of Democracy dataset (www.v-dem.net), which won the same award in 2016 (together with a large international research team). His research interests include political methodology, history, Swedish and comparative politics, comparative democratization, corruption, and state making.

In many countries around the world, women's enfranchisement marked the single largest expansion in the eligible electorate. In Belgium, Canada, Switzerland, and Germany, the electorate more than doubled once women could vote, while in countries that rolled out women's suffrage gradually, such as the UK and Norway, even the second smaller reforms saw the electorate grow by more than a third. The sheer size of the expansion had the potential to transform electoral politics, a prospect that provoked optimism and fear alike: for those who fought for women’s suffrage, the victory brought legitimacy and new beginnings; yet for those who fought against, the reform heralded instability. Did women's suffrage transform electoral politics for good or for bad? Did it increase electoral instability? Did women favor particular parties?

Prominent theories of post-suffrage politics suggest either that women would vote conservatively, or that women's voting power would be vitiated by their reluctance to turn out. Leveraging fine grained municipal level data from Sweden, which includes turnout figures separated by sex, to examine the impact of women's suffrage on electoral politics, we argue that the geography of the gender gap, both in terms of turnout and vote choice, jointly determine the impact of women's votes. Using three methods to estimate the gender vote gap, we find that in cities, women were slightly more likely to vote for the left than men. Although women turned out at lower rates than men overall, their concentration in cities produced a national gender vote gap for the left. These findings, which highlight how diversity among women and electoral geography produce electoral outcomes, complicate longstanding theories about the "traditional" gender voting gap.

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* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

Seminar Recording:  https://youtu.be/Mwjn39S48rE

About the Event: NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg will speak about how the transatlantic alliance is adapting to change in this turbulent period.  President Biden has clearly signaled that he is resolved to reach out to the NATO allies, working to repair the trans-Atlantic bond. To strengthen the bond between America and Europe and prepare the alliance for the future, the Secretary General has launched the NATO 2030 initiative.  This includes proposals on how NATO can better harness technology and innovation, tackle the security implications of climate change, and help make our societies more resilient. While NATO must continue to deter and defend against Russia, it is also keeping channels open to Moscow. The rise of China presents both challenges and opportunities that NATO has started to address. And missions in Afghanistan and Iraq are on the cusp of change, with decisions underway about what role NATO will play in the future. All in all, an exciting time to hear from NATO’s Secretary General.

This event is co-sponsored with The Europe Center.

About the Speaker: 

Jens Stoltenberg became NATO Secretary General in October 2014, following a distinguished international and domestic career. As a former Prime Minister of Norway and UN Special Envoy, Mr. Stoltenberg has been a strong supporter of greater global and transatlantic cooperation. Mr. Stoltenberg’s mandate as NATO Secretary General has been extended until the end of September 2022.

Under Mr. Stoltenberg’s leadership, NATO has responded to a more challenging security environment by implementing the biggest reinforcement of its collective defence since the Cold War, increasing the readiness of its forces and deploying combat troops in the eastern part of the Alliance. He believes in credible deterrence and defence while maintaining dialogue with Russia. He has also advocated for increased defence spending and better burden sharing within the Alliance, and a greater focus on innovation. NATO has also stepped up its efforts in the fight against terrorism. He strongly supports a partnership approach, with cooperation between NATO and the European Union reaching unprecedented levels.

Before coming to NATO, he was the UN Special Envoy on Climate Change from 2013 to 2014. He has also chaired UN High-level Panels on climate financing and the coherence between development, humanitarian assistance and environmental policies.

As Prime Minister of Norway, Mr. Stoltenberg increased the defence spending and transformed the Norwegian armed forces with new high-end capabilities and investments. He also signed an agreement with Russia on establishing maritime borders in the Barents and Polar Sea, ending a 30-years dispute.

Mr. Stoltenberg was also Prime Minister during the deadly terrorist attacks, which killed 77 people in Oslo and Utøya on 22 July 2011, urging in response, “more democracy, more openness, and more humanity, but never naïvete”.

Mr Stoltenberg holds a postgraduate degree in Economics from the University of Oslo. After graduating in 1987, he held a research post at the National Statistical Institute of Norway, before embarking on a career in Norwegian politics.

• 2005-2013: Prime Minister of Norway
• 2002-2014: Leader of the Norwegian Labor Party
• 2000-2001: Prime Minister of Norway
• 1996-1997: Minister of Finance
• 1993-1996: Minister of Industry and Energy
• 1991-2014: Member of Parliament
• 1990-1991: State Secretary at the Ministry of the Environment
• 1985-1989: Leader of the Norwegian Labour Youth

Jens Stoltenberg was born in Oslo on 16 March 1959. He is married to Ingrid Schulerud. They have two grown-up children.

Populist radical right parties are more successful in some areas than others. However, when trying to explain geographical patterns of support for the populist radical right, similar outcomes in otherwise different contexts and different outcomes in otherwise similar contexts can be observed. In this paper, we show that this paradox can be understood when we examine how citizens are affected differently by the context in which they live. Using a unique dataset containing geocoded survey data and contextual data from four countries (DE, FR, NL and UK), we demonstrate that mediating and moderating variables, such a perceptions of local decline and education level shape the relationship between contextual development such as the increasing presence of immigrants, on the one hand, and populist and nativism attitudes and PRR support, on the other hand.
 

A draft copy of this research paper may be downloaded by using the link provided below under "Event Materials".

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Sarah L. de Lange is Professor by special appointment at the Department of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam, where she holds the Dr. J.M. Den Uyl chair. Her research interests include societal cleavages, political parties, and extremism, populism, and radicalism. Her recent research projects focus on the emergence of new political oppositions in Europe on that basis of, amongst others, geographical, generational, and educational divides. She has recently concluded the collaborative international project Sub-National Context and Radical Right Support in Europe (supported by an ORA grant) and is currently co-directing the research project Generational Differences in Determinants of Party Choice (supported by an NWO grant). Her co-edited volume Radical Right-Wing Populist Parties in Western Europe: Into the Mainstream?, which appeared with Routledge in 2016, analyses the extent to which radical right-wing populist parties have become part of mainstream politics, as well as the factors and conditions which facilitate this trend.

Co-Sponsored by the Global Populisms Project.