International audienceThis article engages in a comparative analysis of populist parties across the West-European left-right spectrum. Conceptualizing populism as a ‘thin ideology’, we argue that populist parties show both similarities and differences, and that these are a product of the interaction of the core features of populism with the ‘thicker’ ideological traditions from which the different parties draw upon. We employ a qualitative method in analyzing the core ideational features of populism in four different populist parties, both left and right. We find that all four parties converge in particular on their conception of the elite as a separate ‘caste’, in relation to economic and European integration conflicts, operating on patriotism and in claiming that they represent the true interests of the sovereign people. They differ, however, in their conception of the ‘true’ people that they presumably represent and the nature of popular sovereignty and populist democracy

Many people have been surprised by the eruption of ethnic conflict and civil war in Ivory Coast. The country had gained a reputation as a relatively stable and economically prosperous agricultural republic in a region known for ethnic conflict, economic decline and civil war. The underlying factors that have led to the ethnic violence, the flight of immigrants from neighbouring countries, and the division of the country into a predominantly Muslim north and largely Christian south have been known for some time. The country's property rights regime that encouraged easy access to a forest rent – as long as cheap migrant labour and virgin forested land were available – was a recipe for future conflict. As available land declined and labour costs increased, a cycle of sharpening conflicts over these assets contributed to the current situation of ethno-regional division and civil war.

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We examine data from the World Values Survey regarding the existence of two consistent orientations in mass values, traditional versus secular/rational and survival versus self-expression. We also evaluate the empirical validity of Welzel’s revised value orientations: secular and emancipative. Over the years, a large body of work has presumed the stability and comparability of these value orientations across time and space. Our findings uncover little evidence of the existence of traditional–secular/rational or survival–self-expression values. Welzel’s two dimensions of value orientations—secular and emancipative—seem more reflective of latent value orientations in mass publics but are still imperfectly capturing these orientations. More importantly, these value orientations do not seem very comparable except among a small number of advanced post-industrial democracies. We call attention to the use of value measurements to explain important macro-level phenomena.

The democratisation process which began in the early 1990s in many sub-Saharan African countries has led to renewed interest in the role of voluntary associations in the shaping of the political and social realms. This article maintains that the most effective way to understand the role of associational politics and developments in Africa is not by postulating what they should do according to Western democratic theory, but through an historical analysis of how associations functioned before the introduction of multi-party competitive elections and putative democratic rules in recent years. In this way it will be possible to attain a richer and more complex under-standing of state–society relations under one-party and military regimes, and thus of how these links are likely to change in a more pluralistic environment. This article explores these issues in the Côte d'Ivoire.

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Abstract Beyond the hopes placed in Africa's emergent middle class as an engine of economic growth, some analysts see this group as a bastion of political stability and enduring de-mocratisation across the continent. This paper's approach differs from that of most studies, which treat the middle class as a homogeneous group, through two key contributions. First, using cluster analysis, I propose a novel way of conceptualising social class that broadly draws on the Weberian idea of shared life chances. I apply this method to South Africa and identify five social classes characterised by their members' living standards, overall life satisfaction, and self-perceived upward mobility. Second, the empirical analysis reveals significant discrepancies in attitudes towards democracy between the downwardly and upwardly mobile strata of the middle class, which I term the "anxious" and the "climbers," respectively. On the one hand, the "climbers" show the highest generic support for democracy as a form of government, whereas the "anxious" middle class displays feelings of resignation. On the other hand, I find indicative evidence of a status-quo bias among the "climbers." Rather than assuming a more demanding or critical stance in politics, they allow their political priorities to be at least partly shaped by an interest in securing and expanding attained living standards; being upwardly mobile is even associated with a higher tolerance for government attempts to constrain freedom of information, opinion, or expression. Simone Schotte, M.A. is a doctoral research fellow at the GIGA and a member of the Globalisation and Development (GlaD) research training group at the University of Göttingen. In her dissertation she investigates the economic and political role played by the new middle classes in emerging and developing countries with a focus on South Africa. GIGA Working Papers 304/2017