What are the consequences of globalization for the structure of political conflicts in Western Europe? How are political conflicts organized and articulated in the twenty-first century? And how does the transformation of territorial boundaries affect the scope and content of political conflicts? This book sets out to answer these questions by analyzing the results of a study of national and European electoral campaigns, protest events and public debates in six West European countries. While the mobilization of the losers in the processes of globalization by new right populist parties is seen to be the driving force of the restructuring of West European politics, the book goes beyond party politics. It attempts to show how the cleavage coalitions that are shaping up under the impact of globalization extend to state actors, interest groups and social movement organizations, and how the new conflicts are framed by the various actors involved.

No abstract

measuring immigration policies: the impic database marc helbling a,b, * , liv bjerre b , friederike römer b and malisa zobel c

In the last decade, researchers have developed many innovative ideas for the construction of indices measuring immigration policies. Methodological considerations have, however, been largely absent from the discussion. To close this gap, this paper investigates the characteristics of existing indices by critically comparing and discussing them. We start by providing a definition of immigration policy which may serve as a benchmark when assessing the indices. By means of the analytical framework developed by Munck and Verkuilen (2002), which we adapt and customize for our analysis, we then evaluate the conceptualization, measurement, and aggregation, as well as the empirical scope of thirteen immigration policy indices. We discuss methodological strengths and weaknesses of the indices, how these affect the research questions that can be answered and what the next steps in index building within the field of immigration policy should be.

ReuseUnless indicated otherwise, fulltext items are protected by copyright with all rights reserved. The copyright exception in section 29 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 allows the making of a single copy solely for the purpose of non-commercial research or private study within the limits of fair dealing. The publisher or other rights-holder may allow further reproduction and re-use of this version -refer to the White Rose Research Online record for this item. Where records identify the publisher as the copyright holder, users can verify any specific terms of use on the publisher's website. TakedownIf you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing eprints@whiterose.ac.uk including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. arXiv:0708.2357v2 [gr-qc] 1 Nov 2007Soliton and black hole solutions of su(N) Einstein-Yang-Mills theory in anti-de Sitter space We present new soliton and hairy black hole solutions of su(N ) Einstein-Yang-Mills theory in asymptotically anti-de Sitter space. These solutions are described by N +1 independent parameters, and have N − 1 gauge field degrees of freedom. We examine the space of solutions in detail for su(3) and su(4) solitons and black holes. If the magnitude of the cosmological constant is sufficiently large, we find solutions where all the gauge field functions have no zeros. These solutions are of particular interest because we anticipate that at least some of them will be linearly stable.

No abstract

With the recent upsurge of populism in developed and transition democracies, researchers have started measuring it as an attitude. Several scales have been proposed for this purpose. However, there is little direct comparison between the available alternatives. Scholars who wish to measure populist attitudes have little information available to help select the best scale for their purposes. In this article, we directly compare seven populist attitudes scales from multiple perspectives: conceptual development, questionnaire design, dimensionality, information, cross-national validity, and external validity. We use original survey data collected online from nine countries in Europe and the Americas, with around 250 participants per country, in which all seven batteries of questions were present. Results show that most scales have important methodological and validity limitations in at least one of the dimensions tested, and should not be used for cross-national comparative research. We recommend populist attitudes items that work better at capturing populism, and more generally provide guidelines for researchers who want to compare different scales that supposedly measure the same construct.

Employing a comparative experimental design drawing on over 18,000 interviews across eleven countries on four continents, this article revisits the discussion about the economic and cultural drivers of attitudes towards immigrants in advanced democracies. Experiments manipulate the occupational status, skin tone and national origin of immigrants in short vignettes. The results are most consistent with a Sociotropic Economic Threat thesis: In all countries, higher-skilled immigrants are preferred to their lower-skilled counterparts at all levels of native socio-economic status (SES). There is little support for the Labor Market Competition hypothesis, since respondents are not more opposed to immigrants in their own SES stratum. While skin tone itself has little effect in any country, immigrants from Muslim-majority countries do elicit significantly lower levels of support, and racial animus remains a powerful force.The explosive rise in immigration worldwide over the last two decades has led to significant changes in the demographic composition of many developed countries. The political consequences of these shifts are profound, including the formation and electoral success of anti-immigrant parties in Western Europe, the passage of the UK's referendum to leave the European Union, and now President Trump's drive to dramatically tighten US immigration policy after his election in 2016. Debates about threats posed by immigrants have become a regular feature of election campaigns, and were especially prominent in the 2016 US and 2017 Dutch elections. Then, as for many years before, political rhetoric about the issue was rife with cues highlighting both cultural differences between natives and newcomers, and the potentially negative economic consequences of increasing immigration. The causal antecedents of mass opinion about immigration have received some careful attention, but comprehensive, comparative analyses are still rare, and most such attempts are survey-based correlational studies rather than experiments that can isolate specific causal mechanisms. One core debate focuses on the economic versus ethno-cultural drivers of opposition to new immigrants in advanced industrial nations. In this article, we present results from the largest systematic, cross-national and controlled experimental study of these explanations to date.