Straddling the divide: mainstream populism and conservatism in Howard's Australia and Harper's Canada

Snow, Dave; Moffitt, Benjamin

doi:10.1080/14662043.2012.692922

Cited by 42 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…The fact that populist performances of crisis and other modes of 'crisis politics' in contemporary democracies share a number of commonalities should not come as a surprise, given that many authors have noted the interrelated nature of populism and democracy, with populism being viewed as an 'internal periphery' (Arditi 2007), 'mirror' (Panizza 2005) or 'spectre' (Albertazzi and McDonnell 2008) of democracy. Similarly, a number of authors (Mazzoleni 2008;Mondon 2013;Snow and Moffitt 2012) have noted the ways that populism is becoming increasingly 'mainstreamed' in contemporary democratic politics, indicating that populist and more 'mainstream' forms of politics can have much in common. However, just as we do not identify all democratic politics as inherently populist just because they share the same language of 'the people' at times, neither should we collapse populist performances of crisis with all forms of 'crisis politics' because they share some features.…”

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confidence: 99%

How to Perform Crisis: A Model for Understanding the Key Role of Crisis in Contemporary Populism

Moffitt¹

2014

Gov. & oppos.

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388

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A focus on crisis is a mainstay of the literature on contemporary populism. However, the links between populism and crisis remain under-theorized and undeveloped. This article puts forward a novel perspective for understanding this relationship, arguing that crisis does not just trigger populism, but that populism also attempts to act as a trigger for crisis. This is because crises are always mediated and 'performed'. The article presents a six-step model of how populist actors 'perform' crisis, drawing on empirical examples from Europe, Latin America, North America and the Asia-Pacific region. It explains how the performance of crisis allows populist actors to pit 'the people' against a dangerous other, radically simplify the terrain of political debate and advocate strong leadership. It ultimately suggests that we should move from thinking of crisis as something purely external to populism, towards thinking about the performance of crisis as an internal core feature of populism.

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confidence: 99%

How to Perform Crisis: A Model for Understanding the Key Role of Crisis in Contemporary Populism

Moffitt¹

2014

Gov. & oppos.

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388

179

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“…Mass parties who attempt to engage the electorate through consultation and participation are uncommon. In recent years, the protagonist of political marketing has been the Conservative Party of Canada, which has availed of market research to promote a style of mainstream populism in the mold of the John Howard's Liberal Party in Australia (Snow & Moffitt, ). This has included a diligent concentration of marketing targeted at marginal ridings and flexible partisans (Flanagan, ; Paré & Berger, ), a preoccupation with centralizing government communications so that they are synchronized with the party's messaging (Kozolanka, ), and a disciplined style of media management (Marland, ).…”

Section: Investigating Political Marketingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigating political marketing using mixed method: the case for campaign spending data

Marland

Giasson

2013

Journal of Public Affairs

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This article is a response to calls for new research methods in the study of political marketing. We submit that the mixed method approach to studying how political parties use opinion research and political communication is underused. More specifically we believe that campaign spending data, which are commonly analyzed in electoral studies, can become a significant source of information for the study of political marketing. We summarize the availability of electoral expenditure data in 13 established democracies before using a mixed method design to study political marketing management in Canada. We seek to validate quantitative data about marketing spending activity by administering semi‐structured interviews with practitioners who held senior campaign positions in major political parties. Our preliminary look at campaign finance through a political marketing scholarship lens reveals the strengths of drawing insights from such data but also some limitations. We conclude that, as other research has posited, Canadian political parties focus more on advertising in their approach to campaigning. More broadly, we propose that students of political marketing should balance proprietary interviews with transparent, standardized, replicable and objective sources of information such as campaign spending data, and vice‐versa. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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“…Yet, in both cases, governments have generally adhered to the guidelines of international financial organizations, with Greece even managing to achieve an unprecedented primary surplus, checking almost every box in the list of fiscally orthodox reforms. Outside Europe, the case of Shinawatra's Thai Rak Thai Party was another instance of a healthy economy under populist rule, and so was Canada under Stephen Harper and Australia under John Howard (Snow and Moffitt 2012). Should we, succumbing to the policy bias, retract the populist qualification from all these famous cases?…”

Section: The Policy Biasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Avoiding Bias in the Study of Populism

Aslanidis

2017

Chin. Polit. Sci. Rev.

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The comparative study of populism has produced a wide spectrum of scholarship that covers different regions and historical periods. However, and despite significant breakthroughs in conceptualization and methodology, the process of scientific cumulation is hampered by the unyielding persistence of several misconceptions around the nature of populism, even in the face of repeated refutation by empirical developments. In this paper, I single out and discuss three main problems in the literature: the regional bias, the policy bias, and the normative bias. I argue that to protect the study of populism from the increasing threat of conceptual dilution due to sensationalist punditry and partisan scholarship, analysts should (a) avoid generalizing from region-specific perspectives; (b) remain skeptical of any association of populism with economic policy; and (c) refrain from exaggerating populism's impact on democratic institutions.

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Straddling the divide: mainstream populism and conservatism in Howard's Australia and Harper's Canada

Cited by 42 publications

References 32 publications

How to Perform Crisis: A Model for Understanding the Key Role of Crisis in Contemporary Populism

How to Perform Crisis: A Model for Understanding the Key Role of Crisis in Contemporary Populism

Investigating political marketing using mixed method: the case for campaign spending data

Avoiding Bias in the Study of Populism

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