Next events:

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Wednesday 29th November 2023 (16:00-17:30):

Democratic Resilience in Latin America: Contemporary Argentina, Brazil, and Peru in comparison [online]

Join us for this special panel organized as part of the activities of the REPRESENT network of scholars from the Universities of Nottingham and Birmingham to discuss contemporary challenges to democracy in Latin America and the measures taken to address them from a comparative perspective. What challenges emerge when anti-establishment politicians win elections and when presidents attempt to undermine democracy? How do civil society, legislatures, opposition, and the judiciary respond to such efforts? The panel blends together perspectives from scholars and a leading journalist to explore the political dynamics in Brazil, Argentina and Guatemala, reflecting on the presidential elections in Argentina, President Bolsonaro’s attempts to dismantle democracy and maintain power, and the substantial obstacles faced by President Arevalo since assuming office.  

Speakers:

• Rachel Schwartz (University of Oklahoma)
• Jorge Liotti (La Nación)
• Manoel Gehrke (University of Birmingham)

Chair: Tim Haughton (University of Birmingham)

Convenor: Manoel Gehrke (University of Birmingham)

This event will be held online. Click here to register.

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Wednesday 6th December 2023 (16:00-17:30):

Centrist Anti-Establishment Parties and their Struggle for Survival [online]

Join us for this special seminar organized as part of the activities of the REPRESENT network of scholars from the Universities of Nottingham and Birmingham to discuss Sarah Engler’s new book exploring the fate of anti-establishment parties in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Drawing on the experience of more than 100 parties across the CEE region including some of the more frequently neglected cases of Latvia, Lithuania and Slovenia, Sarah Engler provides an account of why a few anti-establishment parties survive and thrive, but many do not.

Speaker: Sarah Engler (Leuphana University Lüneburg)

Discussants: Sean Hanley (University College London) and Natascha Neudorfer (Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf)

Chair and Convenor: Tim Haughton (University of Birmingham)

This event will be held online. Click here to register.

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Tuesday 13th February 2024 (15:00-16:30):

Why Norms Matter: The Normalization of the Radical Right [hybrid]

REPRESENT welcomes Dr Vicente Valentim (University of Oxford) to present new work on the radical right.

Why are democratic citizens increasingly willing to engage in radical-right behavior, such as voting for radical-right candidates or participating in xenophobic protests? Against previous research, I argue that this is not due to an increase in radical-right preferences among the electorate. Instead, these processes are driven by individuals who had long held radical-right views, but who hid them because they thought they were socially unacceptable. If these voters do not show their views, politicians underestimate how much latent support there is for radical-right policy. This makes radical-right candidates worse quality. If better politicians run for politics with a radical-right platforms, however, they are able to mobilize this muted support for radical-right views, becoming electorally successful. This electoral success, in turn, makes individuals perceive that norms against radical-right behavior are weaker. Radical-right individuals become more comfortable showing their views, and more politicians join the radical right. The argument of the book makes us rethink how political preferences translate into behavior, shows how social norms affect the interaction of political supply and demand, and highlights how a political culture that promotes inclusion can erode.

This event will be held as a hybrid: in Monica Partridge C12 (University of Nottingham, University Park Campus) and Online. Please indicate your preferred mode of attendance here: Registration.

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Wednesday 21st February 2024 (14:30-16:00):

Participation, Gender, and Legitimacy in Party Leader Selection [hybrid]

REPRESENT welcomes Dr Zeynep Somer-Topcu (University of Texas) to give a guest lecture on her new work on participation, gender, and legitimacy in party leader selection.

Previous research has shown that expanding the leadership selectorate to include party members and having competitive leadership elections have a number of short-term benefits for a political party (Cozza and Somer-Topcu 2021). However, while we know that inclusive and competitive selections for party leadership help the party and improve procedural evaluations, we do not know how inclusive and competitive elections affect leader evaluations, and particularly for this paper, how the inclusive election procedure and the competitive leadership elections affect the substantive legitimacy evaluations of women leaders compared to men. We examine the gendered effects of selection details for party leadership with a conjoint experiment in the UK and show that women benefit more from inclusive and competitive leadership elections.

The guest lecture will be held as a hybrid: in Monica Partridge E04 (University of Nottingham, University Park Campus) and Online. Please indicate your preferred mode of attendance here: Registration.