After a subjective decade, the trial that could lead to a ban of the right-wing extremist NPD, Germany’s oldest surviving Extreme Right party, has finally begun this week. That alone is news: Last time around, a blocking minority of the judges was so concerned about the unknown informers within the party’s leadership that the proceedings…
A bit dated now, but still relevant: Showcasing our research at the Democratic Audit: That voters prefer to elect local candidates is a long-held assumption of British politics. Professor Jocelyn Evans’ research has sought to test that assumption. He found that the geographical distance between candidates’ homes and the constituency had a measurable impact on…
Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court has inched a little closer towards banning Germany’s oldest far-right party. After pondering the issue (and more importantly, the evidence) for a mere two years, the court has formally opened the proceedings that could result in a ban. A previous attempt to outlaw the NPD collapsed in 2003 because of the…
This week, I’m moonlighting at the International Association for the Study of German Politics (that is quite a mouthful). Click on the link below for the full text. “However, it is still difficult to assess what kind of party the AfD wants to be, and what they stand for. From its beginnings, the AfD has…
West European Politics has released a virtual special issue on (European) populist parties. The collection brings together a host of articles that were published in the journal over the last 20 years or so, including some evergreens by Paul Taggart, Cas Mudde, David Art, Sarah de Lange, and other chums. Disclaimer: My own article on…
No fees for authors and a legit-looking crowd of supporters. But why “Humanities” and not “Humanities and Social Sciences”? Still looks too soft for quantitative social scientists. The Open Library of Humanities is financially supported by an international library consortium. This means that we never have to charge our authors to publish with us. In…
Being part of the peer review system has a sadomasochistic quality. Nate Jensen’s story about how he had to submit a certain manuscript again and again to different journals to get it published eventually is all too familiar. I don’t keep records as exact as his (would be too depressing), but I remember a single…
Germany’s restrictive bioethics legislation in general, and its very tight rules on embryology and fertilisation in particular, present a puzzle for political science. Early on, the country has enacted liberal rules in other moral policy domains, most notably the abortion law of 1975 (Richardt, 2003: 113). The full range of prenatal diagnosis is available to…
“Cult of guilt” (Schuldkult) is a phrase that was coined in the early 1990s. It is a highly loaded term that is used almost exclusively by the NPD and other right-wing extremist groups whenever the crimes of the Nazis are mentioned. That Pegida would use that word, on that day, and that the crowds would cheer, is significant.