The increasing support for populism is indicative of a profound crisis in European societies. The prevailing cultural narrative posits that support for populist parties, particularly those of a right-wing orientation, is predominantly a reaction to the erosion of nationalistic and religious identities. A growing critique of supranational institutions became visible in some countries. In Europe, populist parties are growing, but Euroscepticism seems to show different trends. Euroscepticism is diminishing and trust in Europe has been growing since 2018 and in particular since 2022. Is there a lack of trust in the European institutions which is reflected in all political parties? What are the reasons for trust and distrust within the political parties in general and within the populist parties in particular? In most countries, the war between Ukraine and Russia is seen as an external threat to the European Union. Did the Covid-19 pandemic and the Ukraine war lead to a “rally around the flag” phenomenon, and is trust in the European Union increasing because of this external hostility? We found evidence of people switching back from populist to mainstream parties and becoming less Eurosceptic, hinting at a “rally around the flag” effect. The study focuses on panel data from voters in 10 countries—Spain, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, the UK, Sweden, Romania, the Czech Republic, and Hungary—from two waves, namely 2018 and 2023, as well as a cross-section of the 2023 wave. The main focus is on supporters of populist parties, which will be compared to mainstream parties. This study thus explores whether the Ukraine war reinvigorated trust in the European Union.

What makes populist parties successful? What is the contribution of populist ideas to their appeal? How do they affect a voter's choice? In this article, we treat populist orientation as just another dimension of spatial competition alongside economic and cultural dimensions, and assess its influence on vote choice. Using survey data from nine countries, we place voters and parties along the populist, economic, and cultural dimensions and estimate a spatial model of vote choice. We find that voters' populist orientations are negatively correlated with their pro-market orientation and positively correlated with their cultural conservatism. We also find that proximity along the populist dimension has a tangible, albeit varying, weight in vote choice. This means that populist appeal can pull populist voters toward populist parties (and non-populist voters toward non-populist parties) even if they do not perfectly align with them on economic and cultural dimensions.

The rise of populism in Europe has often been described as a response to representation deficits. Arguably, populist parties (1) contribute to the representation of underrepresented constituencies by taking stances that non-populist parties are too constrained to advocate and (2) make a promise of extreme responsiveness to those frustrated with the lack of representation. In this research note, we investigate whether populist parties are indeed closer to their voters in the policy space than non-populist parties and are more congruent with their constituencies than the other parties are with theirs. Using data from Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden, we find that populist parties are indeed often the best policy option for their voters, but the correspondence between their positions and those of their constituencies is on average as good or bad as that between other parties and their voters.

This article investigates the effectiveness of three different two-dimensional models in representing political competition using user data from the EU and I Voting Advice Application for the EU elections from 2009 to 2019. We test different ways of aggregating economic, cultural, and European integration issues to determine which configuration best captures voter preferences across all member states. Our findings show that combining economic and cultural issues into a left-right "super-dimension" alongside a separate dimension for European integration generally offers the most accurate representation across time and space. However, regional variations reveal that this model performs better in Western Europe compared to Central/Eastern Europe, where other models may fit better. To address these regional disparities, we recommend implementing more rigorous pre-testing of common items and considering country-specific or regional adaptations in scaling. These measures could enhance the relevance and precision of VAAs, ensuring they effectively reflect the political landscapes of diverse European regions.

First, this chapter develops original criteria – inclusiveness, discursiveness, and effectiveness – in order to map information and communication technologies' uses in consultative processes that can be used for other cases of citizens' constitutional reforms. Second, reviewing five constitutional consultations cases (Iceland, Estonia, Latvia, Luxembourg, and the German region North Rhine-Westphalia [NRW]), this chapter explores to what extent the opinions emerging online contribute to enriching the debate around the constitutional reforms and to what extent they were included in the consultative and law-drafting process. Not surprisingly, the inclusion is low and self-selection shows a strong bias. Organized interest groups, younger age groups, formerly engaged citizens dominate the online participatory process, which is, in some cases, compensated by the introduction of mini-publics. In most cases, online deliberation had an impact on the drafting of the process, even if it is more-or-less straightforward, depending on several factors such as the publicization on the debates and participatory instruments, the role of political parties, politicians, or powerful civil society organizations and media supporting these instruments, or the level of preparedness and quality of online proposals.

Zusammenfassung Crowdsourcing durch die Zivilgesellschaft hat in den letzten Jahren erheblich an Zugkraft gewonnen und sich auch als effektives Instrument zum Monitoring der Integrität von Wahlen in jungen und sich entwickelnden Demokratien erwiesen. Von Crowdsourcing im modernen digitalen Zeitalter wird zunehmend erwartet, dass es nicht nur die Beziehungen zwischen Politikern und Wählern verändert, sondern auch die Zivilgesellschaft einbindet und befähigt, bei der Überwachung von Wahlen durch neue elektronische Mittel von unten mitzuwirken, indem sie partizipative Räume (invented space) nutzt. Angesichts seiner wachsenden Bedeutung in Theorie und Praxis kann Crowdmonitoring, wenn es erfolgreich umgesetzt wird, dazu beitragen, unerlaubte Handlungen in Wahlprozessen zu erfassen und einzudämmen. Die Rolle, die zivilgesellschaftliche Wahlbeobachtungsorganisationen beim Einsatz von Crowdsourcing zur Förderung der Integrität von Wahlen spielen, muss noch ermittelt werden. Aus diesem Grund ist die Beteiligung der Bevölkerung über Online-Plattformen für die Überwachung und den Austausch von Berichten zur Integrität von Wahlen nahezu in Echtzeit ein wesentliches Element für eine moderne Demokratie. Dieser Artikel versucht, einen Überblick über die Zivilgesellschaft bei der Schaffung von partizipativen Räumen für das Crowdmonitoring von Wahlen und die Herausforderungen bei der Einführung des Crowdmonitoring von Wahlen zu geben. Der Artikel dient als Vorlage für zivilgesellschaftliche Wahlbeobachtungsorganisationen und andere Akteure, um fundierte Entscheidungen bei der Entwicklung von Crowdsourcing-Methoden für die Wahlbeobachtung über digitale Plattformen zu treffen.

Precarity is often evoked in discussions about the rise of populism, but there is a dearth of systematic operationalization of the sociological concept of insecurity in populist research. This study fills this gap by theorizing about and empirically linking work-related and financial insecurity to populist outlook and voting in ten European countries. We propose a theoretical framework that links insecurity, respectively, to populist attitudes (symbolic link) and to populist voting (instrumental link). Our empirical investigation of 10 European countries finds a positive association between work and financial insecurity and populist outlook (people-centrism and anti-elitism, in particular) in all our case study countries. Precarity explains votes for Radical Populist Right and Radical Populist Left in all cases except populist right voting in Poland, Hungary, and Italy. Among the dimensions of precarity, financial insecurity and insecurity of work conditions show a particularly significant association with populist attitudes and voting, while the insecurity of tenure provides mixed results. These results suggest that insecurity may have an effect on the diffusion of populist attitudes and populist voting. It also indicates that populist outlook and voting should be investigated by not simply examining the insecurity of tenure but also using measures of insecurity that capture the conditions of work and financial insecurity of individuals.

What is the role of referendums in different regimes from authoritarian electoral democracies to democratic systems? In this article we use the Direct Democracy Integrity Index to analyse the Turkish (2017) and Italian (2020) referendums to understand if they can be seen as contributing to majoritarianism or to consensus democracy, depending on rules such as who can call a referendum and on the integrity of the referendum itself and considering the misuse of the instrument by the executive especially in the initial phase of the referendum. Turkey and Italy are used as a most different systems design: a modern autocracy and a consolidated democracy are actually similar in their extensive and frequent use of nationwide constitutional referendums. We conclude that the constitutional referendum in modern autocratic Turkey contributed to majoritarian developments and strengthened the president, while in democratic Italy the referendum also offered incentives for minorities and regions to express dissent. Integrity was more problematic in the pre-referendum phase.

In response to an unresponsive government, citizens in Uganda have reacted by constructing their own spaces of participation from below. These bottom-up participatory spaces help citizens to escape the repression of regimes and counter their elimination by political representatives and administrative elites from decision-making processes. However, the participatory instruments from below seemingly threaten the regime's survival and the elites' hierarchies. Consequently, the use of bottom-up instruments in Uganda has often faced severe restrictions and control from the state through the use of online and digital communication laws. What is the level of integrity and fairness of digital policies and new online and digital communication laws in Uganda? The article profiles the monitoring of online instruments of participation by the state, and discusses the views of Ugandans towards the integrity and implementation of digital policies in Uganda.

Direct Democracy Integrity in Modern Authoritarian Systems Modern authoritarian regimes have implemented a relatively large number of referendums in recent decades. These have had important consequences for institutional change. Applying the new Direct Democracy Integrity Index to the Turkish constitutional referendum in 2017 and the Russian constitutional referendum in 2020, this analysis determines whether these plebiscites fulfil the standards of integrity and respect the rights of oppositional parties and minorities. We found that the level of integrity was lower during the pre-election period than during the election or the post-election period. We observe that modern authoritarian systems such as Russia (in 2020) use strategies of mobilisation, activism and even modern forms of deliberative democracy. However, their strategies are characterised by propaganda. In contrast, authoritarian regimes (such as Turkey) are still implementing strategies of repression which lead to passivity, disengagement and apathy. Both have strong implications for the integrity of referendums.

Constitutional referendums are important instruments at the end of numerous constitutional review processes. In recent years, these referendums are combined with deliberative instruments such as open forums, stakeholder conferences, and citizen assemblies. Constitutional referendums are also used in modern authoritarian regimes to strengthen the base of legitimacy of incumbent presidents. In the new Direct Democracy Integrity Index, experts evaluate the integrity in the different phases of the referendum cycle. In this index, citizen participation is one aspect in the pre-referendum phase. In this article, the Turkish constitutional referendum in 2017, and the Russian and Italian constitutional referendums in 2020 were analysed. The expert survey showed that referendums in the authoritarian regimes in Turkey and Russia have deficits of integrity in the pre-referendum phase. Authoritarian referendums often include symbolic outreach programmes and constitutional deliberation. But these crowdsourced constitutional processes are characterized by integrity insufficiencies. Nevertheless, the Italian referendum also lacks broad participatory instruments.

Representative surveys among local councilors in North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse, and Lower Saxony showed the enormous effect the Covid-19 pandemic had on local politics as well as the demand for more alternative digital participatory instruments. During the local election in North Rhine-Westphalia in September 2020, in Hesse in March and in Lower Saxony in September 2021, the pandemic showed both different levels and phases of incidents. More or less strict contact restrictions, obligatory mask wearing, tests as well as vaccination were seen as a hindrance and a democratic semi-lockdown by most councilors. Before the local elections, not only council meetings and local commissions but also party registrations, party conventions to prepare for the local elections as well as most civil society meetings were restricted. Electoral campaigning with direct contacts was nearly impossible. Tue survey shows that digital tools for the city councils’ information systems as well as online platforms for citizen participation were not sufficient alternatives and revealed numerous deficits.