Gerry Stoker and Will Jennings have recently examined the relationship between populism and the surge of support for UKIP. Some claim that UKIP are fast becoming the Teflon party of British politics immune from media exposure of scandals affecting it because its base reflects a value or cultural rejection of …
Last month’s YouGov poll showed that political dissatisfaction is on the rise, and is driving UKIP support. It also illustrated that anti-politics is not new. The fact that 35 per cent of respondents to a 1944 Gallup Poll felt that politicians were ‘out for themselves’ suggests that citizens have been …
The past few weeks have been very eventful. I have been meeting different people and associations in Villeneuve and I now got a voluntary workplace at a “Café associatif” in the “Centre des habitants” in la Villeneuve.
At Tuesday night’s Policy Network public debate, key note speaker David Farrell praised the value of Peter Mair’s pessimism about formal politics excellently expressed in Ruling the Void, but went on to ask five questions which might put things in a more positive light: 1. Were things ever really better? …
This week, we have been considering how we might address the challenge of combining a deductive focus on anti-politics with an inductive focus on popular understandings of politics. On the one hand, the project seeks to explain the rise of anti-politics and political disengagement that appears to have taken place …
Since the Fiestas del Pilar, my project has been moving along slowly but steadily. I have been to the local library to research the history and origins of the Jota and have enrolled in a Jota dance class, and attended a couple of lessons so far.
Gerry Stoker and Will Jennings’ previous research on anti-politics has stimulated discussion about the ‘spectre of populism’ spreading across contemporary European democracies in The New York Times, Reuters and The Irish Examiner.
It often happens to me that the answers to my most pressing questions are actually right under my nose. This was the case for my research project as well.