Papers by Teodora Gaidyte
Government and Opposition, Oct 12, 2021
While debates about far-right populism often concentrate on Central and Eastern Europe, research ... more While debates about far-right populism often concentrate on Central and Eastern Europe, research on these parties predominantly focuses on Western countries. Addressing this remarkable gap, this article revisits the 'protest voting' explanation for electoral support for the far right. Using European Social Survey data (2002-16) from 22 countries, we show that political dissatisfaction is a stronger explanatory factor when far-right parties are in opposition, but is a less important determinant of electoral support when they are in government. Previous findings based on Western Europewhich similarly showed that the anti-elite hypothesis is less relevant when far-right parties join government coalitionstravel well to post-communist European countries. In Hungary and Poland, we even find that far-right voters have become less distrustful of national political institutions than the rest of the electorate. Our conclusion implies that anti-elite populism is contextdependent and has limited use for understanding successes of leaders such as Wilders, Salvini and Orbán.
This article aims at analysing and theoretically displaying the peculiarities and differences of ... more This article aims at analysing and theoretically displaying the peculiarities and differences of the category of trust in mature and post-communist democracies. First, referring to the seminal sociological studies by G. Simmel, N. Luhmann, R. Putnam, P. Sztompka, R. Hardin and others, the paper conceptualises the notion of trust as interpreted by the culturalist and the rationalist approaches, and systemises these approaches into a more coherent theoretical framework, underpinning three analytical perspectives: modernisation theories, social capital, and political psychology. Second, two forms of trust, viz., political and generalised trust, are discussed, and the relationship between these categories is analysed, considering the link of mutual causality. Third, in a wider theoretical perspective, the dialectics of political trust and liberalism is tackled with focus on the institutionalisation of distrust as the basis of the liberal system. Finally, the peculiarities of trust in th...
notion of political trust (Heywood and Wood, 2011: 148). However, these are two different analyti... more notion of political trust (Heywood and Wood, 2011: 148). However, these are two different analytical categories. Thus I separate these notions in this dissertation and refer to social trust as trust between people and political trust as trust in political institutions. Compared to social trust, political trust rests on a vague and partial understanding (Giddens, 1990: 179), because the relationship between truster (individual) and trustee (institution, politician) is not direct or equal. Political trust can be learned through primary contact (personal experience with the institutions), but as Newton (2001: 205) observes, it is usually learned indirectly and at a distance – through media. Indeed, media play a crucial role in establishing pillars of political trust, providing us with information to make judgments about politicians and institutions. We may not know the people in government personally, but we believe that we have sufficient information to make expectations and judgments...
Occupying Against Inequality
Research in Political Sociology, 2021
Social inequality is a key recurring theme animating various protest movements over the past deca... more Social inequality is a key recurring theme animating various protest movements over the past decade. Take, for example, the Occupy Wall Street movement conceived by many as a new global movement phenomenon. Others, however, maintain that these demonstrations displayed characteristics typical of “old” social movements. We argue that in order to understand differences between old and new movements, it is necessary to compare Occupy protests with other contemporaneous anti-austerity protests, as demonstrators in both protested against stark inequality following the financial meltdown. To do so, we rely on the Caught in the Act of Protest data where data were collected at actual demonstrations at Occupy protests and anti-austerity protests between 2009 and 2012. We examine sociodemographics (the who of protest), motivational dynamics (the why of protest), and mobilization dynamics (the how of protest). We find that the two types of demonstrations brought different crowds into the street...
Harmonised PolPart Dataset
OSF, Feb 4, 2019
The #FridaysForFuture climate protests mobilized more than 1.6 million people around the globe in... more The #FridaysForFuture climate protests mobilized more than 1.6 million people around the globe in March 2019. Through a school strike, a new generation has been galvanized, representing a historical turn in climate activism. This wave of climate protest mobilization is unique in its tactics, global scope and appeal to teenage school students. Media coverage of these protests and high-level national and international political meetings involving the movement’s icon, Greta Thunberg, illustrate a level of global attention that no previous youth movement has ever received. A team of social scientists from universities across Europe1 organized a survey of the global FFF strike events on March 15. The team surveyed protesters in 13 cities in nine European countries using the same research design to collect data, following the well-established protest survey methodology used previously in the “Caught in the Act of Protest: Contextualizing Contestation” (CCC) project.
Fridays For Future: Surveys of climate protests on 15 March, 2019 in 13 European cities
The #FridaysForFuture climate protests mobilized more than 1.6 million people around the globe in... more The #FridaysForFuture climate protests mobilized more than 1.6 million people around the globe in March 2019. Through a school strike, a new generation has been galvanized, representing a historical turn in climate activism. A team of social scientists from universities across Europe organized a survey of the global FFF strike events on March 15. The team surveyed protesters in 13 cities in nine European countries using the same research design to collect data, following the well-established protest survey methodology used previously in the "Caught in the Act of Protest: Contextualizing Contestation" (CCC) project.
Sociopedia
This article aims to analyse and theorize the peculiarities of trust in mature and postcommunist ... more This article aims to analyse and theorize the peculiarities of trust in mature and postcommunist democracies. First, the article conceptualizes the notion of trust as interpreted by the culturalist and rationalist approaches, and systemizes it into a more coherent theoretical framework. Second, social and political trust are discussed and the relationship between these is analysed. Third, the dialectics of political trust and liberalism is tackled. Finally, trust in the communist regime and aftermath is examined. The main argument is that, at the societal level, social trust in post-communist societies is limited to particularized trust; it is more family-centred as compared to the wider radius of generalized trust in mature democracies. Meanwhile political trust in post-communist societies is less self-reflexive, since, unlike in the older democratic societies, it has evolved in counterpose to fear, rather than to risk. keywords fear u generalized trust u institutionalized distrust u institutionalized trust u particularized trust u political trust u post-communism u risk
Government and Opposition
This article investigates three explanations for electoral support for the far right – ‘cultural ... more This article investigates three explanations for electoral support for the far right – ‘cultural backlash’, ‘economic grievances’ and ‘protest voting’ – in a novel way. Our main contribution is that we contrast far-right voters with voters of centre-right parties, traditional left-wing parties and abstainers. Equally innovative is the comparison between mature and post-communist democracies. Using European Social Survey data (2014–16), we conclude that anti-immigration attitudes are most important in distinguishing far-right voters from all other groups. Yet, these differences are significantly smaller in Eastern Europe. Furthermore, far-right voters are not the so-called socioeconomic ‘losers of globalization’: this is only true when compared with centre-right voters. Concerning protest voting, distrust of supranational governance particularly enhances far-right voting. Overall, our study concludes that more fine-grained distinctions pay off and avoid misleading generalizations abo...
Political Behavior
We investigated whether income gaps in voting turnout vary with country-level economic inequality... more We investigated whether income gaps in voting turnout vary with country-level economic inequality, and whether this pattern differs between wealthier and less-wealthy countries. Moreover, we investigated whether the prevalence of clientelism was the underlying mechanism that accounts for the presumed negative interaction between relative income and economic inequality at lower levels of national wealth per capita. The harmonised PolPart dataset, combining cross-national surveys from 66 countries and 292 country-years, including 510,184 individuals, was analysed using multilevel logistic regression models. We found that the positive effect of relative income on voting was weaker at higher levels of economic inequality, independent of the level of national wealth. Although clientelism partially explains why economic inequality reduces the income gap in voter turnout, it does not do so in the way we expected. It seems to decrease turnout of higher income groups, rather than increase tu...
Government and Opposition, 2020
This article investigates three explanations for electoral support for the far right-'cultural ba... more This article investigates three explanations for electoral support for the far right-'cultural backlash', 'economic grievances' and 'protest voting'-in a novel way. Our main contribution is that we contrast far-right voters with voters of centre-right parties, traditional left-wing parties and abstainers. Equally innovative is the comparison between mature and post-communist democracies. Using European Social Survey data (2014-16), we conclude that anti-immigration attitudes are most important in distinguishing far-right voters from all other groups. Yet, these differences are significantly smaller in Eastern Europe. Furthermore, far-right voters are not the so-called socioeconomic 'losers of globalization': this is only true when compared with centre-right voters. Concerning protest voting, distrust of supranational governance particularly enhances far-right voting. Overall, our study concludes that more fine-grained distinctions pay off and avoid misleading generalizations about 'European far-right voters' often presented in public debates.
This article aims to analyse and theorize the peculiarities of trust in mature and post communist... more This article aims to analyse and theorize the peculiarities of trust in mature and post communist democracies. First, the article conceptualizes the notion of trust as interpreted by the culturalist and rationalist approaches, and systemizes it into a more coherent theoretical framework. Second, social and political trust are discussed and the relationship between these is analysed. Third, the dialectics of political trust and liberalism is tackled. Finally, trust in the communist regime and aftermath is examined. The main argument is that, at the societal level, social trust in post-communist societies is limited to particularized trust; it is more family-centred as compared to the wider radius of generalized trust in mature democracies. Meanwhile political trust in post-communist societies is less self-reflexive, since, unlike in the older democratic societies, it has evolved in counterpose to fear, rather than to risk.
Why are people in post-communist countries less politically active than in mature democracies? Ju... more Why are people in post-communist countries less politically active than in mature democracies? Just before and after the collapse of Communism, the new democracies witnessed a massive political engagement of citizens, be it in demonstrations or elections. The recent years, however, reveal the political passivity of post-communist citizens. It begs the question which factors are responsible for disenchantment from politics. More specifically, we ask whether the communist legacy of political apathy and the economic and political conditions of post-communist societies matter for individuals’ decisions to engage in politics. We expect three sets of individual and contextual predictors to be related to political participation, namely, economic, political and cultural ones. We employ the European Social Survey 2008 data and use multi-level regressions to test our hypotheses. On the one hand, political participation in post-communist democracies is explained by a so-called composition effect: because there are more people in post-communist countries of a certain socio-economic status and with certain political values, levels of participation are lower. On the other hand, we found that political engagement is also shaped by country-level factors. The novelty of our research is that we consider social trust at both individual and contextual levels as predictors of both institutionalized and non-institutionalized political participation. Our results support the claim that the deterioration of social trust in post-communist countries during the communist regime and after its fall has a profound negative impact on individuals’ willingness to participate in politics.
TSPMI studentų vizitas Briuselyje: Europos Sąjungos institucijos iš arčiau
Politologija, 2008
Apie atstovavimą subnacionalinio lygmens interesams Europos Sąjungoje
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Papers by Teodora Gaidyte
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