Analysing political party development and voter attitudes towards political regimes
We conduct in-depth studies of political party development, behaviour and strategies alongside large-scale analyses of voter behaviour and attitudes towards political regimes and societies. This program brings together comparative political scientists at Griffith University who specialise in parties and elections.
Covering a wide range of countries, our work has been published in highly-ranked journals and we collaborate with colleagues from major universities across the globe. Our research currently includes projects funded by the Australian Research Council and the Swedish Research Council.
To further the study of elections and parties in Australia and beyond, we organise annual, invitation-only workshops on topics like the accountability and democracy in South East Asia and the relationship between populist and mainstream parties.
Program Leaders: Professor Duncan McDonnell, Dr Ferran Martinez I Coma
Our team
Sofia Ammassari
Party organisation, populism, comparative politics, Indian party politics
Dr Sarah Cameron
Australian politics, citizen participation and attitudes, public policy
Dr Max Grömping
Interest representation, political participation, authoritarianism, media politics
Professor Juliet Pietsch
Migration politics and political behaviour in Australia and Southeast Asia.
Professor Duncan McDonnell
Political Parties, populism, Euroscepticism and youth wings.
Professor Juliet Pietsch
Migration politics and political behaviour in Australian and South-East Asia
OUR HIGHLIGHTS
Against the Void: Constituency Work & Connection
In his new article for Parliamentary Affairs, Pandanus Petter interrogates the claim that political parties and society have withdrawn from meaningful engagement with one another, creating a ‘void’ at the heart of representative democracy. By utilising interviews with twenty Members of Parliament (MPs) from Queensland’s state legislature Pandanus shows the important work MPs do to build policy, service and symbolic connections between themselves, their constituents, and the political system. In so doing, he concludes that rather than a total disengagement from society, parties are increasingly reliant on the personal efforts of the ‘party in public office’ to fill the void left by the decline of the mass membership party.
Future Fellowship Success
Congratulations to Professor Duncan McDonnell on his success in securing an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship. Duncan has been awarded the fellowship and will undertake research on the internationalisation of nationalist populism. Expected outcomes of this project include a sophisticated, evidence-based understanding of the dynamics and effects of contemporary nationalist populist cooperation. Given Australia's commitment to promoting good governance and strong democratic institutions, in addition to the interest overseas nationalist populists have shown in helping like-minded movements in Australia, the project will provide significant benefits for policymakers.
European Parliament Talk
In December 2022, Dr Lee Morgenbesser attended the convening and implementation meetings of the Declaration of Principles for International Election Observation, hosted by the European Parliament and the European Union’s External Action Service. He was invited to speak on the problem of “fake election observation” – i.e., where authoritarian regimes recruit individuals and groups to “act” as international election observers for the purpose of validating their flawed elections. Dr Morgenbesser used the week in Brussels to discuss the problem at hand, bridge the academic-practitioner divide, and explore future opportunities for collaboration.
Radical Right Populists and government participation in Sweden and Denmark
In their new article, published in International Political Science Review, Duncan McDonnell, Annika Werner, and Malin Karlsson, investigate why cooperation between radical right populist parties and mainstream parties has been so different in Sweden and Denmark. While in the former, centre-right parties have refused to consider cooperation even at the cost of remaining in government, in the latter these parties have cooperated for two decades. Based on expert survey data and elite interviews in the two countries, the authors conclude that the key explanatory factor of differences is not policy-based, but reputational.
Australian Parties, Not Voters, Drive Under-Representation of Women
Ferran Martinez i Coma and Duncan McDonnell have recently published an open access article in Parliamentary Affairs. Using a new dataset of Australian House of Representatives candidates between 2001 and 2019, they find that women still run less than men (especially for parties on the right) and continue to be disproportionately picked for unsafe seats by all parties. However, while parties still discriminate against women, Martinez i Coma and McDonnell show that Australian voters no longer do so. They argue it is time parties catch up with voters and put forward more women in winnable seats.
Agents of resistance and revival? Local election monitors and democratic fortunes in Asia
Max Grömping has recently published a piece in the Democratization journal titled Agents of resistance and revival? Local election monitors and democratic fortunes in Asia. The article explores cultural and political economy theories linking a vibrant civil society to democratic outcomes expect domestic election monitors to provide a vaccine against democratic backsliding. His findings highlight the empirical track record of such groups is mixed. Max draws from theories of interest representation and social movement research to study the effect of observer groups.
We compare the language of populist leaders - the results are unexpected Text
Professor Duncan McDonnell and his colleague Associate Professor Stefano Ondelli from University of Trieste wrote a piece for The Conversation on comparing the language of populist leaders. Whilst it is a common belief that populist leaders use overly simplistic language to appeal to their base, new research from McDonnell and Ondelli surprisingly, does not support this. In this piece they examine why populist leaders use complex language.
They have also published an article The Language of Right Wing Populist Leaders: Not so simple in Cambridge Core. Read the journal article.
The Rise of Sophisticated Authoritarianism in Southeast Asia
Congratulations to Dr Lee Morgenbesser on the publication of his latest monograph "The Rise of Sophisticated Authoritarianism in Southeast Asia" published by Cambridge University Press. This Element offers a way to understand the evolution of authoritarian rule in Southeast Asia. The theoretical framework is based on a set of indicators (judged for their known advantages and mimicry of democratic attributes) as well as a typology (conceptualized as two discreet categories of 'retrograde' and 'sophisticated' authoritarianism). Working with an original dataset, the empirical results reveal vast differences within and across authoritarian regimes in Southeast Asia, but also a discernible shift towards sophisticated authoritarianism over time. The Element concludes with a reflection of its contribution and a statement on its generalizability.
Running Local Elections During the Covid-19 Crisis Text
Dr Ferran Martinez i Coma's recently released a piece for the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance and Electoral Management.
Ferran's case study, 'Running Local Elections During the COVID-19 Crisis: Queensland, Australia', will be influential as we head towards the Queensland State election on 31 October and provides an interesting insight as to the future of elections going forward. This is an issue that will have an affect around the globe.
Exploring citizen turnout and invalid voting in Indonesia: two sides of the same coin?
In this study, Ferran Martinez i Coma and Diego Fossati take on two literatures that have developed along parallel trajectories: citizen turnout and invalid voting. In the study the point of departure is that empirical studies investigate the determinants of turnout or invalid voting, but existing research hardly ever analyses the two together. This is strange because, while turnout and invalid voting are conceptually distinct, the practice is closely intertwined. For starters, they happen at the same time. Consequently, in the paper, Ferran and Diego advocate the need for research jointly adopting these two different but complementary perspectives on participation.
To illustrate the potential of the approach, the study relies on an analysis of the 2014 legislative elections in Indonesia, the third largest democracy in the world. The article finds that turnout and invalid voting are associated with distinct but related mechanisms, which suggests the need of further research studying the two outcomes with unified research designs.
Menu of Autocratic Innovation
In a recent article in Democratization, Lee Morgenbesser developed the “menu of autocratic innovation” to account for a perceived transformation in the nature of autocratic rule. Drawing from an original list of 20 techniques intended to cultivate the pretence of accountability without permitting the actual practice of it, his article describes how autocratic innovation takes different forms and concerns different targets. He tests this theoretical framework against nine autocratic regimes in Southeast Asia from 1975 to 2015.
Submission to Senate Inquiry
Professor Duncan McDonnell and his colleague from University of Queensland, Glenn Kefford, recently made a submission to the Senate Inquiry on nationhood, national identity and democracy.
In it, they discussed the reasons why right-wing populism had been less successful in Australia than in most other Western democracies, arguing in particular that the lack of capable Australian populist leaders was a key difference. Their submission was extensively discussed in a Guardian Australia article on 18 November. (Image by Mick Tsikas/AAP)
International Populism: The Radical Right in the European Parliament
In October-November 2019, Professor Duncan McDonnell presented his new book with Annika Werner, International Populism: The Radical Right in the European Parliament, in 7 universities in Australia, Ireland, France and Singapore. The book, published by Hurst in the UK and Oxford University Press in the US, discusses how radical right populist parties make alliances with one another at European level.
(In the photo below, McDonnell presents his work at the European School of Political and Social Sciences in Lille)
Vice Chancellor's Research Excellence Award
Congratulations to Dr Lee Morgenbesser, who was recently awarded the 2019 Vice Chancellor's Research Excellence Award (Early Career Researcher). Lee's five years as an early career researcher has been incredibly fulfilling and this award is fantastic recognition of his contribution to research in the political science field.
Lee has recently completed work on his forthcoming book The Rise of Sophisticated Authoritarianism in Southeast Asia (New York: Cambridge University Press).
India’s Right-Wing Populists in Power
In a new article, published recently in Democratization, Duncan McDonnell and his CGPP colleague Luis Cabrera, discuss how India’s ruling party, the BJP, espouses right-wing populist conceptions of ‘the people’, ‘elites’ and ‘others’. Arguing that the BJP has been neglected within the literature on populism, they show how it can provide a useful comparison with other cases. McDonnell has also written a comment piece based on this study for The Sydney Morning Herald.
How can political actors shape voter turnout?
Dr Ferran Martinez i Coma was awarded $248,000 by ARC Discovery Projects, for the project “How can political actors shape voter turnout?” This project aims to investigate what explains variations on individual’s turnout rates by analysing the strategies employed by candidates and parties to mobilise their supporters and demobilise their detractors. The project will compare the mobilisation and demobilisation strategies of the parties and candidates. Expected outcomes include an improved understanding of the demobilised, the re-affirmed abstainers and the activated voters, which are under-studied. The findings will enhance understanding of motivations of those citizens, a topic of growing scholarly interest, and also inform Australian policy makers seeking to enhance the design of their governance interventions.
Differently Eurosceptic: radical right populist parties and their supporters
Research group members, Duncan McDonnell and Annika Werner have recently published their second article since 2017 in Journal of European Public Policy (ranked 3rd in the world by the Google Scholar Political Science list). In their new study, McDonnell and Werner investigate the role played by Euroscepticism in driving support for radical right populist parties and examine whether these parties’ supporters have followed their shifts of position and salience on this issue.
Using data from the ‘Euandi’ project, they find that while radical right populist parties and their supporters closely aligned on immigration (which remains the main driver of support), they did not do so as much on European integration. McDonnell and Werner conclude that the increased salience of this issue does not necessarily lead to stronger linkages between parties and voters and that radical right populist parties therefore continue to enjoy flexibility on European integration and can shift positions if necessary (as we have recently seen in the cases of such parties in France and Italy).
Trump, Populism and the Age of Extremes
Ferran Martinez i Coma has co-authored (with Alessandro Nai and Jurgen Maier) an article titled "Donald Trump, Populism, and the Age of Extremes: Comparing the Personality Traits and Campaigning Styles of Trump and Other Leaders Worldwide" in the Presidential Studies Quarterly. Jan 2019. They analysed a novel database based on expert ratings of Trump, 21 other populist leaders and 82 mainstream leaders.
The article examines the evidence, contrasts Trump's profile to others and discusses the implications of such an extreme profile and the potential outcomes of such an extreme personality type on his presidency.
The article has recently been cited in the British Psychological Society Research Digest, 31 January 2019 where Christian Jarrett authored an article on Study Compares Trump’s Personality With Other Populist Leaders And Finds He Is An “Outlier Among The Outliers.