Political scientist David M. Wineroither, DEMOS researcher at the Centre for Social Sciences of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, wrote an op-ed for the Austrian national daily Der Standard. In his piece, Wineroither summarizes the structural inability for collective leadership on behalf of British Tory Brexiteers—a feature to characterize both the political ascendancy of Boris Johnson and populists in the majority of countries on the continent

DEMOS interviews Levente Littvay, Professor of Political Science, Central European University (CEU) and member of the Team Populism on collaboration between academics and the Guardian, which has published a series of evidence-based articles on populism. Littvay also spoke about his research on populism, populist discourse, and the CEU Comparative Populism Project

Jose Maria Castellà, professor at the University of Barcelona and leader of the Spanish team in DEMOS, said that the use and abuse of referenda on any subject in contemporary democracies are typical of populist parties. “These parties tend to claim that institutions of representative democracy are not representing the so called true people, and present their political action as a direct enactment of people’s will,” Castella, also a member of the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe, told “Expansión”, Spain’s leading business newspaper. The interview, on the rise and impacts of populist politics in Europe, came out on the eve of Spain’s elections.

DEMOS project leader Zsolt Boda interviews Andrew Arato on the impacts of populism on democratic life and its relationship with authoritarianism and well-fare state.

We have a new vacancy in the Institute! The Institute for Political Sciences is seeking to fill a full-time vacancy for a junior research fellow in the area of emotions and politics. Details are below.

Central European Societies on the Map of Europe
A thematic issue dedicated to the European Social Survey’s Central European data