Frontiers in political science 

About: Frontiers in political science is an academic journal published by Frontiers Media. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Politics & Computer science. It has an ISSN identifier of 2673-3145. It is also open access. Over the lifetime, 242 publications have been published receiving 165 citations.

The Language of Extremism on Social Media: An Examination of Posts, Comments, and Themes on Reddit

Abstract: Digital media give the public a voice to discuss or share their thoughts about political and social events. However, these discussions can often include language that contributes to creating toxic or uncivil online environments. Using data from Reddit, we examine the language surrounding three major events in the United States that occurred in 2020 and early 2021 from the comments and posts of 65 communities identified for their focus on extreme content. Our results suggest that social and political events in the U.S. triggered increased hostility in discussions as well as the formation of a set of shared language for describing and articulating information about these major political/social moments. Findings further reveal shifts in language toward more negativity, incivility, and specific language surrounding non-White outgroups. Finally, these shifts in language online were found to be durable and last after the events occurred. Our project identifies that negative language is frequently present on social media and is not necessarily exclusive to one group, topic, or real-world event. We discuss the implications of language as a powerful tool to engage, recruit, and radicalize those within communities online.

Challenges to Levelling Up: Post-COVID precarity in “left behind” Stoke-on-Trent

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic both revealed and intensified the United Kingdom's (UK) regional inequalities. The UK is widely recognised as one of the most regionally unbalanced nations in the developed world, with many “left behind” places across the North and Midlands like Stoke-on-Trent falling way behind parts of London and the Southeast of England in terms of living standards in the neoliberal era. Since 2019 the UK Government have promised to “Level Up” the UK, culminating in the publication of the Levelling Up White Paper in 2022. This pinpointed the need to raise living standards, opportunity, and prosperity across the UK, with Stoke identified as a priority area. Primarily utilising qualitative case study data (N = 15) provided by Citizens Advice Staffordshire North and Stoke-on-Trent (CASNS), this article explicates how there are myriad challenges to the Levelling Up strategy in Stoke. Suffering from a historical legacy of the loss of its ceramics and manufacturing industries, the paper outlines how the city-region contains a structural cocktail of disadvantage including low paid jobs, welfare erosion, indebtedness, destitution, and food insecurity. The article closes by discussing the implications of these structural problems for the Government's Levelling Up agenda, suggesting that only a transformative shift in both allocated resources and neoliberal spatial development will regional imbalances be adequately addressed in places like Stoke-on-Trent.

Hostile, Benevolent, Implicit: How Different Shades of Sexism Impact Gendered Policy Attitudes

Abstract: Advances in gender equality and progressive policies are often stymied by cultural sexist systems and individual-level sexist attitudes. These attitudes are pervasive but vary in type—from benevolent to hostile and implicit to explicit. Understanding the types of sexism and their foundations are important for identifying connections to specific social and political attitudes and behaviors. The current study examines the impact of various manifestations of sexism on attitudes regarding policies and public opinion issues that involve gender equality or have gendered implications. More specifically, we look at attitudes on reproductive rights, support for the #MeToo Movement, equal pay, and paid leave policies. In Study 1 we use data from a high-quality web panel (n = 1,400) to look at the relationship between hostile, benevolent, and implicit sexism, and reproductive rights attitudes, as well as support for the #MeToo Movement. In Study 2 we use data from the American National Election Study (n = 4,270) to examine the relationship between hostile and modern sexism and attitudes on abortion, equal pay, and paid family leave. Overall, these results reveal a complicated relationship between different conceptualizations of sexism and gendered attitudes, underscoring the need to consider how different forms of sexism shape broader social and political views, from both a normative perspective for societal change and a measurement approach for research precision.

Editorial: Voting From Abroad

Abstract: The questions of emigrant political participation and political representation are increasingly relevant. As Kapur (2014) rightly points out, “the history of humanity, starting from its antecedents in Africa, is a history of migration.” However, migrants maintaining ties to various places, creating new patterns of belonging is a more recent phenomena, linked with technological advancements and faster movements of global migration. Globalisation and European integration have led to an increased personal mobility across national borders, which in turn has highlighted questions about national belonging (Aksel, 2014). The traditional assumption of domestic politics to be exclusively decided within the borders of the nation state is also challenged by the notion that communities have extended beyond state boundaries (Dahlin and Hironaka, 2008). This is exemplified by the fact that the number of countries having adopted policies which allow non-resident citizens to take part in homeland elections from abroad has increased greatly in the last few decades. Currently, around 130 countries allow voting from abroad (see e.g., Lafleur, 2013; Himmelroos and Peltoniemi, 2021). While the conditions for the exercise of external electoral rights, the degree to which these rights are exercised, and the relative weights of emigrants in the national polity vary widely, the trend is nonetheless clear. External voting rights are on the rise throughout democratic and non-democratic regimes. The trend reflects both the extent of emigration and the greater awareness that emigrants maintain ties with their countries of origin. While emigrant voting rights are viewed by some as an important part of the wave of suffrage reforms, for others they are a contested development that rupture the essence of democracy by breaking the link between citizenship and residence (Reidy). In this Research Topic, Umpierrez de Reguero et al. analyze the nexus between political regimes and external voting rights. Interesting mechanisms are revealed: In democracies with a relatively large diaspora size, emigrant enfranchisement is neither broadcasted nor implemented. On the other hand, the autocracies illustrate that when the diaspora favors the incumbency, external voting rights are extended; otherwise, they are withheld or limited for non-resident citizens. Ireland is a model example of a democratic country with a large diaspora size. In this Research Topic, Reidy connects insights from the emigrant voting literature with historical institutionalism to argue that the longstanding avoidance of emigrant enfranchisement in the Republic of Ireland was overcome during the Great Recession because of an economic imperative, the need for greater investment from the emigrant community. Reidy mirrors the political factors to the economic and administrative viability and finds that diaspora campaigners explicitly link economic engagement with political rights. However, even after non-resident voters are provided with external voting rights, many open questions remain. Is anyone representing non-resident citizens in the legislative process? What are the added costs of voting? External voting rights do not merely include the institutional side, i.e., having certain rights and duties associated with the institutional belonging, manifested in citizenship law. As the six articles included in this Research Topic demonstrate, the electoral rights are, while essential, only the first piece of the puzzle to enfranchise non-resident citizens. If electoral rights are expected to be something more than a symbolic gesture, both the representativeness of the Edited and reviewed by: Ignacio Lago, Pompeu Fabra University, Spain

Which Nationalism for the Anthropocene? A Comparative Study of Exemplary Green Nation-States

Abstract: This article poses, and attempts to answer, two correlated questions: (1) Is nationalism, the dominant ideology in our world of nation-states, compatible with the struggle to halt or minimize climate change and related environmental catastrophes? and (2) Which form(s) of government, whether or not informed by nationalist ideology, could better address the most serious threat to human life that currently appears on the horizon? This article puts forward the claim that while the former question has only recently begun to be explored in a few essays and articles devoted to analyzing the linkages between nationalism and climate change, the latter remains unexplored. Attempting to fill this gap, we investigate case studies of exemplary nation-states that periodically scored the highest in the Environmental Performance Index (EPI) and the Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI): Scandinavian countries (Norway, Sweden, Denmark), Switzerland, and Germany. Their cities received environmental awards (i.e., the European Green Capital Award) and registered the highest levels in terms of citizen satisfaction. The goal is to identify factors and (pre)conditions that make forms of “green nationalism” possible.