Government and Opposition 

About: Government and Opposition is an academic journal published by Cambridge University Press. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Politics & Democracy. It has an ISSN identifier of 0017-257X. Over the lifetime, 1678 publications have been published receiving 32759 citations. The journal is also known as: Government & opposition.

The Populist Zeitgeist

Abstract: Since the 1980s the rise of so-called ‘populist parties’ has given rise to thousands of books, articles, columns and editorials. This article aims to make a threefold contribution to the current debate on populism in liberal democracies. First, a clear and new definition of populism is presented. Second, the normal-pathology thesis is rejected; instead it is argued that today populist discourse has become mainstream in the politics of western democracies. Indeed, one can even speak of a populist Zeitgeist. Third, it is argued that the explanations of and reactions to the current populist Zeitgeist are seriously flawed and might actually strengthen rather than weaken it.

Being Indigenous: Resurgences against Contemporary Colonialism

Abstract: In this article, we discuss strategies for resisting further encroachment on Indigenous existences by Settler societies and states – and as well multinational corporations and other elite organizations controlled by state powers and other elements of the imperial institutional network; and we focus on how Indigenous communities can regenerate themselves to resist the effects of the contemporary colonial assault and regenerate politically and culturally. We ask the fundamental question: how can we resist further dispossession and disconnection when the effects of colonial assaults on our own existences are so pronounced and still so present in the lives of all Indigenous peoples?

Paradoxes of the Competition State: The Dynamics of Political Globalization

Abstract: THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE NATION-STATE INTO A ‘COMPETITION state’ lies at the heart of political globalization. In seeking to adapt to a range of complex changes in cultural, institutional and market structures, both state and market actors are attempting to reinvent the state as a quasi-‘enterprise association’ in a wider world context, a process which involves three central paradoxes. The first paradox is that this process does not lead to a simple decline of the state but may be seen to necessitate the actual expansion of de facto state intervention and regulation in the name of competitiveness and marketization.

Exclusionary vs. Inclusionary Populism: Comparing Contemporary Europe and Latin America

Abstract: Although there is a lively academic debate about contemporary populism in Europe and Latin America, almost no cross-regional research exists on this topic. This article aims to fill this gap by showing that a minimal and ideological definition of populism permits us to analyse current expressions of populism in both regions. Moreover, based on a comparison of four prototypical cases (FN/Le Pen and FPO/Haider in Europe and PSUV/Chavez and MAS/Morales in Latin America), we show that it is possible to identify two regional subtypes of populism: exclusionary populism in Europe and inclusionary populism in Latin America.

The Risk Game and the Blame Game

Abstract: Economists Say There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. The burgeoning ‘risk industry’ – no doubt set for further expansion after the terrorist attacks on US heartlands in 2001 – says there is no such thing as a risk-free lunch. Anthropologists say there is no such thing as a blame-free risk. And political scientists know blame is central to politics. The growth of the ‘risk industry’, the associated explosion in discussion of safety and hazard issues and the search for better ways of assessing and managing risk, has been much commented on. The BSE issue, highlighted in the UK by the blockbuster sixteen-volume Phillips report in 2000, is taken by Ulrich Beck as emblematic of what he claims to be a ‘risk society’. Michael Power says an age of ‘new risk management’ has dawned in corporate governance, sparked by high-profile business failures and accidents. Much academic and media attention has been paid to risks from food, electric power lines, mobile phones, dangerous people, even dangerous dogs (ostensibly a rather traditional risk, but one that in recent years has been the subject of draconian new regulatory regimes in several countries, including France, Spain and Germany). Such developments in the ‘risk game’ have been described by best-selling sociologists like Beck and Giddens (who make much of their world-historical significance in an era of ‘high modernity’) and by social psychologists interested in what shapes risk perception or ‘amplification’.