Going to extremes: Politics after financial crises, 1870 – 2014 | Funke, M., et al.,

Manuel Funke, Moritz Schularickb,, Christoph Trebesch 
Abstract: Partisan conflict and policy uncertainty are frequently invoked as factors contributing to slow post-crisis recoveries. Recent events in Europe provide ample evidence that the political aftershocks of fi nancial crises can be severe. In this paper we study the political fall-out from systemic fi nancial crises over the past 140 years. We construct a new long- run dataset covering 20 advanced economies and more than 800 general elections. Our key fi nding is that policy uncertainty crises strongly after financial crises as government majorities shrink and polarization rises. After a crisis, voters seem to be particularly attracted to the political rhetoric of the extreme right, which often attributes blame to minorities or foreigners. On average, far-right parties increase their vote share by 30% after a financial crisis. Importantly, we do not observe similar political dynamics in normal recessions or after severe macroeconomic shocks that are not financial in nature.

via with thanks Fareed Zakaria "Global Briefing"

The True Toll of the Trade War | Raghuram G. Rajan

Behind the escalating global conflict over trade and technology is a larger breakdown of the postwar rules-based order, which was based on a belief that any country's growth benefits all. Now that China is threatening to compete directly with the United States, support for the system that made that possible has disappeared.

Turkey’s Presidential Regime Rests on Zero Rule of Law I Carnegie Europe

After almost seventeen years in power, Turkey’s president wields absolute power. It’s doubtful he would relinquish it without a fight.

The corrupting of democracy THE ECONOMIST

Cynicism is gnawing at Western democracies

The Anatomy of Illiberal States | Brookings Report

"After decades of expansion, democracy—its consolidation, promotion, and global appeal—is entering a period of retrenchment. Liberal principles—political ideas that espouse the importance of individual liberties, minority rights, and the separation of power across levers of government—and democratic institutions—processes that translate popular will into public policy through legitimate elections—are being pulled apart. " (pdf)

Populist Attitudes, Political Trust, and External Political Efficacy: Old Wine in New Bottles?

via https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2019/08/21/is-populism-about-more-than-discontent/

Abstract: Substantial scholarly attention has been devoted to explaining why voters support populist parties. Recently, a new concept has been introduced to gauge populism among voters and to explain voting for populist parties: populist attitudes. However, some researchers regard populist attitudes as simply another measurement of existing and established concepts such as political trust and external political efficacy. Using data from the Netherlands (2018), this article addresses the relationship between these concepts, both theoretically and empirically. This article examines whether political trust, external political efficacy, and populist attitudes tap into different latent dimensions. Using a confirmatory factor analysis, we show that populist attitudes are not old wine in new bottles and that they tap into different underlying attitudes than political trust and external political efficacy. Furthermore, we show that the three measures are not only different constructs but also relate differently to populist voting preferences.

ERDOĞAN’S ‘OTTOMANIA’ | Roos Feringa

Recep Erdoğan, the president of theTurkish Republic uses Ottoman revival architecture in, what I would say, a two-fold political strategy. Namely, he uses nostalgia to the ‘great’, ‘powerful’, ‘tolerant’Ottomans as a tool, internationally and domestically, for his plan to create a strong and important Turkey. ...