Friend or Foe

No abstract available.

"Die-Hard Supporters"

The success of the maverick politician Rodrigo Duterte in the 2016 election is cited as a result of the weaponization of social media—whereby professional, tech-savvy strategists mobilized public opinion through a networked system of disinformation. Yet, there is evidence of grassroots campaign support that emerged via online platforms. Those who have mobilized include Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs), who have used Facebook groups to rally in support of Duterte. This research looks at the activities of two OFW Facebook groups to understand precisely how and why they organized for Duterte. Employing a dualstage thematic analysis on posts and comments by group members between March 28 – May 9, 2016, three key findings emerged. First, motivations for supporting Duterte varied greatly among users and are far more complex than Duterte’s mandate to crack-down on corruption, crime, and drugs. Second, group behavior deviates from top-heavy explanations of online campaign mobilization, as these groups operated autonomously from Duterte’s official campaign. Finally, these groups were not amorphous and had, as the most active members and organizers, certain intermediaries. These grassroots intermediaries sought to amplify support for Duterte by organizing events, using diversionary tactics, and helping to propagate fake news. These findings suggest that while these groups were operating independently, they were not devoid of influence from Duterte’s official social media campaign.

Normative Rapprochement and Security Cooperation Between China and the European Union

No abstract available.

Brexit

The Brexit vote — the British people’s vote to leave the European Union in 2016 — represents the outcome of a successful populist movement. More recently, the Conservative Party’s staggering 2019 electoral success demonstrated that the populist “Get Brexit Done” message remains popular among both traditional Conservatives and broad swaths of the working class in former Labour Partystrongholds. This study aims to explain the Conservative Party’s marked change rhetoric and policy, as well as factional shifts within the halls of Westminster, in response to the ongoing Brexit negotiations. While some scholars look at the supplyside causes of populism (elites and political parties) and others look at the demandside causes (the voters), this study applies a third school of thought that examines the relationship between supply and demand by analyzing a series of interviews with Conservative Party staff as well as public opinion polling. In doing so, the study concludes that there has been a deep, reciprocal, and simultaneous onset of populist Euroscepticism within both the Conservative Party and the working class that has structurally re-aligned the Conservative Party for decades to come, from more ‘libertarian’ to more ‘authoritarian’ in nature. A feedback loop between the new Conservative base and the Conservative Party has rendered and reciprocated a new mentality among voters. This research contributes to the existing literature as an example of the aftermath of populist movements when both elites and voters are able to forge cooperative relationships to achieve their goals.

How Does External Debt Servicing Ability Affect The Stability of Electoral Authoritarian Regimes?

No abstract available.

The Women Want The Fall of The (Gendered)Regime

The post-2011 breakdown of state media authority in Syria exposed a multilayered terrain of competing counter-discourses, in which citizen journalists were positioned as narrators of events on the ground. Conceptualized in this paper as Emerging Syrian Media (ESM), the rapid pluralization of Syria’s media landscape has irrevocably transformed how citizens engage with the discourse disseminated by the al-Assad regime. However, this phenomenon has not been examined through a gender-based approach. Employing a feminist post-structuralist perspective and utilizing subaltern counterpublic theory, this paper examines whether the opening up of a virtual space has enabled the creation of an online feminist counterpublic, through which Syrian women are able to challenge the dominant representations of gender within the Syrian state feminism discourse. A Critical Discourse Analysis of texts produced by two state-affiliated media outlets reveals the intrinsically patriarchal nature of Syrian state feminism, while a narrative analysis of seven interviews with women participating in Emerging Syrian Media explores the ways in which such a discourse is being challenged. Through their performance of ‘active narrator’ identities, production of anti-regime discourses, and participation in women’s discussion groups, all seven women expressed an ability to counter the gender discourse of the regime. The occurrence of such challenges within confined spheres of activity results in the theorizing of a specifically ‘inward-oriented’ online feminist counterpublic within the ESM online space, whereby alternative discourses on gender can be both established and enacted.

Between Integration and Isolation

No abstract available.

Fall 2020

No abstract available.

Hybrid Insurgencies After State Failure

No abstract available.

China's Neocolonialism in the Political Economy of A.I. Surveillance

No abstract available.