What we are reading: Issue salience and the rise of the radical right

What has salience to do with it?

In the third week of my reading class, we read this recent paper

Dennison, J. (2020). How issue salience explains the rise of the populist right in western europe. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 32(3), 397–420. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ijpor/edz022

The author argues that various explanations for radical right support are all linked to the salience of their issues (first and foremost immigration).

What we liked

The students (and I) thought this was an interesting new approach to an already crowded (but still interesting) field. Students found the text accessible and well-structured, liked the models (particularly the presentation of the fixed effects approach, which was new to most of them) and the literature review. They also said the benefited from the carefully written introduction and the extensive conclusions.

What we did not like so much

There was not much we did not like, but some minor points were raised. The figures were less than perfectly readable. The argument for aggregating individual data was not immediately obvious (but became clear once we discussed the alternatives). Students would have liked some explanations re the random effects specification and asked for replication data.

What we are reading: Issue salience and the rise of the radical right 1

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