Populist Backlash and Democratic Backsliding

The aim of the project is to contribute to the analysis and better understanding of the political strategies of right-wing populism in Europe. In this way, the research aims to promote democratic development in European states. The project investigates how right- wing populist movements and parties in six European countries struggle for political power and how they undermine the rule of law in these processes. In an interdisciplinary research context, Germany, Great Britain, Austria, Poland, Slovenia, and Turkey will be studied comparatively. The researchers from five European countries are primarily interested in analyzing the effects of "excluding populism" on legal systems, the economy and the media landscape in the six countries under investigation. The project aims to identify the social, economic and political causes and consequences of the rise of right-wing populist movements and to develop empirically based theoretical explanations for and policy- oriented strategies against right-wing populism. The starting premise is that right-wing populism builds on argumentation strategies that exclude specific groups in order to create a (national) community. The range of topics of the project therefore includes the following: political and economic risks of right-wing populism, communication strategies and the influence of exclusionary populism on national media landscapes as well as on political attitudes and trust in democratic institutions. The research methods include quantitative legal analyses ("leximetrics"), multi-level analyses of economic and media development in the countries studied, and interviews with experts, e.g. with journalists. The Austrian sub - project focuses on the significance of media for the rise of exclusive populism. Do traditional, but also social media strengthen populist argumentations or do (quality) journalists oppose right-wing populist argumentations with a public voice? The projects thus analyzes what in scientific literature is called media populism. The results of the research are continuously made available to the academic community and the broader public through publications.

The POPBACK project aimed to study the mechanisms "exclusionary populists" use to increase their power in the areas of law, the economy, and the media. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach spanning political economy, legal-, management-, and media studies, we compared Austria, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, and Turkey. The project was organized into four work packages (WPs), focusing on the Rule of Law and legal changes (WP1), business and economics (WP2), media and communications (WP3), and impact (WP4). The Austrian team was part of WP3. This WP used a novel approach to Social Network Analysis (SNA) to investigate media concentration (macro level) and provided an explanation for the seemingly paradoxical phenomenon of right-wing populists' relative tolerance towards oppositional news outlets and dissenting voices. We found that marked core-periphery structures in the ownership networks imply that oppositional voices at the periphery serve the purpose for populists in power to maintain an internal enemy needed for their divisive politics, while not threatening populist dominance over the public discourse. A gender analysis of ownership data in Austria, Slovenia and Turkey revealed that patriarchal family ownership structures with an underrepresentation of women as media owners but their over-represented familial connections to media tycoons favours masculinist authoritarian populism. On a meso level, the project identified strategies of right-wing populists to control journalists as well as their counter strategies. The micro level included an analysis of televised interviews and posts from social media (Facebook and X/Twitter) to understand the communication tactics through which aright-wing populists exploit the Russia-Ukraine war.