The last three decades have seen social enterprises in the United Kingdom pushed to the forefront of welfare delivery, workfare and area-based regeneration. For critics, this is repositioning the sector around a neoliberal politics that privileges marketization, state roll-back and disciplining community groups to become more self-reliant. Successive governments have developed bespoke products,…
This article considers whether, and if so how, rural communities can be supported, through a facilitated process, to create social enterprises within the field of health and care. Using results from the thematic analysis of four community case studies involved in a facilitated action-research process, the article identifies community capabilities and entrepreneurial skills needed to create such…
Over the past couple of decades, African universities have been considered to possess the capacity needed to enhance the development of the continent and its residential communities. In spite of this consideration, Africa as a continent still lags behind the rest of the world in terms of the quality of its institutions and its ability to meet the needs of ordinary people who desire a better soc…
In independent India, national development has been largely equated with economic growth and surplus. Most tribal people in India lead a hard, materially poor life. Multiple natural sources along with strong community ties make their life possible, even under difficult circumstances. Adivasis are by far the most vulnerable and marginalized socio-economic group in India; gaps in poverty, literac…
This article discusses the largely under-researched anti-poverty work of Migrant and Refugee Community Organizations (MRCOs) in Glasgow. The role of MRCOs as a source of social capital and critical coping and survival mechanism in exile has received notable attention since the introduction of dispersal policy in 1999. The practices outlined in this article contribute to this growing body of res…
The policy language of recent UK governments in relation to ‘activating’ communities has drawn on images of ‘community’ as coherent constructions – communities of place – recognizable to their members who are capable of concerted action. From this conceptual basis, localities identified as ‘ineffective’ are encouraged to become ‘successful, integrated communities' through government action such…
This article provides a snapshot of social and solidarity economy (SSE) institutions and activities in two differing regions of the world in order to reflect on how the SSE is being conceptualized and practised in varying contexts and cultures. The SSE is a growing social movement that includes a range of activities that share common values, including solidarity and mutual support, with a focus…
Gamson’s Law of office distribution tells us approximately how many ministries each member of a coalition will receive. However, the question of which ministries are allocated to which parties according to a more general party motivation remains largely open. In a model-theoretic investigation of portfolio allocation we focus on the characteristics of the distributional process concerning the q…
This article analyzes and compares the politics of European policy-making within the British Labour Party, the Parti Socialiste (PS) and the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD) between 1997 and 2012. We know that party leaders have assumed much autonomy in the making of European policy, but, as with policy-making in any area, their autonomy is constrained and sometimes even questioned…
Measurement of the electoral mobilization of ethnic parties has posed a considerable challenge to those performing comparative research on the political mobilization of ethnic groups. To address this issue, we propose indicators that estimate the electoral mobilization of ethnic parties by combining administrative and survey data. Specifically, we propose two measures: an absolute one, fully is…
The individualization of politics is usually studied in relation to party leaders. Using new data from the Norwegian Candidate Survey 2009 and in-depth interviews with 29 top candidates, in this article we study whether candidates in the Norwegian 2009 parliamentary election ran party-centred or individualized campaigns. We distinguish between the organizational aspects and the communicative fo…
This article investigates how parties can influence the level of political sophistication their supporters have. Although the importance of parties in providing their supporters with political information was first suggested in early studies of voting behaviour, this level of analysis has been omitted from individual studies of political sophistication. Focusing on the political environment of …
This article takes a closer look at how presidential elections affect the fragmentation of the legislative party system. It reviews the theory and conventional empirical modelling strategy; identifies some drawbacks to this strategy and suggests solutions; and then conducts an empirical investigation of the implications of this critique by combining replication data from Golder (2006) with new …
Does the number of political parties influence voter turnout in developing democracies? Some scholars argue that large party systems facilitate matching voter preferences with a specific party, increasing turnout. Others argue multiparty systems produce too many alternatives, decreasing turnout. In developing democracies, there is debate over whether these institutions matter at all. We argue t…
Prior research has shown that institutions affect parties’ incentives to coordinate within elections or compete on their own. However, no study to date has examined with institutional effects when parties coordinate in the most important of electoral contests: the presidential race. In this article, we explain which institutions encourage parties to run as part of pre-electoral coalitions (PECs…
This work considers how a ruling party in an increasingly authoritarian regime utilizes legislative electoral system changes. It argues that the placement of former district deputies on the list of Russia’s ruling party after the move to a PR-only system reflected an interest in expanding its presence in the countryside as well as the attractiveness of the ruling party to the former district de…
The literature on authoritarianism and exclusive forms of nationalism often implies that authoritarian and exclusive-nationalist individuals will prefer radical right-wing populist parties such as Austria's FPÖ. The theoretical case for such implications appears sound as party programmes for radical right-wing populist parties invoke rhetoric that should appeal to individuals with either of the…
In this article, using our original data on party leadership succession in 23 parliamentary democracies, we investigate the determinants of a party leader’s survival rate: how long he/she remains in office. Unlike previous studies, which focus on institutional settings of leadership selection or on situational (political, economic and international) conditions at the time of succession, we prop…
I argue that the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) of Japan employed a strategy to prevent unpopular prime ministers from tainting the party’s image. Time-series analyses of public opinion data from 1960 to 2006 show that national economic performance had modest effects on prime minister support ratings and no effects on LDP ratings. When prime minister ratings fall below party ratings, cabinets a…
While national election campaigns have become increasingly personalized, it is unclear to what extent this trend has been replicated at the constituency level. Using surveys of Australian election candidates conducted from 1996 to 2010, this article tests the personalization hypothesis at the local constituency level. Three areas that may be affected by personalization are examined: constituenc…