Despite its theoretical relevance, the role played by the existence of a core party in explaining the partisan composition of governments represents an understudied area in the empirical research on coalition formations. This article addresses the gap in the literature by focusing on the Italian case between 1946–1993. The role of the core party not only finds corroboration in the data, but it …
This study explores how candidates running for the European Parliament (EP) in 2009 used micro-blogging and online social networks – in this case Twitter (www.twitter.com) in the early stage of its adoption – to communicate and connect with citizens. Micro-blogging in general, and Twitter in particular, is one of the new and popular Web 2.0 applications, yet there has been little research focus…
Most existing studies of leadership effects on electoral success employ survey data only. This time-series study combines a content analysis of media appearances of the right-wing populist leader Geert Wilders in 2006 with his party's popularity in the polls. The content analysis focuses on three aspects of the media coverage: (1) visibility, (2) whether he articulates a vision for the future, …
Measures of party divisiveness have been widely used in scholarly literature for a variety of different purposes. However, conventional measures of party divisiveness, such as the percentage of party votes in a particular Congress, fail to consider important changes in the agenda from one Congress to the next. We introduce a measure that controls for such changes, drawing attention to the effec…
This paper develops a theoretical framework for analyzing the strategic interaction between Islamists – pragmatic and dogmatic – and the regime when Shari’a-based issues are negotiated. I advance the new notion that pragmatists might be responsive to the Islamist electorate. Within the framework I generate the hypothesis that, if the regime promotes substantive reforms and the Islamist electora…
The standard model of political party density emphasizing the interaction of social cleavages and district magnitude (M) is incomplete in accounting for number of parties in cases of high values of M in an arbitrary way. We explore an alternative model for such cases emphasizing the slack in the issue agenda available to parties with which to construct viable identities or niches they can emplo…
Buku ini merupakan laporan dari hasil penelitian yang menggabungkan informasi-informasi primer dan sekunder (kajian pustaka) tentang dinamika yang terjadi, terkait dengan munculnya inisiatif mengusung kembali konsepsi adat sebagai alternative terhadap praktek penyeragaman lembaga desa di dalam kehidupan masyarakat lokal di Indonesia. Kajian ini dibatasi hanya pada wilayah Bali, Sumatera dan Flo…
Electoral success of anti-immigrant parties varies considerably across Western Europe. This article contributes to research on this important matter by analysing which current theories that accounts for the failure of anti-immigrant parties in one national context, Sweden. It draws on an unusually rich set of data to trace important processes from the 1970s up to 2006. It shows that the failure…
Compared to its West European counterparts, post-communist Christian Democracy is notable for its lack of success. Even in the most religious of post-communist democracies, no Christian Democratic (CD) party has claimed a plurality of the electorate. At the same time, there is a considerable range in average electoral support from 1990 to 2010, i.e. from 0.7 percent in Estonia to as high as 18.…
In this article we present a content analysis framework for textual analysis of programmatic documents with the goal of identifying party positions on the ethnic dimension of political competition. The proposed approach allows for evaluation and comparison of how party systems in multi-ethnic states process ethno-cultural claims and demands. Our method of content analysis of party programmatic …
In the aftermath of the 2009 national elections in India a number of commentators observed that Indian party politics is a dynastic affair. Why is this the case? This paper claims that absence of a party organization, independent civil society associations that mobilize support for the party, and centralized financing of elections has led to the emergence and sustenance of dynastic parties in I…
This article argues that historical context can be a strong force for the origins of an ideologically and behaviourally moderate religious political party. It explores the origins of Italian Christian Democracy, following the trajectory of the Partito Popolare Italiano and Democrazia Cristiana in order to highlight a path to religious party moderation that excludes extremism and violence at all…
Although economic liberalization has been argued to promote political liberalization, this relationship is poorly understood and we do not consistently observe greater economic openness leading to more open and moderate political systems. We examine the connection between liberalization and moderation in the context of Islamist and Communist parties, both of which are characterized by ideologie…
Institutions figure prominently in explanations for why radical parties forego their agendas and subject themselves to democratic principles when included in politics. Analyzing the Prosperous Justice Party’s political trajectory across Indonesia’s multi-level government structures between 1999 and 2009, I show that the Islamist party has gradually adopted more moderate behavior not only in nat…
This article examines the moderation of the Mexico's National Action Party in the context of democratization. Founded in 1939 as a confessional party, by the 1990s the PAN had moved toward the political center – retaining its Christian-Democratic identity and ideals but also making institutional appeals to the broader voting public in Mexico. This article explains the segmented process through …
The saliency of religious parties in recent democratic consolidation processes forces the discipline to reconsider key questions on party change: Under what conditions do (radical) religious parties moderate? Is their mere inclusion in the democratic process enough to result in their moderation? If so, exactly what mechanisms are at work here? What roles are played by intervening variables such…
In cross-national research on party systems, the empirical units of analysis are often assumed to be self-evident, which can be conducive to misleading research results. This problem is particularly important with regard to party system classification, for which a methodologically rigorous approach to the units of analysis is needed. This article proposes a set of operational criteria for ident…
The left/right semantic is used widely to describe the patterns of party competition in democratic countries. This article examines the patterns of party policy in Anglo-American and Western European countries on three dimensions of left/right disagreement: wealth redistribution, social morality and immigration. The central questions are whether, and why, parties with left-wing or right-wing po…