Government formation under the shadow of a core party: The case of the First …

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 …

Online social networks and micro-blogging in political campaigning: The explo…

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…

A leader without a party: Exploring the relationship between Geert Wilders' l…

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, …

Measuring variations in party unity voting: An assessment of agenda effects

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…

Islamists and the regime: Applying a new framework for analysis to the case o…

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…

Policy agendas and births and deaths of political parties

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…

Jalan Baru Otonomi Desa: mengembalikan otonomi masyarakat, studi kasus Bali, …

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…

The immigration issue and anti-immigrant party success in Sweden 1970-2006: A…

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…

Why there is (almost) no Christian Democracy in post-communist Europe

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.…

Politicization of ethnicity in party manifestos

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 …

Dynastic parties: Organization, finance and impact

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…

Christian Democracy in Italy: An alternative path to religious party moderation

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…

Economic liberalization and political moderation: The case of anti-system par…

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…

Revisiting the inclusion-moderation thesis in the context of decentralized in…

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…

Inclusion and its moderating effects on ideas, interests and institutions: Me…

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 …

Religious parties: Revisiting the inclusion-moderation hypothesis1 - Introduc…

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…

Do Spanish politicians keep their promises?

Edition

Volume 19, Nomor 1, 2013, p. 143-158

ISBN/ISSN

1354-0688

Collation

-

Series Title

Party Politics

Call Number

-

Towards a classification of the world’s democratic party systems, step 1: I…

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 asymmetrical structure of left/right disagreement: Left-wing coherence an…

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…

Why mobilize support online? The paradox of party behaviour online

The internet offers opportunities for political mobilization that parties are under-exploiting. Drawing on the rational choice approach to party behaviour, this paper builds an argument for why this is the case. I argue that if parties are not using new media to mobilize support, it is because the benefits of using it are uncertain while there are very certain costs – communicational and organi…