This article raises questions about how best to assess the performance of radical left parties participating in coalition governments. Drawing in part on interviews (see Appendix 1), it covers parties that have participated in coalition government (Cyprus, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Norway), or have acted as ‘support parties’ (Denmark, Sweden), or are debating the ‘pros and cons’ of coali…
In many Western European states, an increasing number of autonomist parties are taking part in government at state and regional levels. To date, however, scholars have paid little attention to the repercussions of government incumbency for these actors. This article aims to take a first step towards redressing this oversight. Based on an extensive literature examining political parties in gover…
Despite the recent spread of multi-scale approaches to party system classification, the most widely accepted criterion has always been the number of parties, often defined in terms of their relative sizes. Building on the existing body of qualitative classifications and quantitative techniques, this article proposes a method that can be used for defining party system types in operational terms,…
Party gender quotas are rules voluntarily adopted within political party structures that aim at securing a set percentage of women to appear on candidate lists in elections for political office. Although parliamentarian support is critical to the adoption and enforcement of party gender quotas, empirical studies of parliamentarian opinion on this matter are few, and none are concerned with coun…
In this article, we use logit models to examine the role of the major characteristics of a political party's organization, (1) legitimation, (2) penetration/diffusion, (3) charisma, (4) ideology and (5) centralization/decentralization, in the institutionalization of parties in both pre-Soviet and post-Soviet Russian national parliamentary elections. The article begins by situating this research…
Third-party participation in plurality elections should be rare, given the low probability of electoral success. In the United States, the entrenched two-party system makes third-party candidacies especially puzzling. We develop a general theory of these candidacies based on the electoral context, focusing on electoral competition and volatility. When electoral competition is either low or high…
This paper assesses the extent to which party systems are nationalized in four federations. In doing so, the research addresses two questions. First, is dual accountability operational across decentralized countries, or do sub-national voters turn to national cues as a means to economize in a complex information environment? By bringing a cross-national dataset to bear on this question, we are …
The study of party unity and its determinants is conceptually confusing, with terms such as ‘party discipline’ and ‘party cohesion’ used to denote both dependent and independent variables. Moreover, while the literature recognizes both anticipated sanctions and homogeneity of preferences as pathways to party unity, it ignores possibilities such as party loyalty and the division of labour within…
This article analyses the reaction of mainstream political elites to acts of terrorism and assesses whether opposition parties will rally around the flag, much like they do during military or diplomatic crises. A statistical analysis, conducted on 181 terrorist events in five countries (France, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States) over the period 1990 to 2006, indicates tha…
Abstract Against China's attempts at cultivating multilateral forums to augment and institutionalize its influence in Central, Northeast, and Southeast Asia, Japan's major foreign policy challenge now is how to secure its own interests in these forums while balancing its relations with China and the United States.
Abstract Malaysian foreign policy and diplomacy under Mahathir Mohamad were both grandiose and pragmatic, if not audacious. Faced with a changing and uncertain global environment, current Prime Minister Najib Razak has formulated external strategies expected to sustain Malaysia's economic progress to ensure regime legitimacy and political stability.
Abstract This article examines China's “unconscious power” over Mongolia's environmental sector. It argues that Ulaanbaatar's state weakness and Chinese unconscious power constitute a mutually reinforcing threat to Mongolia's environmental security.
Abstract In this era of globalization, does democracy in Asia have a mediating impact on a country's public sector? As the first empirical analysis focused solely on Asian countries, this paper finds that, in general, democracies are associated with a larger government. In particular, democracies more exposed to the global trade have larger public economies. This is not the case, however, in d…
Abstract Chinese local governments widely resort to extra-budgetary exaction to finance themselves, which generates side effects that necessitate central intervention. Through statistical analysis, this paper finds that the central government intervenes only selectively, following a logic driven by economic development and political stability.
Abstract The Chinese government has implemented electricity reform during the reform era, but the process has been accompanied by widespread power shortages and political struggles among state agencies. This paper addresses this contradiction by explaining two interrelated outcomes: the transformation of the state regulatory structure and the development of corporatized state-owned enterprises.
Abstract Economic overheating is a significant and recurring problem in modern China. This paper analyzes the many factors causing overheating and argues that there are systemic and largely structural explanations for overheating that arise from a number of theorized catalysts, including a bureaucratic catalyst and a historical catalyst.
This article examines the capabilities of Cambodia's garment industry in the post-safeguard policy era, and its future prospects. It first analyzes the industry's experience pre-2005, then discusses the role of foreign investors and the government's open-economy policy. The paper then looks at post-2005 industry problems and offers some recommendations for future growth.
Many observers of the US Supreme Court suspect that justices time their departures from the Court based on ideological and political factors. This paper assesses the theoretical effects of such behavior. Does political timing of retirement devalue the appointment process and thereby make the Court less responsive to the public? Do politically motivated retirements lead to more justices serving …
Although party competition is widely regarded as an important part of a working democracy, it is rarely analysed in political science literature. This article discusses the basic properties of party competition, especially the patterns of interaction in contemporary party systems. Competition as a phenomenon at the macro level has to be carefully distinguished from contest and cooperation as th…
This paper investigates how constituency size affects spatial competition in a two-party system with a new entrant. When the electorate is small, two-party systems are stable only if the following conditions hold: the candidates are neither too certain nor too uncertain about voters’ preferences; competition is sufficiently costly; and the candidates have binding policy commitments. Moreover, w…