A Wider Range of Friends: Multi‐speed Organising during the 2015 Labour Leadership Contest

The British Labour party's recent adoption of a partially open primary for the selection of its leader conforms to a trend seen across many European political parties of increasing rights and privileges in internal party decision‐making and expanding opportunities for more loosely affiliated supporters to participate in party activity. This dual trend can be seen as a response to changes in the membership environment, greater individualisation of political participation and growth in social movement politics and online activism. Yet as much as parties are responding to a changed membership environment, they are also driving that change, increasingly blurring the distinction between members and supporters. This article examines the recent impact of this change within the British Labour party and argues that, in line with Susan Scarrow's theory of ‘multi‐speed’ membership, the Labour party's experiment in expanding affiliation options has led directly to a tension in locating the source of authority within the party, creating a challenge for its new leader in accommodating his new supporters within his party's representative traditions.     

Tremors from afar: negotiating the rise of Donald Trump on Sweden’s populist right

ABSTRACT

While commentators often describe transnational far-right populism as a unified movement, Teitelbaum’s article investigates incongruities among anti-immigrant, nationalist actors in two locations today. It focuses on the implications of Donald Trump’s success for the Sweden Democrats, highlighting party leaders’ inability to establish a coherent position on the US Republican. Their struggle derives from Trump’s mismatch with the party’s emerging reformist ideals. Accordingly, the public sphere analysed in this article provides insight, not only into the internal divisions and fraught history of the Sweden Democrats, but also into the dynamic nature of contemporary right-wing populist movements in the West.     

Eurocommunism and the Spanish communists

The DCs development from the mid‐1970s is examined in the light of its overall characteristics as a political party. A sceptical viewpoint is expressed about its prospects for change, in spite of talk of party reform since 1975 under Zaccagnini's secretaryship, if only because the ‘historic compromise’ confirms the DCs governing role even though in a modified policy setting. The main consequence of Moro's death is likely to be an accelerated change in leadership generation rather than a weakening of his ‘strategy’. At the same time, the DC has not yet found an alternative role to replace the political dominance it has lost. The new relationship with the PCI causes some confusion about the party's identity, so that DC leaders tend to view this in a short‐term perspective and to treat it as an empirical rather than ‘historic’ compromise.     

Modes of UK Executive–Legislative Relations Revisited

Anthony King's 1976 article ‘Modes of executive–legislative relations: Great Britain, France and West Germany’ is a classic in legislative studies. It argued that it is simplistic to analyse relations between ‘the executive’ and ‘the legislature’ in parliamentary systems, because parliaments are complex organisations comprised of competing actors. Instead, we must consider the various ‘modes’ through which these actors can interact to challenge the executive. As King pointed out, the classic view of the British Parliament was of a dominant ‘opposition mode’ and yet, in fact, the most important relationship was the ‘intraparty mode’: between the government and its own backbenchers. Other options, such as the ‘non‐party mode’ or ‘cross‐party mode’ were considered weak in Britain. This article revisits King's modes in the light of changes at Westminster during the intervening forty years. Developments such as the establishment of the select committee system and a more confident and party‐balanced House of Lords require significant changes to his conclusions. But his central insights, encouraging readers to focus on the multiple relationships inside legislatures, including those within political parties, remain fundamentally important.     

American Progressivism and the Obama Presidency

US progressivism is half espoused, half rejected, by an ambivalent if talented President. The Republican image of the President as ‘socialist’ is one which the social democratic Democrats wish were true. The President's readiness to compromise has not tempered the extreme hostility of the Republicans. It has been exploited by the political agents of business and finance. It has used by the permanent war party: the campaign against ‘terror’ enables it to retain mastery of foreign and military policy. The New Deal's heirs, seeking more social democracy and less militarism, are bereft of new forms of political action. US democracy is threatened by an eruption of cultural and religious fundamentalism, racism, and xenophobia, as well as a compulsive refusal of social solidarity. Withal, the situation is open as well as complex, and the President in the long run may be much more successful than his angry detractors and disappointed supporters allow.     

The 2012 United States election and the implications for East Asia

Abstract

The 2012 election resulted in a major victory for President Obama and while his Democratic Party improved its Congressional strength, the House of Representatives remains under Republican control. The election revealed the depth of America's political and voter divisions with each party showing dramatically different areas of strength and weakness. Yet the election did not hinge on foreign policy leaving the Obama administration likely to continue most of its earlier policies toward East Asia as marked by the multilayered ‘pivot’ toward Asia. Relations with China and North Korea are likely to remain difficult to manage while US–ROK links should be far smoother. Of particular concern is the economic sluggishness and rising nationalism in Japan which could well cause bilateral problems with the US and regional problems with Japan's neighbors, including US ally, South Korea. And at home the bipolar divisions over how best to deal with America's economic revitalization could well impede US abilities to exert a convincing multi-dimensional role in the region.     

Enoch Powell and the Conservative Party: Reflections on an Ambiguous Legacy

This article examines Enoch Powell's ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech in relation to the Conservative party. Powell's speech created an additional challenge to a Conservative party already weakened by the loss of the 1964 and 1966 elections and by the failure of the newly elected leader, Edward Heath, to impress his authority decisively on the party. Powell had some parliamentary support but his real following was concentrated in the Conservative grass roots. Powell lost the support of the liberal‐minded Shadow Cabinet; but after 1968 the Conservatives nevertheless moved to the right on the issue, especially after Mrs. Thatcher became leader in 1975. His speech has cast a long shadow as the party has sought to modernise in more recent times and to appeal to a more racially diverse electorate.     

Post‐Democratic Party Politics

In recent years many scholars have diagnosed a crisis of party politics. This article considers recent changes in the UK and Europe that appear to challenge this idea. Exploring Colin Crouch's notion of ‘post‐democratic’ party politics and considering his diagnosis of shifts in parties' agenda setting, organisation and communication, the article considers evidence of post‐democratic politics and the possibility for future renewal.     

Run,Jane, Run! Gendered Responses to Political Party Recruitment

Many researchers point to gender inequities in party recruitment practices to explain women’s underrepresentation on the ballot. However, there has been little systematic research about how men and women respond to recruitment, so we do not know whether gender-balanced recruitment would actually lead to gender-balanced outcomes. We conduct two studies to address this question. First, in cooperation with a county Republican Party, we identically recruited 5510 male and 5506 female highly active party members to attend a free candidate training seminar. Republican women were half as likely to respond to the invitation as men. Second, we conducted a survey experiment of 3960 voters on the Utah Colleges Exit Poll. Republican men’s level of self-reported political ambition was increased by the prospect of elite recruitment significantly more than Republican women’s, thereby increasing the gender gap vis-à-vis the control. The gender gap in the effect of recruitment on political ambition among Democrats was much smaller. Together, these findings suggest that to fully understand the role recruitment plays in women’s underrepresentation, researchers must understand the ways in which men and women respond to recruitment, not just whether political elites engage in gendered recruitment practices.     

Germans who have learnt a lesson

Rabbi Meir Kahane's Kach party in Israel is unashamedly and aggressively racist. The first part of this article looks at how a minority Jewish ‘self‐defence’ movement in New York became a political party with a seat in Israel's parliament.     

The ‘Hows’, not the ‘Whys’ or the ‘Wherefores’: The Role of Intra‐party Competition in the 2011 Breakthrough of the True Finns

From minor party status, the True Finn Party (PS) claimed nearly one‐fifth of the vote and almost the same proportion of parliamentary seats at the April 2011 Finnish general election. It registered the largest gains made by any party in postwar Finnish history, thus writing – in the eyes of foreign journalists at least – yet another chapter in the surge of populist radical right parties across contemporary Europe. This article, however, is concerned more with how the substantial PS vote was mobilised than with how much was mobilised. The idea is not to identify the primary causes of the PS's national breakthrough, but to explore the internal dynamics of party's explosive growth and the process of translating a large prospective vote into ‘hard votes’ through the ballot boxes. The focus is on district‐level nomination strategies, the range of candidate types, the mechanics of vote optimisation and the distribution of the personal vote. With regard to the latter, the article seeks to measure and analyse the role of intra‐party competition in the anatomy of party transformation and to do so by the novel means of adapting the Laakso‐Taagepera index to measure the ‘effective number of co‐partisans’. Significantly, at the 2011 Eduskunta election the PS exhibited the highest level of intra‐party competition of any of the eight parliamentary parties.     

The US mid-term elections of 1982

The 1982 US election completed the destruction of the myth that 1980 saw a Republican landslide. It disappointed the election-eve expectations of the Democrats, but was far crueller to the earlier hopes of the Republicans, though their financial advantage kept their losses down. Old political forces-parties and unions-played a more active part than in recent years, and turnout rose for the first time for two decades. The results should make internal differences less divisive among Democrats, more so among Republicans, especially with the crushing exposure of the bogus claims of the ‘New Right’. But if the economy recovers, so may the Republican party.     

Democracy Without Parties? Italy After Berlusconi

This article looks at the legacy of ‘Berlusconism’ for Italian politics. On the right, we identify a process of fragmentation. As a result of the personalised leadership of Silvio Berlusconi, where loyalties and ties were to il cavaliere as an individual rather than to a party or a political tradition, there is little by way of legacy on the right. Surprisingly, we find that Berlusconi's greatest legacy lies on the left of Italian politics, in the figure of Matteo Renzi. In his savvy manipulation of the media and in the careful construction of his own image, accompanied by a non‐ideological set of political slogans, Renzi has gone even further than Berlusconi. As a result, he may be the one to final bury Italian ‘party government’ and all its associated traditions and ideals.     

Having One's Cake and Eating It Too: Cameron's Conservatives and Immigration

The May 2010 general election represented a change in tone on immigration and asylum policy for the Conservative party. Although its manifesto still contained a promise to limit numbers and expressed concern about the abuse of student visas, the Party's previous fixation with asylum seekers had disappeared. This article considers the rationale for these developments in the light of David Cameron's election as leader in late 2005 and his efforts from then on to reposition his party. Cameron's initial silence on this issue and his appointment of a moderate as immigration spokesman were part of an attempt both to shift the focus onto the economic impact of migration and, more broadly, to ‘decontaminate the Tory brand’ in order to gain ‘permission to be heard’ by small‐l liberals who were critical to the Party's electoral recovery but alienated by hard‐line stances. That said, immigration was never entirely forgotten even in this early period and was always seen, so long as it was carefully handled, as an issue capable of benefitting the Tories. As such, it was skilfully factored back into the Party's offer from late 2007 onwards. In government, the Conservatives may have the upper hand on immigration over their junior coalition partner, but this is no guarantee that they will be able to deliver the outcomes they promised     

Putting it Right? The Labour Party's Big Shift on Immigration Since 2010

Under pressure from voters, and from other parties, Europe's centre‐left has had to re‐evaluate its position on migration. The UK Labour party is no exception. Public concern about large‐scale immigration clearly contributed to its heavy defeat at the 2010 general election. Since then it has been slowly but surely hardening its stance on the issue, although this is by no means unprecedented: while the rise of UKIP may have upped the ante in recent months, Labour has a long history of adjusting policy in this area so as to remain competitive with its main rival, the Conservative party. Labour is now asking itself whether it will be possible to do this without challenging one of the fundamental precepts of EU membership—the right of free movement of people. Whatever the result of this internal debate between the party's ‘beer drinkers’ and its ‘wine drinkers’, Labour may still have difficulty in neutralising immigration as an issue since, for the most part, it continues to insist on giving an essentially economic answer to what for many voters is actually a cultural question.     

Conservative Party Modernisation and David Cameron's Politics of the Family

A key feature of David Cameron's electoral appeal is his carefully cultivated image as a ‘family man’. Cameron has repeatedly stressed the importance of the family to his political views and stated his desire to see marriage rewarded through the tax system. At the same time, Cameron has presented himself as a modernising leader, keen to demonstrate that he and his party are in touch with contemporary society. Central to this effort to detoxify the Conservative brand has been an emphasis on social liberalism. The potential conflict between these two objectives reflects the division in the party between social liberals and traditionalists, which has become increasingly apparent over the past decade. This article examines Conservative party policy and rhetoric on social and moral issues since 1997, particularly gay rights and family policy. It notes that a significant divide remains in the Conservative party between social liberals and traditionalists, so in this respect Cameron's modernisation project remains far from complete.     

Introduction: The Progressive Dilemma in British Politics

This special edition reflects on the contemporary relevance of the insights and concerns of David Marquand's book The Progressive Dilemma. In this Introduction, the editors set the scene for these reflections. They consider the structural changes that have occurred in politics since the 1990s: the impact of globalisation, the erosion of class identities, the rise of ‘identity politics’ and the continued fragmentation of the party system. There has been no reconciliation between the parties of the centre‐left, nor any re‐examination of the ‘liberal tradition’ and the potential for a new synthesis with revisionist social democracy. On the one hand, Corbynism is a radicalised metropolitan species of liberalism, while on the other there are plenty in Labour who stress the need for the party to re‐engage with the traditional, socially conservative values of the working class in a new ‘postliberal’ appeal. Yet the authors argue that those who broadly identify with progressive causes in British politics—animated by the various overlapping strands of social liberalism, social democracy and liberal socialism—have still to work out how to address the historic failings that Marquand so eloquently exposed, to create a new and inspiring intellectual vision that unites and energises the left and centre‐left.     

Towards an organisational perspective on party funding: Explaining financial transfers from MEPs to their national parties

Which parties represented in the European Parliament (EP) are able to extract regular donations from their MEPs' salaries and, if they extract donations, how great are they? In the literature on party finances, there has been a lack of attention paid to the use of salaries of elected representatives as a source of funding. This is surprising given that the national headquarters of many parties in Europe regularly collect ‘party taxes’: a fixed (and often significant) share of their elected representatives' salaries. In filling this gap, this article theoretically specifies two sets of party characteristics that account for the presence of a taxing rule and the level of the tax, respectively. The presence of a tax depends on the basic ‘acceptability’ of such an internal obligation that rests on a mutually beneficial financial exchange between parties' campaign finance contributions to their MEPs and MEPs' salary donations to their parties. The level of the tax, in contrast, depends on the level of intra‐organisational compliance costs and parties' capacity to cope with these costs. Three factors are relevant to this second stage: MEPs' ideological position, the size of the parliamentary group and party control over candidate nomination. The framework is tested through a selection model applied to a unique dataset covering the taxing practices in parties across the European Union Member States.     

The West Midlands and Powell's Birmingham Speech

This article examines how the changing political debate in West Midlands’ constituencies influenced Powell's thinking, and how the area reacted to his ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech. It looks at local perceptions of Commonwealth immigration in the West Midlands. It contrasts largely tolerant Wolverhampton with attitudes in nearby Smethwick; here a small number of race propagandists shaped local feeling through the columns of the Smethwick Telephone. The article considers their campaign, and the notorious victory of the hardliner Peter Griffiths in the 1964 general election. Powell and allies learnt there was electoral mileage in the ‘race card’, then campaigning on the issue. The article details the strength of subsequent local support after his Midlands Hotel speech, a loyalty only fortified in response to the execration of a horrified metropolitan elite and lasting until his defection from the Conservative party in 1974.