Interest group–party linkage in the twenty‐first century: Evidence from Denmark,the Netherlands and the United Kingdom

This article systematically investigates interest group–party interactions in the Netherlands, Denmark and the United Kingdom based on cross‐national surveys with responses from 1,225 interest groups. The findings show that interest groups and parties still interact in the beginning of the twenty‐first century, but that the vast majority of their interaction involves a low degree of institutionalisation. Using fractional logit analysis, it is demonstrated that the strength of interest group–party linkage is primarily affected by systematic differences in state–society structures and organisational group characteristics. Moreover, differences are found in what conditions different types of interaction. Whereas historical legacies and partisan origin influence an interest group's structural party links, group resources make interactions of a less institutionalised, ad hoc nature more likely.     

The Decline of Democratic Governance: An Analysis and a Modest Proposal

Why has democratic governance declined, at least in the Anglo‐American world? This essay maps the causes. It starts with the major parties, once basic agents of mass mobilisation and representation. It argues that a cascading series of developments, often involving contingent adjustments to immediate exigencies, have, in a longer perspective, created a fundamental gap between the political system and its publics. A second section then sketches paths to democratic renewal. How might this gap be closed? What other changes might be required to make this a reality? Are prospects of change fanciful?     

Where are the doves? Explaining party support for military operations abroad in Italy

Abstract

Since the end of the Cold War, Italy has radically transformed its foreign and security policy, participating in several Military Operations Abroad (MOA) across the world. A few qualitative studies have already analysed how Italian parties debated and voted on this issue, underlining a bipartisan consensus between centre-left and centre-right parties, based on a common humanitarian narrative. This article provides a substantial methodological contribution to this research agenda, explaining party support in Italy for the six most relevant MOAs during the so-called ‘Second Republic’ (1994–2013), through the employment of automated text analysis and linear regression models. In line with existing literature on the party politics of military interventions, the findings indicate a curvilinear distribution of support across the left–right axis, the strong impact of government–opposition dynamics and the interaction between international legitimacy of the specific operation and ideological leaning.     

New Labour

Abstract

This paper examines the use made by political parties of branding, as a means of establishing party values and winning political support. It looks in particular at the way in which political parties use communication to create, build and maintain political brands.

The paper involves an examination of the recent history of the British Labour Party. After a long period in the political wilderness, the party re-branded itself as “New Labour” in the mid-1990s, and-as New Labour-swept to power in a landslide election victory in 1997, under their new leader, Tony Blair.

Using media coverage and material written by some of the architects of New Labour, the paper will describe the creation of the “New Labour” brand, and look at how it was developed and used to generate political support. The paper will also consider the evolution and development of the brand, as the substance underlying the stated brand values has come to be questioned, not least by so-called “Old Labour” supporters of the party.

The paper will draw conclusions regarding the successful management of a political brand, pointing in particular at the need to ensure that the performance of a party espousing a particular brand supports and reinforces communicated brand values and the brand itself.     

Parliamentary questions as strategic party tools

This article shifts the analysis of parliamentary oversight tools to the level of the political party, asking how political parties make use of written parliamentary questions. It theorises that the use of parliamentary questions is related to the ideological and electoral competition between political parties, borrowing from theories on issue competition and negative campaigning. It provides an empirical test, using data on written questions from the lower house in the Netherlands (1994–2014). The analysis shows that parties tend to put questions to ministers whose portfolios are salient to them, in line with issue ownership theories. Moreover they ask questions of both ministers from parties that are ideologically distant and those with whom they have considerable electoral overlap in line with studies of negative campaigning.     

Stepping in the same river twice: Stability amidst change in Eastern European party competition

Party competition in Eastern Europe faces a seeming paradox. On the one hand, research finds increased political volatility in these countries, while, on the other, some authors demonstrate inherent ideological stability in the region. This research note presents a new methodological approach to adjudicating between these two findings, and suggests that while political organisations come and go, the ideological structure of party competition in Eastern Europe is strikingly steady. By developing a number of different measures of the dimensional structure of party competition, the consistency of the measures across countries, as well as their relative stability within countries over time, is demonstrated. The findings speak to current developments in Eastern Europe, and have implications beyond the region. The conclusion that even volatile party systems can be underpinned by stable ideological oppositions points to two different types of party system structure: one related to parties as organisations, and the other related to parties as expressions of political divides.     

The Funding of Political Parties

Despite attempts over the last decade to bring an end to what has become an ‘arms race’ between political parties, party funding in the UK continues to defy resolution. Drawing on the experience of the committee charged by the last Labour administration to put party funding and electoral spending on a more sustainable footing, this article examines the issues and the main sticking points. It outlines the basis on which the negotiations were undertaken, and the main hurdles they sought to overcome. It highlights the disagreement between the parties on the definition of the central issue, the problems associated with the main funding sources for each of the parties, and the viability of state funding. It discusses why success proved elusive, but also why a solution is necessary, since in the absence of robust rules, parties and therefore the UK political system more broadly, are ‘a hostage to the next scandal’.     

Quotas,women's leadership and grassroots women activists: Bringing women into the party?

Research has consistently shown that women are less likely than men to participate in political parties as members and activists; this participation gender gap has persisted despite narrowing gender gaps in education, employment and in other types of political participation.  Yet while the gaps are widespread, their size varies greatly by country as well as by party.  To what extent do party organizational factors help explain these disparities? More pointedly, are there any lessons to be learned from past experiences about party mechanisms which might help to reduce these gaps? To answer these questions, this study investigates grassroots partisan participation in 68 parties in 12 parliamentary democracies, considering whether factors that have been shown to boost the number of women candidates and legislators are also associated with changing the traditionally male dominance of grassroots party politics.  We find evidence of links between some party mechanisms and higher women's intra-party participation; however, because the same relationship holds for men's participation, they do not alter the participation gender gap. Only greater participation of women in parties’ parliamentary delegations is associated with smaller grassroots gender gaps. We conclude that parties which wish to close grassroots gender gaps should not rely solely on efforts aimed at remedying gender gaps at the elite level.     

Appearing moderate or radical? Radical left party success and the two-dimensional political space

Abstract

Challenger parties’ electoral successes have attracted increasing scholarly attention. Based on the example of West European radical left parties, this article investigates whether and how centripetal and centrifugal positional movements on different conflict dimensions influence the election results of these parties. Depending on parties’ issue-linkages, these strategies will have a different effect for the economic and the non-economic issue dimension. Due to radical left parties’ long-term commitment and a strong party-issue linkage on economic issues, more moderate positions will play to their electoral advantage. In contrast, far-left parties compete with social democratic and green-libertarian parties for party-issue linkages on the non-economic issue dimension. Here, they benefit from promoting centrifugal strategies. Based on time-series cross-section analyses for 25 West European far-left parties between 1990 and 2017, the empirical results show that the success of radical left parties’ positional strategies varies with the conflict dimension in question and that this effect is only partly moderated by the positions of competing mainstream left parties.     

The family policy positions of conservative parties: A farewell to the male-breadwinner family model?

Since the Golden Age of the Welfare State ended, the male-breadwinner family model traditionally supported by conservative parties has been put under pressure. Familialism appears to be no longer attractive to a changing, more volatile constituency. By comparing four different European countries – namely, Denmark, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom – this work investigates the evolution of the conservative parties’ family policy positions in the post-Fordist era (1990s–2010s). The article has two goals. First, relying on a multidimensional theoretical framework where both social consumption and social investment policy instruments are at stake, it probes whether conservatives have switched their positions by backing de-familialism and thus the dual-earner family model. Second, it explains policy position change or stability over time and cross-country differences through a multicausal analytical framework. The content analysis of party manifestos shows that, in the post-Fordist era, the conservative parties have supported ‘optional familialism’, thus upholding both familiarizing and de-familiarizing measures. However, such positions are not static. In the 1990s, support for familialism was higher while, since the 2000s, there has been a constant, increasing backing of de-familialism. While the shift is evident for all the parties, cross-country differences remain. The comparative historical analysis has pointed out that the specific ‘optional familialism’ positions taken by the conservative parties over time result from the interaction of constituency-oriented, institutional, contextual and political factors.     

Parental Socialization and Rational Party Identification

This article constructs a rational choice model of the intergenerational transmission of party identification. At a given time, identification with a party is the estimate of average future benefits from candidates of that party. Experienced voters constantly update this expectation using political events since the last realignment to predict the future in accordance with Bayes Rule. New voters, however, have no experience of their own. In Bayesian terms, they need prior beliefs. It turns out that under certain specified conditions, these young voters should rationally choose to employ parental experience to help orient themselves to politics. The resulting model predicts several well–known features of political socialization, including the strong correlation between parents' and children's partisanship, the greater partisan independence of young voters, and the tendency of partisan alignments to decay.     

What Is It About Politicians?

Why do people dislike politicians and could anything be done about it? Drawing upon survey evidence, it is argued that the twin charge against politicians is that they are engaged in a kind of game and that they are a political class out of touch with real life. These charges are examined and found to have at least some merit. Remedies would involve a change in political behaviour; and measures to widen political recruitment. The consequences of not making such changes will be a further erosion of political trust. Constitutional change is less important in tackling dislike of politicians than alterations in political behaviour.