The 2007 Presidential and Parliamentary Elections in Timor‐Leste

In the wake of the 2006 “east‐west” crisis in Timor‐Leste, the 2007 Presidential and Parliamentary elections were widely heralded as a key test of political development in the newly independent nation. This article analyses the pre‐election situation, significant electoral law changes, the emergence of new political parties, campaign incidents, poll results, and postelection negotiations over a coalition government. It concludes by reflecting on some of the wider implications for political stability in Timor‐Leste, and related developments through 2008. 1     

Corporation‐based Parties: The Present and Future of Business Politics in Latin America

Throughout Latin America, particular business conglomerates have begun to sponsor their own political parties, building those parties on their own corporate assets. These “corporation‐based parties” represent a new wave of highly particularized conservative representation in the region. Indeed, corporation‐based parties have become a regular—though largely unrecognized—feature of contemporary Latin American party systems. This article develops a theory of how and why particular business conglomerates sponsor their own parties, provides substantial evidence for the existence of corporation‐based parties across much of Latin America, and uses a case study of a party built on a Panamanian supermarket chain to demonstrate how such parties are organized. In closing, it discusses the possible future for these parties in the region.     

“The Politics of Political Advertising” in Australia and Britain, 1970–1989

The role of advertising in the production of political campaigns deserves more consideration than it has previously received. My study examines advertising agencies associated with election campaigns in the 1970s and 1980s, investigating their decisions to accept or reject political accounts. Focusing on Britain and Australia, and using a range of primary sources including the industry press, interviews and memoirs, I demonstrate that an agency's decision to accept a political account is always complex, contested and highly contingent. Accepting a political account may alienate clients and agency staff who support another party. Campaigns are labour‐intensive and may detract from an agency's core business. Involvement in a losing campaign can damage an agency's reputation, just as association with a successful one may attract clients. Agencies are often unsure how to approach political advertising where traditional techniques may not be suitable. Such concerns about accepting a political account will likely be put aside where an agency principal has close personal ties to a party or leader.     

The Transformation of Australian Electoral Analysis: The Two‐Party Preferred Vote — Origins,Impacts, and Critics

Measuring party support in Australia by constructing a “two‐party preferred” vote has had a profound effect, not only on the way political scientists, journalists, and politicians understand electoral “swing” and predict electoral outcomes, but also on their understanding of the party system, their thinking about electoral fairness, and their views about which party or parties can legitimately claim government. This article traces the origins — the maternity as well as the paternity – of the “two‐party preferred”. It documents its spread from federal to state elections, even as voting systems in some states have switched from exhaustive preferential to optional preferential. It discusses its wide‐ranging impact, and its implications for notions of electoral fairness and the legitimacy of election outcomes. It evaluates various criticisms of the concept — technical, pragmatic, and conceptual. And it notes the implications for marginal seat campaigning of the commonly observed “uniform swing”— implications completely at odds with the idea that marginal seats matter.     

Rising Tides of Ideological Simplifications: A Comparative and Longitudinal Analysis of Local Parties

This article explores the strength and causal determinants of ideological thinking within Swiss local political parties. The concept of “ideologization” refers to (1): “horizontal couplings”, as they are manifested in intercorrelations between different opinions, and to (2) “vertical couplings” of specific opinions to abstract concepts of “left” and “right”. Results show high ideologization on the left‐center section of the LR‐scale, especially in the vertical dimension. On both sides of the spectrum, ideological constraints are significantly higher in larger communities than in than in smaller ones. Only in rather small communities, does ideologization correlate positively with the educational level, the modern occupational background of party members and the number of other local parties with which they have to compete. In communities of given size, ideological thinking is more pronounced when parties possess a small share of political power. Finally, it is found that ideological constraints have increased somewhat between 1989 and 2002.     

Managing “Self‐Preservation”: Charles Pearson's National Life and Character and the Early Australian Commonwealth

In National Life and Character (1893), Charles Pearson argued that the breakdown in “character” threatening social cohesion in Britain was a phenomenon that was replicated on a global scale in the late nineteenth century. The economic and technological progress that characterised the industrial revolution in Britain had stimulated urbanisation, and unleashed, Pearson claimed, a “bestial element in man”, degrading the quality of civic and economic life, and leading to a rising population of “stunted specimens of humanity”. Most analyses of National Life and Character focus on its fear of non‐white races and influence on policies of racial restriction; we argue that National Life and Character is a more ambitious work of political economy preoccupied, as Pearson observed, with the “self‐preservation” of the white European race, grappling with the tension of managing a potentially degraded population as new forms of state intervention, decline of traditional religious faith, and global expansion transformed white society, leaving it declining into a “stationary state” and vulnerable in the face of the rising non‐European peoples. These concerns were shared by many of the architects of Australian Federation, influencing the policy initiatives of the post‐Federation period.     

Social Policies and Center‐Right Governments in Argentina and Chile

Latin America's “left turn” expanded cash transfers and public services, contributing to lower poverty and inequality. Recently, right‐leaning candidates and parties have begun to win back seats in the legislature, and in some cases have captured the executive branch. This shift has sparked debate about the future of Latin America's welfare states. This article analyzes social policy reforms enacted by two recent right‐leaning governments: that of Sebastián Piñera in Chile (2010–14) and Mauricio Macri in Argentina (2015–). It finds that contrary to neoliberal adjustment policies of the past, neither Macri nor Piñera engaged in privatization or deep spending cuts. Instead, both administrations facilitated a process of policy drift in some sectors and marginal expansion in others. Policy legacies and the strength of the opposition help to explain these outcomes, suggesting that Latin America's political context has been transformed by the consolidation of democracy and the experience of left party rule.     

Strategic Othering: Framing Lebanese Migration and Fraser's “Mistake”

Australian Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Peter Dutton, has framed the mid‐1970s immigration of Lebanese affected by civil war as Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser's “mistake”. His remarks sparked controversy in the parliament and the media. The issue became a contest of frames between the Murdoch media, which supported the Minister's “mistake” frame and argued his right to “tell the truth”, and the Fairfax media, which viewed the Minister as being “racist” for “scapegoating” the Lebanese community. Along with archival documents, this article examines the context and coverage of the Minister's remarks, noting that the frames presented in the media “indexed” those adopted amongst political elites, while failing to re‐examine the historical record. This case study demonstrates the power of framing and the media's tendency to accept rather than challenge frames used by those in the political contest, with the result that errors in the representation of history were never corrected. This article draws on framing theory and indexing theory and concludes that the “mistake” frame for the Lebanese feeds into narratives that serve to “other” Muslim and Arab groups, fanning fears and mobilising a discourse of Islamophobia around the exclusion of “undesirable” immigrants on the basis of “cultural fit”.     

Quand la famille se déchire: analyse des sections divergentes cantonales lors des votations populaires 2003‐2011

The appearance of divergent cantonal sections during popular votes is a recurring phenomenon in Switzerland. However, despite the importance of its analysis to evaluate the internal cohesion of political parties, this has been neglected in the recent literature. We fill the gap by analyzing both quantitatively and qualitatively the divergent sections during popular votes in the last two legislatures (2003‐2007 and 2007‐2011). The quantitative analysis shows stability or even a slight decline of the phenomenon. The qualitative analysis (case studies) relativizes its impact on party cohesion: Its more important occurrences are confined to specific policy areas and caused by particular or specific causes.     

Leadership: Arthur Calwell and the Post‐War Immigration Program*

Arthur Calwell was the major architect of Australia's successful post‐war migration program that laid the demographic, economic and cultural foundations of contemporary society. In public memory, however, Calwell is now mostly associated with the White Australia policy, which aimed to preserve Australia as a white, British‐Australian society by severely restricting Asian immigration. This article assesses Calwell's leadership of the immigration program, his impact and his legacy. It identifies three distinct, often irreconcilable leadership characteristics, defined in terms of him as “innovative policy‐maker’, “political broker” and “agitator”. This focus on leadership challenges the one‐dimensional view of Calwell that exists in Australian political historiography. It is also intended to extend our engagement with leadership studies and illuminate the role leadership plays in political decision‐making, especially sensitive portfolios like immigration.     

Die Entwicklung des Föderalismus und der Föderalismus ‐ diskussion in der Schweiz von 1874 bis 1964

Before 1874 and after 1964, the evolution of federalism and related political discourses is well known. Between these years, however, stretches a terra incognita, which this political‐historical essay tries to explore. This period was characterised by a steady shift of power from the Canton's to the Confederation, resulting in the frequent re‐grouping of federalists and centralists. Before the First World War, traditionalists from central and occidental Switzerland fiercely defended a confederalist vision. During the interwar years, things quietened down. The modern federal State organisation was no longer fundamentally questioned, and the debate focused on technical questions. The “geistige Landesverteidigung” (moral defence of the country against fascism) secured an enduring yet problematic place for federalism in Swiss culture by transforming it into the “unity in diversity” principle. After the Second World War, modernising forces resulted in the “executive and co‐operative federalism” that we know today.     

Does local party organisation make a difference? Political parties and local government elections in Germany

Do large and locally organised memberships represent an electoral asset for political parties in a mass media age? Years of political science discussions of different models of party organisation have produced little evidence about whether, or in what way, alternate models matter. This article examines a survey of 549 SPD and CDU local party organisations for evidence of whether ‘mass’ characteristics are associated with electioneering differences. The study finds that mass‐style organisation is associated with more active local campaigns. Local parties which are active throughout the year and which can draw on relatively large membership bases run more active and more varied campaigns.     

Political Clientelism in Mexico: Bridging the Gap Between Citizens and the State

This article explores practices of political clientelism in a native village in Mexico City during recent elections (2006, 2012), aiming to create more conceptual clarity and to demonstrate the usefulness of ethnographic approaches. Seen from the clients' and the brokers' perspective, political clientelism and vote buying are two different practices, carried out in different ways, with different degrees of legitimacy. The problem‐solving network studied here bridges the gap between the citizen and the state, while the political operators hope to be rewarded with public employment. In this case, one candidate‐patron changed parties a few months before the 2012 elections, and the electoral statistics provide indications of the numerical effectiveness of his clientelist network. Multiparty competition, instead of undermining clientelist practices, appears to “democratize” them.     

The (Partisan) Role of the Press in Direct Democratic Campaigns: Evidence from a Swiss Vote on European Integration

Abstract: This article analyzes the role of the press in direct democratic campaigns. The paper argues the press has a dual role: On news pages, newspapers ought to inform citizens about the issue positions and frames of the pro and con camps in a balanced way. In editorials, newspapers act as political advocates that promote their own issue frames and try to shape public opinion through voting recommendations. Comparing the issue positions and frames in editorials and news reports in the run‐up to the vote on the popular initiative “Yes to Europe” in Switzerland, this article shows that newspapers give similar visibility to the pro and con camps regardless of the papers’ own editorial position. However, some newspapers favor issue frames that are in line with their editorial perspectives. In conclusion, newspapers are more similar in news report content than in editorial views.     

Logics of action and models of capitalism: Explaining bottom‐up non‐liberal change

Recent institutionalist scholarship has theorized the liberalization or “disorganization” of capitalism as the result of shifts in economic actors' “logic of action” towards opportunism. Little attention has been given to the reverse possibility that shifts in economic actors' “logic of action” away from opportunism might contribute to “embedding” or “organizing” capitalism. This paper builds on recent scholarship to theorize this scenario and then demonstrate its empirical validity with an historical institutionalist study of the emergence of such a “non‐liberal” institution in Switzerland in 1961. The theoretical framework links three “logics of action” – opportunism, enlightened self‐interest and strong solidarity – to Höpner's typology of capitalist institutions – organized, coordinated, and liberal. It theorizes the interactions between these logics and the social mechanism – goal signaling – that can explain a shift from one logic of action to another, potentially leading to change from one type of institution to another.     

International Intervention and the People's Will: The Demoralization of Democracy in Cambodia

This article examines the deterioration in relations between two Cambodian opposition parties and the “international community” from whom they sought support during the 1998 Cambodian elections. It is suggested that the manipulation, by influential political actors, of internationally promoted political concepts such as “democracy,” “sovereignty,” and “the people's will” is problematic for mutual understanding between international and local political actors. In Cambodia in 1998, liberal views of the “people's will” as an amoral and neutral construct facilitating the delegation of authority were awkwardly but influentially conflated, by the election campaigning of the two parties, with a view of the “people's will” as a moral imperative to liberate the nation from alleged “traitors.” This caused widespread adherence, among the parties' followers, to views of the 1998 elections that were non-liberal and antidemocratic in a number of respects. When sharp differences in understandings of the political situation emerged between local and international actors, following the electoral defeat of those opposition party leaders, the fragile nature of a purported “partnership” between a self-appointed “international community” and the Cambodian people was exposed.     

Salience‐Based Congruence Between Parties & their Voters: The Swiss Case

Policy congruence between parties and their voters is a prerequisite for the latter's representation. Related research typically focuses on the left‐right dimension. We contribute to this literature by conceiving the alignment between citizens and political elites as congruence on issues that individual citizens consider important (salience‐based congruence). Furthermore, we approach salience from the citizen's perspective and measure it at the individual level. Based on data from the Swiss Election Study (2007), we demonstrate that the assessment of party representation changes once we take salience into account. Policy congruence on salient issues is high and niche parties perform better than mainstream parties. Our arguments and findings about the role personal issue salience plays at the individual and party levels have important repercussions for contemporary debates on representation and policy congruence.     

It's not Economic Interventionism,Stupid! Reassessing the Political Economy of Radical Right‐wing Populist Parties

This paper engages in a comparative analysis of the economic positions of radical right‐wing populist parties in Western Europe. Following Ennser‐Jedenastik ( 2016 ), we argue that those parties’ political economy is best captured in terms of the nativist, populist and authoritarian features of their core ideology, each of which produces a specific set of economic policies independent from the issue of government intervention in the economy. On basis of an analysis of the election manifestos of seven radical right‐wing populist parties in Western Europe in the period 2005‐2015, we argue that those parties share similarities in their economic nativism, authoritarianism and populism, whilst their positions on the traditional role of the state in the economy are more diverse. The findings indicate also a unified ‘nativist’ response to the global financial crisis both in terms of welfare chauvinism and economic protectionism. We discuss the role of internal and external factors in explaining the economic profile of radical right‐wing populist parties.     

Freedom of Expression in South Korea

South Korea is widely considered a consolidated democracy, but there is growing evidence that freedom of expression in South Korea has lagged behind that of comparable Asian countries and that it has deteriorated since 2008. Freedom House downgraded South Korea’s “freedom of the press” status from “free” to “partly free” in 2010 and other international reports also raised concerns on the status of freedom of expression in the country. We identify five problems that have contributed to the deterioration in South Korea’s rankings with respect to civil liberties: abuse of criminal defamation, the rules governing election campaigns, national security limitations on free speech, restrictions related to the internet and partisan use of state power to control the media. We close by considering possible explanations of the phenomenon, ranging from more distant cultural factors and the influence of the Japanese legal systems through the enduring impact of the Cold War. However, the main problems appear political. Governments on both the political right and left have placed limits on freedom of expression in order to contain political opposition, and constitutional, legal and political checks have proven insufficient to stop them.     

Separatism or Status‐Quo?: Indigenous Affairs from the Birth of Land Rights to the Death of ATSIC*

Unlike other settler societies, Australia has yet to recognise Indigenous peoples as “peoples” or “nations”. Despite this, we see something of a consensus emerging which suggests Indigenous “separatism” has been tried and failed in Australia, and it is time to revisit an integrationist approach in order to improve Indigenous peoples' socio‐economic position. This paper challenges the assumption that, beginning in the 1970s, Indigenous‐state relations have been characterised by the realisation of a separatist agenda. On the contrary, assessing three decades of Indigenous‐state relations reveals a consistent logic from the state which ultimately seeks to integrate Indigenous Australians, rather than recognise them as having a distinct — and separate — political identity. This logic reached its “natural” conclusion with the abolition of elected Indigenous political representation in 2005.