The New Left and Health Care Reform in El Salvador

After a decade of civil war and four consecutive conservative administrations, El Salvador's leftist FMLN won its first presidential election in 2009. How has public policy changed under this New Left government, and why? This article addresses the question in the area of public health care. An alliance of health sector leaders with both technocratic and diplomatic abilities capitalized on the policy window opened by the FMLN's electoral victory and worked within the parameters set by President Mauricio Funes, the FMLN, and civil society to universalize health care. The new minister of health, a professional highly esteemed inside and outside the country, was able to engage both a large social movement protesting neoliberal policy and an energetic health diplomat sent by the Pan American Health Organization. In designing its reform, this alliance benefited from international as well as “bottom‐up” policy diffusion.     

Federalism,Party Organization and the Australian Greens

The influence of federalism on the organizational arrangements adopted by Australia's parties endures. This study examines the organizational structure of the State and Territory divisions of the Australian Greens through an analysis of their local party constitutions. It shows that there are important areas of difference in the organizations of state and territory Greens, despite their shared ideological commitment to inclusive internal party structures. These variations are a function of institutional and political factors, especially those induced by the Australian federal system. It is argued that differences in the organizational formats of state and territory party divisions reflect the historical circumstances in which they emerged and variations in the institutional (regional) setting in which they are located.     

Translation,Modernity, and Women in China

The end of the cold war witnessed the emergence of a commercial web sprawling from the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in western China and extending into Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan), Pakistan, and Russia. Running parallel to the state-managed exchange in hydrocarbons, raw materials, technology, and infrastructure, this new Eurasian trade had an informal component as everyday consumer items manufactured in China were imported into neighboring countries, bypassing formal regulatory mechanisms. This inter-Asian trade began as shuttle trading by itinerant merchants for local markets; by the mid 1990s, shuttle trading was overshadowed by largescale export for national markets in neighboring countries without losing its informal character. This informality extending across national boundaries defined the post–cold war commerce in innermost Asia; at the same time, it also signaled a return to pre-cold war trading structures. Moving away from the “retreat of the state” thesis that found traction following the cold war, the author attributes informality in this inter-Asian trade to three factors: (1) a restructuring of state power where informal trade was a new comparative advantage sought in an evolving geopolitical climate; (2) the actors in this inter-Asian trade—party and regional officials in China, along with traders and intermediaries—who found and exercised agency through this exchange; and (3) a chain of inter-locking, commercial macro-regions, which are economically sustainable and which transcended international boundaries. Working in conjunction, these factors constitute a dynamic inter-Asian trade and challenge static state imaginaries of a “New Silk Road” or “Eurasian Continental Bridge.”     

Modernisation or Disorientation? Policy Change in Merkel's CDU

After decades of relative continuity, the Christian Democratic Union began making major modifications in its basic policy orientations after 1998. These waves of modernisation largely vindicate traditional explanations of party change, as they resulted from a combination of external shocks (electoral decline); leadership transition (Angela Merkel's consolidation of power); and internal factional change (weakening of the CDU's traditional conservative and social wings, along with the growing influence of its pro-market and culturally liberal elements). Yet the nature of Merkel's leadership and absence of a dominant internal coalition in the CDU often gave this policy change an ad hoc, inconsistent character.     

Le pouvoir et la guerre dans le discours parlementaire (1914–1918)

SUMMARY

In 1914 the political situation in Portugal was driven by feelings of insecurity, following the revolution of 1910 which had replaced the monarchy by a republic. In this article, Maria Ribeiro illustrates the state of public opinion and its reaction to the European war. The article uses the speeches of the party spokesmen in debates in parliament down to the final decision to enter the war on the side of the Entente powers in February 1916. It argues that public opinion was driven by three perceived sources of insecurity: fear that the great powers had designs for the taking over of Portugal's African colonies; the fear that since the establishment of the republic, the Spanish monarchy might be contemplating intervention in Portuguese internal affairs and sought to compromise her independence; and a general perception that the new republic needed to assert its international status. This last consideration, the desire to establish firm international recognition of the sovereignty of the Portuguese Republic, was probably the principal factor which moved the Portuguese political leaders to intervene in the war.     

Disruption and decline: the gendered consequences of civil war and political transition for education in Tajikistan

ABSTRACT

The sweeping political transition from the Soviet Union to independence in Tajikistan was accompanied by a devastating civil war. Social, economic, and demographic change followed. This research examines a critical indicator of human welfare and stability at the micro- and macro-levels: educational attainment and mobility. Using the 2007 Tajik Living Standards Survey, I compare cohorts educated before, during, and after the civil war. I examine the impact of the war and the political transition on educational attainment and mobility. The findings suggest that the consequences of civil war and political transition in Tajikistan were gendered: boys’ attainment was disrupted when they lived in a conflict-affected area and were 16-to-17 years old when the war began; girls’ attainment decline was more widespread. This research contributes to our understanding of the long-term consequences of political events on human capital accumulation over the life course.     

Too Much Democracy? Primaries and Candidate Success in the 2006 Mexican National Elections

Do primaries help political parties perform better in general elections, or do they undermine electoral performance by contributing to internal divisions and to the weakening of party organizations? This article examines the effect of holding a primary on the general election prospects of candidates, using cases from two of the three major parties in Mexico's 2006 national legislative elections. In both parties, primaries fail to systematically produce candidates with advantages in the general election, due largely to organizational deficits of the parties and low entry requirements for aspiring precandidates. Indeed, outside urban centers, where parties tend to be better organized, primaries actually seem to hurt party performance in subsequent general elections.     

The Domestic Sources of Israel's Decision to Launch the 1956 Sinai Campaign

This article examines Israel's decision to launch the 1956 campaign against Egypt. While the current literature tends to argue that, in 1956, the campaign was a response by Israel to security threats, it is suggested here that, if so, these threats certainly did not predetermine any specific response. Israel could, for example, have responded by adopting a defensive posture. In reality, domestic factors were just as influential as external ones. The most important of these was the severe economic crisis caused by mass immigration to Israel during 1948–1951. This crisis in turn led to the creation in 1953–1956 of a war coalition whose three components—David Ben-Gurion (Prime Minister and Minister of Defence), MAPAI's party bosses and the army—had different interests but shared the idea of a war against Israel's Arab neighbours as a way in which each could advance its preferred aims.     

The Challenges of Transitioning from Opposition to Government: Liberal Party Planning for Government 1983 – 1996

Studies examining opposition transition to government processes and planning usually emphasise the responsibility of oppositions as a legislative institution and the role of party leaders. However, such approaches place too much emphasis on notions of responsible opposition and party leaders. They de‐emphasise the importance of partisan considerations that shape transition planning or how party organisations have attempted to assert control over parliamentary parties. Drawing on archival materials, policy documents, and elite interviews, this study examines both public and internal transition to government strategies undertaken by the Liberal Party of Australia during their opposition years (1983–1996). The paper finds that while party leaders became more important over time, the party organisation's involvement remained significant. The Liberal Party transition planning focused primarily on cabinet processes, Australian Public Service (APS) organisation, particularly the senior bureaucratic level, and selecting political staff. In so doing, the Liberal Party anticipated many of the Hawke government's 1987 reforms to the APS. The Liberal Party was motivated by its desire to restructure the machinery and culture of government and to allocate sufficient political staff resources to government. Its aim was to better equip the party to achieve its political and ideological goals when next in government.     

从2018年地方选举看俄罗斯左翼政党发展态势

俄罗斯地方选举的结果往往能够反映出俄罗斯的政治社会形势、中央地方关系的变化情况以及精英的流动和发展状况,对国家杜马选举甚至俄罗斯总统选举都有一定的影响。2018年俄地方选举呈现出不同以往的特点,普京支持的“统一俄罗斯”党不仅失去多个地区的领导权,在地区立法机构的席位也大幅缩水。相比之下,俄罗斯联邦共产党则取得了不错的竞选成绩,在所有参选地区的得票率都有所提升,大幅提高了在地区立法机构中的席位占比。但是由于政治当局的打压、左翼政党内部的分裂和俄罗斯联邦共产党自身的发展局限,俄罗斯左翼政党在短期内依然无法与强大的政权党抗衡。不断进行理论创新、加强党的自身建设、联合其他左翼政党和爱国力量,才是俄罗斯左翼政党复兴的长远之计。     

Islamism,Pluralism and the Palestine Question: The Case of Hizbullah

The political vocabulary of the Lebanese Islamist party and militia Hizbullah in relation to pluralism exhibits an important self-contradiction. In Lebanon, Hizbullah has adapted to a process of national integration after 15 years of civil war, and appears as much more positive towards pluralism now than in 1985, when it made itself known officially. However, the Palestinian resistance struggle constitutes an ever more important part of the party's political and religious identity, and in this area the party relies on a vocabulary of absolute and religiously motivated conflict. Hizbullah has made the Palestine Question into a religious absolute at the same time as it connects this question to the issue of national unity in Lebanon, questioning the patriotic credibility of every Lebanese who disagrees with it on this issue. Consequently, a conflict-oriented vocabulary ‘colonizes’ Hizbullah's more tolerant and pluralist vocabulary within Lebanon, thus hindering a further development of pluralist attitudes.     

US Foreign Policy and the Korean War

Abstract

Sometimes called the “Forgotten War” because Americans pay so little attention to it, the Korean War was nevertheless a pivotal event in US foreign policy. Three themes will be integrated into this article as it analyzes Korean War policy. First, the Korean War heightened the debates and divisions among US foreign policymakers. If Japan’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor helped to silence these divisions, then President Truman’s handling of North Korea’s 1950 invasion of South Korea helped resurrect them. Second, while foreign policy goals are generally assumed to drive the objectives of war in the classic Clausewitzian sense, the opposite frequently occurred in Korea as changes on the battlefield drove policy objectives of officials in Washington. Third, although the Americans, Chinese and Soviets all worked assiduously to keep the Korean War limited to the Korean Peninsula, the war had repercussions far beyond the Korean battlefield. Its ramifications were felt in Taiwan, Vietnam, Europe and in US defense expenditures as well.     

Can umbrella parties survive? The decline of the Indian National Congress

This paper analyses the defeat of the Congress party in the India’s 2014 election in which it plummeted to its lowest ever vote share (19 per cent) and seat tally (44 of 543). We argue that the defeat is the end result of a gradual decline punctuated by recoveries that began much earlier. We show that the Congress was gradually becoming less competitive in more and more states and constituencies as indicated by its falling to third position or worse. We try to relate this to the desertion of the party by social groups that once supported it in a number of states and other factors. The larger question is whether a Congress-type, encompassing, umbrella party can survive the sharpened politicisation of social cleavages, in the Indian case, religious, caste and regional cleavages since such a party will tend to lose out to parties based on religious, caste and regional identities in identitarian outbidding.     

ZANU(PF) strategies in general elections, 1980-2000: Discourse and coercion

For many analysts, the general election campaign in 2000 showeda new face of the ruling party, ZANU(PF). Against the new oppositionparty, the Movement for Democratic Change, ZANU(PF) engagedin violence and intimidation, often relying on youth and warveterans, even as it accused its opponents of subversive violence.Moreover, ZANU(PF) appealed to its liberation war credentials,while dismissing its chief opponents as puppets of British imperialismand reactionary white settlers. After the election, PresidentMugabe appealed for reconciliation between winners and losers,only to permit violence against those who had voted againstthe ruling party. For ruling party perpetrators of violence,there was impunity and later a presidential pardon. The purposeof this article is to demonstrate how the ruling party usedremarkably similar strategies in every general election since1980, notwithstanding striking differences in the contexts,issues, and nature of the chief opposition party. Given thiswell established pattern of ruling party violence and intimidationand characterization of opposition parties as illegitimate,the article seeks to understand why analysts repeatedly sawin the regular multiparty elections either a democratic systemor one that was amenable to democratization.     

Ethno-religious dynamics and the emergence of the Hezbe Seri Itehad (Secret Unity Party) in Afghanistan in the late 1940s

The Afghanistani government's discriminatory policies against its ethno-religious minorities from the late nineteenth century to the end of World War II brought widespread resentment, which resulted in many local revolts. After the war, these took on a different dimension and led to the founding of an underground political party, Seri Itehad (Secret Unity). The party was different from the other political parties of the time because its goal was to foment an uprising to overthrow the monarchy and so establish a republic. This paper explores why and how the party emerged, and how the unique characteristics of the party's two co-founders, who had little in common in terms of socio-political and cultural backgrounds, shaped the aims, approach, organization, membership and operation of the party. It also examines the consequences of the uprising.     

The Limits of Discretion: The Role of the Liberal Party in the Dismantling of the White Australia Policy1

How significant was the role of the Liberal party in dismantling the White Australia Policy? Contrary to recent politicised claims and counter‐claims, the answer is not a simple one. The party began well, in the wake of Labor's clumsiness on immigration in the 1940s, but courageous exceptions to the rule during the 1950s were also undermined by enduring timidity. Pressure from concerned opinion, both inside and outside Australia, was making itself felt by the early 1960s, but it took Robert Menzies' retirement and concerted efforts by Peter Hey don, Hubert Opperman and the new Prime Minister Harold Holt to amend policy to provide a more significant number of non‐Europeans admission to Australia. The ideal of racial homogeneity died slowly for some, however, and it was left to the Whitlam Labor Government to sweep away what remained of the White Australia Policy.     

Sovereign nations and global markets: modern British Conservatism and hyperglobalism

In this article we seek to trace through the major stands of British Euroscepticism and concentrate, in particular, on the importance of a powerful 'hyperglobalist' Eurosceptical strand within British Conservatism. We investigate the British Conservatives' recent divisions over European integration, against the background of the party's increasingly marginal status in British party politics. The piece also draws on findings from two recent surveys of the attitudes of British parliamentarians to European integration, carried out by the Members of Parliament Project for the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). We explore how Conservative divisions of opinion are related in part to particular understandings of globalisation and regionalisation and attempt to show how globalist ideology has unexpectedly re–emphasised and bolstered the traditional nationalism of the Tory party and caused an increasingly hostile attitude amongst many British Conservatives towards the European project as it is presently constituted. We also examine recent attempts to map British Conservative Euroscepticism on to continental varieties using a mixture of ideological positioning and party system (Taggart 1998), arguing that this ignores the extent to which British Eurosceptics advance unique (in EU member state terms) hyperglobalist (rather than isolationist or protectionist) arguments in objecting to further European integration.     

Fratricidal War: The Conflict between the Mouvement national algérien (MNA) and the Front de libération nationale (FLN) in France during the Algerian War (1954–1962)

On the eve of the Algerian War—one of the most violent wars of decolonisation of the twentieth century—the Algerian nationalist movement was still led by Messali Hadj, the charismatic figure who had shaped it from its very beginnings in emigration in France in the mid-1920s. However, this movement, then known as the Mouvement pour le triomphe des libertés démocratiques (MTLD, 1946–1954), was affected by deep crises and tensions at the end of the 1940s and, at the beginning of the 1950s, by a conflict between Messali's supporters (known as the Messalists) and a younger generation of militants known as the Centralists. This conflict ultimately led to the emergence of a third nationalist force, which launched the insurrection of 1 November 1954 that marked the beginning of the Algerian War. This article explores some important aspects of the bloody internal war that opposed Messali Hadj's MNA and the FLN in France during the Algerian War and discusses some of the key political processes that led to the rapid decline of the Messalist movement in the last years of the war.     

The rise and decline of the new party: Ideology, resources and the political opportunity structure

This paper analyses the growth and decline of Taiwan's first significant third party, the New Party (NP). The NP won numerous seats in the national parliaments in the mid-1990s and received extensive media attention. However, it has shown a steady electoral decline since the late 1990s. Despite its poor recent election performance, the NP should not be regarded as a failure, as it has actually been remarkably successful at achieving its original objectives. By 2004, the KMT's policy positions had become so close to those of the NP that the NP was prepared to promote a party merger and allow its politicians to stand for election under a KMT banner. I challenge the most common explanation that the NP rose when united and fell when divided by bitter factional struggles. Instead a framework incorporating ideology, resources and political opportunity structure is employed to explain the rise and fall of the NP. I argue that when the NP faced a benign political environment in the mid-1990s, its moderate political message and rich human resources enabled the party to grow rapidly. However, after March 1996, the political environment became progressively more hostile, and as the NP's resources were eroded and wasted and the party moved towards a narrow and extremist political project, the party began its terminal decline. The space for the NP became even more limited after 2000, when party had to face intense competition from a powerful new KMT splinter party, the PFP, and a rejuvenated, united and orthodox KMT.     

Party opportunism among local politicians after Taiwan’s power transition

This paper probes into a hypothesised opportunism towards political party affiliation among local politicians in Taiwan since the power transition from Kuomintang (KMT) to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) rule began in 2000. Longitudinal changes in election candidates' party affiliation are analysed to see what happened to the KMT's supposedly strong base of local politicians after the change of governing party. The research finds a generally high propensity of election candidates' changing or dropping their party affiliation between elections, and an increased propensity among KMT candidates after 2000. However, defections to other parties are more common in higher elections. In grassroots elections, many candidates flow in and out of their party affiliation depending on the political circumstances, but they rarely change party. Several years after the DPP gained power in presidential elections, the new ruling party is still struggling to build a strong local party organisation.