Partisan effects in morality policy making

Current comparative policy research gives no clear answer to the question of whether partisan politics in general or the partisan composition of governments in particular matter for different morality policy outputs across countries and over time. This article addresses this desideratum by employing a new encompassing dataset that captures the regulatory permissiveness in six morality policies that are homosexuality, same‐sex partnership, prostitution, pornography, abortion and euthanasia in 16 European countries over five decades from 1960 to 2010. Given the prevalent scepticism about a role for political parties for morality policies in existing research, this is a ‘hard’ test case for the ‘parties do matter’ argument. Starting from the basic theoretical assumption that different party families, if represented in national governments to varying degrees, ought to leave differing imprints on morality policy making, this research demonstrates that parties matter when accounting for the variation in morality policy outputs. This general statement needs to be qualified in three important ways. First, the nature of morality policy implies that party positions or preferences cannot be fully understood by merely focusing on one single cleavage alone. Instead, morality policy is located at the interface of different cleavages, including not only left‐right and secular‐religious dimensions, but also the conflicts between materialism and postmaterialism, green‐alternative‐libertarian and traditional‐authoritarian‐nationalist (GAL‐TAN) parties, and integration and demarcation. Second, it is argued in this article that the relevance of different cleavages for morality issues varies over time. Third, partisan effects can be found only if individual cabinets, rather than country‐years, are used as the unit of analysis in the research design. In particular, party families that tend to prioritise individual freedom over collective interests (i.e., left and liberal parties) are associated with significantly more liberal morality policies than party families that stress societal values and order (i.e., conservative/right and religious parties). While the latter are unlikely to overturn previous moves towards permissiveness, these results suggest that they might preserve the status quo at least. Curiously, no systematic effects of green parties are found, which may be because they have been represented in European governments at later periods when morality policy outputs were already quite permissive.     

Influence of Voter Demographics and Newspaper in Shaping Political Party Choice in India: An Empirical Investigation

Choice of political party is an important decision a citizen faces in a democracy. In recent times, as democracies in many countries have matured, a number of studies are focusing on party and candidate choice and their various determinants. India, being the largest democracy, provides a fertile ground for such research. Accordingly, in this paper we concentrate on demographic characteristics, newspaper-reading habits of voters, and their political choice. To study this we have considered a very unique data set collected just before the watershed elections in the state of West Bengal in India, where the ruling Communist coalition was defeated after thirty-four years of power in the state. The survey was conducted using a structured questionnaire to collect information on demographic characteristics of voters and their political choice. The respondents were asked to indicate their party choice from among the three major political parties. As the literature shows that gender, age, education, income levels, marital status, occupational status, and choice of newspaper have significant impact on political choice, we have considered these as predictor variables for our study. From our study it is seen that among the demographic determinants, gender, marital status, and income of the respondents do not influence the choice of political party in our sample. However, occupation and newspaper choice of voters have significant impact on political party choice in our sample. In addition, we have observed that certain categories of age of voters significantly influence decision making of voters along with occupation and newspaper choice categories.     

Intra-Campaign Changes in Voting Preferences: The Impact of Media and Party Communication

An increasing number of citizens change and adapt their party preferences during the electoral campaign. We analyze which short-term factors explain intra-campaign changes in voting preferences, focusing on the visibility and tone of news media reporting and party canvassing. Our analyses rely on an integrative data approach, linking data from media content analysis to public opinion data. This enables us to investigate the relative impact of news media reporting as well as party communication. Inherently, we overcome previously identified methodological problems in the study of communication effects on voting behavior. Our findings reveal that campaigns matter: Especially interpersonal party canvassing increases voters’ likelihood to change their voting preferences in favor of the respective party, whereas media effects are limited to quality news outlets and depend on individual voters’ party ambivalence.     

社会主义民主政治建设的基础性工程——关于推进基层民主建设的思考

基层民主政治建设是社会主义民主政治事业的一项基础性工程。在党的领导下扎实推进基层民主政治的建设,需要在提高认识基础上通过各种途径拓展基层民主政治的深度和广度,重视充分发挥党内民主对于基层民主的保障与促进作用,以改变执政方式为前提,确立以"共治"方式推进基层民主发展的新思路。     

Electoral infidelity: Why party members cast defecting votes

Party politics and electoral research generally assume that party members are loyal voters. This article first assesses the empirical basis for this assumption before providing individual‐level explanations for defection. It combines prominent theories from party politics and electoral behaviour research and argues that internal disagreement and external pressure can each bring about disloyal voting. The hypotheses are motivated with multi‐country European survey data and tested on two sets of party‐level national surveys. The results show, first, that, on average, 8 per cent of European party members cast a defecting vote in the last election, and second, that dissatisfaction with the leadership is the strongest predictor of defection. Additionally, internal ideological disagreement is associated with higher probabilities of defection, whereas the effects of pull factors in the form of contentious policies are rather limited. These findings emphasise the importance of testing scientific assumptions and the potential significance of party leadership contests.     

在深化改革中不断提高党校教学质量

党校作为培训各级领导干部的主阵地、主渠道,必须适应形势发展变化,通过以下几个方面深化教学改革,以不断提高党校教学质量：一是转变教学思路,大胆借鉴＂现代培训理念＂的精华;二是创新教学形式,大力推行＂研究式教学＂模式;三是改革教学内容,努力做到＂依需定学、因需施教＂;四是提升教师能力素质,构建＂开放型师资队伍＂。     

论加强新时代党的全面领导的法规制度建设

新时代党的领导以全面领导为特征,以法治化为基本方向,为此,必须在准确把握党的全面领导内涵的前提下,完善党的全面领导的法规制度,使党的全面领导做到有法可依、有法必依.党的全面领导以政治领导为核心和根本,在党的全面领导的法规制度建设中,要着重围绕政治领导,首先从《宪法》《党章》层面对党的全面领导做出规定,同时也要在党的全面领导的主要领域做到有规可依,注重用党内法规制度解决党的全面领导存在的突出问题,这样才能更好地保证党的全面领导要求得到真正贯彻落实.     

Membership ballots and the value of intra-party democracy

On the face of it, membership ballots present a clear case in which intra-party democracy comes into collision with core principles of representative democracy: they weaken the autonomy of representatives, and undermine the authority of the voters. In this article, I investigate whether this is correct, and whether membership ballots are, therefore, democratically illegitimate, using the controversial 2013 Mitgliederentscheid in the German Social Democratic party as a critical case. I argue that there is nothing democratically suspect about membership ballots and mount a defence of intra-party democracy as intrinsically valuable, appealing to a principle of equal respect for persons as autonomous agents. It turns out that endorsing this principle has two possible implications: that the content of the ballot must be open to deliberation, and that these deliberations should be rendered open to non-members. I discuss these implications and offer some institutional design guidelines.     

Auckland,New Zealand – fair game for central party politics

This paper explores the influence of central party politics in Auckland local government, in New Zealand’s largest city, following the 2010 amalgamation. Political parties have been an accepted and dominant presence in European representative democratic local government, throughout the 20^th century. Not so, however, in New Zealand and Australia, where citizens have ‘flocked to the banner “Keep Politics out of Local Government”. Our analysis of the self-declared party accreditation status of candidates and elected members demonstrates that political affiliation, at least in the main centre Auckland, is on the rise, counter to assumptions that New Zealand local government is largely removed from central politics.     

浅论清末民初章士钊的政党思想

章士钊是中国近代史上著名的思想家和理论家,他注意观察和研究近代民主政治,尤其是政党政治,他强调党纲的重要性,推崇英国式的政党内阁制,并由此提出了毁党造党说,即政党和国内政治资源的重新优化组合,一方面,所谓党者尽毁之,既毁其名又毁其实,另一方面,造有党纲之党,在国内形成两大政党对抗的局面。毁党造党说轰动一时,但因不符合中国的国情而遭到失败。