People, Place and Party: Describing Party Activism

The aim of this article is to present a structure for the historical study of party activism. Based on research carried out on the activities of the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) between 1884 and 1911, the article puts forward the case that current understandings of that organisation should be reassessed to include the notion of the 'political journeys' of the activists. Instead of focusing exclusively on ideology, the article suggests that other poles or features such as locality and collective biography should be used. If the organisation is viewed from a wider perspective and with a longer exposure time, then, this article argues, a clearer picture presents itself.     

The Party Faithful: Partisan Images,Candidate Religion,and the Electoral Impact of Party Identification

We argue that the factors shaping the impact of partisanship on vote choice—“partisan voting”—depend on the nature of party identification. Because party identification is partly based on images of the social group characteristics of the parties, the social profiles of political candidates should affect levels of partisan voting. A candidate's religious affiliation enables a test of this hypothesis. Using survey experiments which vary a hypothetical candidate's religious affiliation, we find strong evidence that candidates’ religions can affect partisan voting. Identifying a candidate as an evangelical (a group viewed as Republican) increases Republican support for, and Democratic opposition to, the candidate, while identifying the candidate as a Catholic (a group lacking a clear partisan profile) has no bearing on partisan voting. Importantly, the conditional effect of candidate religion on partisan voting requires the group to have a salient partisan image and holds with controls for respondents’ own religious affiliations and ideologies.     

Crashing the Party? Elites,Outsiders, and Elections

We consider an election between two parties that nominate candidates for office. The parties are polarized along a traditional cleavage, but they are also internally divided along a second issue dimension. We introduce a threat of entry from Outsider candidates, who have the prominence and resources to bypass party elites. We consider when voters will turn to Outsiders, and identify the conditions under which Outsiders will enter the election through an established party's nomination process, as opposed to circumventing established parties via a third-party challenge. We further explore when the elites will fail to respond to the threat of Outsider candidates. Our framework highlights how established parties will be especially vulnerable to Outsider primary entry in periods of intense ideological polarization between the parties, and that this vulnerability is especially heightened for the majority party.     

Party Strength,the Personal Vote,and Government Spending

“Strong” political parties within legislatures are one possible solution to the problem of inefficient universalism, a norm under which all legislators seek large projects for their districts that are paid for out of a common pool. We demonstrate that even if parties have no role in the legislature, their role in elections can be sufficient to reduce spending. If parties in the electorate are strong, then legislators will demand less distributive spending because of a decreased incentive to secure a “personal vote” via local projects. We estimate that spending in states with strong party organizations is at least 4% smaller than in states where parties are weak. We also find evidence that strong party states receive less federal aid than states with weak organizations, and we theorize that this is because members of Congress from strong party states feel less compelled to secure aid than members from weak party states.     

Party Types,Organisation and Functions

Austria, which between the wars could neither find its political identity nor put its economy in order, has made a spectacular recovery after its resurrection in 1945, and especially since the State Treaty ten years later which restored its sovereign independence. Today, Austria is one of the most stable and reasonably prosperous small nations in Europe, pursuing a policy of ‘active neutrality’ between the Great Power blocs and cultivating good relations with other neutral and non‐aligned states. Behind her internal consolidation and her new role in international politics is the remarkable personality and diplomatic skill of Bruno Kreisky, Federal Chancellor of Austria and leader of the Socialist Party.     

A Party of a Different Color? Race,Campaign Communication,and Party Politics

Although studies have examined the contents of party images and the impact of those images on candidate evaluations, we do not have an understanding of the conditions that lead to party image change. In this article, I examine the impact of racialized campaigns on perceptions of individuals' party images. Moreover, I explore the factors that mediate the campaigns' effects. I argue that the success of a strategy's ability to alter party images depends on the strength of the individuals' extant party images. Using the 2000 Republican National Convention as a case study, I find that party images are indeed malleable. Further, I find that race, party identification, and education mediate party image change.     

党建、执政与国家治理——国家理论视域中的"三个代表"思想

当代中国民主政治建设中,党的建设以执政为价值导向,政党执政以人民为价值导向,国家治理则以社会为价值导向。“三个代表”的重要思想揭示了当代中国政治生活中,党的建设、政党执政与国家治理在国家理论上的价值一致性,阐明了当代中国国家治理的本质及其新的价值根基,厘清了当代中国国家治理的实践原则,也规定了当代中国国家治理之历史发展的价值趋向。     

Roll Calls, Party Labels, and Elections

We develop a model of legislative policymaking in which individuallegislators are concerned with both policy and reelection. Legislators'preferences are private information, and they have two meansof communicating their preferences to voters. First, they eachhave a "party label" that credibly identifies an interval withinwhich their ideal points must lie. Second, their roll call votesmay convey additional information about their preferences. Eachlegislator must therefore tailor his or her votes to his orher district in order to forestall a reelection challenge fromthe opposing party. In equilibrium, nonsincere voting recordswill occur mostly in moderate districts, where extreme incumbentsare vulnerable to challenges from relatively centrist candidates.In those districts, the most extreme legislators may even chooseto vote sincerely and retire rather than compile a moderatevoting record. Thus, both roll call scores and candidate typeswill be responsive to district type. An empirical test of shiftsin roll call scores of retiring House members in moderate districtsconfirms these findings.     

Blame,Responsibility, and the Tea Party in the 2010 Midterm Elections

There is a general consensus both in the news media and scholarly research that 2010 was a highly nationalized election year. Reports have indicated that anti-Obama sentiment, the Democrats’ legislative agenda, the economy, and the Tea Party were all factors contributing to Democratic losses in the congressional elections. In this paper, we use data from 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study to examine the individual-level dynamics that contributed to the heightened nationalization of the 2010 congressional elections. Our analysis shows that Tea Party support and the attribution of blame and responsibility by voters are essential to understanding the 2010 election outcome, beyond what we would expect from a simple referendum model of midterm elections. Not surprisingly, Tea Party supporters blamed Democrats for the state of national affairs, disapproved of the Democrats’ policy agenda, and overwhelmingly supported Republican candidates in the congressional elections. However, our analysis shows that not all voters who supported Republican candidates were driven by high levels of opposition to President Obama and the Democrats. Another key group of voters blamed both Democrats and Republicans for the nation’s problems but ultimately held Democrats responsible in the voting booth by supporting Republican congressional candidates.     

George W. Bush, the Party System, and American Federalism

George W. Bush's presidency presents two major puzzles. TheRepublican Party has traditionally stood for "limited government,"but Bush's principal legacy for federalism is centralizationof power in the federal government and the executive branch.Most modern presidents have neglected their partisan duties,but Bush has been a uniquely vigorous party leader. Here, weshow that Bush's puzzling lack of attention to federalism issuesis in large part the result of his efforts to strengthen theRepublican Party to cope with the political and electoral challengescharacteristic of the contemporary political context. We explainwhy the Bush administration's strategy for redressing the Republicanparty's shortcomings has presupposed the deprecation of federalism,and consider the implications of our argument for the developmentof federal arrangements.     

Economics, Party, and the Vote: Causality Issues and Panel Data

Conventional wisdom argues that national economic perceptions generally have an important impact on the vote choice in democracies. Recently, a revisionist view has arisen, contending that this link, regularly observed in election surveys, is mostly spurious. According to the argument, partisanship distorts economic perception, thereby substantially exaggerating the real vote connection. These causality issues have not been much investigated empirically, despite their critical importance. Utilizing primarily American, and secondarily British and Canadian, election panel surveys, we confront directly questions of the time dynamic and independent variable exogeneity. We find, after all, economics clearly matters for the vote. Indeed, once these causality concerns are properly taken into account, the impact of economic perceptions emerges as larger than previously thought. As well, the actual impact of partisanship is clearly reduced.     

Measuring Party Identification: Britain, Canada, and the United States

The article proposes an empirically based reflection on how to measure party identification cross nationally, using data from the 1997 Canadian Election Study, the 1997 British Election Study, and the 1996 American National Election Study. These studies included both traditional national questions and a new common one, which allows for an assessment of the effects of question wording on the distribution and correlates of party identification. We show that the distribution of party identification is strongly affected by question wording and that the relationship between party identification and variables such as party and leader ratings, and voting behavior does not quite conform to theoretical expectations. We point out problems in the wording of party identification questions and propose an alternative formulation.     

Party Identification,Issue Attitudes,and the Dynamics of Political Debate

This article investigates whether media coverage of elite debate surrounding an issue moderates the relationship between individual‐level partisan identities and issue preferences. We posit that when the news media cover debate among partisan elites on a given issue, citizens update their party identities and issue attitudes. We test this proposition for a quartet of prominent issues debated during the first Clinton term: health care reform, welfare reform, gay rights, and affirmative action. Drawing on data from the Vanderbilt Television News Archives and the 1992‐93‐94‐96 NES panel, we demonstrate that when partisan debate on an important issue receives extensive media coverage, partisanship systematically affects—and is affected by—issue attitudes. When the issue is not being contested, dynamic updating between party ties and issue attitudes ceases.     

高校学生党员结合群众路线加强党性修养浅析

党性不仅是党员的灵魂,是党员素质的根本,决定着党员的风貌,反映着党员的形象,而且还关系着党的兴衰成败和生死存亡。对于大学生党员来说,党性修养是一门重要的必修课。在深入开展群众路线、加强党性修养的今天,大学生党员作为中国共产党的生力军,要结合党的群众路线,增强党的意识,提高党性修养,不断加强主观世界的改造,履行好共产党员的义务,把自己培养成社会主义事业的建设者和接班人。