Emergence of a Dominant Party System After Multipartyism: Theoretical Implications from the Case of the AKP in Turkey

This study aims to provide insights into how and why a dominant party system emerges after an era of multipartyism. Conceptualising the emergence phase of a dominant party system within the framework of Sartori's ‘predominant party system’, it elaborates the causal weight of different theories within the Turkish context through a comparative-historical analysis. Comparing the case of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) with the Justice Party (AP), it argues that perceptions of an incumbent's good economic performance and lack of centrifugal intra-party conflicts are two crucial factors that lead to the emergence of a dominant party system after multipartyism. Restrictive electoral rules and existing social cleavages, however, create a favourable setting for this outcome.     

Winning Against the Trend: Labour’s Victory in the 2017 Maltese Parliamentary Election

The re-election of the Labour Party with an increased majority in the 2017 Maltese national election bucks the trends of incumbent punishment experienced in most South European countries during the ‘Great Recession’ and of the decline of social democratic parties in Europe in the past 50 years. This Maltese ‘exceptionalism’ is explained by the Labour Party’s centrist shift, the country’s pure two-party system, and the economic prosperity which encouraged voters to opt for continuity. These factors allowed the governing party to win, despite corruption allegations deriving from the Panama Papers. Although a third party entered parliament for the first time since 1966, the fundamentals of the party and electoral systems have not changed and this development may not be long-lived.     

Guatemala's Party Universe: A Case Study in Underinstitutionalization

The article examines the degree of institutionalization of the Guatemalan party universe across four areas: the pattern of inter‐party competition; the rootedness of parties in society; the legitimacy accorded to parties and democratic institutions; and the nature of internal party organization. Guatemala displays an extremely inchoate party structure across all these variables. There is no stability in the identity of the main parties in the polity. After more than two decades of electoral democracy, no single party has been able to avert a drift into electoral irrelevance or outright disappearance. With respect to the basic facets of internal party organization, Guatemalan parties exhibit a feebleness so pronounced that their very status as parties is questionable. In general, Guatemalan “parties” only fulfill Sartori's minimalist definition as organizations that field candidates for public office, but offer nothing more substantive.     

Is electoral authoritarianism good for women's representation? Evidence from the 1999–2011 regional legislative elections in Russia

This article employs a comprehensive set of data on 226 regional legislative elections held in Russia in 1999–2011 in order to assess the impact of electoral authoritarianism upon women's representation in sub-national legislative bodies. The analysis of 50,520 cases of candidate nomination and 9553 cases of electoral success, supported by a cross-regional statistical study of the factors of women's nomination and success, empirically confirms an explanatory model that incorporates three working hypotheses derived from the mainstream literature on women's representation. According to this model, the 2002–2003 electoral reform, by introducing proportional representation into regional electoral systems, strongly facilitated women's representation. After the advent of electoral authoritarianism, proportional rules, in combination with the increased ‘party magnitude’ of the pro-government party, continued to exert expectedly positive effects; yet these effects were offset by the decreased competitiveness in majority districts. As a result, political regime transformation did not lead to a significant increase in the number of female deputies.     

Political opposition and the challenges of a dominant party system: The democratic alliance in South Africa

The African National Congress enjoys a position of leviathan-like dominance in South Africa. In official opposition stands the Democratic Alliance whose support has risen considerably since South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994. The white electorate strongly favours the party over its main rival, the Freedom Front Plus. The coloured community in the Western Cape has also given the Democratic Alliance its support. Although the party has done well in attracting the support of ethnic minority groups it has not been so successful among the African electorate. In accounting for the success of the Democratic Alliance this article considers three themes: firstly, the reasons why white voters, especially Afrikaners, shifted their support to the party; secondly, the brand of South African patriotism now used by the party to promote the primacy of a non-racial South African identity; and finally, the party's understanding of political opposition and the obstacles that exist to it making further electoral progress.     

The ‘ballot and the brick’: protest,voting and non-voting in post-apartheid South Africa

Over the last decade, protest has become an enduring feature of the post-apartheid political landscape. Despite this wave of protest, the African National Congress (ANC) has largely retained its dominant status. The endurance of the ANC’s electoral support in spite of the high levels of protest has led Susan Booysen to conclude that protests in South Africa form part of a ‘dual repertoire’ of political contestation. She argues that protests are used to signal grievances to the ANC between elections but that, ultimately, people remain loyal to the party of liberation. This article interrogates Booysen’s claim through advancing an analysis of voting district and ward-level data in protest hotspots. The article highlights weaknesses in the methodological base of Booysen’s thesis. By analysing the support for the ANC amongst the estimated eligible voting-age population, this article suggests a different relationship between voting and protesting in post-apartheid South Africa.     

Transitions to democracy,institutional choices and party system stability: lessons from small African islands

ABSTRACT

It is not easy to understand why some African party systems manage to stabilise while others remain fluid. This article argues that institutional choices made during democratic transition impact the likelihood of party system stabilisation. The experiences of Cabo Verde, Comoros, São Tomé and Príncipe and Seychelles are compared; despite sharing many similarities (insularity, smallness, low ethnic diversity, authoritarian past, economic vulnerability and competitive elections), they differ substantively in terms of the patterns of interparty competition. It is shown that stabilisation is likely if party elites are able to control the rules of the game during the transition to democracy. A strategic choice of the party law, electoral system and executive system helps structure interactions over time and reduce uncertainty in electoral competition. The findings highlight the need to further explore the ‘black box’ of democratic transitions, and the role of agency in political outcomes in Africa.     

Institutional Change and Ethnic Parties in South America

The central question of this article is why indigenous social movements formed electorally viable political parties in Latin America in the 1990s. This development represents a new phenomenon in Latin America, where ethnic parties have been both rare and unpopular among voters. Institutional reforms in six South American countries are examined to see if the creation and success of these parties can be correlated with changes in electoral systems, political party registration requirements, or the administrative structure of the state. The study concludes that institutional change is likely to be a necessary but not sufficient condition for the emergence and electoral viability of ethnic parties.     

Towards understanding Botswana and South Africa’s ambivalence to liberal democracy

ABSTRACT

Despite their recognised democratic successes, Botswana and South Africa have had ambivalent experiences with liberal democracy. It is contended that they fall somewhere in-between what scholars refer to as electoral and liberal democracies; dominant party systems within Carothers’ ‘gray zone’. Two explanations are offered. The first relates to the underlying political culture of the ruling elite: the liberal democratic values of the founders and early elites of both the African National Congress (ANC) and the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) were never fully embedded; instead, their political cultures were influenced by traditions and ideologies with illiberal values. The second explanation focuses on a key feature of a liberal democracy – restraining of power, namely through encouraging an autonomous civil society and limiting executive access to the state. It is argued that for fear of losing their dominant positions, the ANC and the BDP resist restraints on their access to state power.     

Electoral rules and manufacturing legislative supermajority: evidence from Singapore

Electoral authoritarian regimes usually preserve the dominance of the ruling party through electoral fraud, violence and intimidation. This paper focuses on the subtler forms of manipulation that undermine the electoral integrity and democratic outcomes. Specifically, we examine how an unusual electoral rule, involving multimember districts elected through plurality bloc voting for party slates, exaggerates the legislative seat shares of the People’s Action Party (PAP) in Singapore. This rule, used also by other electoral authoritarian regimes, facilitates the manipulation of district magnitude and gerrymandering, especially the ‘stacking’ form, to produce a large disproportionality which distorts the seats–votes linkage. It operates in an undemocratic fashion by precluding the opposition from gaining anything but token seats as long as the PAP remains the plurality-winning party. The importance of this electoral rule and its manipulation has been overlooked in current work that emphasises redistributive strategies or coercion to repress electoral competition.     

Competition and Coalescence in European Party Systems: Social Democracy and Christian Democracy Moving into the 21st Century

Party systems in Europe have been in transition since the 1990s. New parties have emerged and appear more successful in gaining representation in parliament and government than before. Conversely the established party families in many postwar West European party systems ‐ Social Democracy and Christian Democracy in particular ‐ seem to have lost ground. We argue that an ideological convergence is developing between these two party families towards the ‘centre of gravity’ of their respective party systems. This may help to explain why ‘new’ parties of the Left and the Right have competed more successfully since the 1990s: they have bypassed Social and Christian Democratic parties in terms of both Left/Right and Progressive/Conservative dimensions and differences. These developments are explored by analysing party programmes. It appears that many Social and Christian Democratic parties are indeed often moving closer to each other. In fact, we conclude that being in the centre of a party system or in government is hardly an electoral asset any more in most West European polities.     

Paradoxes of electoral authoritarianism: the 2015 Ethiopian elections as hegemonic performance

The 2015 elections in Ethiopia had a predictable outcome, showing an entrenched system of one-party dominance that self-referentially enacts the political order created by the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) since 1991. EPRDF spokespersons continued to defend the party’s hegemony as inevitable, grounded in a logic of technocratic authority and with reference to ‘stability’ and ‘development’. This paper describes the electoral process not in the light of democracy theory but of hegemonic governance theory. Elections seem to have lost relevance in Ethiopia as a means of political expression and are only important as a performance of hegemonic governance and as ‘global impression management’ – showing state skills in securing a smooth electoral process as a major organisational feat in itself. Contradictions that the political process creates between the Ethiopian party-state and domestic constituencies, and between the attitudes/policies of certain donor countries, are downplayed or avoided, but problematic in the long run.     

Electoral Systems in a Divided Society: The Case of Afghanistan

Electoral systems can be powerful instruments for shaping the content and practice of politics in divided societies, such as Afghanistan; and their design needs to be closely linked to context. This paper explores the suitability of Afghanistan's electoral mechanisms in light of the nation's political system, social divisions, and the process, which led to their adoption. There is no perfect electoral system; and the winners of the country's first-ever presidential election and the subsequent assembly elections face the formidable challenge of transforming Afghanistan from a war torn fiefdom into a nation. Hamid Karzai's victory and Afghanistan's improved, although fragile, security environment appear to represent an important step toward democracy. Yet, elections and electoral mechanisms are a necessary but insufficient means to the introduction and endurance of constitutional democratic government. The legitimacy of Afghanistan's new democratic institutions will rest on the government's progress in producing results, such as disarming the private militias of powerful commanders, some of whom represent sizeable ethnic minorities, and curbing the burgeoning poppy cultivation. An electoral system is but one piece, significant but not the linchpin, of the schema of Afghan political dynamics.     

Race and ethnicity: Voters’ party preference in South African elections

Abstract

Genuine, periodic, free and fair elections are one of the key defining features of a vibrant multi-party democracy. They provide a public mechanism for regular peaceful institutional competition for power and the opportunity for people to change, review or legitimise government through their freely expressed will. This article interrogates the behaviour of South African voters using a qualitative analysis of available studies covering the national and provincial elections held in 1994, 1999, 2004 and 2009, and the municipal election of 2011. One of the notable trends is that while the number of registered voters keeps increasing, voter turnout is on the decrease. There are other salient observable tends but they are not the focus of the article. For the purposes of the article the first conclusion is that among the various competing variables influencing voters’ choice of a particular political party in South African public elections, the race issue, however weak some might suggest it is, still looms large and is a dominant factor despite denials by some researchers. Second, in contrast to what obtains in many other African countries, ethnic identity happily has only a marginal influence on South African voters. This second conclusion should however not be regarded as cast in stone, given the ever-changing dynamic nature of people's identity and behaviour as well as the election campaign strategies of participating political parties and the role of the media. Given that there is a complex interrelatedness of ethnic and racial identity and interests, the electorate might well be more sophisticated than many realise.     

Past the saturation point: Why voters switch from mainstream to niche parties and vice-versa

When do voters switch from mainstream to niche parties and vice-versa? To understand these switches, we focus on the saturation of the party system. We theorize that when a party system is oversaturated – i.e. when a higher effective number of parties contests elections than predicted based on socio-political contextual characteristics (the system's ‘carrying capacity’) – it becomes increasingly likely that: (1) mainstream party voters defect to niche parties; and (2) niche party voters refrain from switching to mainstream parties. Based on vote-switching patterns in 15 countries and 53 elections, we find that oversaturation increases shifts from mainstream to niche parties. Further analyses show that this holds for shifts from mainstream to radical left and right parties, but not for shifts to green parties. This has important consequences for research on vote switching, the electoral consequences of policy differentiation and the competition between niche and mainstream parties.     

Losers' Second Chances and Control of the Party Machine: Aspirant Premiers in Regional Spain

In parliamentary democracies, controlling party machines has traditionally been a key asset for nascent political leaders, allowing them to continue in their position even after suffering a bad electoral start. Recent research suggests that in ‘old democracies’ this is no longer the case. Seeking to find whether this finding also applies to ‘young democracies’, the article analyses a dataset (built by the author) of candidates from the main national parties for the premiership of the Spanish Comunidades Autónomas, to ask whether being party chair increases the chances of ‘reselection’ after losing a first election. I conclude that in Spain, an example of a ‘young’ democracy, party machines still play a fundamental role at the start of politicians' leadership careers.     

The catch‐all party thesis and the Austrian social democrats

This article examines Kirchheimer's catch‐all party thesis systematically, using the example of the Austrian Socialist Party (SPÖ). First, five central elements of the Kirchheimer catch‐all party are identified and possibilities for empirical research are explored. Then the empirical evidence on these five dimensions is analysed. As Kirchheimer has expected, the SPÖ's ‘ideological baggage’ has been drastically reduced, its top leadership groups and its electoral leader in particular have been further strengthened, the working‐class clientele has been de‐emphasised, and the party's function in the political system has been substantially reduced. Concerning the SPÖ's link to interest groups, however, Kirchheimer's thesis is only valid when looking at the most recent period. In view of the cumulative effect of the changes in the direction of a catch‐all party the SPÖ of the 1990s can definitely be classified as a catch‐all party.     

Electoral Reform as an Engine of Party System Change in Italy

Abstract

After more than forty years of proportional representation, in 1991 Italy embarked on a period of electoral law revision. The ongoing debate about how to engineer an electoral system capable of producing the preferred political outcomes stands out against the stasis in constitutional reform, most recently demonstrated in the rejection by popular referendum of Matteo Renzi’s package of reforms. The extent to which the different electoral reforms have had an impact on Italian politics, especially following the 2005 electoral legislation, can be evaluated by analysing the changing Italian party system over the past decade and beyond in terms of its morphology, dynamics, and party/parliamentary group switching. The 2005 electoral reform has had a clear effect on Italian politics and on the party system, but that effect is unlikely to endure given the highly controversial new electoral law that came into force in 2017.     

The Decline of a Dominant Party and the Destabilization of Electoral Authoritarianism?

The demonstrations following the December 2011 legislative election and the poorer performance of United Russia in that election suggest a potential crisis in the Russian electoral authoritarian regime. Assuming the Russian leadership wishes to stabilize electoral authoritarian rule, how should it go about doing this? Increasing electoral competition and decreasing control potentially can lead to democratization, and therefore regime change. A safer course for the regime may be reform of United Russia. This article analyzes United Russia's performance, asking if it has been carrying out the tasks of a dominant party, and considers the party's best chances for long-term stabilization of electoral authoritarianism.     

Ethnic interests and national ideology during Israel's first decade: addressing the rational Oriental vote

The article offers an empirical foundation through which the electoral behaviour of the new Oriental immigrants into Israel during the 1950s can be interpreted, based on the assumption that their conduct was, in fact, rational. It focuses on the egalitarian wage policy in the important public sector, which led Ben-Gurion and the leaders of Israel's first ruling party, MAPAI, to a confrontation with the European academically educated middle class, and on the political–electoral strategy of MAPAI vis-à-vis the Oriental immigrants during the 1950s electoral campaigns. The article discusses three assumptions: first, that this wage policy was part of the ruling party's attempt to address the interests of the new Oriental working class; second, that this political strategy was publicly discussed, and it addressed the Oriental immigrants’ rational socio-economic calculations for the purpose of securing their political and electoral support; third, that the leaders of nascent Israel and its ruling party presented this policy as a measure towards creating a minimal socio-economic foundation for the process of nation-building during the 1950s.