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.     

Legislative Organisation and its Determinants in European Parliamentary Democracies

Questions regarding the origin and evolution of legislative institutions are at the heart of comparative legislative studies. Much research in this area focuses on the US Congress; in contrast, comparative studies of European democracies have been more limited. Addressing this imbalance, this special issue showcases newly emerging research on legislative organisation in Europe. In doing so, it brings together contributions that explore the rationales behind the emergence of, and variation in, national European voting practices, investiture rules, minority rights, committee power, agenda control, debating rules and individual MPs’ rights.     

Privatisation — A History and Survey of Changes in Organisation Structures, Cultural and Environmental Profiles

This paper provides a brief history of changes after privatisation to organisational structures and cultural profiles of affected entities. It assesses the experience of change in the electricity industry in New Zealand, the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories and the State Electricity Commission of Victoria and then examines results of a survey of senior executives of organisations privatised in Australia between 1990 and 1998. These senior executives had access to knowledge of pre- and post-privatisation conditions and their answers to a series of questions on organisational structure, cultural and environmental issues were analysed. The detailed answers involve limited areas of 'no change' but, critically, significant cultural changes relating to private ownership are established. These are summarised for readers' convenience by tables and discussed within the text.     

Margaret Fuller's Rome and the problem of provincial American democracy

ABSTRACT

Margaret Fuller's visit to Italy as a correspondent for the New York Tribune at the time of the 1848 revolutions gave her a unique perspective on them, not only as a feminist intellectual but also as a commentator on the American relationship with revolutionary Europe. In her Tribune writings she addressed issues at once more partisan and more global than those she had covered inside the United States, including the political condition of Italy as a subject state under Austrian imperial control, and as an object of ridicule by many American observers, and the condition of American slavery. Italian peoples and slaves, in her mind, were, like women, oppressed by a transatlantic patriarchy whose prejudices allowed only for white males to enjoy political independence. Fuller called for American support for the Roman republic, but her sympathies did not reflect the thrust of American opinion. Many Americans did not believe Italians were capable of maintaining republican self-government, which was different, they alleged, from their own version, part of the inheritance of the American Revolution. That heritage conferred a unique American revolutionary ‘exceptionalism’. For these Americans, the 1848 revolutions provided evidence that Europe was impulsive, reactionary and flawed; they saw in them confirmation of the superiority of American race relations and democratic society. After her death in 1850, the American Civil War would confirm Fuller's implicit sense that the United States and Europe were more alike than many Americans of her generation believed or realized. Her critique of American attitudes to the prospect for democracy in Italy provides perspective on the ambiguity of American global leadership today.     

The multi-store model for economic voting: Rome wasn't built in a day

The 2012 presidential election was closely contested with the media predicting that the unemployment rate announcement just before the election would be the deciding factor. If a single economic indicator could buoy up job approval ratings, delivering positive economic statistics to the voters would be a rational re-election strategy for an incumbent. In contrast, this paper presents a model in which voters do not immediately convert each economic statistic into a performance evaluation. Only after many “rehearsals” do voters convert statistics into a positive or negative evaluation. I take the case of Japan and use a survey experiment and an inverse probability weighting (IPW) estimator to assess whether short-, medium- and long-term performance evaluations form based on voter perception of economic conditions.     

Inside the Cartel Party: Party Organisation in Government and Opposition

This article assesses the internal dynamics of the cartel party model. It argues that a party's endeavour to increase its societal reach by opening membership boundaries while keeping candidate selection local (two tendencies ascribed to this model), and the general need to maintain party unity, are difficult to reconcile. Therefore a fully fledged cartel party is organisationally vulnerable, which reinforces its resort to selective benefits (i.e. political appointments, patronage) whenever in government to satisfy organisational demands, a trigger intensifying party–state relations which is usually overlooked. Further, the dominant view of the ascendancy of parties' 'public face' needs to be qualified: the Irish Fianna Fáil, with its permeable boundaries and local candidate selection, reflects the cartel party model without a cartel at the party system level. Majoritarian dynamics have forced Fianna Fáil repeatedly into opposition which reveals the following: Fianna Fáil as a cartel party can afford to neglect its infrastructure on the ground as long as it is controlling government resources. In opposition its leadership initiates reforms to reinvigorate the party's infrastructure since it is pressed to generate organisational support through other means than distributing benefits.     

Olson Triumphant? Recruitment Strategies and the Growth of a Small Business Organisation

This article looks at the emergence and maintenance of interest groups. We systematically identify a range of membership incentives that underpin mobilisation and apply them to a case study, the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), focusing on the recruitment literature rather than the special niche literature on trade associations. The FSB was created in 1974 and membership was 'flat' at about 40,000 until recruiting method changes were introduced in the early 1990s. The total now approaches 200,000. This account of FSB recruitment argues unsurprisingly that the group resulted from a combination of diverse influences rather than the Truman type of 'automatic' mobilisation. More surprisingly, it notes that while early membership is accounted for by the perspectives of Truman, Salisbury, Wilson, Moe, Opp and Sabatier, the major increases of the past decade requires attention to the contribution of face-to-face marketing and Olsonian incentives. The FSB is an unusually good example of group entrepreneur activity that illustrates how entrepreneur incentives are different from those salient to members. Groups can experience different phases and forms as they grow. We exploit a 'natural experiment' by illustrating how the FSB addressed membership stagnation by changing the recruitment package in a broadly Olsonian direction. The 'before and after' patterns of recruitment allow a 'test' of these techniques. It also raises the issue of how different recruitment efforts produce a membership with different political characteristics.     

The political economy of EC protectionism: National protectionism based on Article 115, Treaty of Rome

This paper investigates the trade policy of the EC, based on Art. 115, Treaty of Rome. It is shown that politicians and bureaucrats take advantage of the significant discretion the procedure allows. Political and bureaucratic self-interest are the underlying motives for national trade barriers against non-member countries based on Art. 115. The empirical results support this hypothesis.     

From CAUR to EUR: Italian Fascism,the ‘myth of Rome’ and the pursuit of international primacy

ABSTRACT

The formation of Fascist Italy's international imaginary in the 1930s tells a fascinating story of growing global political ambition, of constant recalibration in the face of seismic geopolitical shifts and, in the end, a (frustrated) pursuit of symbolic primacy. Kallis discusses two different Fascist projects underpinned by this imaginary: first, the political project of internationalization promoted through instruments such as the Fasci Italiani all'Estero (Italian Fasci Abroad) and especially the Comitati d'Azione per l'Universalità di Roma (CAUR), as well as through direct diplomatic and political ties with an expanding circle of regimes in Europe and overseas; and, second, the pursuit of a deeper sense of historic-cultural primacy, linked to the idea of ‘Roman universality, which became the discursive lynchpin of the ill-fated plan to host a 1942 world’s fair in Rome (EUR/E42). The transformation of Fascism from a hyper-nationalist phenomenon into a force actively seeking international diffusion and finally ‘universality’ can be understood as a reflexive adjustment of Fascism’s ideological-political horizon, driven as much by new geopolitical opportunities and frustrations as by conquering ambition and ideological continuity. In fact, Italian Fascism’s trajectory from CAUR in the 1930s to EUR/E42 in the war-torn 1940s, unfolding against a backdrop of growing antagonism between Italy and Nazi Germany for global influence, retained a primary symbolic point of reference: the ideological, political and cultural-historic estate of the ‘myth of Rome’ as a symbolic discourse of trans-temporal and -spatial primacy.     

Partisan politics and treaty ratification: The acceptance of International Labour Organisation conventions by industrialised democracies, 1960–1996

Abstract. This article looks at the political and economic determinants of the ratification of International Labour Organisation conventions by 17 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries since 1960. Two well-known models of intra-governmental decision making – the veto player model and the portfolio allocation model – provide alternative assumptions regarding the political process. Results from stratified Cox estimation of the ratification hazard suggest that the latter model is more appropriate than the former. They indicate that partisan preferences of government parties have a huge influence on ratification probabilities. Among economic determinants, the unemployment rate and the sectoral composition of employment exert a significant impact, but its size differs according to the government's policy position.