Regional Mobilization in the New Europe: Old Wine in a New Bottle?

This conclusion links the various contributions in light of the introductory framework. In line with our framework, scepticism towards the EU has increased since 2004 across most of the EU regions (old and new) and state-centric approaches (regional influence mediated through the central executives) have become the dominant strategy for regional mobilization. Unmediated access through direct regional representation in Brussels remains an important side-strategy though, especially for sub-state nations and regions with the highest level of regional authority, as theoretically expected. Regional authority—more so than the difference between competitive versus cooperative multi-level designs—is an important predictor against centralization pressures resulting from European integration. Overall, changes in the ‘New Europe’ have intensified but not transformed the dominant patterns of regional mobilization, while system-level and regional variables mediate impacts of Europeanization.     

Irish Unification After Brexit: Old and New Political Identities?

This article contends that the outcome of the prolonged dispute about the future constitutional status of Northern Ireland (NI) will be shaped by the emerging dynamic between ‘old’ and ‘new’ political identities in NI. The ‘old’ identities conceived political outcomes as defined by two monolithic ethno-cultural blocs: nationalism (alongside republicanism) and unionism (alongside loyalism). Nationalism and unionism formed the ‘two communities model’ of consociational governance enshrined in the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement (B/GFA). Today, despite the Agreement being in existence for over twenty years, growing numbers of citizens identify with neither ethno-cultural category. Recent elections indicate that more pluralistic ‘new’ political identities are gaining ground at the expense of traditional alignments. The implications for NI's constitutional future are likely to be profound. The emerging constituency of non-aligned voters will have a decisive impact on the final outcome of any border poll on Irish unification. Such voters typically support the cross-community Alliance Party, the Greens, or the left People Before Profit (PBP) party. Crucially, these parties are concerned as much with economic and social issues as constitutional questions. In the context of growing political fluidity, the result of any future border poll remains contingent.     

Is Political Marketing New Words or New Practice in UK Politics?

ABSTRACT

This review of the literature on political marketing and the party most associated with it in the UK, New Labour, suggests that the relationship is not straightforward. Politicians are, for example, hesitant to use marketing language in public. The relationship is problema-tised along the three dimensions of: partial or total import into some or all of politics; functional or instrumental use by leading politicians, and the roles of transformer of politics, or transfer agent for techniques. The results suggest two responses. The first is more fieldwork into political marketing outside of electoral campaigning and inside policy making. The second is a reconceptualising of the relationship away from the transformation or transfer dimension, and towards political marketing as a methodology for understanding a very different, and very separate activity, namely politics.     

Are Politics and Geography Related?: Evidence from a Cross-Section of Capital Cities

With a few prominent exceptions, a capital city is typically alsothe biggest city of its country. This might suggest that a capitalcity is more attractive than other cities because of thecapital city function. In the paper, we test this hypothesis bylooking at employment growth in a sample of capital cities.Employment growth might indicate outmigration from the politicalhinterland and immigration into the capital city. Specifically, welook at a sample of regional capitals that consists of West-Germancounty seats. These county seats underwent reform in the latesixties and early seventies. In this sample, we can rejectthe idea that the county capital role does not have apositive influence on local employment growth.     

Race,Class, and Values in Post-New Deal Presidential Politics: Inverted Class Loyalties as a Trend in Presidential Elections, 2000–2012

This article analyzes the role of race, class, and values as a determinant of voting behavior in recent presidential elections. Over the past decade the What's the Matter with Kansas? thesis has been cited to argue that the culture wars over social issues (civil rights, homosexual rights, feminism, gun control) have inverted the class determinant of partisan choice to the point where lower-income white voters favor the Republican Party while professionals have shifted toward the Democratic Party. The article concludes that there is significant evidence that the class loyalties as determinants of partisan identity established by the New Deal have been superseded by values-driven imperatives, which are themselves trumped by racial identities. As a result, traditionally Democratic pre-materialist white blue-collar constituencies have moved toward the Republican Party, while the opposite has occurred in traditionally Republican post-materialist suburban constituencies.     

Global Protesters Versus Global Elites: Are Direct Action and Deliberative Politics Compatible?1

In this article I examine the legitimacy of direct action in relation to liberal deliberative norms and global institutions (World Bank, World Trade Organization, etc.). Because the deliberative processes of these institutions are illegitimate according to the theory of deliberative politics, the activists of the movement for global justice are legitimate to confront these institutions. Moreover, confrontational action in itself may have a deliberative value for at least seven reasons: (1) initiating deliberation (agenda-setting); (2) enlarging participation; (3) enlarging representation; (4) disseminating information and arguments (publicity); (5) stimulating imagination; (6) pushing for action; (7) re-opening deliberations. Finally, social movements such as the movement for global justice may be seen themselves as deliberative arenas. Thus, those who seek to evaluate the legitimacy of direct actions need to take into consideration the deliberative nature of the process through which activists decide which means may be more efficient in order to repair defects in the official deliberative process, and promote equality, liberty, and justice.     

Religion and Politics in Western and Islamic Political Thought: A Clash of Epistemologies?

Early Christianity viewed religion and politics as largely separate; early Islam viewed them as largely concurrent. But from the eighth to the eleventh centuries each modified their original position, so that they almost converged. However, they subsequently diverged again. This was because, in the West, political thought became secularised following the eleventh-century papal reform movement and then the Protestant Reformation. Muslim thinkers, on the other hand, beginning with al-Mawardi (974–1058), sought to restore the subsumption of politics into religion, notably during the sixteenth-century Shi'ite revolution in Iran. While today the West views religion and politics as largely separate categories, Muslims see them as necessarily intertwined; attempts to separate them have so far largely failed. Hence Muslim political thought is based primarily on revelation (interpreted in various ways), while Western political thought is based on philosophy.     

Changing Regulation and Governance of Finnish Energy Policy Making: New Rules but Old Elites?

Energy policy making is commonly seen as a sector dominated more by experts and technocrats than politicians. Regulation of Finnish energy policy, which was traditionally characterized by state‐centeredness and detailed governmental control, was step by step annulled in the mid‐1980s on, and a deregulation policy was introduced. The return of regulation can be timed to in the beginning of the twenty‐first century, being the result of the global debate and measures dealing with climate change. The purpose of this study was to assess the extent to which the changes of operational environment have transformed the power structure of Finnish energy policy making and whether the key actors constitute a coherent energy elite in terms of attitudinal unanimity and interaction networks. Methodologically the study was based on three sets of elite interview data collected in 1987, 1997, and 2009 and a postal survey conducted among the citizenry in 2007. The major finding was that despite fundamental changes in the operational environment the power structure of the energy sector policy making has been fairly stable from 1987 to 2009 and the old cohesive energy elite is still in power.     

New Labour in Britain: New Democratic Centralism?

This article uses a case study - the introduction in 1997 of new policy machinery - to analyse competing claims about the nature of the Labour Party's organisational transformation. It aims to demonstrate that whilst the new policy process was presented as a move towards greater democracy, both its general design and its modes of operation rendered inevitable the production of a general election manifesto in 2001 (the culmination of the process) whose contents coincided very closely to the leadership's tastes. The article then seeks to account for the form Labour's transformation took, drawing on the work of Michels and Lipset and his colleagues.     

Questions of Sovereignty: Redefining Politics in Scotland?

The issue of sovereignty has never been resolved in Scotland. The 1998 Scotland Act, creating the Scottish Parliament affirmed that the Westminster Parliament is sovereign, but this is disputed. In practice, the issue was left largely in abeyance as sovereignty was seen as an outdated concept. The Scottish independence referendum of 2014 and the UK Brexit referendum of 2016 both brought back the question of sovereignty in stark terms. Analysis of data from the British Election Study of 2019 with regard to (a) the right of Scottish self‐determination, and (b) the right of a UK‐wide majority to take Scotland out of the EU, allows us to identify ‘sovereigntists’ and ‘unionists’. Sovereigntists, on both dimensions, now constitute a majority. A smaller group of unionists reject both positions. There remains a group of ‘semi‐sovereigntists’ who accept Scottish self‐determination, but also that the UK as a whole should decide on Brexit. Controlling for the social and political factors, Scots are increasingly polarised around issues of sovereignty, which have become central to contemporary Scottish politics.     

Searching for a New Politics: The New Politics Movement and the Struggle to Democratize the Democratic Party, 1968–1978

By the late 1960s, the Democratic Party had fallen into crisis. Vietnam, urban riots, and declining electoral fortunes marked a crossroads in the history of the party, raising questions about the meaning and trajectory of postwar liberalism. Amid the political chaos and economic crisis of the 1970s, a distinct political tendency running through the civil rights, feminist, labor, and antiwar movements demanded a new politics. The New Politics movement attempted to reform and realign the Democratic Party to the left. Reformers perceived party rules and structure as constraining progressives’ influence on public policy. Their project to democratize the Democratic Party began in the wake of the 1968 party crisis, and it ended ten years later with the failure to compel a sitting Democratic president and Democratic Congress to implement the party’s program for full employment. While faced with organized intraparty resistance, the failure of the New Politics movement hinged on the contradictory consequences of its struggle to open the party. The successes and failures of the New Politics movement suggest the limits and possibilities confronting progressive forces in the United States today. The New Politics episode can help clarify the goals and tactics involved in realigning American politics in a more progressive direction.     

Religion, Nationalism, History, and Politics in Hungary’s New Constitution

Positive and negative factors in Hungary??s history, politics, and society contribute to controversies over the new Constitution. Hungarians in Budapest conversed with the author about religion and secularism, nationalism and authoritarianism, the legacy of 1956 and 1989, and the work of the Constitutional Court.     

Proving,Pleasing and Persuading? Rhetoric in Contemporary British Politics

Expressions of disaffection with politics are often connected with criticism of the ways in which contemporary politicians speak and communicate. In this article I show how political speech is in part a product of the way in which a society organises and arranges communication institutionally, technologically and aesthetically. The art of rhetoric is most fundamentally concerned with how, in the midst of political dispute and contestation, political arguments may be made persuasive through their connection with the ‘common sense’ of audiences. This process enables a people to reflect on its beliefs and values and to assess their adequacy in particular circumstances. Decline in this art may be attributed to social and technological change but also, and above all, to the dominance of ideologies hostile to the concepts of ‘common sense’ and ‘common good’, and which privilege the arts of behaviour change and choice management over those of argument, debate and persuasion.