Political generations in Northern Ireland

Since the late 1980s, Northern Ireland has seen a radical electoral shift away from the historically dominant parties in the Catholic and Protestant blocs – the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) and Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), respectively – towards the traditionally more ‘extreme’ parties – Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). This change in aggregate support has been accompanied by increasing differences between generations as older cohorts of UUP and SDLP supporters have been replaced by newer cohorts of DUP and Sinn Fein partisans. This is not a result of increased polarisation in values and attitudes (whether overtly political or simply communal intolerance) among younger cohorts who are, if anything, slightly more moderate than their forbears. Rather, this results from the changing political context in which new generations have been socialised – in particular the expanded choice sets facing voters as they have reached voting age. This in turn has positive implications for the consolidation of devolved democratic governance.     

新型政党制度所蕴含的中国智慧

中国共产党领导的多党合作和政治协商制度是从中国土壤中生长出来的新型政党制度,充分汲取了中国传统民本智慧、和合智慧、包容智慧,展现出了无与伦比的内在优越性,实现了群众根本利益与群体特殊利益的有机统一、实现了政党关系的非对称性和谐、实现了通过政党协商进行科学民主决策、实现了集中力量办大事,从而克服了垄断型一党制和竞争型两党制、多党制的固有弊端。作为和谐型多党制的新型政党制度充分展现了中国智慧,为世界政党制度发展与进步提供了新方向和新选择。     

Religious voting and moral traditionalism: The moderating role of party characteristics

One of the most important theoretical explanations for why religion is associated with party choice is that religion affects citizens' moral values, which in turn affect party preference. In this article, I first estimate the empirical importance of this mechanism. On average, about ten percent of religious voting is mediated by moral traditionalism. Secondly, I argue that the importance of this mechanism varies depending on party characteristics. The effect is indirect through moral traditionalism to the extent that parties emphasize moral issues such as abortion or euthanasia. Under these conditions, group belonging may provide useful cues for voters. Combining data on 50 parties with survey data on more than 10,000 citizens from 13 West European countries, this article provides empirical evidence of this proposition in the case of the religious cleavage. The findings may be of relevance also for other social structural variables, such as class or gender.     

Politics by denunciation: Political whistleblowing against members of parliament in Italy

Judicial investigations into politicians are a fundamental component of politics, with these investigations often leading to public scandals. Yet, empirical evidence of the strategic determinants of judicial investigations is intrinsically hard to gather, a problem that has significantly limited the study of this important phenomenon. This paper studies the politics behind judicial investigations by leveraging new data on prosecutors’ informants in 1125 episodes of misbehavior of Italian MPs involved in different crimes (1983–2019). Results provide evidence in favor of a political use of denunciations for corruption crimes: when a party weakens, the likelihood that political enemies denounce past misbehavior of members of the weakened party increases, suggesting that the political use of denunciation is elastic to changes in the electoral performance. Furthermore, weakened MPs are more likely to be accused of misbehavior that happened a long time before the accusation, which further supports the argument that accusations are politically motivated.     

The religious and spiritual underpinnings of party choice in christian Europe

Many studies have shown that individual religiosity is related to a Christian Democratic vote. Recently, studies from sociology of religion have reported the rise of holistic spirituality. This paper is the first to examine the effects of holistic spirituality on party choice. In addition, it critically assesses the assertion that conventional religiosity prevents individuals from affiliating with Green parties.Our results show that spirituality is related to a higher probability of choosing Green parties. Moreover, conventional religiosity increases the probability that moderate left voters will prefer a Green party to a Social Democratic party. This result shows that there is common ground between the electorates of Green and Christian Democratic parties, thus creating possibilities for new political coalitions.     

Differing mandates and party loyalty in mixed-member systems: Taiwan as a baseline case

There is widespread consensus on the theoretical foundations of the differing mandates hypothesis, that in mixed-member systems district legislators are more likely to defect from the party line than list legislators. However, the empirical evidence for this hypothesis is extremely weak. Is the hypothesis itself fundamentally flawed, or does the long list of intervening variables cited in the literature account for these weak results? This paper examines the differing mandates hypothesis in a case, Taiwan from 1993 to 2007, in which none of the proposed intervening variables should alter expectations. If the hypothesis is not supported in this baseline case, perhaps it should be discarded altogether. In fact, there is strong support for the hypothesis, indicating that the hypothesis is not fundamentally flawed, though it may be less robust than commonly believed.     

农村党建新课题:重点解决农民党员政治入党问题

农村党组织是新农村建设的领导核心,也是维护农村稳定的第一道防线。由于各种原因,目前农村部分党员政治信念淡薄、政治意志衰退等问题日渐突出。在坚持思想入党原则的基础上,明确提出党员政治入党的要求,采取有效措施重点提高农民党员政治素质,已经成为加强农村党建的新课题。     

A Transition without Players: The Role of Political Parties in the Arab Revolutions

Academic scholarship regarding the role of political parties in the Arab world remains largely underdeveloped in comparison to analyses focusing on the role of political Islam or on authoritarian resilience. Although both of these fields of research contain useful paradigms for explaining aspects of the region’s political development, this overemphasis means that there is a lack of meaningful analysis of political participation. This article seeks to analyze the role of political parties in the light of regional transition processes since the Arab uprisings, claiming that the region’s political history and sociocultural makeup can help in explaining that much of the popular mobilization in the Arab world following the Arab revolutions took place outside of institutionalized politics. First, the article reviews and analyzes relevant theories of political parties. Second, the article presents a comparative analysis of existing theories and case studies of political parties being part of transition processes in Latin America and Eastern Europe. Taking this as starting point, the article, by looking at the Egyptian and Tunisian cases, demonstrates the limited role of political parties in connection with the regional transitory processes, with the ambition of presenting some relevant analytical tools as well as useful hints for further analyses of political transformation processes in the Middle East.     

加强企业基层组织和党员队伍建设实践研究

高楼大厦只有根基稳固,才能经受住狂风暴雨和自然灾害的侵害。中国共产党能长期成为执政党,就是因为我们党始终把根扎在基层,不断加强对基层权力点的控制和管理。我们党在革命初期就把党支部建在连上,这不是一时的随意,是共产党第一代领导人的智慧所在,深知党指挥枪的重要性,才使共产党从小到大,由弱到强,并领导人民建立了新中国。     

大国干部调配:中国省级党委常委的来源

地方领导干部的来源不仅能够反映其本人的政治职业特征,也能够反映上级党委及政府选人用人的基本特征。以时下350名省级党委常委为观察对象,通过描述性统计分析发现:省级党委常委的来源类型包括本省选拔、外省调入和中央下派,且以前二者为主,后者为辅;不同来源类型的省级党委常委各自所担任的职务存在明显差异,外省调入和中央下派的常委大多担任更为重要的职务;不同来源类型的省级党委常委在不同地区所占的比例也存在差异,经济越发达或政府治理能力越高的地区,本省选拔的省级党委常委的平均比例也越高,反之,则外省调入的省级党委常委的平均比例越高;不同来源类型的省级党委常委的职务来源也并不相同。当前省级党委常委来源类型的整体分布与地域分布,显示了中央在搭建优势互补、更具政治整合性的省级党委常委领导班子上所做的努力。     

Bringing People Back in Politics: The Role of Civil Society,Political Parties,and Regional Organizations in a Changing Middle East

The Introduction briefly presents the ideas behind this collection of articles, namely to analyze popular mobilization and the role of civil society, political parties, and regional organizations in relation to the developments in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) over the last years, and to discuss theoretical approaches and paradigms of relevance for the analysis of these new regional dynamics. The MENA region experienced, in connection with and following the Arab uprisings, a hitherto unseen popular mobilization. Despite the recent highly problematic situation in several Middle Eastern states, the Introduction emphasizes the continued relevance of focusing on a repoliticized MENA reality. The Middle East is still on the move away from the established image of unshakeable authoritarianism attributed to the region, which made the upgrading authoritarianism paradigm seem forever relevant and without any realistic alternative for the decades to come—therefore, the relevance, offered in this collection of articles, of bringing people back in politics.     

Second-order effects plus pan-European political swings: An analysis of European Parliament elections across time

After seven waves of European Parliament elections and European Union enlargement to 27 states, the time is ripe to analyse the temporal robustness of the second-order model. We pool all the elections in a single evaluation and also look at election-by-election variations. We analyse changes in party performance over time in all EU states as well as in the ‘original 10’, to see whether any cross-time changes are driven by the changing composition of the EU. We also look for pan-European trends in each election, as a way identifying ‘European effects’ distinct from second-order effects. There are few consistent winners and losers, although socialist parties performed worse in the last three elections than their size and government status would predict.     

大国民主发展之道——加强中国式民主操作机制建设的思考

加强中国式民主操作机制建设既是中国政治刻不容缓的形势需要,也是实现民主价值和发挥民主功能的内在要求。发展中国式民主既应该“在价值层次上做出确定论证”,也需要“在操作层次上做出系统规定”。加强操作机制建设是中国探索超大社会发展大国民主的重大课题和必由之路。通过健全制度体系、加强操作机制建设已成为中国民主发展的战略选择和生动实践。虽然中国共产党人领导中国人民为坚持和完善中国特色社会主义民主政治制度体系做出了不懈努力并取得了巨大成就,但加强中国式民主操作机制建设任务依然十分艰巨,探索仍应继续。既要搞好顶层设计往下推,也要总结基层经验往上提;必须考虑民主多重价值之间及其与民主多样手段之间的相容度和兼容性,避免各种要素结构功能之间的矛盾与冲突;操作理论简洁明了,操作要领简单易行,操作结果廉价高效,应成为加强中国式民主操作机制建设努力的重要方向。     

Party registration and party self-identification: Exploring the role of electoral institutions in attitudes and behaviors

How do electoral institutions affect self-identified partisanship? I hypothesize that party registration acts to anchor a person's party identification, tying a person to a political party even when their underlying preferences may align them with the other party. Estimating a random effects multinomial logit model, I find individuals registered with a party are more likely to self-identify with that party and away from the other party. Party registration also affects voting in presidential elections but not in House elections, leading to greater defection in the former where voters have more information about the candidates. These insights illuminate varying rates of electoral realignment, particularly among southern states, and the makeup of primary electorates in states with and without party registration.     

Party organisation and party competitiveness: The case of the Austrian People's Party, 1945–1992

Abstract. This article links party organisation to party performance, examining their relationship over almost half a century in an in-depth case study of the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP). It proceeds from the assumption that party organisation does matter for party performance, at least indirectly, and that the adaptation of the party organisation to a changing environment is, in the long run, the only viable strategy for party goal achievement. While the ÖVP's environment was subject to important changes, all of which worked against the party, it has failed to adapt to them. This, in turn, has reduced the competitiveness of the ÖVP. Consequently its record in achieving most of its party goals has been rather poor since 1970. The reconstruction of the intra-party discussions reveals that the party leadership had access to analyses identifying the structural weaknesses of the party organisation since the late 1950s. The ÖVP's failure to adapt is explained by using the 'nested games' approach of Tsebelis (1990). In order to enhance the understanding of organisational dynamics of parties in a more general sense, the case of the ÖVP is related to the work of Panebianco (1988) and Janda (1990).     

Beyond Unionism versus Nationalism: the Rise of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland has always been a polity noted for its strong links between national identity, religion, and voting, and acute British unionist versus Irish nationalist divisions. The constitutional question of whether Northern Ireland should be part of the UK or a united Ireland dominates. Yet, recent surveys have suggested a sizeable and growing section of its electorate declares itself neither unionist nor nationalist. This development may have assisted the growth of the centrist Alliance Party, which rejects unionist and nationalist identities and claims to be neutral on Northern Ireland’s constitutional status. Alliance doubled its vote across three elections in 2019 and is now the third largest party in the region. This article examines the importance of ideological dealignment relative to other factors, such as Alliance’s opposition to Brexit, in explaining the rise of a non-binary party in a divided society.     

The elimination paradox: apportionment in the Democratic Party

To award delegates in their presidential primary elections, the US Democratic Party uses Hamilton’s method of apportionment after eliminating any candidates (and their votes) that receive less than 15% of the total votes cast. We illustrate how a remaining candidate may have his or her delegate total decline as a result of other candidates being eliminated; this leads to a new elimination paradox. We relate that paradox to the new states, no show, and population paradoxes and show that divisor methods are not susceptible to the elimination paradox. We conclude with instances in which the elimination paradox may occur in other contexts, including parliamentary systems.

     

From voter ID to party ID: How political parties affect perceptions of election fraud in the U.S.

This paper uses a survey experiment to assess what individuals understand about election fraud and under what circumstances they see it as a problem. I argue that political parties are central to answering both these questions. Results from the 2011 CCES survey suggest respondents are able to differentiate between the relative incentives of Democrats and Republicans where fraud tactics are concerned, but whether voters see these tactics as problematic is heavily influenced by partisan bias. The results show little support for the notion that partisan ideology drives fraud assessments, and suggest support for the idea that individual concerns for fraud are shaped a desire for their preferred candidate to win. These results offer insights that might be applied more broadly to questions of perceptions of electoral integrity and procedural fairness in democracies.     

改革开放以来中国共产党政治纪律建设历程与基本经验

政治纪律建设是新时代推进全面从严治党的关键举措,是提高党的执政能力、巩固党的执政地位的有力保证。改革开放以来党的政治纪律建设历程表明,加强政治纪律建设要始终坚持问题导向、维护党中央权威与集中统一领导、完善党内法规制度体系、坚持严格执纪。深刻总结改革开放以来党的政治纪律建设的基本经验,为推进新时代党的政治纪律建设、解决党内政治生活中存在的突出问题、坚持"两个维护"、巩固党的团结统一提供重要借鉴。     

Two political worlds?: The influence of provincial party loyalty federal voting in Canada

Scholars have known for years that many Canadian voters hold different partisan loyalties at the federal and provincial level. In this paper, I address the question of whether provincial party loyalty has an effect on federal level vote choice above and beyond the effects of federal level party loyalty. I also examine whether provincial party loyalty is enough to explain the persistence of the ‘two-party-plus’ system in Canada. In order to address these questions I construct a series of multinomial logit models of federal vote choice in the 1993 and 2000 Canadian elections. I conclude that provincial party loyalty does have an effect on federal level vote choice, but that this influence is not enough to explain the persistence of the ‘two-party-plus’ system.