Mobilising volunteer activists in political parties: the view from central office

The role of volunteer activists in the success of election campaigning has undergone somewhat of a renaissance in the last decade or so. It is now becoming increasingly evident that having a strong volunteer activist base is central to winning elections, especially when the campaign is a close run affair. This then raises the important question of how to raise the volunteer armies necessary for such work. Indeed, there is a reasonably long standing literature on what might incentivise people to become active in political parties. However, there is relatively little work done on what party managers are able and willing to offer members as incentives for activism. Using new data from extensive interviews with professional party managers working in the central offices of political parties, this article explores the ways in which such party managers have worked to incentivise volunteer activists. From this data, it offers a new framework for encouraging volunteer activism through inclusive party organisations.     

Party System Competition and Private Sector Development in Africa

Democratic transitions by many African countries have generated much analysis of the organisational features of political parties or their role in voter mobilisation during elections. Yet, scholars have largely overlooked how parties negotiate economic policymaking or interact with the private sector in countries that are incipient democracies and emerging markets. This article argues that the stability or fragmentation of the party system affects patterns of private sector development and shapes linkages between the state, business and labour. It compares Mozambique and Zambia to demonstrate how variations in party system characteristics influence the relationship between economic and political interests.     

A Slow and Painful Death? Political Parties and Local Democracy in Two Northern Towns

This paper assesses the state of local political parties in the UK, using case study material generated via a comparative study of local democracy in Burnley and Harrogate. It considers the challenges facing local political parties arising from the transition from local government to local governance and the ‘diversification’ of mechanisms through which local residents relate to local public agencies. The paper argues that local parties have reached an advanced state of decline, reflected in the erosion of third parties and, in the case of Burnley, the rise of the British National Party. The paper concludes with proposals for reinvigorating local parties, as part of a broader agenda of reviving local democracy in the UK.     

National Minorities and Intra-Ethnic Coordination in the European Parliament: Evidence from Central and Eastern Europe

This article investigates the role that intra-ethnic coordination and kin-state alliances play in shaping how parties that represent national minority groups approach their participation in the European Parliament (EP). This is done through an analysis of the political behaviour—electoral strategy, party group choice and modes of interest assertion in the EP—of ethnic minority parties in five Central and East European countries. The article finds that the role of intra-ethnic coordination and kin-state alliances is limited at the level of EP elections, but significant at the level of party group choice and in the visibility of minority issues in the EP.     

Foreign threat and political party change: Russia and changes in party manifestos

How do political parties react to foreign security threats? There has been very little attention paid in the literature generally to how parties react to international events, particularly how parties react to foreign policy threats. Using data from the Comparative Manifesto Project, we examine how political parties in countries in Europe have reacted to Russian actions in terms of their emphasis on security issues. Based upon our analysis of the manifestoes from 331 parties in 36 countries we find that, generally, interstate threats have no significant effect on the military position adopted by political parties, although these effects vary by party type and by the type of threat. Russian based threats appear to be associated with the Far Left becoming more dovish (which is consistent with what would be expected by the literature) and the Far Right becoming significantly less hawkish.     

Between class and nation: Ideology and radical Basque ethnonationalism

This article uses the case of the Basque country as an example of the apparently ironic situation where, in the face of the demise of Socialist regimes in Europe after 1989, ethnic nationalist movements pursue an avenue of continued radicalism. These movements, which include political parties, trade unions, youth movements, and other organizations, try to combine a leftist appeal to the working class with a call to support the nationalist demands of a given ethnic group that the movements claim has been oppressed by other groups. The article explores how these movements justify their ethnonationalistic appeals to the working class. It also examines the relevance of these movements to their respective regions and the support that they find within these regions. Lastly, the paper speculates on what direction the politics of their respective regions might take in the future.     

Ideas,interests and practical authority in reform politics: decentralization reform in South Korea in the 2000s

This paper explains the reason why the hitherto statist country, Korea, has carried out significant decentralization since the 2000s. In explaining the motivation for decentralization, extant literature has focused on the role of parties, bureaucratic politics, democratization, or territorial interests. Yet there is still limited explanation of how the decentralization laws in Korea could be successfully passed in the 2000s, while cental stakeholders still persisted. By tracing the process of decentralization reform in the 2000s, this article demonstrates how structural factors created favourable circumstances and discursive background for institutional change, and how the idea of decentralization, through the idea diffusion mechanism, gave directions for central decision makers to produce a specific path of reform strategies. It also pays attention to the formation of ‘practical authority’ for reform politicians that made it possible to overcome obdurate resistance from central bureaucrats and politicians.     

Hungary’s radical right 2.0

In the digital age, the Internet is an important factor in the emergence and success of political parties and social movements. Despite growing evidence that extremists of all stripes use the virtual world for their purposes, research on this topic still lacks a wide array of empirical data, case studies, and theoretical background. In particular, Facebook, as the most important social networking site, is a new tool for political parties and movements to mobilize followers. The article explores how the extreme-right party Jobbik uses this tool more successfully than other Hungarian parties or Western European extreme-right parties. Comparing the growth in followers highlights this success, and a look at how it generates likes helps to explain it. The article argues that Jobbik uses Facebook in a sophisticated way and suggests that this “likable” attitude helps to attract young and first-time voters.     

The post-communist left and the European Union: The Czech Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM) and the German Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS)

This article traces the development of two post-communist parties—the Czech KSČM and the German PDS—illustrating how they may continue to shape hard left policy in an expanded European Union (EU). It analyses three policy areas in detail (security and defense policy, employment policy and policies towards the institutional reform of the EU) and argues that, providing the parties avoid internal ideological conflict, they may come to play significant roles in influencing hard left policy in future years. The PDS is likely to act as a bridge for other hard left groups with more conservative agendas while the much larger KSČM may attempt to shift the ideological balance back towards more structurally conservative anti-capitalist policies.     

Swords into plowshares: The organizational transformation of rebel groups into political parties

How do the features of a rebel group and the external political environment interact to affect the internal dynamics within a rebel group after it transforms into a political party? In this paper we combine literature on organizational change in parties in new democracies with the emerging literature on rebel group-to-party transformation, to develop a framework by which to understand these dynamics. Using the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) as a case study, we find that the legacies of the conflict, the organizational legacies of the rebel group, and the post civil war incentives for electoral gain, create political cleavages within parties that generate considerable organizational centripetal pressures, pressures that will need to be accommodated in new party organizational structures.     

Armed opposition groups into political parties: Comparing Bosnia,Kosovo, and Mozambique

Since the end of the Cold War, the overwhelming majority of negotiated peace settlements have been premised on the establishment of competitive, multiparty politics. The success of such settlements depends in turn on the degree to which the warring parties can make the adjustment from battlefield to political arena. This article addresses the question of how armed opposition groups are transformed into functional civilian political parties in the aftermath of civil conflict. It argues that the character and degree of commitment such parties make to the post-war political settlement depends on the kinds of challenges that adaptation to the settlement presents for them, as organizations. This article examines the cases of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the Croatian Democratic Union, and the Serbian Democratic Party in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Renamo (Mozambique National Resistance Movement) in Mozambique. Carrie Manning is assistant professor of political science at Georgia State University. Her book,The Politics of Peace in Mozambique: Post-Conflict Democratization, 1992–2000 (Praeger), appeared in 2002.     

EU Integration under Highly Fractionalised Party Systems: The Cases of Poland and the Czech Republic

It is widely argued that the pre-accession process of the Eastern enlargement affected political competition in Central and Eastern Europe. While such claims have been substantiated in general theoretical propositions, there is a lack of theoretically informed research attempting to explain how political competition was affected throughout the region. This article utilises Lijphart’s institutional typology to better understand how pre-accession processes shaped political competition under consensus democracies. The article shows that the consensually designed democracies of Poland and the Czech Republic were able to mitigate the negative impact of the pre-accession process through the rise of Eurosceptic parties.     

The trap of pop-charisma for the institutionalization of Indonesia's post-Suharto parties

This article investigates how the Indonesian party system has created parties that increasingly rely on charisma for support and votes. Initially associated with divinely bestowed qualities, the concept of charisma has evolved to emphasize popularity and recognizability instead. In Indonesia, this tendency has combined with direct elections to distract parties from their ideal functions of developing platforms and programmes. Instead, parties have sought to pick and choose candidates that are popular to front their campaign. This has contributed to the formation of dysfunctional parties that are opportunistic, corrupt, and rent-seeking. As Indonesian parties continue their struggle to prove themselves by relying on the ephemeral attraction of personal charisma, the resultant incapacity to develop solid organization will continue to be a crippling trap for them.     

The ‘basket case’ and the ‘poster child’: explaining the end of civil conflicts in Liberia and Mozambique

Through a comparison of protracted domestic conflicts in Liberia and Mozambique this paper evaluates several standard explanations regarding the roles of leaders, third parties and domestic social forces in resolving or continuing civil wars in Africa. The paper finds that no single account of how peace is achieved is sufficient to explain the continuance of violence in Liberia and the successful attainment of peace in Mozambique. Rather, an explanation that can accommodate the divergent outcomes of conflict in the two countries must combine insights from elite, structuralist and agency‐based approaches. Furthermore, the paper addresses the ways in which the construction of social organisations, particularly women's groups, during wartime affects the direction of donor funding and the shape of reconstruction efforts after the peace is signed. We illustrate our argument by examining the efforts of leaders, third parties and local actors, particularly women, to perpetuate violence or to bring about peace in Liberia and Mozambique, and the gendered contexts in which donor aid is distributed in the postwar period.     

White Turks,Black Turks? Faultlines beyond Islamism versus secularism

According to popular views, contemporary Turkish politics is defined by the ideological conflict between Islamist and secularist parties. However, the focus on the Islamism versus secularism dichotomy, a common bias in the studies of Muslim countries, disguises a deeper faultline between the old urban elites and the newly rising provincial actors. This article highlights the need to see beyond the ‘Islamism–secularism’ divide and to consider the complex relations of power between alienated social groups in Turkey. It analyses the intricate and multi-layered forms of ‘othering’ in the urban secularist discourse, which perpetuates the inequalities and contention in society. Instead of taking the ‘Islamism–secularism’ divide as given, the article analyses the construction of secularist and Islamic identities and considers how this dichotomous discourse has empowered the urban parties to control the provincial. Finally, implications for the reconciliation of antagonised social groups are presented.     

The Serbian Opposition and Civil Society: Roots of the Delayed Transition in Serbia

The article discusses the reasons for the ten-year delay in the democratic transition in Serbia, focusing in particular on opposition parties and civil society. It argues that the policy of opposition parties was partly responsible for the failure of an earlier fall of the Miloevic regime. While civil society has been similarly weak and divided, the article details how a number of NGOs proved to be crucial in the coordinated campaign which lead to the overthrow of the Miloevic regime in October 2000.     

The Party of Democratic Socialism in the new Germany

The Party of Democratic Socialism's electoral prowess reflects the success other reformed communist parties are having with voters disillusioned with the changes since 1989. This article seeks to explain why it is doing so well, what kind of people are drawn to it, and what its success tells us about the new eastern political culture and the consequences of unification. Its future prospects depend on how quickly the two parts of Germany become integrated and how effectively the other parties respond to eastern Germans' feelings. PDS success is a product of eastern German attitudes and conditions. It thrives on the tensions between east and west and on east Germans asserting their determination to be different from west Germans. But it will experience difficulty in continuing to derive its identity from a mixture of nostalgia for certain aspects of the GDR and animosity toward western Germans. With its path to western voters blocked, with growing intraparty disunity, and with a leader absorbed by charges that he had been a Stasi collaborator, the PDS faces a serious struggle to survive in the 21st century as a long-term significant political force.     

The Chinese and Japanese communist parties: three decades of discord and reconciliation, 1966–1998

This article depicts a painful period in the relations between the Chinese and Japanese communist parties. Using a case study of relations between a ruling Chinese communist party and a non-ruling Japanese communist party, the article covers negotiations and communiqué between the JCP leader Miyamoto and CCP leadership in 1966 that was overruled by Mao Zedong on the issue of Soviet “revisionism” and revolutionary line for the JCP. It discusses the resulting breakdown of negotiations and CCP’s efforts to splinter the Japanese party by setting up a pro-Beijing Japanese communist group. The article analyzes the obstacles to normalization, and the reasons why the leadership of the two parties decided to compromise and reach normalization in 1998 after 30 years of acrimony.     

Historical legacies and the size of the red-brown vote in post-communist politics

In this paper I examine the relatively under-investigated topic of how historical legacies shaped the emergence of the “Red-brown” political tendency in East-Central Europe and the former Soviet Union – which is sometimes referred to as “National Bolshevism” or “National Communism” or “Strasserism.” More specifically I ask the question, how do historical legacies help explain why extreme right wing voters support the successors to the formerly dominant communist parties (or what I refer to as the “red-brown” vote)? I find that the most important legacy variable that affects the red brown phenomenon is the legacy of the previous communist regime.     

The Syrian wars of words: international and local instrumentalisations of the war on terror

Abstract

This article presents a study of the ‘wars of words’ among selected parties involved in the Syrian conflict. Based on a combination of content analysis and critical discourse analysis (CDA), it examines actors’ discourses within the United Nations Security Council (2011–2015), the global arena of confrontation and international legitimisation of armed actions. Here, it investigates their instrumentalisation of the word ‘terrorism’ and the war on terror narrative, and it explores the dynamics of discursive (de)legitimisation of the use of violence in Syria. The article shows how parties instrumentalised this narrative to criminalise their enemies while legitimising their own violent actions. By doing this, the paper also offers a broader reflection on the global narrative on terrorism, and its different reception and instrumentalisation by core and peripheral actors.