‘Bigwig hatred’ and the emergence of the first Scandinavian agrarian-populist party

In the genealogy of the Scandinavian populist-party family, agrarian populism has been largely neglected and, when discussed at all, it is traced back to Finland in the late 1950s. This paper argues: (i) that agrarian populism long predated the 1950s and that it was politically salient from the decade before Finnish independence in 1917; (ii) that it is useful to distinguish between an agrarian-class and agrarian-populist party type; (iii) that in wider comparative perspective, first-wave Finnish agrarian populism was distinctive; and iv) that during the critical party-building phase, the Finnish Agrarian Party (AP) is best characterised a populist party embodying a diffuse small-farmer antipathy towards socially superior urban elites. The AP did not create this ‘bigwig hatred’ (herraviha), but in perpetuating it and ‘othering it’ within a binary ‘us-and-them’ paradigm, it became the first populist party in both Finland and Scandinavia.     

Reconsidering Nordic Party Space1

The erosion of the social and economic bases underlying traditional party systems has led analysts to search for new cleavage structures undergirding the present party systems. Meanwhile, analysts have identified a range of issue dimensions that also bear on voters’ party preferences. This article studies the degree to which grid-group theory's four political biases of hierarchy, egalitarianism, individualism, and fatalism can make inroads into the left–right dimension's stronghold in accounting for voters’ party preference. The analysis draws on a 1999 survey in the five Nordic countries (N= 4,832). The method combines voters’ party preferences with their scores on issue dimensions, or political dimensions. Analyses show that conventional party families, with one exception, are not identified along any of the five political orientations. Only the five conservative parties are exclusively identified as a party family on the left–right dimension. Party preference is more closely associated with the left–right dimension than the political biases. Sweden has the purest and simplest party cleavage, whereas Denmark has the most composite one. Across the Nordic countries, the green party family is most dissimilar, whereas the progress siblings are most alike. The left–right dimension accounts well for differences between parties within polities, whereas political biases, and egalitarianism in particular, account well for differences between parties of similar origin across polities.     

A Crisis of Party?*

The debate about the (future) role of political parties in modern democracies suffers from generally unacknowledged normative preconceptions as well as a tendency to reason in terms of ‘inevitable’ social processes, rather than precise theoretical reasoning or empirical analysis. At least four distinct bodies of thought affect the discussion about the assumed crisis of party: (1) the view that parties are a danger to the good society, leading to the denial of parties as legitimate actors; (2) the belief that some types of parties are ‘good’ and others ‘bad’, causing a selective rejection of parties; (3) the proposition that certain party systems are ‘good’ and others ‘bad’, resulting in a selective rejection of party systems; and (4) the affirmation that parties are becoming redundant. The latter suggestion is shown in a variety of approaches -e. g. the idea that parties are transient agents of democratization, the analysis of parties as mere market-forces, the assumption that parties do not matter in policies, and the view, as exemplified by neocorporatism, that parties inevitably lose their functions to other political actors. The pervasive presence of aprioristic views suggests the need for a conceptual house-cleaning, the importance of distinguishing normative from empirical arguments, and the need for more detailed empirical research, giving due weight to differences between countries, party systems, parties and periods instead of postulating inexorable trends.     

Partisan Sorting and Niche Parties in Europe

Earlier research has concluded that European citizens do not update their Left–Right policy preferences or their party attachments in response to the content of parties’ election manifestos – i.e. partisan sorting is not observed in the mass public in response to shifts in the Left–Right tone of these manifestos. Here we extend this research to analyse whether we observe partisan sorting patterns that correspond with political experts’ perceptions of parties’ Left–Right policy shifts. Given that these experts plausibly consider all pertinent information when estimating parties’ Left–Right orientations – including party elites’ speeches, elite interviews, coalition behaviour, and legislative voting patterns – such a finding would imply that citizens do weigh the wider informational environment when updating their Left–Right orientations and their party support, even if they do not attach great weight to the parties’ policy manifestos. Our analyses provide support for this hypothesis with respect to niche parties, i.e. green, communist, and radical right parties, but not for mainstream parties.     

The Limits to Public Value,or Rescuing Responsible Government from the Platonic Guardians

In various guises, public value has become extraordinarily popular in recent years. We challenge the relevance and usefulness of the approach in Westminster systems with their dominant hierarchies of control, strong roles for ministers, and tight authorising regimes underpinned by disciplined two‐party systems. We start by spelling out the core assumptions behind the public value approach. We identify two key confusions; about public value as theory, and in defining ‘public managers’. We identify five linked core assumptions in public value: the benign view of large‐scale organisations; the primacy of management; the relevance of private sector experience; the downgrading of party politics; and public servants as Platonic guardians. We then focus on the last two assumptions because they are the least applicable in Westminster systems. We defend the ‘primacy of party politics’ and we criticise the notion that public managers should play the role of Platonic guardians deciding the public interest. The final section of the article presents a ‘ladder of public value’ by which to gauge the utility of the approach for public managers in Westminster systems.     

From Ted to Ed: Electing British Party Leaders

Since 1965, British political parties have radically, and repeatedly, changed the ways in which they choose their leaders. In this article, I explain how and why these changes occurred and assess the consequences of the ‘new’ selection procedures adopted by four ‘mainstream’ parties: Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Party and the Liberal Democrats. In the first section, following Sjoblom and Stark, I outline a theoretical framework which purports to explain the criteria used by parties in parliamentary systems when choosing their leaders. I then examine the four parties in turn and consider two questions. First, how and why has the process of selecting British party leaders changed over time; and secondly, to what extent, and why, have the ‘new’ selection procedures adopted since 1965 produced different outcomes, resulting in the election of leaders who would not have been chosen had the decision rested with their party's elites and/or MPs alone?     

The nation under threat: secularist,racial and populist nativism in the Netherlands

ABSTRACT

Right-wing discourses and issues of belonging and collective identity in Europe’s political and public spheres are often analysed in terms of Islamophobia, racism and populism. While acknowledging the value of these concepts, Ke?i? and Duyvendak argue that these discourses can be better understood through the logic of nativism. Their article opens with a conceptual clarification of nativism, which they define as an intense opposition to an internal minority that is seen as a threat to the nation due to its ‘foreignness’. This is followed by the analysis of nativism’s three subtypes: secularist nativism, problematizing particularly Islam and Muslims; racial nativism, problematizing black minorities; and populist nativism, problematizing ‘native’ elites. The authors show that the logic of nativism offers the advantages of both analytical precision and scope. The article focuses on the Dutch case as a specific illustration of a broader European trend.     

Party Elites' Perceptions of Voters and Public Opinion

Given the vast amounts of research on party competition, party strategy, political communication and electoral campaigning, surprisingly little attention has been devoted to the study of national party elites' perceptions of voters and public opinion. This article argues that the mindset of leading party officials, and more specifically their perceptions of voter and public opinion rationality, driving forces and knowledge, is a much‐neglected explanation for why parties adopt the electoral strategies they do. Analysed here are unique internal party documents from two Swedish parties during the period 1964 to 1991: the Social Democratic Party and the Conservative Party. A simple analytic framework is proposed for the study of party elite perceptions of voters and public opinion. In contrast to the overwhelmingly pessimistic view of voter rationality that still prevails in contemporary research, the findings presented in this article suggest that national party elites in general have had a surprisingly positive view of voters and, in particular, public opinion. Perceptions of voters and public opinion were largely unaffected by the parties' electoral fortunes, and did not become gloomier over time.     

Podemos: the ambiguous promises of left-wing populism in contemporary Spain

The paper inquires critically into Podemos as an instance of left-wing populism in contemporary European politics, putting forward four claims and a major thesis. First, Podemos was started as an original endeavour to ally in a hybrid mix two divergent approaches to democratic politics: the horizontal, open and networked mobilizations of the multitude, and the vertical, hierarchical, formal and representative structures of party formations, on the other. Such an amalgam might serve to combine the virtues of different models of democracy. Second, Podemos’ populism exemplifies a creative version of a ‘politics of the common’, but the terms of the ‘common sense’ are inflected in the direction of social rights, inclusion and egalitarian democracy. Third, Podemos illustrates a unique ‘reflexivity’ in the pursuit of populism. The party leadership has taken its cues from E. Laclau’s hegemonic theory of populism and implements it in its political strategy. Fourth, since the autumn of 2014, Podemos has arguably seen the gradual preponderance of a vertical, ‘hegemonic’ logic, reflecting a particular reading of populist theory which is prevalent among the party’s leadership. The broader thesis is that a dualist politics, which welds together horizontalism and verticalism in a conflictual bind, is a prima facie plausible strategy for renewing democracy in the present critical context. But a political organization like Podemos will be able to redeem its democratic promises as long as it maintains a constructive balance between these two political logics, avoiding the reassertion of centralized leadership and the suppression of pluralism which are typical of the populist tradition.     

Forced Exits: Accounting for the Removal of Contemporary Party Leaders

This article seeks to account for the remarkably high number of British party leaders who have been forced to leave office in recent years. In particular it seeks to explain why numerous leaders have felt compelled to resign following pressure from party colleagues. It is suggested that four general factors may be of importance: i) the increased importance of perceptions of leadership; ii) the rise of ‘celebrity’ politics; iii) erosion of traditional public–private divides, and; iv) increased professionalism amongst parliamentarians. The article refers to both the forced exit of leaders of all the major British political parties as well as the removal of leaders of parties within the devolved regions of the UK.     

Crashing the Party? Elites,Outsiders, and Elections

We consider an election between two parties that nominate candidates for office. The parties are polarized along a traditional cleavage, but they are also internally divided along a second issue dimension. We introduce a threat of entry from Outsider candidates, who have the prominence and resources to bypass party elites. We consider when voters will turn to Outsiders, and identify the conditions under which Outsiders will enter the election through an established party's nomination process, as opposed to circumventing established parties via a third-party challenge. We further explore when the elites will fail to respond to the threat of Outsider candidates. Our framework highlights how established parties will be especially vulnerable to Outsider primary entry in periods of intense ideological polarization between the parties, and that this vulnerability is especially heightened for the majority party.     

Pathways to power: Women's representation in the 2014 European Parliament elections

The 2014 European Parliament (EP) elections produced a record proportion of women MEPs overall (37 per cent). Yet, these results vary widely across countries and parties. This article aims to explain these variations, evaluating not only who the elected representatives of the 8^th EP are, but also how they got there. Are the paths to the EP the same for women and men? Are there gender differences in terms of MEPs’ political experience? A unique dataset listing more than 700 elected MEPs and their background, party and country characteristics is used to empirically examine who makes it to the EP and through which route. The results of the analysis suggest no significant gender differences in the pathways to the EP. Yet, parties matter: more women were elected to the 8^th EP from left‐wing than from right‐wing or ‘new’ parties, and both men and (especially) women representing right‐wing parties tend to be politically more experienced than their fellow MEPs from other types of parties. Furthermore, it is found that men are more likely than women to be promoted straight from party office to the EP, suggesting that some pathways to the EP are less open to women than others.     

Incentives in Third‐Party Governance: Management Practices and Accountability Implications

Contract incentives are designed to motivate contractor performance and to provide public managers with a powerful tool to achieve contract accountability. Our knowledge of contract incentives is rooted in contract design, yet as we move beyond contract specification and further into the contract lifecycle, we know little about why and how managers implement incentives. This study assesses public managers’ use of contract incentives in practice and advances theory development. A typology of contract incentives is constructed to capture a comprehensive range of formal and informal incentives, and the factors that influence managerial use of incentives are identified. The findings shed light on the complexities of maintaining accountability in third‐party governance structures and the management techniques aimed at improving the performance of public agencies.     

Simulation Analysis of the Effect of Party Identification on Finnish Parties' Optimal Positions

The Finnish National Election Study of 2003 revealed that most voters in Finland do not identify with parties and are self‐described as independents. In this article it is asserted that partisan attachments affect Finnish parties' optimal positions despite the large amount of independents. To show this, the article is divided in two parts. In the first part, voters' decisions are assumed to be deterministic. To show the effect of party identification under deterministic voting, two different types of simulations are conducted: the partisan type, where the partisans' voting behaviour depends on their distance from the party and on a degree of partisan attachment, and the apartisan type, where voting behaviour depends solely on policy issue distance. Results show that partisan attachments drive parties to adopt different ‘one‐off’ optimal positions than they would if party competition was solely based on policy issue distance. In the second part of the article, it is assumed that voters' decisions are probabilistic. Upon showing that party identification makes a voting model solely based on distance significantly more fit, the predicted probabilities of party choice are computed. Results indicate that the probability that a voter will vote for a party is higher when the party is located at its optimal position according to the partisan type of simulations rather than the apartisan one.     

How to stay populist? The Front National and the changing French party system

Abstract

The main aim of this contribution is to assess the relevance of the notion of ‘exclusionary populism’ for the characterisation of the Front National (FN) in France. Since its emergence in the 1970s, several categories or notions have been applied to this political party. Once considered as the resurgence of a traditional extreme right, it has since been classified as a case of a new European right-wing extremism, or as one of the neo-populist parties that obtained electoral successes in the 1990s. The recent evolution of the party has also been described as a sort of ‘normalisation’. Is therefore ‘exclusionary populism’ still a category that can grasp the evolution of the party, as well as its present position in the French party system? To answer this question, this article examines political discourses and various electoral platforms of the Front National to gather some empirical evidence. The argument is twofold: The Front National, despite its ‘dédiabolisation’ strategy, is still a classic populist party characterised by exclusionary populism and a sort of ‘catch-all populism’; its evolution is, however, dependent on the recent evolution of the French party system.     

Heuristics Behaving Badly: Party Cues and Voter Knowledge

Party cues provide citizens with low‐cost information about their representatives’ policy positions. But what happens when elected officials deviate from the party line? Relying on the 2006 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), we examine citizens’ knowledge of their senators’ positions on seven high‐profile roll‐call votes. We find that although politically interested citizens are the group most likely to know their senator's position when she votes with the party, they are also the group most likely to incorrectly identify their senator's position when she votes against her party. The results indicate that when heuristics “go bad,” it is the norm for the most attentive segment of the public to become the most misinformed, revealing an important drawback to heuristic use.     

A Regional Party in a Centralized Country: The Case of One Osaka in Japan

Among the regional parties that have emerged in Japan against a background of prevalent voter disillusionment with national politics, by far the most prominent and successful example is One Osaka (Osaka Ishin no kai), which won both the 2011 gubernatorial and mayoral elections (‘double elections’) in Osaka against rivals backed by both major national parties before expanding into a national party. The present study attempts to place this party in a comparative context and analyses a voter survey to test the extent to which party support is attributable to political alienation, local factors, policy stances and favourable views of candidates. Results show that backing for One Osaka was based less on issue preferences or general disaffection with national politics, but instead motivated primarily by positive attitudes towards its candidates, particularly the party leader. The article also traces the party's expansion into national politics, compares its leadership with regional parties in other countries and discusses its future prospects.     

Run,Jane, Run! Gendered Responses to Political Party Recruitment

Many researchers point to gender inequities in party recruitment practices to explain women’s underrepresentation on the ballot. However, there has been little systematic research about how men and women respond to recruitment, so we do not know whether gender-balanced recruitment would actually lead to gender-balanced outcomes. We conduct two studies to address this question. First, in cooperation with a county Republican Party, we identically recruited 5510 male and 5506 female highly active party members to attend a free candidate training seminar. Republican women were half as likely to respond to the invitation as men. Second, we conducted a survey experiment of 3960 voters on the Utah Colleges Exit Poll. Republican men’s level of self-reported political ambition was increased by the prospect of elite recruitment significantly more than Republican women’s, thereby increasing the gender gap vis-à-vis the control. The gender gap in the effect of recruitment on political ambition among Democrats was much smaller. Together, these findings suggest that to fully understand the role recruitment plays in women’s underrepresentation, researchers must understand the ways in which men and women respond to recruitment, not just whether political elites engage in gendered recruitment practices.     

Party system(s) and electoral behaviour in Belgium: From stability to balkanisation

Belgium has one of the most fragmented party systems of any modern democracy. This article asks the following questions: is party fragmentation linked to the importance of the ethno-regionalist vote or to the rules of the electoral system? Has party fragmentation also produced centrifugal or polarised multipartyism (between the regions, but also within Flanders, given the spectacular rise of the Vlaams Blok)? What explains the difference in party fragmentation between Flanders and Wallonia? What are the dimensions of party competition in each community and what are the socio-demographic and attitudinal characteristics of the different electorates? Which steps have the political elites taken to cope with the increasing fragmentation of the party landscape and growing voter volatility? To what extent has the increasing divergence between the regional party systems led to the building of asymmetrical coalitions at the federal and regional levels of government? The splitting of the Belgian party system into two, albeit still fragmented, party systems has further complicated the problems of coordination within a polarised, multi-cleavage and multilevel system that seriously undermines the stability of the entire political system.