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?     

Political Branding: The Tea Party and Its Use of Participation Branding

The emergence of the Tea Party movement in 2009 witnessed the surfacing of a populist, anti-Obama libertarian mobilization within the United States. The Tea Party, a movement that brought together a number of disparate groups—some new, some established—utilized participation branding where the consumer attributed the movement its own identity and brand. Its consumer-facing approach, lack of one single leader, and lack of a detailed party platform, in combination with its impact on the 2010 election races in America, earmarks it as a contemporary and unconventional brand phenomenon worthy of investigation.     

What parties want from their leaders: How office achievement trumps electoral performance as a driver of party leader survival

Rational choice theories of political behaviour start from the premise that parties seek policy, office, and votes. In accordance with this premise, previous research has shown that electoral performance and office achievement independently affect party leader survival. However, we know little about how goal attainment interacts across these two domains. This paper proposes a novel hypothesis stating that intrinsic goals (office) dominate over purely instrumental ones (votes). As a result, the impact of electoral performance on party leader survival should be conditional on office achievement. Using data on over 500 party leaders in 14 parliamentary democracies between 1965 and 2012, we show that electoral performance and office achievement strongly affect leadership turnover. However, we also demonstrate that the electoral performance effect disappears when parties enter or exit office at the same time. These results constitute the best direct evidence to date that parties prioritise office achievement over electoral success.     

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.     

Advance or consolidation? The French national front and the 1995 elections

This article seeks to analyse the performance of the leader of the French National Front, Jean‐Marie Le Pen, and that of his Party, at the Presidential and Municipal elections of 1995. The elections took place after a period of apparent stagnation in the Front's political fortunes. Le Pen's relative success in the Presidential election was followed by the Front's capture of three significant towns at the municipal elections. However, its victories were in large part facilitated by the failure of the mainstream parties to rally against it. The elections ushered in a period of organisational and ideological change within the Party, which has, none the less, firmly established itself in the French political system.     

Anti-Semitism: the Touchstone Issue for the Next Labour Leader

As the Labour Party ponders who its next leader should be, dealing with anti-semitism within its ranks has become a touchstone issue. Ivor Gaber, who has watched anti-semitism within Labour fester long before it hit the headlines, takes a personal view of its roots and consequences and recommends a possible way forward.     

The primary runoff as a remnant of the old South

During the Jim Crow era, the American South developed a distinctive one-party political structure. One important feature of that structure was the primary runoff, which was adopted to require candidates to generate majority support in the nomination process and to stimulate competition within the Democratic Party (thus keeping the Republican Party irrelevant). In this piece, I argue that although the South has become a two-party region and the runoff has lived beyond its original purposes, it continues to do many of the things it was put into place to do. As in decades past, the runoff still has an impact on such things as candidate emergence, the competitiveness of primaries, and the ability for voters to reevaluate their choices.     

Towards a ‘New English Regionalism’ in the North? The Case of Yorkshire First

Traditionally, the debate over English devolution has been framed by mainstream parties, favouring a top‐down approach. However, this scenario has recently started to change, particularly in the areas with stronger regional identities such as the North of England. In 2014, the first regionalist party (Yorkshire First) was created, followed by the North East Party and the Northern Party. Such actors overtly challenge the narratives of regionalisation that have prevailed so far, and endorse bottom‐up regionalism. This article offers the first analysis of these ‘new regional voices’ in the North, and seeks to assess emerging tensions between regionalisation and regionalism in the devolution debate. To achieve this, it concentrates on the case of Yorkshire First, drawing on documentary analysis and the results of a membership survey. It will be argued that, although still limited in its impact, the rise of Yorkshire First signals the presence of a political vacuum in the region which has been left open by mainstream politics, and that regional identity and territorial cleavages do matter in the current debate on devolution in the North of England.     

Prime ministers in the age of austerity: an increase in the personalisation of voting behaviour

This article tests the personalisation thesis in Portugal (2002–2015), as well as its causes, focusing on changes in the level of party identification and perceptions of the economy. Portugal is an interesting example given its recent experience of a harsh economic crisis, as well as a decline in party identification. Results confirm a growing exogenous impact of leader evaluations on voting over the period but not in a linear fashion. During the crisis, the growing trend of leader effects for the incumbent party continues for those voters who have a positive perception of the economy. Conversely, for the main opposition party, leader effects are greater for those who perceive the economy as being worse. Thus the crisis operates as a catalyst for leader effects. The impact of leaders is also greater among the de-aligned, the numbers of which rise considerably during the period under analysis. It is voters with no party identification, who use leaders as proxies to a greater extent. These conclusions may extend to further studies on leader effects in Western democracies and help to shed light on the process through which leaders are becoming more relevant in voting decisions.     

The Scottish Liberal Democrats

As the junior members of the two Scottish coalition or partnership governments (1999–2003 and 2003–7), the Liberal Democrats have had a major impact on post-devolution public policy in Scotland. Contrary to expectations, their participation as junior partners in a coalition government has enhanced rather than damaged their electoral prospects. The party's success in coalition reflects the electoral and policy compatibilities between them and Labour, the availability of increased public spending to fund their demands, their use of specific policy agreements and effective election campaign tactics. Under their new leader, Nicol Stephen, they have sought greater distance from Labour and located themselves between Labour and the Scottish Nationalist Party. Looking forward to the 2007 election, the declining Labour vote and probable SNP gains mean that the Liberal Democrats are likely this time to have a choice between joining a Labour-led or forming a non-Labour coalition.     

The 1987 Eduskunta Election in Finland*

The election to the Finnish Eduskunta which was held on 15–16 March 1987 may go down as something of a turning-point in Finnish postwar politics. It marked an end to the long-standing practice of excluding the Conservative Party from the list of potential government parties. Social Democratic Party leader Kalevi Sorsa elaborated on this topic in several campaign speeches and in such terms that there was little doubt he was more favorably disposed towards the Conservative Party than towards the Center Party In a speech which he delivered when visiting one of the local party organizations in Helsinki in late 1986. the Social Democratic Prime Minister even suggested that the Center and Conservative parties had changed places on the Finnish left/right continuum. As a consequence there did not seem to be much hope left for the kind of red/green government coalitions to which the Social Democrats had been committed ever since the mid sixties.     

The Morphology of the Labour Party's One Nation Narrative: Story,Plot and Authorship

By applying narrative theory to the party political texts emerging within the UK Labour Party after 2010, which make up the corpus of One Nation discourse, we can grasp the underlying significance of this ideational revision of Labour Party and leftist thought. Through an identification and analysis of the sequence of texts and their constitution as a “story” that interpolates an underlying “plot,” we can see how a revision of Labour's “tale” offers to leadership a new party discourse appropriate to it, mediating—if not reconciling—the problematic duality of narrative authorship by both party and leader.     

The Mystery of the Third Hurdle: Re-electing the Conservative Leader

This article examines one aspect of the contests for the leadership of the British Conservative Party: the 'third' burdle. Since the introduction of formal elections no Conservative leader has been tripped up by the third hurdle (a need to win 'convincingly') but this has not prevented its existence as being taken as fact. This article considers whether it exists at all, and if so, attempts to consider its height. It concludes that if the third hurdle exists it owes more to realpolitik than to precise statistical measurement.     

Whatever happened to Italian communism? Explaining the dissolution of the largest communist party in the West

This article attempts to explain why the largest and most successful communist party in the West (the Italian Communist Party) has been the first to dissolve itself under the apparent impact of the revolutions in Eastern Europe. It does so by utilising and comparing four possible approaches to the study of West European Communist parties: ideological, electoral, strategic and ‘internal‐external’ approaches. The first three approaches are outlined and their limitations indicated before a more detailed exposition and application of the fourth approach is made as offering the most adequate framework to explain of one the most significant developments in Italian politics and West European communism.     

Class,Race Issues,and Declining White Support for the Democratic Party in the South

The Democratic Party in the South has experienced a major loss of white voters in recent decades. Two major hypotheses have been proposed to explain this change. The dominant explanation in recent years has been that race issues have driven whites from the Democratic Party in the South. In this view, defections from the Democratic Party have occurred because whites oppose the party's positions on race issues. In contrast, others have suggested that class divisions have emerged as important, with affluent whites increasingly supportive of the Republican Party because they find its positions more compatible with their interests. Using NES data, this article assesses the evidence for these hypotheses, examining the impact of income position and race issues on partisan behavior since 1952. While both factors affect partisan support, income has come to have a relatively greater effect on partisan support than race issues. The evidence clearly indicates that class divisions in the South have steadily increased and that affluent whites have steadily shifted to the Republican Party. The implications are significant for understanding the dramatic changes in the South in recent decades. Much has been made of the tensions over race issues, and the findings presented here lend further support to the importance of race issues in southern electoral politics. However, these findings also suggest that class divisions are a steadily increasing source of political cleavage in this region. The current state of electoral politics in the South cannot be properly understood unless both of these factors are taken into account.     

Antisemites in Britain

A former leader of the Liberal Party believes that antisemitism is unlikely to grow in Britain but it is very much alive on the fringes.     

A New Electorate? Comparing Preferences and Partisanship between Immigrants and Natives

As immigrants constitute a large and rising share of both the population and the electorate in many developed democracies, we examine aspects of immigrant political behavior, a vital issue that has gone largely unexplored outside of the U.S. context. We focus on Germany and Great Britain, two countries that provide good leverage to explore both within-country and cross-national variation in Europe. Our overall aim is to assess the impact of the immigration context. As a first step, we investigate whether immigrants and natives have systematically different attitudes on two issues that have dominated postwar European politics: social spending and redistribution. With controls in place, we observe that immigrants are no more likely to support increased social spending or redistributive measures than natives and find support for hypotheses highlighting selection effects and the impact of the immigration regime. Where we do find an opinion gap, immigrants tend to have more conservative preferences than natives. As a second step, we explore the determinants of immigrant partisan identification in Britain and find that the salience of the immigration context helps explain immigrants' partisan attachment to the Labour Party.     

‘No regionalism please,we are Leghisti !’ The transformation of the Italian Lega Nord under the leadership of Matteo Salvini

Whilst the Lega Nord has traditionally been defined as a regionalist populist party, since Matteo Salvini became its leader in 2013 it has undergone a process of profound ideological transformation. This article assesses this momentous change and the impact it could have on the future of the Lega, drawing on a content analysis of Salvini’s and the party’s Facebook posts, as well as interviews with regional leaders. It argues that, under Salvini’s personal style of leadership: (a) regionalism has been replaced by an empty form of nativist nationalism, which fails to address socio-economic issues related to the North–South divide; (b) populism remains central to the party’s strategic communication, but the EU has taken Rome’s place as the people’s ‘enemy’; (c) this ideological shift has paid-off at the 2018 general election, but is underpinned by latent fractures between the leader and regional representatives which could have profound implications in the future.     

After the Fukushima Disaster: Japan's Nuclear Policy Change from 2011 to 2012

This article analyzes why and how the cabinet of Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) decided in September 2012 to phase‐out nuclear power plants by 2039—the decision representing a large policy change from previous energy‐supply policy, in which the dependence on nuclear power would continuously grow. In doing so, this article examines the causal relationship between three factors identified on the basis of theoretical models explaining policy change; change in the governing coalition from the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to DPJ in 2009, the Fukushima accident, and the change in public opinion. Based on opinion poll and deliberative polling data, as well as discourse analyses of DPJ leaders’ statements, the article concludes that the change in public opinion on nuclear energy after the Fukushima accident was crucial in inducing the DPJ's decision to phase‐out nuclear power plants by affecting DPJ leaders' interests in vote‐ and office‐seeking. Finally, I discuss the applicability of the theoretical models developed on the basis of U.S. pluralistic cases to Japan and the issues to be explored for the further development of policy process models.     

Do Leadership Training and Development Make a Difference in the Public Sector? A Panel Study

Although significant progress has been made in developing leadership theory and understanding the traits, skills, behaviors, and styles that make a good leader, progress in bridging the gap between theory and practice using models of leadership training and development has been slow. This research attempts to answer the question of whether leadership training and development programs in the public sector improve leader and organizational performance. The findings indicate that a combination of coaching, classroom instruction, feedback, and experiential training has a significant impact on leader performance. In addition, organizational effectiveness improves for organizations whose leaders received the intervention. This article enhances our understanding of the impact that training and development can have on leader and organizational outcomes.