The territorial genealogies of Russia's political parties and the transferability of political machines

This article uses statistical analysis of aggregate electoral returns in order to establish continuities in the territorial patterns of support between four major political parties of contemporary Russia, on the one hand, and those parties that contested national legislative (Duma) elections from 1993 through 2007, on the other hand. It is hypothesized that such continuities, dubbed “territorial genealogies,” are largely rooted in the migration of region-based gubernatorial political machines from one national party to another, which constitutes a major flow of organizational continuity in the development of political parties. Statistical analysis confirms that the main hubs of machine politics in Russia's regions, originating from the intra-elite struggles of the 1990s, provide United Russia with the territorial core of its current support. Other political parties retain electoral salience in those regions where their electoral appeal is not mitigated by the presence of political machines, which underscores the importance of non-machine party organization for their electoral destinies.     

Radical Change at the Ballot Box: Causes and Consequences of Electoral Behavior in Venezuela's 2000 Elections

This study aims to explain the victory of Hugo Chávez and his party in the 2000 Venezuelan elections, to analyze the factors that made this victory possible, and to examine the consequences for future developments in the Venezuelan political system. The decay of traditional party loyalties without the emergence of new parties deeply rooted in society (dealignment without realignment); underdevelopment; and an institutional setting dominated by a president elected by a plurality electoral system have opened the door to personality-centered politics and weak parties, which are the main features of the current political situation. Compared to the 1993 and 1998 elections, the 2000 elections once again confirm an increase in personality politics and the decay of parties as instruments for articulating interests, representation, and governance. As a consequence, this article argues, instability is likely to remain a feature of Venezuela's party system for some time.     

Is Consensual Politicizing Being Punished in Switzerland?

Over the last decade, Switzerland has been characterized by both a radicalization of its political system and the relative success of the SP and SVP parties, which tend to adopt a strategy of permanent campaigning. Because of this, it is often argued that politicians are held accountable for their behaviour and that their electoral successes depend on their voting behaviour in parliament. We thus explore whether the voting behaviour of representatives, or citizens' evaluations of parties' ideological positions had an impact on their electoral success in the 1995, 1999, and 2003 national elections. More precisely, we assess how far the proximity and directional models explain the electoral success of incumbents and parties using roll call data for the National Council as well as the Selects surveys at the individual level. The results at both levels suggest that voters' choice is largely consistent with what is predicted by the spatial models of electoral behaviour. Swiss voters form their party preference on both proximity and direction, which supports a mixed model of electoral behaviour.     

Explaining Electoral Volatility in Latin America: Evidence at the Party Level

Many existing explanations of electoral volatility have been tested at the country level, but they are largely untested at the individual party level. This study reexamines theories of electoral volatility through the use of multilevel models on party‐level data in the lower house elections of 18 Latin American countries from 1978 to 2012. Testing hypotheses at different levels, it finds that irregular institutional alteration increases electoral volatility for all the parties in a country, but the effect is more significant for the presidential party. At the party level, the results show that while a party that is more ideologically distinctive than other parties tends to experience lower electoral volatility, party age is not a statistically significant factor for explaining party volatility.     

Neo-Nazism in an Established Democracy: The Persistence of Golden Dawn in Greece

The literature predicts that extremist right-wing parties like the Greek Golden Dawn (GD) are doomed to stay in the margins of electoral competition, scaring away voters with their authoritarian views and violent tactics. Defying scholarly expectations and despite the criminal prosecution of its leadership, GD increased its electoral strength in the May 2014 European elections. The article contrasts the neo-Nazi GD with Western European radical right parties and examines the factors that facilitated the persistence of such an extreme political party in an established European democracy. It shows how GD managed to capitalise on the de-legitimation of Greek political institutions and, through its organisational activity, present itself as a socially legitimate anti-system alternative.     

Stability and Change in Party Preference

This article analyses stability and volatility of party preferences using data from the Swiss Household‐Panel (SHP), which, for the first time, allow studying transitions and stability of voters over several years in Switzerland. Analyses cover the years 1999–2007 and systematically distinguish changes between party blocks and changes within party blocks. The first part looks at different patterns of change, which show relatively high volatility. The second part tests several theories on causes of such changes applying a multinomial random‐effects model. Results show that party preferences stabilise with their duration and with age and that the electoral cycle, political sophistication, socio‐structural predispositions, the household‐context as well as party size and the number of parties each explain part of electoral volatility. Different results for within‐ and between party‐block changes underlie the importance of that differentiation.     

Failure of security co‐operation in SADC: The suspension of the organ for politics,defence and security

Political opposition parties are considered crucial to the nurturing, enhancing and consolidating of democracy in every political system. Indeed, their existence is proof of political tolerance, competitive party elections, the provision of choices to the voting public and the possibility of alternation in power. However, the political opposition on the African continent is generally weak, and particularly so in Botswana, resulting in the predominance of the ruling party in political affairs. This article analyses the weaknesses of Botswana's opposition parties by tracing their historical evolution, characteristics, electoral base, and performance against the background of the political and electoral system in Botswana and the strength of the ruling party itself. It concludes that future prospects for the opposition to make greater inroads into the Botswana Democratic Party's support are small because of the fragmented nature of the opposition itself and the relative satisfaction of citizens with the current government's performance.     

The Transformation of Australian Electoral Analysis: The Two‐Party Preferred Vote — Origins,Impacts, and Critics

Measuring party support in Australia by constructing a “two‐party preferred” vote has had a profound effect, not only on the way political scientists, journalists, and politicians understand electoral “swing” and predict electoral outcomes, but also on their understanding of the party system, their thinking about electoral fairness, and their views about which party or parties can legitimately claim government. This article traces the origins — the maternity as well as the paternity – of the “two‐party preferred”. It documents its spread from federal to state elections, even as voting systems in some states have switched from exhaustive preferential to optional preferential. It discusses its wide‐ranging impact, and its implications for notions of electoral fairness and the legitimacy of election outcomes. It evaluates various criticisms of the concept — technical, pragmatic, and conceptual. And it notes the implications for marginal seat campaigning of the commonly observed “uniform swing”— implications completely at odds with the idea that marginal seats matter.     

Does local party organisation make a difference? Political parties and local government elections in Germany

Do large and locally organised memberships represent an electoral asset for political parties in a mass media age? Years of political science discussions of different models of party organisation have produced little evidence about whether, or in what way, alternate models matter. This article examines a survey of 549 SPD and CDU local party organisations for evidence of whether ‘mass’ characteristics are associated with electioneering differences. The study finds that mass‐style organisation is associated with more active local campaigns. Local parties which are active throughout the year and which can draw on relatively large membership bases run more active and more varied campaigns.     

The Electoral Cycle and Multi-Level Voting in Germany

The aim of this contribution is to analyse whether Land elections may (have) become uncoupled from the federal electoral process, and, if they have, to explore the implications for party competition in Germany. Initially, an overview is presented of the relevant theoretical models that can help unpack the relationship between different electoral arenas. Secondly, how these ideas have been applied to national and sub-national electoral competition in Germany is outlined, before an examination of the 'fit' of the data in both the pre- and post-unification periods. We conclude with reflections on two key features that have regularly surfaced in Gordon Smith's writings: party system change and political stability.     

Party patronage and merit-based bureaucratic reform in Pakistan

ABSTRACT

How do ruling political parties accommodate their members’ demand for access to state patronage with a push for merit-based bureaucratic reform? I argue that political commitment to reform is contingent on electoral calculations within the party. Therefore, distortions in reform implementation reveal not only dynamics within the party itself, but also the significance of appointing the right bureaucrats to the right posts to regulate access to patronage. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork in Punjab, I contextualise political commitment to bureaucratic reform to provide an explanation for their unsustainability and for persistently low state capacity in countries with weak, patronage-reliant parties.     

Allocating Campaign Effort in Spain: Evidence from Four General Elections

Abstract

This paper analyses which districts are targeted by Spanish political parties in their electoral campaigns. We find that the major Spanish parties - PP and PSOE - mobilise districts where they are more likely to win a new seat or are in danger of losing one they already hold. The predicted closeness of the district race is more relevant in the smallest districts. We also find that Spanish parties mobilise their strongholds. We suggest that, apart from the pure office-seeking strategies, political finance motivations might also play a role in the mobilisation choices made by Spanish party elites.     

Minimum Winning Electoral Coalitions Under Presidentialism: Reality or Fiction? The Case of Brazil

This article studies the motivations of party leaders to form "minimum winning" electoral coalitions—alliances that cease to be winning if one member is subtracted. In Brazil, concurrent elections stimulate political actors' coordination, and electoral alliances are allowed. In 2002 and 2006, moreover, the Electoral Supreme Court obliged those parties with presidential candidates to replicate this electoral arrangement in the district. Under "verticalization," parties with presidential candidates could not form alliances with rival parties in the concurrent legislative and gubernatorial elections. Verticalization arguably pushed party leaders to form minimum winning electoral coalitions. This new rule forced them to reconsider the contributions of each possible ally in the elections for president, federal deputy, and governor. Examining the elections from 1998 to 2006, this study finds that under verticalization, while parties did form more electoral coalitions with those partners they considered crucial to win, they did so at the expense of policy.     

Not to the highest bidder: the failure of incumbency in the Zambian 2011 elections

Incumbent political parties in emerging democracies tend to use clientelism and state resources to mobilise electoral support. In most cases, they go on to win these electoral contests. However, this paper uses the Zambian example to demonstrate that mere incumbency may not always win elections. Despite the advantages of incumbency, the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) lost the 2011 elections to the opposition Patriotic Front (PF). To explain this, the paper argues that the qualities of an incumbent political party matter. For the MMD, the paper identifies three major contextual variables which undermined incumbency: first, the internal long-term but sustained centrifugal conditions which systematically eroded the party’s strength. Second, the public perception of the MMD as a decaying and recalcitrant party which increasingly detached itself from the electorate. Third, the presence of a surging populist, grassroots-based opposition political party.     

Not Dead Yet? Explaining Party Member Activity in Germany

While political parties in Germany have been steadily losing members for more than two decades, there has been no sign of a breakdown in their day-to-day grass-roots activities. Despite many prophecies of doom, the ‘party on the ground’ does not seem to be dead yet. There is some evidence that the declining number of party members is compensated for by an increasing share of party activists. The question is how the erosion of the political parties’ member-ship base affects their levels and types of activity. This paper aims to describe and explain these two dimensions of activity in German political parties, using data from German party membership studies from 1998 and 2009. The analyses show that parties are partly able to compensate for membership losses via an increased activity of the remaining members, but at the same time, it is possible that changes in the social profile and motivations of the most active group of members may lead to future difficulties in coping with party work and canvassing new members.     

The Australian Greens: Party Organisation and Political Processes

The Greens challenge the Australian two‐party system by promoting an alternative political agenda and by facilitating democratic processes. Their recent successes in federal and state elections suggest that the party itself deserves closer scrutiny. This paper shows how the Greens are organisationally different from other parties currently active in Australian politics due to both their internal processes and their parliamentary practices. Recent theories of parties argue that party organisation has changed significantly for major parties, adopting an electoral‐professional or cartel model that centralises power and decision‐making in party representatives within parliaments. This paper shows how a smaller party uses identity formation processes to establish a distinctive organisational style. We examine the Greens' party organisation by analysing the interdependent relationships between the party membership, the state and national offices, and Green MPs. The paper is based on original research including in‐depth interviews undertaken with state and federal Greens members of parliaments.     

Institutional Change and Ethnic Parties in South America

The central question of this article is why indigenous social movements formed electorally viable political parties in Latin America in the 1990s. This development represents a new phenomenon in Latin America, where ethnic parties have been both rare and unpopular among voters. Institutional reforms in six South American countries are examined to see if the creation and success of these parties can be correlated with changes in electoral systems, political party registration requirements, or the administrative structure of the state. The study concludes that institutional change is likely to be a necessary but not sufficient condition for the emergence and electoral viability of ethnic parties.     

Guatemala's Party Universe: A Case Study in Underinstitutionalization

The article examines the degree of institutionalization of the Guatemalan party universe across four areas: the pattern of inter‐party competition; the rootedness of parties in society; the legitimacy accorded to parties and democratic institutions; and the nature of internal party organization. Guatemala displays an extremely inchoate party structure across all these variables. There is no stability in the identity of the main parties in the polity. After more than two decades of electoral democracy, no single party has been able to avert a drift into electoral irrelevance or outright disappearance. With respect to the basic facets of internal party organization, Guatemalan parties exhibit a feebleness so pronounced that their very status as parties is questionable. In general, Guatemalan “parties” only fulfill Sartori's minimalist definition as organizations that field candidates for public office, but offer nothing more substantive.