Implementing Democratic Equality in Political Parties: Organisational Consequences in the Swedish and the German Pirate Parties

This article theorises and empirically assesses some important intra‐organisational implications of maximising democratic equality in political parties both between followers and members and between members and elites. They include weak member commitment, passivity of the rank‐and‐file membership and – depending on party structure – high levels of internal conflict. To substantiate the arguments, two parties that implement principles of democratic equality in their organisations are examined: the Swedish and German Pirate parties. These cases show, first, that while organisational structures implementing norms of equality allowed them to rapidly mobilise a considerable following, the same structures systematically reduced their capacity to consolidate support in the longer term – a weakness that might eventually put these parties' survival at risk. Second, they show that differences in the extent to which subnational units provide a foundation for member mobilisation helps to explain variation in the level of internal conflict experienced by these parties.     

Party Feminism: Gender Gaps within Nordic Political Parties

On the basis of surveys of Danish and Norwegian political party members, this article shows that female presence is comparatively high in Danish and Norwegian parties, and that there are a number of consistent and politically significant gender differences in political opinions within the parties. These gender gaps are largest regarding issues that are not central to the ideological core of the parties and on issues where women are particularly affected. The study still reveals the importance of party in the sense that the differences between the members of different parties are greater than the gender gaps within parties. In the Nordic party systems, gender as such does not constitute a political force transcending the left–right dimension.     

Central Governing Incapacity and the Weakness of Political Parties: Russian Democracy in Disarray

Political parties can be an important mechanism by which tobetter integrate states in the developing world. Despite this,in Russia parties continue to penetrate provincial politicsonly weakly and thus do not help to integrate the state andenhance its abilities to govern in the periphery by extension.Drawing on evidence of weak central-state capacity to governin the Russian provinces and correspondingly weak politicalparty penetration, emergent political and economic actors havelittle interest in building political parties and increasingstate integration and capacity as a result. The article concludeswith a discussion of the implications of the argument and analysisfor the future of Russian political and economic development.     

Exploring the Consequences of Negative Political Advertising for Liberal Democracy

ABSTRACT

This paper explores existing thinking and research on the use of negative advertising strategies in political campaigning, and in particular examines their potential impact on liberal democracy. We ask what impacts negative forms of political communication may have on our system of government and democratic participation. Though political advertising makes up only a part of political discourse, an analysis of it is necessary given the increasing “marketisation” of political communication, coupled with concerns regarding the so called “democratic deficit.” In order to more truly evaluate its impact, the evidence pertaining to both the positive and detrimental consequences of employing negative ad strategies is examined. What emerges are some very real short-term benefits, some very real concerns over its use, and confusion over its “true” impact. Of particular note is the need for researchers and campaign managers to take a longer-term view of the potentially detrimental consequences of employing negative advertising strategies-to look beyond the short-term gains of winning elections and to consider the longer-term societal consequences of consistently employing advertising strategies characterised by the creation of doubt, fear, anxiety, violation and viciousness. We argue that the “winning” mentality of political ad campaigns needs to be balanced by a more “nurturing” orientation if the tenets of liberal democracy are to remain sustainable.     

Human Branding in Political Marketing: Applying Contemporary Branding Thought to Political Parties and Their Leaders

Political marketing advances by engaging with new and advanced concepts from both of its parent disciplines. One of the most recent fields of brand research—the study of the human brand—is taken into the political marketing arena in this essay. Human branding is an emergent topic in mainstream marketing. The value as a brand of a person who is well-known and subject to explicit marketing communications efforts is being investigated in many fields. The concept has clear prima facie value in political marketing, where the role of a political leader as part of the political marketing offer has been recognized extensively. Politics is also a unique context given the relationship between leaders and parties, each of which has some unique brand associations. The process of exploring the application of human branding in politics also provides a context in which some of the interactions among party and leader, human brand, and organizational brand can be explored and further developed. Among the conclusions are that political party leaders require brand authenticity as an advocate of the party policy platform and brand authority to command the organization and deliver on the policies being advocated. Implications for party and campaign management are outlined.     

The Changing Finnish Democracy: Stronger Parliamentary Accountability, Coalescing Political Parties and Weaker External Constraints

Examining constitutional and political developments since the Second World War, this article shows that Finland has moved from a system dominated by the president toward a normal parliamentary democracy. Government formation is now based on partisan negotiations and the president is almost completely excluded from the policy process in domestic matters. The chain of delegation from the voters to the civil servants is thus now simpler than before and subject to fewer external constraints. In fact, Finland is probably the only West European country where parliamentary democracy has become less constrained since the 1980s. Leadership by presidents has effectively been replaced with leadership by strong majority governments, which have ruled, without much effective opposition, since the early 1980s. The stronger role of parties in shaping public policy stands in contrast to the weakening of the parties among the electorate. The ability of political parties to effectively align preferences is increasingly in doubt, as indicated by the transforming cleavage structure, lower turnout and declining party membership.     

Political Parties and Intergovernmental Relations in 1984: The Consequences of Party Renewal for Territorial Constituencies

Democratic and Republican efforts at party renewal have differedin approach, but both can be recognized as intergovernmentalphenomena having significant implications for American federalism.The Democratic Party's national charter and delegate selectionrules, for instance, have federalized the governing structureof the party. The national Republican Party organization hasdeveloped such a large base of financial resources andcampaignservices that state Republican parties and candidate committeeshave begun to accept national party authority along with itsmoney. Moreover, as national, state, and local parties and candidatesincreasingly coordinate their delegate selection, finance, andother campaigh activities, they may transform the decentralizedparty system that has been a protector of state and local influencewithin the federal government. National ideological constituencieswithin both party organizations may rival territorial and functionalconstituencies for the attention of federal elected officials.     

Political Star Power and Political Parties

Abstract

Political parties, and more specifically public interest groups, budget extensive amounts of time and money to use celebrity endorsers for their candidate. Do celebrities bring forth enough value to warrant the time, effort, and money expended to make their endorsements public? Using a sample of first-time voters from the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election, the authors examine the extent to which celebrities influence voting while specifically assessing whether celebrity influence is greater for Republicans or Democrats. Implications and recommendations for future research are discussed.     

Politically Significant Events and Their Effect on the Image of Political Parties

Abstract

This article begins by arguing that the image of a political party is of strategic importance in its pursuit of electoral success. More specifically, it is argued that important influences on party image are ‘politically relevant’ events. The paper then develops a conceptual model of how the images of political parties are influenced by such events. It considers internal and external factors that influence the power of a given event to affect party image. Next, the process of image transfer itself is discussed along with the factors that influence the way credit/ blame is apportioned from an event. Then, ways of dealing with ‘negative’ events are considered. The overall model is used to analyse a specific political event (the Iraq war) and assess its likely impact on party image. The article concludes by assessing the model's efficacy and limitations in analysing the case used and with events per se. Finally, future research ideas prompted by the paper are discussed.     

Who Should Govern Political Parties? Organizational Values in Norwegian and Danish Political Parties

The article explores party member attitudes towards internal party democracy and party leadership in Danish and Norwegian parties. The focus is on the relationship between party members' public policy values (measured by means of 'old politics' and 'new politics' value dimensions) and their organizational values (i.e. ideas about internal democracy), but the members' educational and activism levels as well as indicators capturing factors specific to individual parties are also applied to explain party members' organizational values. We find that positions on the two policy value dimensions are related to party members' organizational values. But the relationships are not particularly strong, and their signs are contrary to expectations. One explanation may be that the 'new politics' literature draws a misleading picture of the organizational values of New Left and New Right party members – at least in the Danish and Norwegian cases. We also find that the social democratic parties in both countries differ considerably from the other parties in the sense that the dissatisfaction with the leadership was much stronger in these parties.     

Change and Permanence in Political Parties

Incessant changes alter political parties in their organization, structure, recruitment and all other characteristics. Nevertheless, they are usually credited with stable features by which they are identified, and which enable them to be classified. If we consider French political parties, it is possible to demonstrate that both change and apparent stability arise from interaction within each party as well as between them and between the social organizations to which they are linked. These interactions and their effects must be related to general processes, such as social and cultural transformation; they cannot be solely explained by specifically political competition.     

Parties, Democracy and Grounded Utopias: A Reply to Sara Motta

The article is a reply to Sara Motta's article 'Utopias Re-imagined: A Reply to Panizza' in this journal. It discusses the relations between representative and participatory democracy in Latin America in the light of Motta's vindication of different forms of participatory democracy. It argues that when analysing the advances of the left and the centre-left in contemporary Latin America it is difficult to ignore the strategic role played by left-of-centre political parties in winning elections and the importance of controlling the state as a crucial instrument for promoting change. It further argues that while participatory democracy is essential for a democratic polity, it presupposes a well-functioning representative democracy rather than an alternative to it. Against Motta's celebration of localised, anti-capitalist utopias the article vindicates a process of iterative yet cumulative change that shapes and reshapes the political and institutional parameters that redefine what governments consider politically possible, feasible and desirable. It concludes by noting that the twentieth century's failure of totalising utopias makes us overlook the success of other, more grounded and open forms of utopian thinking, such as political democracy and economic social democracy, which have the potential to improve the lives of millions of people in Latin America.     

Electoral Selection with Parties and Primaries

We develop a model of intraparty candidate selection under partisan electoral competition and voter uncertainty. Candidates for office belong to parties, which are factions of ideologically similar candidates. Each party’s candidate for a general election can be selected either by a “centralized” mechanism that effectively randomizes over possible candidates or by voters in a primary election. The electorate cares about ideology and valence, and both primary and general elections may reveal candidate valences. Our main theoretical result is that while primaries raise the expected quality of a party’s candidates, they may hurt the ex ante preferred party in a competitive electorate by increasing the chances of revealing the opposing party’s candidates as superior. Thus, primaries are adopted in relatively extreme districts where a clear favorite party exists. An empirical analysis of the adoption of direct primaries and the competitiveness of primary elections across U.S. states supports these predictions.     

Developments in Danish Parliamentary Democracy: Accountability, Parties and External Constraints

Danish parliamentary developments since the Second World War include the consolidation of minority rule, a reduction in the power of established political parties, and more external constraints on parliamentary actors. They also involve a number of more specific changes to the various steps of delegation and accountability. The evidence tends to support the thesis of a paradox in the development of parliamentary democracy. On the one hand, changes in the constitutional chain of delegation and accountability have, on the whole, favoured the principals (voters, parliament, ministers) compared with their agents (parliament, ministers, civil servants). On the other hand, the established parties have declined somewhat and there are more external constraints than there used to be. This implies that the power of democratic principals has increased within narrower limits of action. In such a situation, the principals can be said to 'decide more about less' because of the stronger national and (not least) international constraints. However, the emergence of a partially new system of governance cannot unequivocally be called better or worse than the traditional Danish system of democratic governance.