Stammwähler und die opportunistische Wahl parteipolitischer Programme

This article explains political radicalism by the number of voters who are biased towards a party. With little voters biased in favor of a party, this party has to rely more heavily on its programmatic distance to other parties. Because large parties – i.e.: parties with a high number of biased voters – gain votes when they move to the center of the political spectrum, parties with a lower number of voters that are biased in their favor are forced to the edges of the policy space. We draw on a computational model of political competition between four parties in a two‐dimensional policy space to investigate this relationship. We use panel corrected OLS estimates to analyze the data generated by the computer simulation. Our results substantiate the hypothesis of a negative relationship between the number of biased voters and the inclination of a party to adopt a more extreme policy stance.     

Singapore’s 2015 General Election: Explaining PAP’s Resounding Win

Abstract

While Singapore’s 15th general election came about as expected, the ensuing results did not. In view of the opposition’s performance in the 2011 general election and the general sense that the ruling party had done well despite its performance being anything but sterling, the results were somewhat shocking. Even the leaders of the ruling party were caught by surprise at the party’s ability to garner 70% of the valid votes, 10% more than in the previous election. While many factors played a role, it was the opposition parties that lost the election rather than the ruling party that won it. Most of the opposition parties were rejected by the voters on grounds of not being worthy of support. The leading opposition party, the Workers’ Party, also suffered as many voters feared that it might perform too well to the detriment of the ruling party. In the end, the 2015 general elections strengthened the one-party-dominant state in Singapore and the quest for greater political representation was placed on the back burner.     

Losing the connection: party-voter linkages in Pakistan

How do political parties in Pakistan aggregate votes and connect to voters, especially in rural areas? Most explanations for party-voter linkages in rural Pakistan can be grouped into four broad categories: (a) political parties are made up of powerful landlords who use economic power to collect votes from dependent voters; (b) parties are conglomerations of clientelist networks; (c) parties are large aggregations of kinship networks; and (d) parties function by building links with specific types of constituencies across large parts of the country, and voters forge links with political parties based on ideology and party identification. These are, at best, only partial explanations. How is it that they can all co-exist? The answer lies in the level of analysis employed. I argue that when viewed in aggregated form at a macro-level of analysis, such as that of national politics, these varied explanations of party-voter linkages appear to be distinct and sometimes mutually exclusive. However, when disaggregated and examined at a micro-level of analysis, that of village-level politics, it becomes obvious how it is possible for all of these linkages to not only co-exist but often even work together. I adopt this micro-level of analysis through a longitudinal study of one village in Pakistan's most populous and politically most important province, Punjab. Using the case study of Sahiwal, I argue that the reason for the varied explanations is that the link between political parties and their voters is rarely direct. Instead, it is mediated by different types of local actors. As the national political arena changes, different actors gain precedence, leading to multiple explanations of what is really going on in rural Pakistan between political parties and their voters.     

The development and consolidation of the Lithuanian political party system

Abstract

The consolidation of Lithuania's party system has proceeded in two phases. During the first phase from 1988 to 1992, the basis of a multiparty system was established. In the second phase, polarization has been reduced as the relevant parties in the system have begun to converge toward the middle of the political spectrum. However, continued high levels of voter volatility do not yet permit us to speak of a fully consolidated party system. Nonetheless, parties have become the only means by which political elites mobilize public support in efforts to gain access to public office.     

CDU refugee policies and the landesverband oder/neiße: Electoral tool or instrument of integration?

Despite the recognition that the integration of refugees and expellees into west Germany has been one of the success stories of the post‐war period, little light has been shed on the process of political integration of this group into the political system of the nascent Federal Republic. As the ‘newcomers’ were prevented from organising themselves in political or cultural organisations, the only legitimate way of exercising political influence was the way through the licensed parties. The CDU/CSU as a conglomerate of liberal and conservative traditions made use of its historic opportunity to adapt its flexible party apparatus and encourage refugee participation. Thereby, it made an important contribution to the political representation of refugee demands as well as attracting a large proportion of the newcomers’ votes.     

Elite interests and political participation in Botswana, 1966–2014

ABSTRACT

Botswana’s tiny economy is overwhelmingly government-driven and political participation, particularly on the side of the ruling party, is critical for one’s economic survival and prosperity. This has led to enduring intrigue and conflict among the country’s political power elite. Opposition party activists traditionally have embraced leftist policies and claimed to be representing the country’s poor and downtrodden while castigating the ruling Botswana Democratic Party (in power since 1966) of being pro-rich and politically connected business. Ironically, some members of the opposition elite also engage in business ventures with their ruling party counterparts. The scramble for economic opportunities has fuelled debilitating factionalism within both the ruling and opposition parties over the years. In some instances tribalism was mobilised in intra- and inter-party elections for positions of influence even though voters are more interested in service delivery than traditional ethnic issues. Our paper considers the question: ‘Whose interests do Botswana’s politicians represent?’     

Cambodia and the United Nations - Legal Documents

ABSTRACT

This study examines the evolution of political party finance in Thailand, which has been crucial for party development. The nature of party finance cannot be examined separately from the country's democratization given that the military early on dominated political parties. At the same time, such financing traditionally depended upon either regional factions (for larger parties) or party leaders (for micro-parties), while state funding for parties was nonexistent. The 1998 and 2007 Organic Acts on Political Parties contained finance reforms to strengthen parties, making them more transparent and accountable. Yet these reforms have only been partly successful. Today party leaders, faction leaders, and the military continue to influence party finance. This study addresses the issue of party finance in Thailand by scrutinizing its historical evolution from the dawn of Thai parties and party laws in the 1950s to the present. The authors conclude, first, that the limited nature of party finance laws in the pre-1998 period legitimized military-backed parties while facilitating intra-party factionalism. Second, they contend that despite reforms in party finance laws in Thailand major flaws remain to be corrected.     

Still Connected? Attitudinal Representativeness of German Party Memberships

In modern representative democracies political parties are the main institutions responsible for providing linkage between citizens and the state. One way to do this is through organizational linkage mechanisms, especially the representation of a party’s voters through the party membership. This paper tries to describe the attitudinal representativeness of German party memberships in terms of left-right positions using data from two party membership studies from 1998 and 2009. In a second step, the determinants of divergent attitudes of party members from the position of the parties’ voters are analyzed on an individual level, testing four possible explanations for this.     

Party and governance in the Arab republics

Abstract

By focusing on political memoirs as an important source, the article deals with the ruling party and governance in the Arab republics, whether they had a one-party system such as Iraq and Syria, or a multi-party system such as Egypt and Tunisia. However, one country among the republics, Libya, annulled political parties and parliament and created its own unique system of governance. Through memoirs of party members, parliamentary opponents, and ministers, the article analyses the substantial role of the ruling parties in perpetuating the regimes. While the triangular relationship between the leadership, the party, and the bureaucracy differed from one republic to another, the overall structure of governance did not vary widely, except in the case of Libya.     

Party competition in the Middle East: spatial competition in the post-Arab Spring era

This paper charts the nature of political cleavage between major parties in post-Arab Spring elections in five Mediterranean region countries, with data from online opt-in surveys. We compare the Moroccan elections, held under a consolidated authoritarian regime, with the transitional cases of Tunisia and Egypt as well as the more mature democracies of Turkey and Israel. Voter opinions are obtained on 30 salient issues, and parties and voters are aligned along two dimensions. We trace country-specific cleavage patterns and reflections of party system maturity in these five countries. The cases of Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco reveal that in less settled cleavage structures there is little congruence between vote propensities for parties and agreement levels with policy positions compared to the more institutionalized democracies of Israel and Turkey where voters exhibit a higher likelihood to vote for a party as the distance between the voter and the party in the policy space gets smaller.     

Flesh of the Same Flesh: A Study of Voters for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the 2017 Federal Election

Using the 2017 post-election German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES), this article examines the voters for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the 2017 German federal election. We show that AfD voters in 2017 were truly ‘flesh of the same flesh’ of the mainstream German political parties, with the AfD drawing its voters from across the political party spectrum as well as from previous non-voters in 2013. In contrast to previous scholarship, we find that in most respects AfD voters in 2017 did not differ demographically from voters for all other parties, be that in terms of gender, education, employment status, and union membership. Furthermore, we find that AfD voters were not driven by anxiety about their own economic situation: they are no ‘losers of globalisation.’ Instead, AfD voters in 2017 were driven solely by two factors: their attitudes towards immigrants/refugees and anti-establishment sentiment/satisfaction with democracy in Germany.     

Analysen zur Entstehung der Massenparteien und zu ihrem Einfluß auf das Parlament: Ostrogorski,Michels, Weber

SUMMARY

The object of this article is the analysis of Ostrogorski's, Michels' and Weber's statements on the connections between parties and Parliament. These three authors are really known as the founders of the sociology of parties, but their consideration of the relations between parties and Parliament in the time of mass-society represents an interesting component of their inquiry. Firstly, their remarks are significant in the historical respect, because they take into account (although in different ways) the problematical function of mediation taken on by the parties in political life; secondly, they arouse interest from the political point of view, because they look for alternative solutions and emendations. Their suggestions concern both the internal organization of the party, how to obtain more flexibility in the framework and more democracy and discussion on the decision-making level, and the integration of the party-system in a general political system of balance of powers, which should include at the same time a more consistent development of direct and participative democracy.     

Fission and fusion of parties in Estonia, 1987–1999

Abstract

We provide a schematic history of contemporary Estonian political parties, 1987–99, in which we specify dates of party origin and subsequent fissions and fusions of some fifty movements and parties, and we briefly discuss some important factors and features in party formation. Our analysis begins with the seminal 1987–94 period that marked the rebirth of Estonian democracy, with an extension to two subsequent parliamentary elections (1995 and 1999). We argue that the early phase of Estonian party competition generally exemplifies what we call “kaleidoscopic parties”: parties that form around leaders rather than durable issues and lack any organizational permanency or any real voter attachment. However, the rate of formation of new groups has decreased, and the major parties may be becoming more stable than in the past. While there is some evidence of a left-right patterning now emerging in the political debate in Estonia, the parties have not aligned themselves along such a left-right continuum.     

Salience‐Based Congruence Between Parties & their Voters: The Swiss Case

Policy congruence between parties and their voters is a prerequisite for the latter's representation. Related research typically focuses on the left‐right dimension. We contribute to this literature by conceiving the alignment between citizens and political elites as congruence on issues that individual citizens consider important (salience‐based congruence). Furthermore, we approach salience from the citizen's perspective and measure it at the individual level. Based on data from the Swiss Election Study (2007), we demonstrate that the assessment of party representation changes once we take salience into account. Policy congruence on salient issues is high and niche parties perform better than mainstream parties. Our arguments and findings about the role personal issue salience plays at the individual and party levels have important repercussions for contemporary debates on representation and policy congruence.     

Political Parties,Australia and the U.S. Alliance: 1976-2016

ABSTRACT

What causes variation in the foreign policies of U.S. allies regarding their desired U.S. military role in their region and their troop commitments to U.S. military interventions? This paper addresses this question through documenting and explaining the sources of variation in Australia’s foreign policies regarding these issues over four decades. Treating the two major political parties in Australia and their respective leaders who self-select into them as endogenous, the paper argues that Australian foreign policy, whilst always supportive of the U.S. alliance, has systematically varied. This variation has correlated with the political party in power while the late Cold War and post-Cold War balances of power remained constant. While the Labor party has only been willing to send combat troops to large U.S. military interventions when the latter have a supporting United Nations Security Council Resolution, the conservative Liberal party has been willing to military intervene without this multilateral support. The Labor party, unlike the Liberal party, has also frequently proposed the formation and consolidation of multilateral regional institutions. These preferences render the U.S. to have been necessary for the Labor Party but sufficient for the Liberal party. Future Sino-U.S. armed conflict would provide a harder test of these hypotheses.     

The evolution of party images and party system in Taiwan, 1992–2004

This article examines the evolution of party images in Taiwan between 1992 and 2004. It shows that party images are not immutable, as while the DPP gained more positive images, the other parties gained more negative images during the research period. The results show that the Taiwanese parties have quite distinct party images. Taiwanese voters often tend to use ethnic background and the cross-Strait relations to define the parties. Party images also play a significant role in Taiwanese voting behaviour, even when other variables are controlled. Voters tend to vote for the parties that they have favourable impressions of. The results also have implications for how political parties package themselves to attract more votes and on the development of the party system in Taiwan.     

Party Potential and the Pattern of Party Competition in the 2003 Swiss Federal Elections

This article explores both the party potential of the five major parties in Switzerland at the 2003 elections and how well the parties actually did in relation to how well they could have done. A party's electoral potential depends on both the probability of the electorate voting for the party and on the probability of individual voters participating in an election. The analysis shows that the SVP and the CVP were successful in mobilising their potential voters in the 2003 elections, while the FDP did almost as badly as they could have done. However, compared to the potential of the FDP or the SP, the overall potential of the SVP is limited. For the SVP, issue specific factors account for the mobilising success. This is especially the case for its stands against the EU and asylum seekers. The CVP profited from the Ruth Metzler effect, who was a key figure in the 2003 CVP campaign.     

Past the saturation point: Why voters switch from mainstream to niche parties and vice-versa

When do voters switch from mainstream to niche parties and vice-versa? To understand these switches, we focus on the saturation of the party system. We theorize that when a party system is oversaturated – i.e. when a higher effective number of parties contests elections than predicted based on socio-political contextual characteristics (the system's ‘carrying capacity’) – it becomes increasingly likely that: (1) mainstream party voters defect to niche parties; and (2) niche party voters refrain from switching to mainstream parties. Based on vote-switching patterns in 15 countries and 53 elections, we find that oversaturation increases shifts from mainstream to niche parties. Further analyses show that this holds for shifts from mainstream to radical left and right parties, but not for shifts to green parties. This has important consequences for research on vote switching, the electoral consequences of policy differentiation and the competition between niche and mainstream parties.     

Race and ethnicity: Voters’ party preference in South African elections

Abstract

Genuine, periodic, free and fair elections are one of the key defining features of a vibrant multi-party democracy. They provide a public mechanism for regular peaceful institutional competition for power and the opportunity for people to change, review or legitimise government through their freely expressed will. This article interrogates the behaviour of South African voters using a qualitative analysis of available studies covering the national and provincial elections held in 1994, 1999, 2004 and 2009, and the municipal election of 2011. One of the notable trends is that while the number of registered voters keeps increasing, voter turnout is on the decrease. There are other salient observable tends but they are not the focus of the article. For the purposes of the article the first conclusion is that among the various competing variables influencing voters’ choice of a particular political party in South African public elections, the race issue, however weak some might suggest it is, still looms large and is a dominant factor despite denials by some researchers. Second, in contrast to what obtains in many other African countries, ethnic identity happily has only a marginal influence on South African voters. This second conclusion should however not be regarded as cast in stone, given the ever-changing dynamic nature of people's identity and behaviour as well as the election campaign strategies of participating political parties and the role of the media. Given that there is a complex interrelatedness of ethnic and racial identity and interests, the electorate might well be more sophisticated than many realise.     

The Social Representativeness of German Party Membership

The present article empirically examines the social composition of German political party membership. In the first stage of the analysis, party members are compared with the total population and with voters. This makes it possible to identify potential deficiencies in the political representation of certain social groups. In the second stage, party membership is regressed on individual characteristics. This makes it possible to study cleavage structures. Since the empirical analysis includes data from the 2009 German Party Membership Study as well as from the 1998 Potsdam Party Membership Study, we are able to investigate changes over a period of eleven years. In light of the empirical findings, we then consider whether German parties are socially representative of the German population and their respective voters.