From parliamentary pay to party funding: The acceptability of informal institutions in advanced democracies

While direct state funding of political parties has been a prominent theme in cross‐national research over the last decade, we still know little about party strategies to access state resources that are not explicitly earmarked for partisan usage. This article looks at one widespread but often overlooked informal party practice: the ‘taxing’ of MP salaries – that is, the regular transfer of fixed salary shares to party coffers. Building on notions of informal institutions developed in work on new democracies, the theoretical approach specifies factors that shape the acceptability of this legally non‐enforceable intra‐organisational practice. It is tested through a selection model applied to a unique dataset covering 124 parties across 19 advanced democracies. Controlling for a range of party‐ and institutional‐level variables, it is found that the presence of a taxing rule and the collection of demanding tax shares are more common in leftist parties (high internal acceptability) and in systems in which the penetration of state institutions by political parties is intense (high external acceptability).     

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.     

Making the economic case for independence: The Scottish National Party’s electoral strategy in post-devolution Scotland

This article examines the strategic behaviour of the Scottish National Party (SNP) in regional elections from 1999 to 2016. It builds on recent work that has theorized the kind of strategic tools regionalist parties have at their disposal in electoral competition, and the factors expected to determine the strategic choices these parties make. An in-depth case study of the SNP describes when and explores why the party makes strategic choices in an effort to bolster its electoral support in post-devolution Scotland. The analysis finds (i) that the SNP has consistently sought to ‘frame’ the issue of independence in economic terms, by advancing an economic case for separating Scotland from the UK and (ii) that this strategic approach is the result of competing constraints internal and external to the party. These findings suggest that the strategic behaviour of regionalist parties in electoral competition is more sophisticated than expected by extant theoretical accounts.     

Television and party political dissent: intra‐party competition and the formation of news agendas

This paper re‐examines the formation of political news agendas on British television. It argues that studies of news agenda formation in political communication have been overly focused on general election campaigns and the competition between the main political parties to set the news agenda. It suggests that such studies see political parties as either homogeneous or focus exclusively on the activities of communication elites and therefore miss another important aspect of the modern political communication process. Using the British party conferences as a case study, this paper argues that in order to capture the complexities of agenda formation outside election periods, political parties have to be seen as heterogeneous organisations, consisting of various ‘claim‐makers’. News agendas in certain situations have to be understood as the product of intra‐party competition between the leadership and dissenting voices. While this competition is imperfect, favouring resource rich party elites, on certain newsworthy issues broadcasting professionals act as a counterweight to leadership resource advantages, and help shape the outcome of intra‐party competition. In conclusion the paper suggests that dissenting actors within political parties, when newsworthy, can make a substantial contribution to the formation of television news agendas despite the resistance of party leaderships. Taking account of the communicative activity of these actors and of news values will provide further insights into the formation of political news agendas between general elections. Copyright © 2001 Henry Stewart Publications     

Why do only some people who support parties actually join them? Evidence from Britain

What makes people join a political party is one of the most commonly studied questions in research on party members. Nearly all this research, however, is based on talking to people who have actually joined parties. This article simultaneously analyses surveys of members of political parties in Britain and surveys of non-member supporters of those same parties. This uniquely enables us to model the decision to join parties. The results suggest that most of the elements that constitute the influential ‘General Incentives Model’ are significant. But it also reveals that, while party supporters imagine that selective benefits, social norms and opposing rival parties’ policies are key factors in members’ decisions to join a party, those who actually do so are more likely to say they are motivated by attachments to their party’s values, policies and leaders, as well as by an altruistic desire to support democracy more generally.     

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.     

The Partisan Usage of Parliamentary Salaries: Informal Party Practices Compared

It is widely acknowledged that political parties in European democracies have become increasingly dependent on state resources, most notably direct state funding. Yet cross-national studies on parties' usage of state resources that are not earmarked for partisan purposes, which require the assessment of informal, intra-organisational practices, are still rare. This article looks at one such practice across 33 parties in five European democracies: namely the ‘taxing’ of national MPs' salaries. Under this practice, candidates who enter elected office on a party ticket are obliged regularly to donate a fixed share of their public salaries to party coffers. The empirical analysis shows that the presence of a taxing rule is more likely in parties with a strong extra-parliamentary organisation, while a leftist ideology facilitates the collection of high salary shares from parliamentarians. Moreover, where party entanglement with the state is particularly pronounced, the partisan usage of parliamentary salaries is easier irrespective of their organisational dispositions. Finally, while in unitary systems national headquarters are usually able to monopolise control over national MPs' contributions, in federal systems regional party executives are able to insist on their share of these payments.     

New politics and party systems: The emergence of a new type of party?

Building upon theories of new politics, this article suggests an ideal‐typical model of New Politics parties that integrates all important aspects of a political party: organisation, ideology, membership and electorate. It is then demonstrated that for Germany, Sweden, and Austria such a model is necessary in order to distinguish between conservative or centrist ‘Green’ formations and parties that are genuine products of the ‘new politics’.     

Dimensions of political conflict and party positions in multi-level democracies: evidence from the Local Manifesto Project

Partisan conflicts have been frequently analysed in comparative political science research. Yet little is known about the dimensions of political conflict at the local level in multi-level democracies. This article contributes to the literature on the estimation and analysis of party positions by first presenting a new dataset of more than 800 local party manifestos in Germany that allows for a systematic analysis of the dimensions of political conflict at the German local level. Secondly, it is demonstrated that (semi-)automatic content analysis of these texts offers a promising approach for gaining new insights into local party positions. Thirdly, the empirical analysis of German local party manifestos shows that partisan conflicts are not only structured along the left–right dimension but also along a dimension which distinguishes between parties addressing ‘local’ and ‘national’ issues to a varying degree in their manifestos, due to the different behaviour of established and populist parties.     

The second edition of the EPAC expert survey on ethnonationalism in party competition – testing for validity and reliability

This research note presents EPAC 2017, a dataset resulting from the second round of an expert survey on ethnonationalism in party competition. EPAC provides cross-sectional data on the positions of (ethno-) national and mainstream parties on an ethnonational (also often referred to as ‘territorial’ or ‘centre-periphery’) dimension, as well as other important dimensions of political competition. The 2017 edition covers 222 political parties in 22 multinational European countries. The research note presents the main survey items and performs a series of validity and reliability tests on the data. Results show that EPAC 2017 provides valid and reliable measures of party positions on an ethnonational dimension. A short analysis of party system changes in Spain and Bosnia and Herzegovina illustrates the opportunities of combining the 2011 and 2017 editions. The combined dataset allows studying the mobilization of the centre-periphery cleavage in party competition across Eastern and Western Europe and over time.     

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 search for the centre: Pivot parties in West European party systems

The central question is whether or not in multiparty systems the so‐called parties of the ‘centre’ can be defined and observed in isolation. We start from the assumption that party‐life in the centre‐space of a political system has distinctive features. Centre parties must therefore be conceptualised and analysed as phenomena sui generis and do not belong to either the left‐wing or the right‐wing of a party system. The second assumption is that every party in a parliamentary democracy is a vote seeking and policy guided actor. This means that a centre party depends on its capacity to compete with both ‘wings’ of a party system whilst occupying the centre‐space. It is then capable of becoming the ‘pivot’ of the system: its ‘centrality’ and ‘dominance’ represent ideological distinctiveness and electoral/legislative weight. The cross‐national analysis demonstrates that only a few parties are genuine pivot parties. The paper concludes with a discussion about the issue whether or not the existence of a pivot party is a blessing in disguise for the working of a democracy.     

Party subsidies and the freezing of party competition: Do cartel mechanisms work?

The number of countries offering public subsidies to political parties has vastly increased in recent decades, but there have been few attempts to assess how these subsidies affect political competition. Expectations about their likely impact vary widely. Some have described subsidies as key devices used by so-called ‘cartel parties’ to buttress their status and exclude new challengers. Others see subsidies as incentives that encourage new party formation and sustain fledgling parties that otherwise might disappear. The research reported here investigates the circumstances under which subsidies seem more likely to play one or the other of these roles by considering the development of party systems and party subsidies in European democracies. It finds little evidence that subsidies freeze out new parties, but there are signs that certain schemes may encourage party fragmentation.     

Do voters learn? Evidence that voters respond accurately to changes in political parties’ policy positions

A premise of the mass–elite linkage at the heart of representative democracy is that voters notice changes in political parties’ policy positions and update their party perceptions accordingly. However, recent studies question the ability of voters accurately to perceive changes in parties’ positions. The study advances this literature with a two-wave panel survey design that measured voters’ perception of party positions before and after a major policy shift by parties in the government coalition in Denmark 2011–2013. Two key findings extend previous work. First, voters do indeed pay attention to parties when they visibly change policy position. Second, voters update their perceptions of the party positions much more accurately than would have been expected if they merely relied on a ‘coalition heuristic’ as a rule-of-thumb. These findings imply that under some conditions voters are better able to make meaningful political choices than previous work suggests.     

The effects of membership decline on party organisations in Europe

On election day, voters’ commitment is crucial for political parties, but between elections members are an important resource for party organisations. However, membership figures have been dropping across parties and countries in the last decades. How does this trend affect parties’ organisation? Following classics in party politics research as well as contemporary organisational theory literature, this study tests some of the most longstanding hypotheses in political science regarding the effects of membership size change. According to organisational learning theory, membership decline should induce an expansion of the party organisation. However, threat‐rigidity theory and the work of Robert Michels suggest that parties are downsizing their organisation to match the decline in membership size. To test the hypotheses, 47 parties in six European countries (Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom) are followed annually between 1960 and 2010 on key organisational characteristics such as finances, professionalism and complexity. A total of 1,922 party‐year observations are analysed. The results of multilevel modelling show that party membership decline triggers mixed effects. Declining membership size induces the employment of more staff, higher spending and a higher reliance on state subsidies. At the same time, it also triggers lower staff salaries and a reduction in the party's local presence. The findings indicate that today's parties are targeting an organisational structure that is custom‐made for the electoral moment every four years. Faced with lasting membership decline, the party organisation retracts its organisational resources and focuses more on election day. Members matter to parties, but votes matter more.     

Why change party finance transparency? Political competition and evidence from the ‘deviant’ case of Norway

This article focuses on the development of a key type of regulation ensuring public surveillance of political finance: party finance transparency rules. It makes two contributions to the emerging theory on the evolution of political finance regulation. First, using previous research, it conceptualises the underlying causal mechanisms that explain when and why party finance transparency regulation changes. Second, it presents the first detailed study of party finance transparency reforms in Norway, which is a deviant case for the introduction of such reforms. It is found that, in the absence of major scandals, an intense political discourse on corruption and political competition are sufficient factors to launch transparency reforms. Whether reforms are enacted depends on the interaction of several factors. Parties that predominantly rely on state funding and grassroots support push for and adopt more constraining transparency regulation, while parties that are close to business oppose it. Experience of regulation in similar contexts and intense discourse on corruption – stimulated by domestic or international events – are necessary for the reform to succeed. Norwegian cooperation with the Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) further demonstrates that the success of party finance transparency reforms initiated by a foreign actor is a function of the existing tradition of party regulation, the policy position of a governing party and the international reputational costs of non-compliance.     

Neglected and Unloved: Does the Hinge Party Deserve That?

This article focuses on the hinge party both as a concept and a strategy. It seeks to ‘liberate’ the hinge party from the clutches of such close conceptual relatives as the ‘pivot party’, the ‘genuine pivot party’, the ‘pivotal centre party’, the ‘pivotal middle party’ and the ‘pivotal median party’. This is a taxonomical jungle and while some use the terms ‘hinge party’ and ‘pivot party’ interchangeably, this study urges a ‘velvet divorce’. The main theoretical question is in two parts: (1) What are the distinguishing features of the hinge party and how does it differ from the pivot party?; and (2) What set of legislative party system circumstances would seem most likely to favour a hinge party strategy of keeping options open to both left and right? Self‐styled centrist parties would seem most likely to favour a hinge party strategy and the empirical question is: To what extent have the Nordic Centre‐label [former agrarian] parties sought and been able to do so?     

Two Political Worlds? Multi-level Campaign Integration in Canadian Constituencies

The purpose of this article is twofold. First, using survey data from Canadian constituency associations, the article explores the extent to which federal and provincial parties engage in cross-jurisdictional coordination. In doing so, this study builds on and empirically tests findings that have been derived from earlier case studies (i.e. Koop, 2011). Far from inhabiting ‘two political worlds’ the data reveal that parties are much more connected than previously thought. Second, the article seeks to uncover why some parties and associations are more integrated than others. Examining organizational design, the article concludes that vertical party integration is not simply an organizational phenomenon, as organizationally truncated parties still engage in modest levels of informal integration. In addition, constituency level factors are also considered. The results of a multinomial logistic regression demonstrate that parties are significantly more integrated in districts where they are electorally viable compared to those where they are weak.     

The green party in German politics

Among the parties emerging from the ‘new social movements’ in Western Europe, the German Green Party represents the most successful of the ‘new type’ parties so far. This article surveys the salient features of the party, its programme, strategy and organisational structure, showing the problems the party faces in all three respects. Attention is also paid to the nature of electoral support given to the Greens as well as to the impact the party is having on the established parties and the political system.     

Strategy,market orientation and performance: the political context

This paper investigates the fit between the strategic posture of a political party and its political market orientation, and analyses the impact of this fit on party performance. For this purpose, a configuration theory logic is applied to the context of the political market; in particular, we develop strategic profiles (i.e. strategic postures and political market orientation) of four Belgian political parties represented in the Flemish Parliament. By comparing the strategic profiles derived from a questionnaire administered to 3148 party members with those of ‘theoretically ideal’ profiles, we uncover the ‘strategic misfit’ (or ‘misalignment’) for each party and then relate this misfit to party performance. Results indicate that there is a strong, negative relationship between the misalignment of actual and perceived strategic profiles on the one hand and performance on the other. However, the ‘ideal profiles’ differ with the strategic posture of a party. Thus, our findings show that it is not so much the strategic posture itself that will determine superior performance, but it is the strategic posture that the party aligns with implementing a particular political market orientation that is the most important factor. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.