The Funding of Political Parties

Despite attempts over the last decade to bring an end to what has become an ‘arms race’ between political parties, party funding in the UK continues to defy resolution. Drawing on the experience of the committee charged by the last Labour administration to put party funding and electoral spending on a more sustainable footing, this article examines the issues and the main sticking points. It outlines the basis on which the negotiations were undertaken, and the main hurdles they sought to overcome. It highlights the disagreement between the parties on the definition of the central issue, the problems associated with the main funding sources for each of the parties, and the viability of state funding. It discusses why success proved elusive, but also why a solution is necessary, since in the absence of robust rules, parties and therefore the UK political system more broadly, are ‘a hostage to the next scandal’.     

Political Parties, Political Integrity and Public Policy: a 'Transactions Costs' Approach

Increasing concern about political 'sleaze' prompted the establishment, in 1995, of the Standing Committee of Standards in Public Life and the announcement, in 1999, of proposals to reform political party finance in the UK. A 'public choice' analysis predicts 'opportunism' by representatives at the expense of 'rationally ignorant' voters. It commends constitutional constraints to restrict the range of policy options open to representatives. By contrast, a 'transactions costs' approach suggests that electoral competition can offer protection when voters rely on 'party signal' as a low cost information source. If voters reduce transactions costs by relying on party signal, politicians have an incentive to maintain party reputation. Representatives are more willing than might otherwise be anticipated to accept the need for regulation if this serves to protect reputation.     

The Weakness of Our Political Parties

Whatever else the 2008 presidential election may result in, we can be sure that it will only contribute further to the steadily declining role of political parties in American politics, and the myriad negative consequences arising from that decline.

Policy Congruence and Style of Representation: Party Voters and Political Parties

This article focuses on whether styles of representation influence policy congruence. Style of representation is defined at the party level as the proportion of representatives within parties who are partisans, delegates or trustees. Policy congruence refers to how close on the left–right scale the mean position of a party as placed by its candidates is compared to that of party voters. The article concludes that where there are higher proportions of trustees within parties, there is a greater degree of policy congruence, whereas a higher proportion of partisans results in less policy congruence. The proportion of delegates has no significant impact on congruence after taking account of other party and country measures. This indicates that party constraints on representatives are applied at the cost of congruence with voters, and that when representatives enjoy more flexibility to follow their own opinions, the party displays greater congruence with its own voters.     

The Federal Structure of Australian Political Parties

Australian parties reflect the combination of British responsiblegovernment and elements of American federalism embodied in theconstitution. Despite considerable symmetry in party competitionfor all seven parliaments, party organizations must functionwithin electoral systems complicated by state differences andbicameralism. The extra-parliamentary federal organizations,which began as weak confederations, have gradually gained ascendancyover state parties, particularly within the Labor parties. Yetthis shift of power to national party organizations is lessmarked than the increase in Commonwealth government activities.Such developments have not made for complete Commonwealth dominationbut the intermeshing of state and federal responsibilities hasincreased the need for bargaining between the two planes ofgovernment and decreased the areas in which independent decisionsby either are possible. Frequent elections, in which federaland state issues can rarely be separated, strengthen these trendsand make bargaining between federal and state leaders withineach party as important as bargaining between governments.     

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.     

European Parliament Elections and Political Representation: Policy Congruence between Voters and Parties

It is often said that European Parliament elections fail as an instrument to express the will of the European people. However, while the elections are not contested at the European level and are often dominated by national issues, this does not necessarily imply that they fail to connect policy views of voters and representatives. This article examines policy congruence between voters and candidates, utilising the candidate and voter surveys of the European Election Study 2009. First, it demonstrates that policy preferences of candidates and voters are constrained by three separate policy dimensions. Second, it shows that the quality of representation is high in terms of left/right, the main dimension of conflict in European politics, but lower on the cultural and European integration dimensions. Finally, it establishes that in some cases the aggregation of national parties in political groups in the European Parliament poses problems for effective political representation.     

Alternative Ulster? Political Parties and the Non-constitutional Policy Space in Northern Ireland

This article uses data from a survey of the candidates in the 2003 Northern Ireland Assembly election to measure the policy positions of the Northern Irish political parties on scales that are the usual measurements of party policy in Western Europe, such as on economic and social issues, the European Union, morality issues, environmental issues and minority groups. These data were then used to test whether the Northern Ireland party system was conducive to integration or consociationalism, which is the current debate on conflict resolution in Northern Ireland. It argues that this debate has been under-theorised and that empirical data can be used to test the likelihood of either scenario. It concludes that, in most aspects, the Northern Ireland party system tends towards the consociational scenario but there are, nevertheless, aspects which suggest that an integrationist scenario could be produced in the long term.     

Long-Term Performance of Political Parties

Abstract

Whilst politicians can “buy” votes in the short-term, most political parties are more interested in maintaining power over a period of years in order to implement their policies. This paper explores whether political parties can be considered to possess long-term competitive resources that sustain their competitive advantages. It employs the well-established strategic management concept of the Resource-Based View of strategy development for this purpose. Because such a concept has not previously been applied to political parties, the paper begins by considering the nature of the competition that exists between political parties and the role of resources in developing superior political performance. A series of theoretical propositions about why some parties maintain political power and influence for lengthy periods is then developed. We argue that the competitive resources of a political party such as its policies, leadership, organisational and communications skills require long-term investment and development, rejecting the notion that long-term electoral success is based primarily on the promises and resources deployed in the final election campaign.     

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.     

The Impact of Parties and Elections on Municipal Debt Policy in Mexico

Opportunistic electoral fiscal policy cycle theory suggests that all subnational officials will raise fiscal spending during elections. Ideological partisan fiscal policy cycle theory suggests that only left‐leaning governments will raise election year fiscal spending, with right‐leaning parties choosing the reverse. This article assesses which of these competing logics applies to debt policy choices. Cross‐sectional time‐series analysis of yearly loan acquisition across Mexican municipalities—on statistically matched municipal subsamples to balance creditworthiness across left‐ and right‐leaning governments—shows that all parties engage in electoral policy cycles but not in the way originally thought. It also shows that different parties favored different types of loans, although not always according to partisan predictions. Both electoral and partisan logics thus shape debt policy decisions—in contrast to fiscal policy where these logics are mutually exclusive—because debt policy involves decisions on multiple dimensions, about the total and type of loans.     

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.     

The Life and Death of New Political Parties in the Low Countries

Numerous new parties have emerged since voters became less loyal to established political parties. A number of these survived and have been analysed intensely, especially green and radical right parties; many other new parties disappeared and have been neglected by party research. This article analyses the fate of all 30 political parties that entered parliament in the Netherlands or Belgium between 1950 and 2003. Qualitative comparative analysis is used to identify characteristics of both surviving and disappeared new parties. Conditions related to party origin (roots in civil society, organisational newness, initial programmatic profile) are scrutinised, as are conditions pertaining to the party’s developmental process (party organisational strength and the occurrence of defections or party splits). Surviving parties are characterised by strong, rooted organisations that have not suffered defections. Most disappeared parties lacked a strong organisation and roots and have experienced shocks that they could not absorb. Organisational newness makes new parties vulnerable.     

Poverty and Divine Rewards: The Electoral Advantage of Islamist Political Parties

Political life in many Muslim‐majority countries has been marked by the electoral dominance of Islamist parties. Recent attempts to explain why have highlighted their material and organizational factors, such as the provision of social services. In this article, we revive an older literature that emphasizes the appeal of these parties’ religious nature to voters experiencing economic hardship. Individuals suffering economic strain may vote for Islamists because they believe this to be an intrinsically virtuous act that will be met with divine rewards in the afterlife. We explore this hypothesis through a series of laboratory experiments in Tunisia. Individuals assigned to treatment conditions instilling feelings of economic strain exhibit greater support for Islamist parties, and this support is causally mediated by an expectation of divine compensation in the hereafter. The evidence suggests that the religious nature of Islamist parties may thus be an important factor in their electoral success.