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.     

Social Protest and Policy Attitudes: The Case of the 2006 Immigrant Rallies

Do protests sway public opinion? If so, why and how? To address these questions, we examine the impact of the 2006 immigration protests on immigration policy preferences. We use the 2006 Latino National Survey coupled with protest data to examine whether temporal and spatial exposure to the protests are associated with policy preferences. Our findings lend evidence that protest activity influences Latinos’ immigration policy preferences. However, the findings suggest the effect of protest on immigration policy preferences is not uniform across the population, but rather contingent on generational status and the intensity of protest activity at the local level.     

Voter polarisation and party responsiveness: Why parties emphasise divided issues,but remain silent on unified issues

How does voter polarisation affect party responsiveness? Previous research has shown that political parties emphasise political issues that are important to their voters. However, it is posited in this article that political parties are not equally responsive to citizen demands across all issue areas. The hypothesis is that party responsiveness varies considerably with the preference configuration of the electorate. More specifically, it is argued that party responsiveness increases with the polarisation of issues among voters. To test these theoretical expectations, party responsiveness is analysed across nine West European countries from 1982 until 2013. Data on voter attention and voter preferences with regard to specific policy issues from a variety of national election studies is combined with Comparative Manifestos Project data on parties' emphasis of these issues in their election manifestos. The findings have major implications for understanding party competition and political representation in Europe.     

The international diffusion of electoral systems: The spread of mechanisms tempering proportional representation across Europe

There is an assumption in much of the electoral engineering literature that domestic episodes of electoral system choice occur in a vacuum, isolated from international influences. Yet this assumption remains largely untested, despite the comparative focus of much of that literature. This article focuses on part of this gap by considering two electoral mechanisms that seek to limit party system fragmentation under proportional representation – low district magnitudes and high electoral thresholds – and shows that the mechanisms have spread across many European countries during the post‐1945 period. Analyses reveal that national legislators are more likely to adopt one of these electoral mechanisms when a large number of peer countries have made similar choices within the last two or three years. This effect is robust to various model specifications and to the inclusion of multiple controls. The article also offers some qualitative evidence from case studies and parliamentary debates.     

Nondestructive Methods for Recovery of Biological Material from Human Teeth for DNA Extraction

The extraction of DNA from human skeletal remains applied to forensic, and evolutionary studies do not exclude risks, which are to be evaluated when working with unique specimens that could be damaged or even destroyed. In the present study were evaluated several nondestructive methods for recovering DNA instead of the most currently used pulverization method. Three different procedures to access inside the dental pieces (occlusal perforation, cervical perforation, and cervical cut) have been compared with the aim of recovering as many cell remains as possible to carry out a DNA extraction. Given the DNA quantitation results, a method was proposed that consists of a cervical cut to facilitate the access to the pulp cavity and a subsequent filing of the root canals down to the apex of the dental root. This methodology allows the recovery of both mitochondrial and nuclear DNA, with the minimum deterioration for the dental pieces.     

Informal Institutions and Judicial Independence in Paraguay, 1954–2011

This article explains how informal institutions have prevented the emergence of autonomous judges in Paraguay between 1954 and 2011. The central argument is that co‐optation, clientelism, and judicial corruption considered as informal institutions, rooted during the dictatorship, have impeded the appearance of an independent judicial branch in the democratic regime. To test this hypothesis, the article relies on historical narratives, surveys, and semistructured interviews. The conclusions suggest that in countries that have experienced the consolidation of informal institutions oriented toward maintaining the ties of subordination of judges to politicians, constitutional reforms and fragmentation of political power are necessary but not sufficient conditions for improving judicial independence.