Immigration, Europe and the 'new' cultural dimension

Kriesi et al. announced the birth of a new cleavage in contemporary Western Europe, one dividing the winners and losers of globalisation. Their studies in 2006 and 2008 contain analyses of party positions in six countries, based on the contents of editorial sections of newspapers. This article challenges the main conclusion of Kriesi et al. by demonstrating − on the basis of two expert surveys − that party positions are mainly structured by one dimension. The structure detected by Kriesi et al. in their analysis of parties is not found, except concerning voter positions. A consequence of this article's findings is that large groups of citizens are not represented by any parties, in particular those who are left-wing on socio-economic issues and right-wing on cultural issues. The article in its conclusion discusses possible causes for the differences between these findings and those of Kriesi et al., and the implications of these findings for democratic representation.     

An Eccentric Dramatist Who Focuses on Realities

L＇Aide-Memoire, by re- nowned French playwright Jean Claude Carriere, had its Chinese premiere in October 2008, and was warmly received by local audiences. The Beijing People＇s Art Theater, where the drama was staged, was filled to over 90 percent of its capacity. ＂That＇s amazing. We didn＇t expect much attention for such a serious play and small production,＂ remarks producer Wang Jingping.     

Keeping the rascals in: Anti‐political‐establishment parties and their cost of governing in established democracies

Coalition governments in established democracies incur, on average, an electoral ‘cost of governing’. This cost varies across coalition partners, and is higher for anti‐political‐establishment parties. This is because, if such a party participates in a coalition, it loses the purity of its message by being seen to cooperate with the political establishment. In order to demonstrate that anti‐political‐establishment parties suffer an additional cost of governing, this article builds on the work by Van der Brug et al. and refines the standard cost of governing theory by ‘bringing the party back in’. The results of the analyses, based on 594 observations concerning 51 parties in seven Western European countries, cast doubt on the conventional concept of a cost of governing that pertains to all parties equally. The findings call for a major revision of the standard cost of governing literature, while adding a significant contribution to the debate on strategies against parties that may constitute a danger to democracy.     

The limits to local participation and deliberation in the French 'politique de la ville'

Abstract.  Over the past twenty years in France, the politique de la ville (a public policy initiative targeting impoverished urban areas) has constituted one of the main sources of renewal of the discourse concerning social participation. This article looks at whether it has led to a genuine democratisation of policy making. The following four questions are discussed: Have participatory procedures improved the efficiency of public policy? Have they fostered the strengthening of the social bond? Has setting up new procedures improved deliberation between political and nonpolitical actors? And has this new policy generated a renewal of local elites and modified the decision-making process? The authors conclude that these different attempts have had only a very limited impact.     

Party attachments and political fragmentation in Europe

Abstract. Values and ideologies seem to be changing rapidly in many countries of Western Europe. These developments imply a shift among the adherents of political parties. On the one hand, we expect to see a process of deideologization weakening the traditional ties between parties and their adherents. On the other hand, increasing pluralization is suggested by the ongoing process of individualization. In this study we analyze the orientations of the adherents of the main political parties in 12 Western European countries in the last two decades. We expect to find clear traces of ongoing deideologization as well as pluralization, but this expectation proves to be inaccurate. Neither deideologization nor pluralization can be accepted as a common feature of party adherents in advanced industrial societies. On the contrary. Each of these processes seems to follow a different path of development in distinct countries and in distinct party families. A general 'decline-of-the-party' or an 'end-of-ideology' is not to be found among the adherents of the main parties in Western Europe in the last decades. The processes appear to be more complicated, with divergent developments in different countries.     

European Community politics and electoral representation: Evidence from the 1989 European Elections Study

Abstract: In spite of the fact that the European elections were, in most countries, not fought over the issue of Community building and European integration, this article shows that only a few parties take positions towards the Community which are clearly out of line with the average position of their voters. The parties involved are the orthodox-Protestant combination in the Netherlands, the Workers Party in Ireland, the Italian MSI, and the greens in Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Luxembourg. The discrepancies between these parties'positions and the attitudes of their electorates - in combination with their generally successful electoral performance - underscores what is known from other analyses: Parties do not acquire votes on the basis of European issue concerns, but on the basis of national political concerns. The result of the European elections may still, however, be considered as an ex post facto , endorsement and legitimation of parties'policies towards European integration.     

European parties' performance in electoral competition

Abstract: This article focuses on competition for votes between parties, as it existed in Western Europe in the period of the direct election to the European Parliament in 1989. Following earlier research by Van der Eijk and Niemöller, an instrument is introduced to measure the probability of party choice of EC citizens which establishes the likelihood of respondents to vote for any of the nationally relevant options/parties. A number of substantive conclusions about political parties'competitive performance result from this research. First, a single mechanism seems to structure electoral competition in all EC member-countries. Second, the competitive performance of political parties is not affected by their governmental status, their ideological position, and the degree of politicisation of the electoral environment. And third, parties'competitive performance is strongly affected by the degree of uniqueness of their electoral potential, their mobilising capacities, their ideological extremity and their sheer size.     

Fair models of political fairness

Abstract. In this note we study different methods of aggregation of preferences met on the occasion of elections. Through a simple geometrical representation, we analyse several of their properties, in particular those linked to Arrow's theorem for ordinal rankings; we pursue this discussion in the case of cardinal rankings, the qualities of which convince us of the usefulness of experiencing their introduction in real ballots.     

'ONE CHIEF, ONE VOTE': THE REVIVAL OF TRADITIONAL AUTHORITIES IN POST-APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA

During the apartheid era, chiefs were maligned as puppets ofbantustan rule. In ANC-related circles, it was widely assumedthat chieftaincy would not survive in the post apartheid era.But the institution of traditional leadership has proved highlyflexible. Rather than being phased out as relics of pre-modemtimes, chiefs are re-asserting themselves in the new South Africa.Chiefs have survived throughout this century with a strategyof shifting alliances. Towards the end of the 1980s, chiefswere re-orienting themselves towards the ANC, rightly perceivedas the new ruling party-in-waiting. Combining the resourcesof tradition with a discourse of liberation politics and development,they were able to explain constitutional and other legal guaranteesfor the position of traditional leaders and their representationsin the local, provincial and national administration. For itspart, the ANC had an interest in wooing chiefs to its side inorder to prevent the emergence of a conservative alliance wheretraditional leaders could join forces with the bantustan elites.The article analyses these developments, discusses the mainthemes of debate and concludes with a briefcase study of chieftaincyissues in the Northern Transvaal.