Nothing personal: explaining the rise and decline of political machines in Ukraine

This article is the first to explore and compare the dynamics of party-building between the three main political forces that competed for power during the last decade in Ukraine – Viktor Yushchenko's Nasha Ukrayina (Our Ukraine), Yulia Tymoshenko's Batkivshchyna (Fatherland), and Viktor Yanukovych's Partiya Rehioniv (Party of Regions). We show that their political trajectories can be explained by differences in their organizational structure and distribution of resources within the party's leadership. When a party depends on resources linked primarily to one individual, it will develop a personalized decision-making structure advantaging its leader, and the party's fortunes will be tied to the popularity (or lack of same) of the leader. By contrast, when a party relies equally on resources from several groups, a more consociational style of decision-making is likely to emerge. Using Ukraine as a case study, the article shows that personality-led parties will be more vulnerable to defections and less capable of absorbing potential competitors. On the other hand, coalition-led parties are better capable of surviving defeats, maintaining internal cohesion, and merging with like-minded parties.     

Public Policy in the Party City: The Spectacle of Culture,Gender, and Locality

The article explores the bidding process for the European Capital of Culture (ECOC) award, an aspect of local regeneration policy reliant upon a specific conception of culture. The process is examined in terms of changes in urban layout, manifestations of cultural and community identity, media representations, and the spectacle of culture, gender, and locality. The process is viewed as an urban managerialist project, driven by private and public sector elites in pursuit of economic rather than cultural goals. A narrow and particular view of culture was employed in the bidding process to achieve essentially managerial goals, and cut adrift from significant issues of gender, identity, and class. “Culture,” as conceived within the ECOC process, is viewed as a policy product of local government, regeneration partnerships, government agencies, and business interests, in contrast to culture as a way of life or lived urban experience. As an elite process, the voices of local culture were largely excluded.     

面向未来发展的中国共产党与创建青春之党——解读党的十八大报告对青年人的关注与召唤

青年是祖国的未来、民族的希望,是创建青春之党的中流砥柱,党和国家的前途命运系于青年。因此,全党都要关注关心关爱青年,特别是要关注青年成长、关心青年就业、关爱青年身心。广大青年更要红心向党建功立业,自觉地爱党爱祖国爱人民、坚定理想信念、增长知识本领、锤炼品德意志,努力成长为对党和人民有用的栋梁之才。     

新形势下基层党组织密切党群关系的路径探析

新形势下,基层党组织要发挥自己在教育群众、联系群众和服务群众的桥梁和纽带作用,需要做到：一是以提升自己“服务”能力为立足点,提高基层党组织资源整合能力;二是建立健全密切党群关系的机制,保证党的群众工作的常态化;三是创新群众工作的方式方法,提高党的群众工作的适应力;四是推进基层民主建设,建立健全权力运行的群众监督机制。     

环境运动和环境组织在生态文明建设中的作用

环境运动和环境组织的兴起与世界范围内日益凸显的环境和生态问题以及政府和市场在生态文明建设中存在的失灵现象紧密相连。环境运动和环境组织在我国生态文明建设中发挥着积极的作用,具有扩大群众参与、反映群众诉求、增强社会自治的功能。环境运动和环境组织是我国生态文明建设中的薄弱环节,要推动其健康有序发展,必须将党的领导、人民当家作主和依法治国有机统一起来。     

也论仲裁第三人制度

目前部分仲裁较发达的国家和国际仲裁机构已经试行了仲裁第三人程序.而我国对于仲裁第三人制度的立场当前正处在徘徊中,部分仲裁机构曾进行过实践,但是现在又放弃了改革.司法实践中曾意图构建该制度,但是迄今尚未完成.而我国的《合同法》、《民法通则》、《公司法》、《保险法》等法律中已有仲裁协议扩展的立法和理论基础,因此,可以在此基础上构建我国的仲裁第三人制度.     

The Time Path of Legislative Party Switching and the Dynamics of Political Competition: The Italian Case (1996–2011)

Political competition is more realistically described as a dynamic process rather than as a series of static stages in which parties compete over policy and government formation. This paper focuses on legislative party switching as the main manifestation of this endogenously evolving process, linking individual switching behaviour to policy and office incentives that are assumed to evolve throughout the life of the entire legislature. Using a new data set tracking the timing of MPs’ changes in party affiliations between 1996 and 2011 in Italy, it is found that switching is mainly motivated by policy reasons and that it is more likely during government formation periods and budget negotiations. These results are a consequence of the interplay between MPs’ ambition and the alternation of key phases in the legislative cycle.     

The Politics of the Third Person

Abstract

Against the enthusiasm for dialogue and deliberation in recent democratic theory, the Italian philosopher Roberto Esposito and French philosopher Jacques Rancière construct their political philosophies around the nondialogical figure of the third person. The strikingly different deployments of the figure of the third person offered by Esposito and Rancière present a crystallization of their respective approaches to political philosophy. In this essay, the divergent analyses of the third person offered by these two thinkers are considered in terms of the critical strategies they employ. Contrasting Esposito’s strategy of “ethical dissensus” with Rancière’s strategy of “aesthetic dissensus,” it is argued that Esposito’s attempts to recruit the figure of the third person to dismantle the dispositif of the person are politically (if not philosophically) problematic, while Rancière’s alternative account of the third person is more promising for political theory and practice.     

The Role of Marketing in Politics

ABSTRACT

Political marketing is an exciting new area. Research produced over the last decade has been pioneering in showing the applicability of marketing to politics. However, this article argues that the field now needs to move in a different direction if we are to reach political marketing's full potential. Political marketing needs a comprehensive approach: it can be applied not just to party-electoral behaviour but also legislatures, local government, the media, and public services, with both concepts and techniques from marketing, and an understanding from political science literature as well as management studies. The article, therefore, maps out the route to be taken to reach the end of the rainbow and the pot of gold that the political marketing field potentially offers.     

Political Marketing and Professionalized Campaigning

Abstract

During the last decade a number of scholars have argued that political campaigning has become professionalized, and that political marketing has become the new dominant campaign paradigm. However, the conceptual relationship between political marketing and the professionalization of political campaigning is unclear. Furthermore, the distinction between political marketing, market orientation, and marketing techniques is often blurred. At the same time, most of the literature is dominated by either an American or British perspective. This makes it unclear as to whether these concepts should be viewed as general concepts, or as concepts relevant primarily for countries that share some specific set of political institutions.

In this backdrop, the purpose of this article is to analyze (1) the conceptual relationship between political marketing, market orientation, marketing techniques, and professionalization of political campaigning, and (2) whether contemporary concepts of political marketing and the professionalization of political campaigning are equally applicable to all modern democracies regardless of, for example, political system and other country-specific factors. It also outlines a theory of strategic party goals for multiple arenas.