Influence of Voter Demographics and Newspaper in Shaping Political Party Choice in India: An Empirical Investigation

Choice of political party is an important decision a citizen faces in a democracy. In recent times, as democracies in many countries have matured, a number of studies are focusing on party and candidate choice and their various determinants. India, being the largest democracy, provides a fertile ground for such research. Accordingly, in this paper we concentrate on demographic characteristics, newspaper-reading habits of voters, and their political choice. To study this we have considered a very unique data set collected just before the watershed elections in the state of West Bengal in India, where the ruling Communist coalition was defeated after thirty-four years of power in the state. The survey was conducted using a structured questionnaire to collect information on demographic characteristics of voters and their political choice. The respondents were asked to indicate their party choice from among the three major political parties. As the literature shows that gender, age, education, income levels, marital status, occupational status, and choice of newspaper have significant impact on political choice, we have considered these as predictor variables for our study. From our study it is seen that among the demographic determinants, gender, marital status, and income of the respondents do not influence the choice of political party in our sample. However, occupation and newspaper choice of voters have significant impact on political party choice in our sample. In addition, we have observed that certain categories of age of voters significantly influence decision making of voters along with occupation and newspaper choice categories.     

The İsmailağa community and its relationship with the AK party

This article aims to demonstrate the importance of the relationship between the Naqshbandi Ismaila?a community and the AK Party (Adalet ve Kalk?nma Partisi, “Justice and Development Party”) government. As one of the most widespread Sufi brotherhoods in the world, the strength of the Naqshbandiyya lies in its characteristic combination of strict adherence to religious law and active involvement in social and political affairs. The ?smaila?a community, one of five main Naqshbandi communities in Turkey, is highly conservative and traditional, historically dominated by elders who have remained aloof from any power struggles within the Turkish government. While the AK Party has developed ties with religious orders in recent years, including the Ismaila?a, some voices within the Ismaila?a community have become critical of this relationship, leading to a rift within the community. In addition, since 2013, and especially after the attempted coup of July 2016, the AK Party has lost the support of its old ally, the Fethullah Gülen movement. This article examines the relationship between the AK Party and religious movements in Turkey as reflected via its relationship with Ismaila?a, and assesses whether the Fethullah Gülen movement can be replaced as a party ally by the Ismaila?a community.     

‘Animals first!’ The rise of animal advocacy parties in the EU: a new party family

‘Euro Animal 7’ is the name given informally to 7 animal protection parties which represent voters in Cyprus, Germany, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and United Kingdom. These parties contested in the 2014 European Parliament (EP) election and gained representation in Germany and the Netherlands. Animal advocacy parties are also represented in the national parliaments of Portugal and the Netherlands.

Animal protection is an emergent issue in international politics and this research offers an account of the political positioning of these animal advocacy parties, analyzing their manifestos and the election results. While acknowledging that some parties have distinct ideological traits and some are still reclusive in the form of a single-issue party, this article argues that animal advocacy parties constitute a new party family in European politics.     

Where Do We Go from Here?

The left needs a fundamental rethinking of its politics for a new era. The first task is to understand the contemporary conjuncture: the dynamic combination of events and circumstances which structure a political settlement. Two such conjunctures have occurred in recent history. The first produced the postwar welfare settlement of 1945, which broke down in the economic crisis of the 1970s. The second took shape in the 1980s around the revival of liberal market economics and what became known as Thatcherism. It failed following the 2008 financial crash, and has begun to break apart with the vote to leave the EU. New political and cultural faultlines are confounding the orthodoxies of the governing class and cutting across the partisan loyalties of the main political parties. They herald the renewal of politics. But Labour is on the edge of an abyss. This article considers what the left can learn from Labour's previous periods of defeat and revisionism, and suggests where—if it survives—it should go next.     

Progressivism in British Politics: Some Revisionist Themes

This article argues that a return to the history of progressive political thought can help us to think afresh about what a renewed centre‐left politics might look like today. The article identifies some significant aspects of this history that attracted little attention in earlier debates over the British progressive tradition—in particular, debates about social ownership, nationalism and distributism. This revisionist history of British progressivism points the way towards some common ideological ground that could provide a starting point for a new dialogue between different ‘progressive’ political parties and interests.     

E. P. Thompson: Last of the English Radicals?

Historian, activist and campaigner Edward Thompson is seen as an exemplar of an English radicalism which some see as a lineage with which the contemporary Labour party might fruitfully reconnect. This article examines how Thompson himself understood and characterised the ‘English radical idiom’ and traces his use and then abandonment of this idea in the middle years of his career. It offers some wider reflections about what the insights and lessons associated with his historical writings and reflections on the distinctive nature of English cultural and social thought.     

Stepping in the same river twice: Stability amidst change in Eastern European party competition

Party competition in Eastern Europe faces a seeming paradox. On the one hand, research finds increased political volatility in these countries, while, on the other, some authors demonstrate inherent ideological stability in the region. This research note presents a new methodological approach to adjudicating between these two findings, and suggests that while political organisations come and go, the ideological structure of party competition in Eastern Europe is strikingly steady. By developing a number of different measures of the dimensional structure of party competition, the consistency of the measures across countries, as well as their relative stability within countries over time, is demonstrated. The findings speak to current developments in Eastern Europe, and have implications beyond the region. The conclusion that even volatile party systems can be underpinned by stable ideological oppositions points to two different types of party system structure: one related to parties as organisations, and the other related to parties as expressions of political divides.     

Foreign threat and political party change: Russia and changes in party manifestos

How do political parties react to foreign security threats? There has been very little attention paid in the literature generally to how parties react to international events, particularly how parties react to foreign policy threats. Using data from the Comparative Manifesto Project, we examine how political parties in countries in Europe have reacted to Russian actions in terms of their emphasis on security issues. Based upon our analysis of the manifestoes from 331 parties in 36 countries we find that, generally, interstate threats have no significant effect on the military position adopted by political parties, although these effects vary by party type and by the type of threat. Russian based threats appear to be associated with the Far Left becoming more dovish (which is consistent with what would be expected by the literature) and the Far Right becoming significantly less hawkish.     

Incumbency,internal processes and renomination in Indian parties

This paper analyses a critical aspect of the internal functioning of five major Indian political parties, namely the nomination of candidates for parliamentary elections, focusing on the pattern of renomination of former candidates and incumbents. The data are analysed against the literature on the structure and functioning of Indian parties, and interview material on the process of nomination in the 2009 and 2004 elections. From the perspective of a six-fold typology of centralisation of nomination processes drawn from the comparative literature, it is found that all the parties analysed are in either the second-most centralised, or even most centralised categories, and that for the three major national parties, Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party and Communist Party of India (Marxist), past performance plays a role in nominations, the majority of incumbents being renominated in the post-1989 period.     

中国共产党执政的社会基础拓展要素分析

拥有广泛而强大的社会基础是中国共产党完成执政使命的依靠力量,是党实现长期执政的重要前提。变动的社会背景下中国共产党要促进执政目标的达成,就必须努力赢得最广大民众的情感支撑和执政认同,持续不断地拓展和扩大社会基础。而其中的影响或制约要素包涵了多个层级和维度,它们共同交织在一起,纳入到现代政党政治运作的指标体系当中。深入分析和研究这些要素,对于中国共产党有效实现社会整合、重塑政治权威意义巨大。