代表性建设是参政党建设的重要内容

代表性建设是参政党建设的重要内容.加强民主党派的代表性建设,要正确认识民主党派的代表性问题,正确处理民主党派的代表性与代表件人士的关系,正确处理政治思想的进步性与成员思想观念的广泛性、根本利益的一致性与成员具体利益的多样性、一般成员与代表性人士、中共党委的肯定与民主党派成员的认同、领导班子中整体的代表性与成员个体的代表性之间的关系,正确把握理论建设、人才培养和机制建设三个主要环节.     

What voters want from their parties: Testing the promise-keeping assumption

How should party governments make representative democracy? Much of the democracy representation literature assumes that voters prefer parties to fulfill the promises of their election campaigns, with higher preference for promise-keeping placed on the party a voter supports. That voters agree with these assumptions, however, remains largely unclear and this is the main hypothesis of this article. Within the context of Australia, this article investigates voter preferences regarding three ideal party representative styles: promise-keeping, focus on public opinion, and seeking the common good. Furthermore, it tests whether voters prefer their party – over other parties – to keep their promises. Based on novel and innovative survey data, this study finds that, generally, voters care least about parties keeping their promises and their preferences are unaffected by their party support. These results, if confirmed in other contexts, not only challenge the primacy of promise-keeping, but also the assumed ubiquitous party effect.     

What consideration sets can teach us about electoral competition: A two-hurdle model

Consideration set models (CSMs) offer a novel way to study electoral behavior. Until now, they have been mostly studied at the micro-level of the voter's decision process. By contrast, we focus on the implications of CSMs for understanding the phenomenon of party competition. We propose a two hurdle model whereby parties compete for both consideration and selection, pursuant the consideration and choice stages of the CSM. We operationalize these hurdles in terms of a party's inclusivity—is it being considered?—and exclusivity—is it considered on its own?—and formally derive lower- and upper-bounds for the electoral fortunes of the party. We also show how consideration set data can be used to sketch the competition landscape in an election and to characterize the system-wide competitiveness of a political system. We illustrate our concepts and ideas using data from the 2010 Dutch and 2014 Swedish parliamentary elections.     

Party convergence and vote switching: Explaining mainstream party decline across Europe

How can one explain the significant vote losses of mainstream parties across Europe in recent years? In this article, it is argued that mainstream party convergence is an important determinant of the recent political and electoral volatility in European party systems. More specifically, it is hypothesised that as mainstream parties converge on the left-right scale, voters will switch from supporting a mainstream party to a non-mainstream party in the next election as they look for an alternative that better represents their ideological views. To test these theoretical expectations, data is combined from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and the Manifestos Project for nearly 15,000 vote choices of individual voters in 30 elections in 16 West and East European countries from 2001 until 2013. The findings have important implications for understanding the recent rise of non-mainstream parties, the changing nature of party systems and the increasing complexity of cabinet formation across Europe.     

Responding to the crisis: Eurosceptic parties of the left and right and their changing position towards the European Union

At the time of the election of the European Parliament (EP) in 2014, the European Union (EU) was heavily affected by a multifaceted crisis that had – and still has – far-reaching implications for the political system of its member countries, but also for the European level of governance. Against the background of the strong Eurosceptic vote in the 2014 EP elections, this study aims to investigate in which way Eurosceptic parties of the left and the right respond to the multiple crises of the EU. Using data from the Euromanifesto Project from 2004/2009 and 2014, changes in the party positions towards the EU are analysed in the shadow of the multiple crises and the reasons thereof are explored. The findings show a general anti-European shift among the two types of Eurosceptic parties. Nevertheless, the changes in the EU polity tone are not determined by issue-based repercussions of the multiple crises, but by the EU-related evaluation – the polity mood – of the national citizenry. For far-right Eurosceptic parties, the shift is moderated by the level of public support for EU integration in their national environment. Among far-left Eurosceptic parties, by contrast, it is moderated by the more specific public attitudes about the monetary union policy of the EU. Consequently, political parties when drafting their manifestos for EP elections are not so much guided by the objective severity of political problems or by the evaluations of these problems by the citizenry. What matters in the end is the link that citizens themselves are able to establish between the severity of political problems, on the one hand, and the responsibility of the EU for these problems on the other. This has important consequences for understanding of the nature and substance of political responsiveness within the EU system of multilevel governance.     

A problem with empirical studies of party policy shifts: Alternative measures of party shifts are uncorrelated

Many recent cross-national studies analyse the causes and electoral consequences of party policy shifts, using party position measures derived from election manifestos, expert surveys or voter surveys. However few studies validate their findings by analysing multiple measures of party policy shifts. In this article, data on European parties’ position shifts on both European integration and left-right ideology is analysed, showing that this is problematic because, while alternative measures of party policy positions correlate strongly in cross-sectional analyses, alternative measures of parties’ policy shifts are essentially uncorrelated in longitudinal analyses. Suggestions are offered on how to address this problem.     

Why do only some people who support parties actually join them? Evidence from Britain

What makes people join a political party is one of the most commonly studied questions in research on party members. Nearly all this research, however, is based on talking to people who have actually joined parties. This article simultaneously analyses surveys of members of political parties in Britain and surveys of non-member supporters of those same parties. This uniquely enables us to model the decision to join parties. The results suggest that most of the elements that constitute the influential ‘General Incentives Model’ are significant. But it also reveals that, while party supporters imagine that selective benefits, social norms and opposing rival parties’ policies are key factors in members’ decisions to join a party, those who actually do so are more likely to say they are motivated by attachments to their party’s values, policies and leaders, as well as by an altruistic desire to support democracy more generally.     

建立民主党派的核心价值观——民主党派树立和践行社会主义核心价值体系的切入点

民主党派建立社会主义核心价值观,是增进思想认同、强化角色定位、弘扬优良传统的必然选择。民主党派社会主义核心价值观的内涵是由我国国家政治体制的特点、民主党派的性质定位以及时代发展的要求共同决定的,主要体现在参政为民、协商为本、合作共赢、发展进步四个方面。民主党派树立和践行社会主义核心价值观,必须处理好自成体系与换位思考、应然与实然、局部与整体、共性与个性四对关系。     

浅谈我国参政党自身建设问题

当前,民主党派要切实履行参政党职能、提高参政能力建设,就必须重视自身能力建设.加强参政党自身建设具有一定的客观必然性,这是由参政党的地位、性质和特点所决定的.参政党加强自身建设的总体目标是,实现思想观念、组织结构、政治功能和活动方式的现代化.要以思想建设为核心,以组织建设为基础,以制度建设为保障,以作风建设为动力,切实加强自身建设,增强自身的凝聚力、战斗力、团结力.     

略论参政党的民主监督——基于权利的分析视角

民主监督是我国参政党的两大职能之一,是以权利制约权力的监督形式.它既是人民民主权利的重要体现,也是多党合作制度赋予民主党派的权利和职责.本文在分析参政党民主监督的定位和民主监督权利体系的基本要素的基础上,从参政党建设的角度探讨这一权利有效行使亟须解决的若干问题.