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The Eurozone crisis has altered the party political landscape across Europe. The most visible effect is the rise of challenger parties. The crisis not only caused economic hardship, but also placed considerable fiscal constraints upon a number of national governments. Many voters have reacted to this by turning their back on the traditional parties and opting instead for new, or reinvigorated, challenger parties that reject the mainstream consensus of austerity and European integration. This article argues that both sanctioning and selection mechanisms can help to explain this flight from the centre to challenger parties. First, voters who were economically adversely affected by the crisis punish mainstream parties both in government and in opposition by voting for challenger parties. Second, the choice of specific challenger party is shaped by preferences on three issues that directly flow from the Euro crisis: EU integration, austerity and immigration. Analysing both aggregate-level and individual-level survey data from all 17 Western EU member states, this article finds strong support for both propositions and shows how the crisis has reshaped the nature of party competition in Europe.

Haftung für Affiliates [Liability for Affiliates]

This study uses extensive field research to compare and contrast the political education that political parties provide for their members and people. The researcher focuses on two political parties: the Democrat Party and the Puea Fah Din Party based on four important reasons: 1) both parties have constantly played significant roles in Thai politics for a long period of time; 2) both parties have apparent organization and internal structure; 3) both parties have the accurate number of party members as well as party branches in the past years; and 4) both parties have organized more or less political education for their party members and the public. The research result reveals that due to the differences in the objectives of party formation, political ideology, political participation and the strategy to recruit members, the two parties experience distinctive procedures to conduct political education for their members and public in general. While the Puea Fah Din Party was founded and has been working with the Asoke Community as a means to represent Asoke in politics rather than winning the elections, the Democrat Party was founded by political elites and aims to win the elections. As a result, the Puea Fah Din Party conduct activities on political education in order to strengthen party's ideology among members. The Democrat Party, on the other hand, organize political activities to education people in general about party's policy with a hope to win the elections.

Although many studies address the representation of women in parliament, few explore gender representation in Africa. Prior research on women's representation conducted in various areas of the world has emphasized the type of electoral system, quotas and the economic affluence of a country, as well as the state's political culture. In this evaluation these commonly used indicators are complemented by two factors that are not that frequently employed – a country's degree of democracy and its level of corruption. Besides quota provisions and the electoral system type of a country, both of these additional variables affect women's representation. Higher containment of corruption fosters higher percentages of women in parliament. In contrast, democratic states have fewer female members in parliament than non-democratic states.