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"Compared to other countries, Canada's Parliament shows a high level of party unity when it comes to legislative voting. This was not always the case, however. One hundred years ago, this sort of party discipline was not as evident, leading scholars to wonder what explains the growing influence of political parties in the Canadian Parliament. In Lost on Division, Jean-François Godbout analyses more than two million individual votes recorded in the House of Commons and the Senate since Confederation, demonstrating that the increase in partisanship is linked to changes in the content of the legislative agenda, itself a product of more restrictive parliamentary rules instituted after 1900. These rules reduced the independence of private members, polarized voting along partisan lines, and undermined Parliament's ability to represent distinct regional interests, resulting in - among other things - the rise of third parties. Bridging the scholarship on party politics, legislatures, and elections, Lost on Division builds a powerful case for bringing institutions back into our understanding of how party systems change. It represents a significant contribution to legislative studies, the political development literature, and the comparative study of parliaments."--

One of the most important issues of political development and nation building in Africa is national integration. One major political institution which the new nations have employed in the pursuit of this goal is the political party. Ironically and unfortunately, political parties stand for division and cleavages. Thus as Seymour Lipset and Stein Rokkan have noted, in Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignment: an introduction (Glencoe, 1967), '"Party" throughout the history of western government stood for division [my italics], conflict, opposition within a body polity. "Party" is etymologically derived from "part" and since it first appeared in political discourse in the late Middle Ages has always retained this reference to one set of elements in competition or in controversy with another set of elements within some unified whole' (p. 3). These indeed have been the main characteristics of political parties in most parts of Africa. That is, most of them are fragmentary, and thus contribute to national disintegration rather than fostering national integration. In other words, many political parties in most African nations have not functioned efficiently for the good of their respective countries.

Contrary to longstanding arguments that equate parties with durable, information-rich brand names, the relabeling of parties is not rare, and in many countries it is not even very unusual. This paper provides the first effort to document this neglected phenomenon. It finds that across European democracies roughly a third of all parties have relabeled themselves at least once since 1945, and a similar proportion of elections include at least one party running under a new name. It then presents analyses of why parties change names more frequently in some circumstances, finding support for three explanations derived from the existing literature: parties with longer-standing brands are less likely to shed them, but relabeling is more likely for parties that suffer electoral setbacks and for parties in weaker party systems. Finally, it presents evidence that the end of Soviet communism made left parties more likely to rename themselves.

The present work analyzes the interaction between intra-party politics and party system, focusing on inter-factional bargaining dynamics within Italian parties (from 1946 to 2010). We provide a game-theoretic model based on the 'exit, voice and loyalty' framework that helps to understand intra-party decision-making and factional bargaining under the threat of a party fission. Starting from our theory we derive several hypotheses concerning the degree of factionalism, the patterns of portfolio allocation (office payoffs) and party position-taking (policy payoffs) and the determinants of faction breakaways. These hypotheses will be tested thanks to data gathered from party congresses. These data allow to shed light on how factional bargaining shape the party and, through it, the whole political system. We will focus on the impact of internal rules, assessed by looking at party statutes, as well as on the effect of divergent factional preferences, measured through a quantitative text analysis applied to congress motions presented by party factions. We also take into account the impact of exogenous elements like the electoral rules or party system competitiveness. Our results shown that factions are driven by policy, office and electoral motives. For the sake of preserving party unity the whole amount of payoffs available within a party is shared among all factions in proportion to their strength in party body. Consensual dynamics are enhanced when the need for party unity increases, such as in competitive party systems or when new general elections approach. Under very competitive conditions, powerful minorities may even exploit their blackmail power by threatening to break away in order to increase their quota of payoffs. On the contrary in low competitive environments the party leader will trade unity for cohesion, and will overpay the mainstream faction no matter the danger of a split carried out by internal minority. This effect is even more clear among parties whose leader is selected by party members through a direct election. By appealing directly to members and voters, the leader is able to get rid of factional constraints and she will exploit this larger degree of autonomy to reward her followers. However, when party unity is an issue at stake even autonomous leader will revert to fair dynamics of payoffs allocation in order to keep the party together. Consensual dynamics are in fact a deterrent for party fission. On the other side other elements contribute to preserve party unity. Among them, disproportional electoral systems, preference voting and the loyalty effect, while low democratic party statutes and centralized decision-making processes tend to increase the probability of party breakup. To conclude, our research shown the effect of factional politics on policy-making, coalition bargaining and in the electoral market. Intra-party division seems to decrease MPs cohesiveness in roll call votes lowering party effectiveness in policy-making. Heterogeneity jeopardizes also party's chance to get in office, unless autonomous leaders manage to solve the problem of credible commitment. In addition, when factional strife ends up in a party splits, the party will suffer a loss that seems to be proportional to the strength of the splinter group. To sum up, going beyond the assumption of party as unitary actor, we proved that parties are the output of an inter-factional bargaining where factional preferences, leader autonomy and party system conditions interact and impact on the internal decision-making process wielding effects on the whole political system.

According to the standard policy-seeking model of party behaviour, a party should always want to join a coalition if its inclusion would decrease the policy distance between the party and the winning coalition. However, in multiparty systems where no party has a majority, policy influence always comes at a cost to the party's preferred policy. A party has to moderate its own policy principles in order to join winning coalitions and influence public policy. Based on data from 14 Danish parties from 1971 to 2005, this article shows that the policy-seeking behaviour of political parties is affected by the organizational constraints a party poses on its representatives in parliament. Parties strongly constrained by the party organization tend to ask more questions and raise more interpellations in parliament than parties with weaker organizational constraints. These latter parties, on the other hand, tend to participate more frequently in winning legislative coalitions.

Bedeutung der Parteiidentifikation.

Themen: Politikinteresse; Parteineigung; Parteiidentifikation;
Parteipräferenz; Gründe für die Parteineigung (Skala); Parteiinteresse
des sozialen Umfelds; Parteipräferenz der meisten Bekannten; Häufigkeit
politischer Gespräche; persönliche Einstellungen zum Leben und
Wertorientierung (Skala: Orientierung an Vorbildern, Verpflichtung
gegenüber der Allgemeinheit; Sinn des Lebens; Selbstbewusstsein und
Neigung zur Unterordnung); Identifikation mit der präferierten Partei;
Parteien, die als politischer Gegner betrachtet werden;
Gemeinschaftsgefühl mit den Anhängern der präferierten Partei;
Selbsteinschätzung als typischer Anhänger der präferierten Partei;
Empfindung bei Kritik sowie bei Lob für die präferierte Partei;
Empfindung bei einem negativen Öffentlichkeitsbild der präferierten
Partei; Freude bei Erfolgen der Partei.

Demographie: Bundesland; Geschlecht; Alter; Beruf; berufliche
Position; Schulabschluss; Haushaltsnettoeinkommen.

This article analyzes the impact of party strategies on the issue structure, and consequently the dimensional structure, of party systems across Europe. Conceptualizing political competition in two dimensions (economic left-right and social traditionalism versus liberalism), the authors demonstrate that political parties in both Eastern and Western Europe contest the issue composition of political space. The authors argue that large, mainstream parties are invested in the dimensional status quo, preferring to compete on the primary dimension by emphasizing economic issues. Systematically disadvantaged niche parties, conversely, prefer to compete along a secondary dimension by stressing social issues. Adopting such a strategy enables niche parties to divert voter attention and challenge the structure of conflict between the major partisan competitors. The authors test these propositions using the 2006 iteration of the Chapel Hill Expert Surveys on Party Positions. Findings indicate that while the structure of political conflict in Eastern versus Western Europe could not be more different, the logic with which parties compete in their respective systems is the same. The authors conclude that political competition is primarily a struggle over dimensionality; it does not merely occur along issue dimensions but also over their content.

This article analyzes the impact of party strategies on the issue structure, and consequently the dimensional structure, of party systems across Europe. Conceptualizing political competition in two dimensions (economic left-right and social traditionalism versus liberalism), the authors demonstrate that political parties in both Eastern and Western Europe contest the issue composition of political space. The authors argue that large, mainstream parties are invested in the dimensional status quo, preferring to compete on the primary dimension by emphasizing economic issues. Systematically disadvantaged niche parties, conversely, prefer to compete along a secondary dimension by stressing social issues. Adopting such a strategy enables niche parties to divert voter attention and challenge the structure of conflict between the major partisan competitors. The authors test these propositions using the 2006 iteration of the Chapel Hill Expert Surveys on Party Positions. Findings indicate that while the structure of political conflict in Eastern versus Western Europe could not be more different, the logic with which parties compete in their respective systems is the same. The authors conclude that political competition is primarily a struggle over dimensionality; it does not merely occur along issue dimensions but also over their content.

An analysis of state-labour relations in Malawi over a period of four decades reveals, like in other countries in Southern Africa, tendencies towards continuities and discontinuities in labour controls. While Malawi's political system has undergone a major transformation to democracy in the 1990s after three decades of dictatorship which was hostile to trade unions through administrative, political and legal apparatuses, the democratic state has been marked by 'diplomatic' hostility through divide-and-rule and hide-and-seek tactics. Using different means the state has succeeded in curtailing freedom of association in varying degrees during the one-party and multiparty periods. Thus, while labour control as an objective of the state has not changed, the means have changed dramatically. The desire to achieve political stability and economic development, against a changed international political order demanding human rights and good governance in the 1990s, explains the current 'diplomatic' hostility in Malawi's industrial relations. The role of the international donor community in exporting democratic structures and values to societies that do not have an in-built culture of democracy similar to western societies is viewed as a further explanation for the creation of significant degrees of discrepancies between labour policy and practice in Malawi. (Afr Dev/GIGA)

In recent years, members of established political parties have received increased powers to select candidates and leaders. Several explanations have been advanced to account for this trend, focusing on the evolution of the political system, the characteristics of party systems or intra-party dynamics. The aim of this article is to examine the introduction of democratising reforms for leadership selection in Portuguese parties. Despite the high degree of centralisation and the low levels of internal participation, all governing parties have expanded members' rights during the last decade. The main findings suggest that party leaders have decided to change methods for leadership selection mainly for instrumental purposes in order to consolidate their internal power or gain electoral benefits. Moreover, this organisational transformation has had reduced effects on the internal party functioning. Regardless of these similarities, the data show that there are important differences between parties with regard to levels of participation and internal competition.