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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.

The third book in the Healthcare Payment Systems series, Prospective Payment Systems examines the various types of prospective payment systems (PPS) used by healthcare providers and third-party payers. Emphasizing the basic elements of PPS, it considers the many variations of payment for hospital inpatient and outpatient services, skilled nursing facilities, home health agencies, long-term hospital care, and rehabilitation facilities along with other providers. The book describes the anatomy of PPS, including cost reports, adjudication features and processes, relative weights, and payment processes. It outlines the features and documentation requirements for Medicare Severity Diagnosis Related Groups (MS-DRGs), the Medicare Ambulatory Payment Classifications (APCs), Medicare HHPPS, Medicare Skilled Nursing Resource Utilization Groups (RUGs), and private third-party payers. Provides a framework for understanding and analyzing the characteristics of any PPS Discusses Medicare prospective payment systems and approaches Includes specific references to helpful resources, both online and in print Facilitates a clear understanding of the complexities related to PPS--covering specific topics at a high level and revisiting similar topics to reinforce understanding Complete with a detailed listing of the acronyms most-commonly used in healthcare coding, billing, and reimbursement, the book includes a series of case studies that illustrate key concepts. It concludes with a discussion of the challenges with PPS--including compliance and overpayment issues--to provide you with the real-world understanding needed to make sense of any PPS.

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.

Party identification, the psychological bond between citizens and a political party, is one of the central variables in understanding political behavior. This article argues that such party ties are also a measure of party system institutionalization from the standpoint of the public. We apply Converse's model of partisan learning to 36 nations surveyed as part of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems. We find that electoral experience and parental socialization are strong sources of partisanship, but the third-wave democracies also display evidence of latent socialization carried over from the old regime. The results suggest that party identities can develop in new democracies if the party system creates the conditions to develop these bonds.

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.

At a time when the literature on political parties is brimming with health and vitality, the parties themselves seem to be experiencing potentially severe legitimacy problems and to be suffering from a quite massive withdrawal of popular support and affection. This article addresses one key aspect of the problems facing contemporary parties in Europe, which is the challenge to party government. I begin by reviewing the changing pattern of party competition, in which I discuss the decline of partisanship in policy-making and the convergence of parties into a mainstream consensus. I then look again at the familiar 'parties-do-matter' thesis and at the evidence for declining partisanship within the electorate. In the third section of the paper I explore the various attempts to specify the conditions for party government, before going on in the final section to argue that these conditions have been undermined in such a way that it is now almost impossible to imagine party government in contemporary Europe either functioning effectively or sustaining complete legitimacy. Adapted from the source document.

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)