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Disagreement today -- A mixed disagreement legacy -- Argument after World War II -- United we stand and conspiracy thinking -- The strange case of the mass media -- Democracy as conversation -- Multiculturalism with principle -- Disagreement practice -- Freedom and disagreement

"Europe's 'political space,' its dimensionality and its impact on European policies have received increased academic attention lately. Yet, one very basic element of this political space, the party composition of EU member states' governments, has never been studied in a systematic way in the rich literature on European integration. In this paper we explain why the EU literature would benefit from a closer analysis of Europe's party-political 'center of gravity.' We give a systematic overview of the party composition of member governments from 1957 to 2003. This includes analyses of how the support for integration, the left/ right political conviction, and the ideological homogeneity or heterogeneity of the member states affected strictly intergovernmentalist EU institutions like the Council over the course of time. We draw on expert surveys, the data of the Comparative Manifesto Project, and data about government composition. Our case study about the fate of European social policy from the Treaty of Rome to the present day highlights the argument that analyses of European integration require an understanding of the party-political dimension of this process." (author's abstract)

Europe's 'political space', its dimensionality and its impact on European policies have received increased academic attention lately. Yet, one very basic element of this political space, the party composition of EU member states' governments, has never been studied in a systematic way in the rich literature on European integration. In this paper we explain why the EU literature would benefit from a closer analysis of Europe's party-political 'center of gravity'. We give a systematic overview of the party composition of member governments from 1957 to 2003. This includes analyses of how the support for integration, the left/right political conviction, and the ideological homogeneity or heterogeneity of the member states affected strictly intergovernmentalist EU institutions like the Council over the course of time. We draw on expert surveys, the data of the Comparative Manifesto Project, and data about government composition. Our case study about the fate of European social policy from the Treaty of Rome to the present day highlights the argument that analyses of European integration require an understanding of the party-political dimension of this process. ; In den letzten Jahren ist Europas 'politischer Raum', seine Dimensionalität sowie sein Einfluss auf einzelne Politiken zunehmend in den Mittelpunkt akademischen Interesses gerückt. Trotz einer Vielzahl bestehender Studien wurde jedoch ein zentrales Element dieses politischen Raums bisher nicht systematisch untersucht: die parteipolitische Zusammensetzung der Regierungen der Mitgliedstaaten. In diesem Papier zeigen wir, weshalb die Analyse des parteipolitischen 'Gravitationszentrums' der EU mehr Beachtung in der Literatur finden sollte, und liefern eine erste systematische Darstellung der Regierungszusammensetzung aller Mitgliedstaaten von 1957 bis 2003. Darüber hinaus wird untersucht, wie integrationsfreundlich, links oder rechts sowie ideologisch homogen bzw. heterogen die Mitgliedstaaten - und damit die intergouvernementalen EU-Gremien - im Zeitverlauf waren. Hierbei greifen wir auf Expertensurveys, Daten zur parteipolitischen Regierungszusammensetzung und Daten des Manifesto-Projektes zurück. Eine Fallstudie zur Entwicklung der EU-Sozialpolitik seit den Römer Verträgen ergänzt die quantitative Darstellung. Sie unterstreicht, dass die Analyse der Europäischen Integration ein angemessenes Verständnis der parteipolitischen Dimension des Einigungsprozesses voraussetzt.

This article deals with the political, programmatic, and organizational changes within the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) during the time of the second grand coalition (2005-present). For the CDU, the period of the grand coalition is a time of waiting concerning its organizational and programmatic reform processes. Thus, the election of 2009 will be crucial for the political development of the party—in respect to its political profile, as well as its strategic options within the political market.

Fundamental to modern politics is the fact that politics of security and diplomacy are central to society. Historically, foreign and security politics have been the main priorities of the political center, conducted primarily on that level. Since 1945, these political centers have gained predominance in die U.S. In the absence of well-integrated political elites, a highly centralized political party or parties, and powerful and permanent bureaucracies and civil service, the presidential political center has become the pivotal political center with almost exclusive control over foreign affairs and national security. The locus and degree of power widiin the American political and constitutional context, rather than elite orientations and practices, are identified to explain who dominates American foreign policy.

AbstractContemporary Malaysia is an amalgamation of regions with distinct historical origins and features that provide the raw material for strong regional identities. The Malay‐Muslim nature of the nation‐building project led by the dominant United Malays Nasional Organisation (UMNO) has reified regional identities by sharpening the contrast between them and Malaysia's political center. Yet while regional identities are often pronounced, Malaysian politics are highly centralized, and neither deep fragmentation along regional lines nor meaningful secessionist movements have materialized. That results from Malaysia's institutional features and the primacy of highly essentialized, trans‐regional ethno‐religious identities. This article examines the process of regional and ethnic identity formation, which has occurred in an endogenous manner that draws from and reinforces the dominance of UMNO and its political heartland. It argues that the embrace of the ethno‐religious identities has enabled the primacy of Malay‐Muslim considerations in national political discourse and consequently crowded out particularistic regional demands.

Abstract.  The formal stochastic model of voting should be the theoretical benchmark against which empirical models can be gauged. A standard result in the formal model is the 'mean voter theorem' stating that parties converge to the electoral center. Empirical analysis based on the vote‐maximizing premise, however, invalidates this convergence result. We consider both empirical and formal models that incorporate exogeneous valence terms for the parties. Valence can be regarded as an electorally perceived attribute of each party leader that is independent of the policy position of the party. We show that the mean voter theorem is valid for empirical multinomial logit and probit models of a number of elections in the Netherlands and Britain. To account for the non‐centrist policy positions of parties, we consider a more general formal model where valence is also affected by the behavior of party activists. The results suggest that non‐convergent policy choice by party leaders can be understood as rational, vote‐maximizing calculation by leaders in response to electoral and activist motivations.

This article provides an algorithm to produce a time-series estimate of the political center (or median voter) from aggregate survey data, even when the same questions are not asked in most years. This is compared to the existing Stimson dyad ratios approach, which has been applied to various questions in political science. Unlike the dyad ratios approach, the model developed here is derived from an explicit model of individual behavior—the widely used item response theory model. I compare the results of both techniques using the data on public opinion from the United Kingdom from 1947 to 2005 from Bartle, Dellepiane-Avellaneda, and Stimson. Measures of overall model fit are provided, as well as techniques for testing model's assumptions and the fit of individual items. Full code is provided for estimation with free software WinBUGS and JAGS.