Suchergebnisse

For Portugal, 2003 saw efforts at financial austerity & government reshuffling. Some attention is given to changes & developments in political parties, eg, the main opposition Socialist Party. 1 Table, 4 References. J. Zendejas

The role of political parties in foreign policy is gaining increasing attention. Nonetheless, despite an extraordinary interest in 'populism', the foreign policy of populist parties has rarely been investigated. This article provides an innovative theoretical framework, applying it on a rare example of a 'pure' populist party: Italy's Five Star Movement. How has Five Star Movement positioned on Italian contribution to military operations abroad? What does such positioning say about its ideological leaning? In order to address such questions, the article analyses Five Star Movement's MPs' votes and speeches on foreign policy during its first term in Parliament (2013–2018). We find that, notwithstanding some ambiguities, the Movement's stance has been mostly pacifist and humanitarian, resembling more a 'left-libertarian populist party' than a 'sovereigntist far-right one'. Through these findings, the article contributes to the debate on populist parties and foreign policy in Europe, clarifying also the elusive ideological leaning of the Five Star Movement.

Argues that recent & substantial global changes -- particularly the demise of communism, the development of new democracies, & new conflicts over environmental & immigration issues in advanced industrial societies -- raise questions about the meaning & importance of Right-Left ideology. Drawing on 1993 questionnaire data from 343 political scholars in 42 countries, examined are (1) the use of Right & Left language, (2) the existence of secondary dimensions orthogonal to the Left-Right dimension of political conflict, & (3) issues defining Left-Right ideology. Empirical data on the Left-Right domains of political parties in the 42 countries are also presented. It is concluded that, although the Left-Right dimension can be located in most political systems, its connotations differ according to a society's political & economic conditions. 4 Tables, 2 Appendixes, 33 References. M. Grounds

Mexico's neo-Cardenist movement began in the early 1980s as a primarily local & grass-roots organization, rose to national prominence through its influence on members of the official party, the Partido Revolucionario Institutional (PRI), & became a full player in national electoral politics with its 1988 incorporation as the Partido de la Revolucion Democratica (PRD). With its future now tied to its electoral success, its prospects in 1991 & 1994 elections are reviewed, as are the likely effects the political process will have on the platforms of both the PRD & PRI. The future of neo-Cardenism, it is argued, is ultimately tied to the decisions of a society alternatively intrigued by opposition movements & inclined to express discontent by electoral absenteeism. A. Levine

In the Indonesian legal system, local political parties introduced and allowed in Aceh province along with the enactment of Law No. 11 Year 2006 on Governing Aceh (UUPA). UUPA has set a lot of things related to local political parties, including the definition, formation, principles, objectives, and functions, rights and obligations, prohibitions, membership and sovereignty of members, financial sanctions, to the supervision of local political parties. Development of local political parties in Aceh province represents a new chapter in the development of democracy in Indonesia. Implementation of the UUPA associated with local political parties, the government has issued Government Regulation No. 20 Year 2007 on Local Political Parties in Aceh. In line with the Government of Aceh has prepared regulations related to local political parties, among them the Aceh Qanun No. 8 of 2007 on Financial Aid to Political Party and Local Political Parties and Aceh Qanun No. 3 of 2008 on political parties and the setting of local political parties in the regulation of central government and local government regulations indicate the existence of local political parties in the Indonesian legal system.

Synthetic biology may be an important source of progress as well as societal and political conflict. Against this backdrop, several technology assessment organizations have been seeking to contribute to timely societal and political opinion-making on synthetic biology. The Rathenau Instituut, based in the Netherlands, is one of these organizations. In 2011, the institute organized a 'Meeting of Young Minds': a young people's debate between 'future synthetic biologists' and 'future politicians'. The former were represented by participants in the international Genetically Engineered Machines competition (iGEM), the latter by political youth organizations (PYOs) linked to Dutch political parties. The Rathenau Instituut found seven PYOs—including right wing, left wing, Green and Christian groups—willing to commit to an intensive process aimed at formulating a tentative partisan view on synthetic biology and discussing it with fellow PYOs and iGEM participants. Given the minimal amount of available data on how political parties understand synthetic biology, mapping the debate may provide valuable insights. In this article, I aim to provide such a mapping exercise and also to reflect on how and why the Rathenau Instituut organized the event.

The party manifesto is a crucial document identifying a party's ideological position. Measuring the response of political party manifestos to both the mean voter as well as party constituency positions remains extensively difficult given the lack of available data, but also the complex political realities and factors which the parties must take into consideration e.g. the economy, globalization, the demands of the market, and pressure from rival parties. In spite of these complexities, this article analyses the extent to which political parties reflect voter policy emphasis in their political manifestos. Through the content analysis of electoral manifestos the article determines the policy positions of Czech political parties during the 2010 and 2013 elections to the Lower House of the Parliament. Identifying also key voter policy preferences the article looks into the possible congruence between shifts in voter emphasis and changes in party electoral manifestos. Employing an approach not yet fully applied in academic research, the article examines shifts within ideological space, while focusing also on specific key policy areas. It concludes that in the short term – from the 2010 to 2013 parliamentary elections in the Czech Republic - political parties responded to shifts in voter policy emphasis in just one quarter of cases. The responsiveness differed significantly from one party to another.

Political scientists have long been interested in the rationale behind giving official development assistance (ODA). With a few notable exceptions, scholars have neglected the impact of governing parties of differ-ent provenience on a donor country's foreign aid policy. In order to address this shortcoming, this paper focuses on the change of government from conservative ('right') to social democratic ('left') parties in Sweden (1994) and the United Kingdom (1997). The results contradict and qualify much of the conven-tional wisdom on the allegedly more benign foreign aid policy of social democratic parties. The paper reveals instead that the Swedish and British foreign aid policies of the 1990s share an interesting pattern: Social democrats tend to display a rhetoric that is more attuned to the idea of solidarity than the conserva-tive foreign aid agenda, but in neither case does this tendency translate into a higher degree of solidarity as measured by five quantitative measures. On the contrary, conservative ODA actions speak louder than their words suggest, expressing at least as much, if not more, solidarity than their social democratic rivals.

Latino-majority congressional districts are far more likely to elect Latino representatives to Congress than majority-white districts. However, not all majority-Latino districts do so. This paper addresses this question, and it investigates how the level of influence of political parties and interest groups in majority-Latino districts substantially shapes Latino representation to the US House of Representatives. I rely on five case studies and a dataset of candidates to open congressional races with a Latino population plurality from 2004 to 2014. The evidence indicates that groups and political networks are critical for Latina/o candidate recruitment, the organization of resources in a congressional district, the deployment of campaign resources on behalf of certain candidates, and the eventual success of Latina/o candidates. The findings suggest that Latino descriptive and substantive representation are shaped by the wielding influence of political parties and interest groups.

In cross-national research on party systems, the empirical units of analysis are often assumed to be self-evident, which can be conducive to misleading research results. This problem is particularly important with regard to party system classification, for which a methodologically rigorous approach to the units of analysis is needed. This article proposes a set of operational criteria for identifying elements that qualify for inclusion within the universe of democratic party systems among individual election outcomes and country-specific sequences of elections. On this basis, I introduce additional criteria for distinguishing between party systems and party non-systems, and among party systems evolving within the same nation-state settings. By applying these criteria to a set of 1502 national legislative elections held in the world's democracies from 1792 to 2009, the article identifies 162 units that can be entered into a classification of the world's democratic party systems and 21 party non-systems. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright holder.]

This research note summarizes initial research from a wider project on the determinants of candidate selection procedures. It seeks to contribute to the growing literature on candidate selection by distinguishing transitional and institutionalized democracies. First, it provides a review of the existing literature, with particular emphasis placed on identifying the existing hypotheses on the determinants of candidate selection procedures. Second, it elucidates why transitional polities differently constrain the choice of legislative candidate selection procedures compared to institutionalized democracies. Third, several hypotheses derived from the literature indicate that the barriers to adopting inclusive legislative candidate selection procedures are higher in transitional than in institutionalized democracies.

Duverger's law postulates that single-member plurality electoral systems lead to two-party systems. Existing scholarship regards India as an exception to this law at national level, but not at district level. This study tests the latter hypothesis through analysis of a comprehensive dataset covering Indian parliamentary elections in the period 1952—2004. The results show that a large number of Indian districts do not conform to the Duvergerian norm of two-party competition, and that there is no consistent movement towards the Duvergerian equilibrium. Furthermore, inter-region and inter-state variations in the size of district-level party systems make it difficult to generalize about the application of Duverger's law to the Indian case. The study concludes that a narrow focus on electoral rules is inadequate, and that a more comprehensive set of explanatory variables is needed to explain the size of the Indian party system even at the district level.