Suchergebnisse

Whether the Radical Democratic Party (RDP) in Switzerland is best described as dominant or predominant in political life, in light of its special characteristics, symbiosis with the institutions it helped to create, and continuing influence; research note with comments by three reviewers. Summaries in English and German.

"Die Freisinnig-Demokratische Partei der Schweiz steht heute noch für die Werte Schweizer Demokratie und repräsentiert exemplarisch die dominante Partei, wie sie in den theoretischen Werken zum Thema beschrieben wird. Der Autor analysiert die spezifischen Charakteristika der Etablierung im Schweizer Parteiensystem. Ausgehend von den operationellen Konzepten, wie sie von Sartori postuliert werden, stellt er die Frage nach der aktuellen Entwicklung. Die verschiedenen Partikularismen des helvetischen Radikalismus machen eine Klassifikation schwierig. Trotzdem ist es notwendig, sich über die führende Stellung dieser Partei im politischen Gefüge der Schweiz und deren Einfluss - im Widerspruch zur Wählererosion seit 1945 - Rechenschaft abzulegen." (Autorenreferat)

After analyzing the function & structure of the British Conservative & Labor Parties from information based on recent res, the author concludes that the mass party is not appropriate to American conditions. Because party activists are zealots, methods are found in both British parties of preventing their deciding party policy, in order not to antagonize the moderate voter. Because the US lacks the aristocratic tradition & respect for the leader, an American mass party would be more difficult to keep in its place. Duverger has argued that American parties are backward in comparison with European because of their lack of class-consciousness. But the reverse is probably true; absence of class-consciousness is a characteristic of an advanced econ. Since America has had universal suffrage longer than any European country, it cannot be argued that absence of mass parties is a sign of pol'al immaturity. (AIPSA).

This research examines the form and content of state party websites in the 2000 US election, and considers whether or not state parties are following the lead of the national parties. Generally, state parties attempted to provide essential party functions online, but lacked technical sophistication in 2000. The range of state party websites was broad - from state parties that lacked simple graphics to those with streaming video. Highly integrated parties (those receiving large soft-money transfers) produced the strongest websites and demonstrated the most expertise in this emerging medium.

Anti-immigration parties have experienced electoral lift-off in most Western democracies, although the consequences of their victories for real-life policy outcomes have remained largely unexplored. A key question is: do electoral pressures from anti-immigration parties have a 'contagion' impact on other parties' immigration policy positions? In this article, I argue and empirically demonstrate that this is the case. On the basis of a comparative-empirical study of 75 parties in 11 Western European countries, I conclude that this contagion effect involves entire party systems rather than the mainstream right only. In addition, I find that opposition parties are more vulnerable to this contagion effect than parties in government. The findings of this article imply that anti-immigration parties are able to influence policy output in their political systems without entering government.

Political parties are active when citizens choose among candidates inelectionsand when winning candidates choose among policy alternatives ingovernment. But the inextricably linked institutions, incentives, and behavior that determine these multistage choices are substantively complex and analytically unwieldy, particularly if modeled explicitly and considered in total, from citizen preferences through government outcomes. To strike a balance between complexity and tractability, we modify standard spatial models of electoral competition and governmental policy-making to study how components of partisanship—such as candidate platform separation in elections, party ID-based voting, national partisan tides, and party-disciplined behavior in the legislature—are related to policy outcomes. We definepartisan biasas the distance between the following two points in a conventional choice space: the ideal point of the median voter in the median legislative district and the policy outcome selected by the elected legislature. The study reveals that none of the party-in-electorate conditions is capable of producing partisan bias independently. Specified combinations of conditions, however, can significantly increase the bias and/or the variance of policy outcomes, sometimes in subtle ways.

Souvent considérée comme un point aveugle de son œuvre, la question du parti constitue pourtant une composante centrale de la pensée de Marx. En prenant en compte l'expérience militante qui fut la sienne tout au long de sa vie, cet article entreprend de montrer que Marx a développé non pas une mais deux théories du parti bien distinctes. La thèse décisive formulée à la fin des années 1840 dans le Manifeste du parti communiste – celle d'un parti communiste conçu comme fraction éclairée d'un parti ouvrier plus large – disparaît en effet de l'horizon stratégique de Marx au cours des années 1860, cédant la place à une réflexion centrée sur la construction du parti de classe, dans laquelle l'idée même d'une distinction fonctionnelle entre parti ouvrier et parti communiste perd son sens. Opposant alors de façon systématique le parti à la secte, Marx cherche à penser les conditions de possibilité d'une activité politique autonome de la classe ouvrière plutôt qu'une organisation fondée sur une doctrine pré-constituée.