Suchergebnisse

Several studies reveal that there is little empirical support for the ´end of ideology´ thesis. However we know that there has been a drive towards the centre (-rigth) of the major centre- left parties, which have been converging with the neoliberal consensus, and that the clarity of policy alternatives offered by political parties do count for the way citizens think about (and make use of) the left-right divide. Moreover, there are several claims by politicians, political commentators and journalists that the left-right divide is no longer useful to understand politics of our times. The major research questions in the present paper are the following. First, are left-right orientations losing their relevance for individual electors in European countries? Second, are the electorates in European countries moving towards the centre? In both cases, the answers are basically negative: there is too much diversity to talk about general trends but in any case the empirical evidence points predominantly in the opposite direction. After the conclusion, the paper ends by suggesting some cues for future reseach about how to explain the differences found across countries. Resumo Diversos estudos revelam que existem poucas bases empíricas para a tese do "fim da ideologia". No entanto, sabemos que tem havido um movimento em direção ao centro (-rigth) dos principais partidos de centro-esquerda, que têm convergido com o consenso neoliberal, e que a clareza das alternativas políticas oferecidas pelos partidos políticos tem peso na forma como os cidadãos pensam (e fazem uso) da divisão esquerda-direita. Além disso, existem várias alegações de políticos, comentadores políticos e jornalistas de que a divisão esquerda-direita não é mais útil para entender a política dos nossos tempos. As principais questões de investigação do presente artigo são as seguintes: em primeiro lugar, as orientações esquerda-direita perdem sua relevância para os eleitores individuais nos países europeus? Em segundo lugar, os eleitorados nos países europeus estão a mover-se em direção ao centro? Em ambos os casos, as respostas são basicamente negativas: há demasiada diversidade para se falar de tendências gerais, mas, em qualquer caso, as evidências empíricas apontam predominantemente na direção oposta. Após a conclusão, o artigo termina com a sugestão de futuras investigações sobre como explicar as diferenças encontradas entre os países.

An exploration of how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) manages to maintain its political legitimacy while simultaneously dismantling the socialist system focuses on the key role of propaganda. Late-20th-century developments in the People's Republic of China, as well as the fall of socialist regimes in Eastern Europe, have prompted the CCP to look beyond the concept of itself as a Marxist-Leninist party. It has used propaganda to "repackage" the CCP from that of a revolutionary party to a political party that offers the best hope for avoiding chaos. Nationalism has replaced communist ideology as a tool for uniting public opinion, strengthening government power, & improving the image of both the party & the military. Ways in which propaganda has been used to ignite patriotic sentiments & encourage hostility toward "Other" party propagandists are described, along with new approaches to propaganda that have adopted Western public relations/advertising techniques alongside tried & true practices. It is concluded that the CCP's ability to adapt to changing circumstances has been the key to its success. J. Lindroth

The democratic changes underway in the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation are focused on the development of parties and the party system, which explains the immense interest in the process demonstrated by their own and foreign communities of political scientists. They concentrate on the emergence and stages of the parties' development, their legal institutionalization, the "party of power" phenomenon, conduct of parties in election campaigns, the way a definite type of party system took shape, etc. Kazakhstani political scientist D. Satpaev has offered a highly imaginative formula: "some trends of their political development make Russia and Kazakhstan look like identical twins." 1 This is particularly true of the process that resulted in a multiparty system, the similarity of which in both countries has been confirmed by Russian authors as well. 2 This article can be described as an attempt to present a comparative analysis of the emergence and development of parties as political institutions in both countries in the context of their histories. This approach suggests parallels, formulates common criteria, identifies common trends, and reveals the specifics of institutionalization of the party arena in Russia and Kazakhstan.

Writing assignments are common in most political science courses. If
nothing else, they serve the purpose of allowing instructors to
exercise their evaluative power in assigning grades. All too often,
however, they fail to transcend this purpose. As a result, both
students and instructors often view each student paper as a private
communication between the two parties—a work with no future and an
audience of one (Zeiser 1999; Fulwiler 1982).

First published in 1982 Problems of Contemporary French Politics looks at the most important political controversies that have preoccupied France from the death of de Gaulle up to and including 1981 presidential and legislative elections. Three areas are discussed: the evolution of government and opposition parties, focusing in particular on their electoral attitudes and on the relations between parties making up the respective coalitions; the changes in the European and world situation and their effects on French political thinking in the field of foreign policy; and the political situation in which the fourth President of the Fifth Republic - and the first socialist President - takes up his office. Dorothy Pickles looks dispassionately at what promise to be the main issues dominating French politics in the 1980s, asking questions rather than suggesting answers. This book is a must read for students and scholars of French politics, French history, European politics, and international relations.

This paper sets out to think the relationship between horizontality and verticality from the perspective of post-foundational discourse theory, taking as a starting point the diachronic development from Laclau's and Mouffe's joint work on radical democracy to Laclau's theory of populism. The argument here is that the shift in conceptual terrain from the autonomy of 'democratic struggles' to the representative function of 'empty' popular signifiers points to deeper shifts and slippages – especially around the category of antagonism – as well as a more general tension between a horizontal politics of autonomy and a vertical politics of representation, for which radical democracy and populism respectively take on a paradigmatic character. While horizontality is predicated on the autonomous multiplicity and 'multiplication of antagonisms', verticality entails the simplification and concentration of antagonism around central representative signifiers. The question thus becomes how antagonism is organized, or – drawing on Nonhoff's concept of contrariety – to what extent the contrarieties defining the constituent parts of an equivalential chain are more multiple or more concentrated. This is followed by empirical considerations on how horizontality and verticality are organizationally mediated within current political projects, including a distinction between movement parties and 'Volksparteien neuen Typs' ('people's parties of a new type').

Triggered by the end of the four-year parliamentary term, an election to the unicameral Swedish parliament, the Riksdag, was held on 19 September 2010. The four-party non-socialist 'Alliance' coalition lost its outright majority but increased its advantage over the centre-left opposition parties and stayed in office. The Moderate Party improved on its 2006 result, and nearly took overtook the Social Democrats as the country's biggest party. The number of parliamentary parties increased from seven to eight, with the entry of tue immigration-critical Sweden Democrats. Turnout continued its recent upward trend, reaching 84.6 percent. [Copyright Elsevier Ltd.]

While support for redistribution remains high across Europe, voting for left-wing parties, traditionally identified with this agenda, has been under par. Past research explains this puzzle by class-based disagreements about redistributive priorities and by second-dimension attitudes. These explanations, however, assume coherent voter preferences reacting to structural changes. By contrast, I argue that part of the puzzle also lies in attitudinal ambivalence—simultaneous negative and positive evaluations—regarding redistributive policy. Using cross-sectional public opinion and party position data, I find that such ambivalence increases with lower political sophistication, greater value conflict, and weaker economic need. Electorally, it deepens detachment between support for redistribution and left-wing self-identification and increases voting for more economically and culturally right-wing parties. These patterns hold independently of class differences and second-dimension attitudes and replicate stably in earlier data. The findings contribute to ongoing debates about attitude structures and voting patterns and illuminate an additional challenge for economically progressive parties.

How does a party's size affect its decision to run a candidate for president? Consistent with the literature, the authors posit that environmental factors influence the likelihood that a party enters the presidential race. However, the authors argue that the effects of these factors are conditional on party size. Large parties are influenced by factors that increase their chances at being competitive, whereas small parties are influenced by factors that allow them to build their credibility. To evaluate the conditional effects of party size, the authors use an original data set of more than 2,400 party-level observations in 23 democracies across South America and Europe from 1975 to 2009. They find that small and large parties respond differently to several environmental conditions, namely, the presence of an incumbent, "crowded" plurality elections, and federalism. The findings have important implications for understanding party strategy and the factors that alter the competition for the most important of political offices. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright holder.]

How does a party's size affect its decision to run a candidate for president? Consistent with the literature, the authors posit that environmental factors influence the likelihood that a party enters the presidential race. However, the authors argue that the effects of these factors are conditional on party size. Large parties are influenced by factors that increase their chances at being competitive, whereas small parties are influenced by factors that allow them to build their credibility. To evaluate the conditional effects of party size, the authors use an original data set of more than 2,400 party-level observations in 23 democracies across South America and Europe from 1975 to 2009. They find that small and large parties respond differently to several environmental conditions, namely, the presence of an incumbent, "crowded" plurality elections, and federalism. The findings have important implications for understanding party strategy and the factors that alter the competition for the most important of political offices.

В статье раскрыта сущность партии при авторитарном и тоталитарных режимах. Отражены основополагающие требования для организации политической партии в РФ. Представлены результаты выборов в Курскую областную Думу VI созыва ; The article reveals the essence of the party with authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. Reflect the fundamental requirements for the organization of a political party in Russia. Presents the results of the elections in the Kursk regional Duma of the VI convocation

Does clientelism perpetuate the weak state capacity that characterizes many young democracies? Prior work explains that clientelist parties skew public spending to private goods and under-supply public goods. Building on these insights, this article argues that clientelism creates a bureaucratic trap. Governments that rely on clientelism invest in labour-intensive, low-skilled bureaucracies that can design and implement relatively more straightforward distributive policies. Although such bureaucracies are useful to win some elections, they cannot resolve more complex social problems, so economic and human development is hindered. Empirically, the article examines the wage structure of municipal bureaucracies as a proxy for the personnel's human capital in Mexico between 2012 and 2016. During this period, turnover in the party in power in municipalities was frequent, a situation that also allows investigating how resilient the bureaucratic trap is to increased competition. The results show that all parties invest in labour-intensive, lowskilled bureaucracies. However, the bureaucratic trap has a different grip on the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), a quintessential clientelist party, compared to other parties. After an electoral turnover, other parties invest more in their bureaucracies' human capital, and the PRI does not. While prior work has proposed other clientelism-induced negative equilibria, this article offers a more direct path from clientelism to state capacity. The results help explain why more fiscal resources, political competition, and demand-side strategies to fight vote buying are insufficient and underscore the importance of civil service reform to tame clientelism.